Best Uses of SNES Features

Sometimes it’s useful to study the various ways that some of the many different and unique capabilities of SNES were used in old games as a way to stimulate your own new indie/homebrew SNES game ideas. So here are some nice examples of novel graphical effects in existing SNES games that use a few of these features (and sometimes even combine multiple of them), in the hope that they may inspire you in your own current or future SNES creations:

Best examples of window/shape masks in SNES games

Is Gunstar Heroes Possible on SNES?

Continuing with my idea for a series of articles looking at both old and new Sega Genesis games and analysing whether they could run on SNES or not–I’m here to prove they can by providing examples of similar feats being achieved in actual SNES games, both old and new titles, plus any modern demos and the like where necessary–the next game I want to look at is Gunstar Heroes.

Is Xeno Crisis Possible on SNES?

Continuing with my idea for a series of articles looking at both old and new Sega Genesis games and analysing whether they could run on SNES or not–I’m here to prove they can by providing examples of similar feats being achieved in actual SNES games, both old and new titles, plus any modern demos and the like where necessary–the next game I want to look at is Xeno Crisis.

Sonic on SNES

So, just a quick thought and a simple example demonstrating how a SNES version of Sonic the Hedgehog could improve the visuals of the game in some areas to give the SNES version a very nice look of its own, despite it not having as wide a view of the level as the Genesis version:

A little bit of  Colour Blasting does the trick

The image above shows how, along with adding a little more colour into the GUI, a nice gradient on the background sky, and making the clouds look a little softer using some more colours, the SNES version could also use that extra third background layer along with a bit of colour math to have a really nice reflection and semi-transparency effect on the water. And, it’s important to point out that not only does it look like its reflecting the scenery there, but the actual shimmering water would be on a seperate layer from the reflection of the hills and would be scrolling at a different speed too, which would add some really nice extra depth to the parallax also. Oh, I also used the Sonic Mania character design and GUI icon for him too, just because.

Is Castlevania: Bloodlines Possible on SNES?

Continuing with my idea for a series of articles looking at both old and new Sega Genesis games and analysing whether they could run on SNES or not–I’m here to prove they can by providing examples of similar feats being achieved in actual SNES games, both old and new titles, plus any modern demos and the like where necessary–the next game I want to look at is Castlevania: Bloodlines.

Is The Cursed Knight possible on SNES?

I’ve heard a lot of people claim in recent times that the SNES couldn’t run this Genesis game or that Genesis game because it’s too complex for the system or it would just suffer slowdown on SNES because of its “slow” CPU, etc, which simply isn’t true in 99% of cases. And, not only are these assertions coming from hadcore Genesis fans, they’re even coming from SNES fans at times too, which is just very disappointing.

So, here’s an idea for a series of articles looking at both old and new Sega Genesis games and analysing whether they could run on SNES or not–I’m here to prove they can–by providing examples of similar feats being achieved in actual SNES games, both old and new titles, plus any modern demos and the like where necessary.

The first game I want to try this with is The Cursed Knight, just because I was watching a playthrough of it when this idea popped into my head.

Modern SNES Games and Demos

Note: Some of these examples may be a few years old, but they’re still new games for SNES that came out decades after it was no longer officially on the market. And some of them may be barely more than simple concept tests, or possibly just glorified ROM hacks, but I still think they’re worth covering here.

So, without further ado, let’s begin:

Multi-jointed Enemies in SNES Games

Because it’s often been asserted by certain people that the SNES can’t really handle multi-jointed enemies, I figured I post a few examples of the SNES doing just fine in this department.

Here’s a couple from Turrican 2:

At 1:06 and 24:04

Idea for cool 3D effect on SNES

​So, I’ve just considered that Mode 7 also uses 8bpp 256-colours like Mode 3, which means you could create all kinds of pseudo-3D effects alongside the 8bpp 256-colour palette cycling I’ve mentioned previously for some amazing results.

My first idea is a 3D waterfall effect that combines the kind of thing Kulor is doing below along with the palette cycling to have the water animated and actually streaming down the 3D scene too:

Note: I sent Kulor a wee message about potentially adding in additional shading to the wall sections of his scene that aren’t flat, where there would be less light hitting them (assuming the light source in the scene is somewhere above and in the distance), which would sell the 3D effect even more, and I would definitely apply that to the waterfall scene too.

“Blast Processing”, the reality. . . .

As it turns out, “Blast Processing” really was just total marketing spiel back in the day, even if the Genesis could technically do some stuff under the hood that can now be sort of linked to it decades later.

“The fact is that Blast Processing is such a hardcore, low-level application of the Mega Drive hardware that, astonishingly, it was never used in any shipping games and only in recent years has the technique been successfully mastered. And even then, its actual application in games is severely limited, with some interesting, but not exactly game-changing results … But secondly, and perhaps more pressingly, Blast Processing essentially uses the entirety of the 68000’s CPU time. You can run Blast Processing on a Mega Drive game, but you’d be unable to run anything with it … So it’s useless for standard cartridge games [other than for static high-colour images] … Throughout the machine’s lifetime, clever coding produced an almost generational leap in the effects seen in Mega Drive titles – but Blast Processing, unfortunately, wasn’t one of them.” – Eurogamer