We’ve linked them before, and more than once, but they’re one of a small number of Youtubers who consistently does great work. Here they look at the effects in a number of games and reveal how the programmers coaxed surprisingly complex effects out of the hardware for each of them. (25 minutes)
The games and effects covered this time:
- Art of Fighting on the PC Engine, zooming in and out from the fighters as they approach and draw away from each other
- Road Rash on the SMS, which created a startling effect of a road undulating and going over hills for 8-bit hardware
- Ranger-X on Genesis/Mega Drive, artillery shots firing into the distance in the background and multi-plane parallax scrolling
- The Lawnmower Man on Genesis, SNES and Gameboy, fast 3D virtual reality scenes (well, slower on Gameboy)
- Donkey Kong Country 3 on SNES: vertical stretching of a boss
- Contra 3 on SNES: rotating both a large boss, the background and the player on the screen at once when the SNES only had one hardware scroll background layer
- Super Metroid: the Power Bomb explosion effect
If you enjoyed this you’re in luck, for they’ve done many other videos like this one. They’re all in this 21-item playlist.
