What gave Mega Drive / Genesis bad rep?

[VinsCool]

First steps?
Theoretically it started in the 2600 era with games that used nothing but simple lines and only 2 colors to make a quasi 3d effect but I hear what your saying

That is not mode7, that is racing the beam

 

[RodrigoDavy]

I think that, excluding games like Pilotwings and the racing games, Mode 7 was used mostly as a gimmick to make graphics a little nicer in some games. It had a lot of potential, but most of the games at the time were side-scrollers which didn't benefit from Mode 7.

 

[VinsCool]

I think that, besides games like Pilotwings and the racing games, Mode 7 was used mostly as a gimmick to make graphics a little nicer in some games. It had a lot of potential, but most of the games at the time were side-scrollers which didn't benefit from Mode 7.

Donkey Kong Country used it very well

 

[RevPokemon]

That is not mode7, that is racing the beam

I was speaking of the first 3d games on home consoles not specifically 7

 

[Sakitoshi]

I think that, excluding games like Pilotwings and the racing games, Mode 7 was used mostly as a gimmick to make graphics a little nicer in some games. It had a lot of potential, but most of the games at the time were side-scrollers which didn't benefit from Mode 7.

The very first minutes of Super Metroid use it too. the title screen itself, when Ridley escapes and you are escaping the Ceres station. the little cutscenes of Samus ship too.

Spoiler

In Super Mario World, the platform when you fight Iggy and Larry. when they scale the wall, jump across the stage and you step on and defeat Morton, Ludwig and Roy. and the rotating wheel of Reznor. and Bowser as he fly toward the screen and rotate to drop the balls.

Spoiler

 

[RevPokemon]

The very first minutes of Super Metroid use it too. the title screen itself, when Ridley escapes and you are escaping the Ceres station. the little cutscenes of Samus ship too.

Spoiler

In Super Mario World, the platform when you fight Iggy and Larry. when they scale the wall, jump across the stage and you step on and defeat Morton, Ludwig and Roy. and the rotating wheel of Reznor. and Bowser as he fly toward the screen and rotate to drop the balls.

Spoiler

Now that I look back in SMBW it reminds me of how they use it in castlevania to an extent

 

[XDel]

First steps?
Theoretically it started in the 2600 era with games that used nothing but simple lines and only 2 colors to make a quasi 3d effect but I hear what your saying

Maybe I should have used the term (zoomable pixels)?

 

[RevPokemon]

Maybe I should have used the term (zoomable pixels)?

True but like I said I get what you are saying.
Ultimately the fact that the snes had an expansion port for a gpu and cartridge was better than an add on. Although I do wonder what the Sony/Nintendo collab would of given us

 

[XDel]

True but like I said I get what you are saying.
Ultimately the fact that the snes had an expansion port for a gpu and cartridge was better than an add on. Although I do wonder what the Sony/Nintendo collab would of given us

I always imagined it would have been something like later generation DOS games, such as Anvil of Dawn, Terminator: Future Shock, etc. Basically something able to pull off PSX first gen games, and totally excel at 2D at the same time. That and we'd prolly have been blessed with a ton of RPG's with full motion animation.

 

[RodrigoDavy]

Donkey Kong Country used it very well

I wasn't aware that DKC used Mode 7, is it in a boss battle?

The very first minutes of Super Metroid use it too. the title screen itself, when Ridley escapes and you are escaping the Ceres station. the little cutscenes of Samus ship too.

Spoiler

In Super Mario World, the platform when you fight Iggy and Larry. when they scale the wall, jump across the stage and you step on and defeat Morton, Ludwig and Roy. and the rotating wheel of Reznor. and Bowser as he fly toward the screen and rotate to drop the balls.

Spoiler

I guess you have a point. It's a shame though that most games only used it for Boss Battles. I really like how they used it in Super Metroid to create tension though.

EDIT: And now we're discussing the Super Nintendo in a thread about the Mega Drive... lol

 

[VinsCool]

I wasn't aware that DKC used Mode 7, is it in a boss battle?

All 3 DKC games used mode 7 for pseudo 3d effects in backgrounds while playing in many levels. DKC2 used it beautifully in ships levels

 

[RodrigoDavy]

All 3 DKC games used mode 7 for pseudo 3d effects in backgrounds while playing in many levels. DKC2 used it beautifully in ships levels

Oh, I know what you mean. I always thought the background in the ship levels was a trick done by the CPU.

 

[Pleng]

Even the Mega CD, yeah perhaps that got a bad rep, but really the only competitor to that machine was the fukkin Phillips CDi, and taken in that context, the Mega CD was awesome!

In Europe there was the Amiga CD32 which wiped the floor with the Mega CD...

And by cool you mean had rich parents

Or maybe he, you know, had a job? Our family had both a MegaDrive and a SNES (And a GameGear and a GameBoy and a CD32...) and we were never bought any systems from our parents.

 

[mightymuffy]

In Europe there was the Amiga CD32 which wiped the floor with the Mega CD...

(I just knew somebody was gonna come up with that one!)
UK here, and I also still have a CD32 plugged in - great machine... If there's anything MD related that'd challenge the CD32 it'd be the 32X in my opinion, or the 32X CD, and you can add the Atari Jaguar/CD and 3DO to that group.
No you should've said the PC-Engine CD, that'd have shut me up!
Still, if you insist on the two machines being pitted together - I fully agree with you!

 

[DjoeN]

Brrr, Amiga CD / Atari Jaguar CD / Panasonic FZ-1 R.E.A.L. 3DO
Had them all, sold the amigacd, the Atari stuff i still have and the Panasonic FZ-1 i maybe can sell for €50 but the FZ-10, I can't even sell it around here for a price higher then €20, (even if you throw some AWESOME madden game with it )
AmigaCD was great if you had the extras to turn it into an almost fully workin,g Amiga 1200
I really don't know what Atari was thinking when it launched the Atari Jaguar and later it's CD add-on both for a price way to high
Panasonic, well that was a very expensive flop :/

The Retro CD consoles i love the most are my PC-Engine Duo-RX (RGB modded) / Saturn and Dreamcast (and then comes PSX (the old versions, not the smaller white version PS1)

[EDIT]
For those wondering, no, most i didn't buy myself or my parents at that time, i got a best friend who bought them all (his parents (who owned a company) payed it all), we played alot at his home and we lost each other while going to different schools, but i later met him again and asked about his consoles, turned out he still had everythig (AmigaCD/Panasonic/Atari Jaguar(+CD) (The PC-Engine Duo-RX was a gift from some Japanese friends from my parents) (The Saturn and Dreamcast i bought myself)
So i asked if he would sell them to me, that was no problem, under 1 condition (he was moving to Africa and was not planning to take them with him) 5000 BF (around €125) not more and i would get rid of the 3DO systems cause the where so awefull, lol, anyway i could do as i pleased whit it, So i payed 5000 BF and a dinner (that was more then 10 years ago) i broke his promise :/ i still have both Panasonic systems

 

[Hungry Friend]

The PCE, especially the CD system had a ridiculously good library of games in Japan that were never localized due to its lack of popularity in the west, but it's definitely an underrated system. SF2CE didn't even use the arcade card and it was a really fantastic port, and some of the Neogeo ports looked better than their SNES & Genesis counterparts(Fatal Fury Special for example) Also Lords of Thunder was originally a PCE CD game that was ported to the SCD. Also Rondo of Blood, which is arguably the best classic CV game but that's a matter of taste.

All I can say about the 3DO(never had one) was that it had awesome ports of SSF2T & Samurai Showdown. They weren't perfect but for 90s ports they were pretty incredible. Other than loading time, the sound seemed to be rather compressed, especially in SS. Some parallax scrolling was missing in SSF2T, like the bathtub in E-Honda's stage+ some background animation.

 

[sarkwalvein]

Also Rondo of Blood, which is arguably the best classic CV game but that's a matter of taste.

That fucking great soundtrack... Oh... Nice...



Oh Konami, why did you had to die such a horrible death?

 

[Foxi4]

I have trouble understanding what the OP means by "bad rep", both the SNES and the Genesis/MD went neck in neck throughout the generation and estimates of sales are inconclusive regarding which one sold better (according to some calculations the Genesis/MD might've actually sold more units than the SNES due to sales made in North and South American states). The MD/Genesis never had a "bad rep", it's a highly respected system, claiming otherwise is revisionist history.

 

[RevPokemon]

I have trouble understanding what the OP means by "bad rep", both consoles went neck in neck and estimates of sales are inconclusive regarding which one sold better (according to some calculations the MD might've actually sold more units than the SNES due to sales made in North and South American states). The MD/Genesis never had a "bad rep", it's a highly respected system, claiming otherwise is revisionist history.

I think we all think that. I think " why is the Genesis not held as highly as the Snes" or something like that would be a better title

 

[Foxi4]

I think we all think that. I think " why is the Genesis not held as highly as the Snes" or something like that would be a better title

Considering the sheer amount of third-party/knock-off/clone/SoC-based MD/Genesis systems currently present on the market, I'd say that both systems were held in equal regard, and still are to this day. There's countless plug-and-play MD-based systems out there, people clearly still have a soft spot for its library.