Uploaded January 2023 | Updated September 2026, 6 days ago
No Commentary / Gameplay Edited to Action / First Play - Series Experience / Hard Difficulty
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR44RMWeveiwTKXJYVk_s46Ik
Battles will keep all talking and tutorials and mini-cutscenes but actual gameplay will have idle times edited out. All movies and non-battle stuffs will be UNEDITED and in their own video.
----
Hey, it's the Prologue. Expect a straight playthrough since it's just a simple tutorial/conceit for exposition.
No Commentary / Gameplay Edited to Action / First Play - Series Experience / Hard Difficulty
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR44RMWeveiwTKXJYVk_s46Ik
Battles will keep all talking and tutorials and mini-cutscenes but actual gameplay will have idle times edited out. All movies and non-battle stuffs will be UNEDITED and in their own video.
----
Hey, it's the Prologue. Expect a straight playthrough since it's just a simple tutorial/conceit for exposition.
![BONUS 01. [FPGA 4K] Rad Racer (NES) - Title & Demo](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YYglnkcog0U/mqdefault.jpg "BONUS 01. [FPGA 4K] Rad Racer (NES) - Title & Demo
No Commentary / 4k60 (4:3 Integer Upscale) / Digital Prime (FBX) Color Palette / Decent Player
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR44Lsym0AXzlkcixYzLe0jhU
This is being played on an AnaloguePocket FPGA game console allowing for clear output in sound and audio! The video provided to YouTube is 4:4:4 and lossless! Details below in Technical Notes!
Not much to this Demo, the guy doesnt even know how to turn!
Technical Notes:
TL;DR: YouTube was provided a perfect video so pixels are sharp and shapes are correct. Watch in 4k if your computer can handle it.
This video has suffered no lossy compression before reaching YouTube! Its a lossless video file with no chroma subsampling (4:4:4). Essentially, its a perfect copy until YouTube works its magic which now makes it a 4:2:0 video with lossy compression, yes. However, the better the initial copy... the better!
I went for a 4:3 output with pixel perfect sharpness via integer upscales. 4:3 was selected because this was the aspect ratio people played the game in on the original console. The video is compressed losslessly so no definition is lost.
256 x 240 - internal NES resolution
256* 10 = 2560 / 4 = 640
240* 8 = 1920 / 3 = 640
2560 x 1920 = 4:3
So you can fit the nearest neighbor upscales in a 4k frame and suffer no interpolation and have it in 4:3!
Im using the Digital Prime (FBX) Color Palette developed by FirebrandX. The Nintendo Entertainment System does not have any way of letting you know what its colors should be EXACTLY by our current digital standards. It was all analog and cant be translated precisely. This hasnt stopped some people from trying though! The Digital Prime (FBX) Color Palette was developed to look very nice and accurate to how a modern day NES would appear!
About the Analogue Pocket: Its a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based game system which to explain in laymans terms (BY a layman): Its a chip dense with circuits and stuff that can be programmed to use only so many in whatever ways necessary to replicate another chip. Basically, if you can reverse engineer a NES exactly, you can pretty much program this chip to behave like a NES exactly. Which is what this is.
Im playing this using the OpenFPGA feature on the Analogue Pocket which allows developers to import/create cores (systems) to be used by the FPGA chip. The Spiritualized NES core is the one being played on and is widely considered to be a port of the core in Analogues NT Mini/Noir systems and made by the same developer.
Im using the Analogue Dock to play this on my TV and capture the footage.")
![01. [FPGA 4K] Blades of Vengeance (Genesis) - All Treasure/Secrets - Mountains of Flame](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YyZXfCb-IDY/mqdefault.jpg "01. [FPGA 4K] Blades of Vengeance (Genesis) - All Treasure/Secrets - Mountains of Flame
No Commentary / 4k60 (x9 Integer Upscale) / High Res Audio
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR47pFjCqAKmP4MlsltjL3Bvo
This is being played on an Analogue Mega Sg FPGA game console allowing for clear output in sound and audio! The video provided to YouTube is 4:4:4 and lossless! Details below in Technical Notes!
Its not too often you find a brainless hack and slash platformer that has some depth!
The level design is strong giving you what feels like plenty of options but still keeping you on track to reach the end. There are many secrets as well, all of which I catalogued here! I had some bullet points on my other screen telling me how to get to the next treasure so that I can complete the whole affair live - I didnt want to keep stopping the video, especially since the music continues even when paused. So if you see me standing still for a moment, thats probably why.
I chose to play as the Huntress because she is the most balanced and has the most drastic style change partway through.
Ill explain mechanics and such next video!
Technical Notes:
TL;DR: YouTube was provided a perfect video so pixels are sharp and shapes are correct. Audio is high resolution compared to a Genesis system due to no processing constraints. Watch in 4k or 1440p if your computer can handle it.
This video has suffered no lossy compression before reaching YouTube! Its a lossless video file with no chroma subsampling (4:4:4). Essentially, its a perfect copy until YouTube works its magic which now makes it a 4:2:0 video with lossy compression, yes. However, the better the initial copy... the better!
The video was originally captured in a 320 x 224 resolution, the native square pixel resolution of most NTSC Genesis games, and then integer upscaled x9 times to 2880 x 2016 with black borders added along the outside for a clean 4k display!
This results in a pixel perfect output that is slightly wider than what you might have seen on your old CRT TV set! However, the pixels are sharp this way AND the art was designed in this pixel perfect resolution before being squashed to 4:3 back in the day. In short: Pixels are sharp AND circles are circles and squares are squares.
Some games were a 256 x 224 resolution, originally. These will be uploaded in 1440p to fill the screen as much as possible and maintain a pixel perfect integer upscale. The native resolution is far too thin for what the game looked like on a CRT OR for the art, so the width is integer scaled a step higher to result in a 4:3 aspect ratio (256 x 7 for 1792 and 224 x 6 for 1344 = 1792 x 1344). These will look a little thinner than the 320 x 224 games Im uploading, but the art will be crisp AND be how it looked in the old days!
Some games switch between 320 x 224 resolution and 256 x 224 resolution (Sonic 2 special stage, Lion King Stampede level, etc.). I will generally upload levels containing large sections in 256 x 224 resolution as 1440p to maintain perfect integer upscales and preferred ratios. 320 x 224 does not change ratio between 4k or 1440p. You will know when the genesis is using 256 x 224 cause the screen will shrink a little in these videos!
About the Mega SG... Its a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based game system which to explain in laymans terms (BY a layman): Its a chip dense with circuits and stuff that can be programmed to use only so many in whatever ways necessary to replicate another chip. Basically, if you can reverse engineer a genesis exactly, you can pretty much program this chip to behave like a genesis exactly. Which is what this is.
Im playing in Zero Delay mode so the game is running marginally faster. 0.15%, to be exact. Thats less than 1/7th of a single percent. Ive also cropped out the colored border Genesis games tend to have.
The sound has been tweaked slightly per FirebrandXs recommendations, Ive enabled YM2612 High Quality Mode for uncompressed audio, and I have not engaged the ladder effect or lowpass filter. This will definitely sound different than a normal genesis because of the latter option. Its essentially listening closer to what the source sound would be like before the Genesis muffles it a bit.
I also want to mention dithering for just a moment here. In Genesis games youll often see lines of color alternating here and there, this is because on an old CRT tv the screen would be a bit blurry resulting in those colors bleeding together and becoming a mix of the two. This can also result in transparencies if used correctly. Unfortunately with a clean digital image this wont happen. The only way to enable these extra colors is to blur the digital image and this certainly would not be pixel perfect as is my goal. I like to think that we are now able to see how the artists tried to achieve their effect! You can always squint your eyes a bit if you want to try to replicate the blurriness!")
![05. [FPGA 4K] Dinosaurs for Hire (Genesis) - Level Five](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z-9ZBQoCzsE/mqdefault.jpg "05. [FPGA 4K] Dinosaurs for Hire (Genesis) - Level Five
No Commentary / 4k60 (x9 Integer9 Upscale) / High Res Audio / Capable Player
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR47cFeVP5ZPojNHCpuwcSEUX
Full Title: Tom Masons Dinosaurs for Hire
This is being played on an Analogue Mega Sg FPGA game console allowing for clear output in sound and audio! The video provided to YouTube is 4:4:4 and lossless! Details below in Technical Notes!
Originally a comic book, this game is about 3 wisecracking dinosaurs that are actually aliens who LOOK like small dinosaurs running a mercenary gig while wielding ginormous firearms.
Its better not to worry about it.
This is contra-esque run and gun with some wonky platforming and design choices - but - overall is a fine brainless time once you know whats coming.
Technical Notes:
TL;DR: YouTube was provided a perfect video so pixels are sharp and shapes are correct. Audio is high resolution compared to a Genesis system due to no processing constraints. Watch in 4k or 1440p if your computer can handle it.
This video has suffered no lossy compression before reaching YouTube! Its a lossless video file with no chroma subsampling (4:4:4). Essentially, its a perfect copy until YouTube works its magic which now makes it a 4:2:0 video with lossy compression, yes. However, the better the initial copy... the better!
The video was originally captured in a 320 x 224 resolution, the native square pixel resolution of most NTSC Genesis games, and then integer upscaled x9 times to 2880 x 2016 with black borders added along the outside for a clean 4k display!
This results in a pixel perfect output that is slightly wider than what you might have seen on your old CRT TV set! However, the pixels are sharp this way AND the art was designed in this pixel perfect resolution before being squashed to 4:3 back in the day. In short: Pixels are sharp AND circles are circles and squares are squares.
Some games were a 256 x 224 resolution, originally. These will be uploaded in 1440p to fill the screen as much as possible and maintain a pixel perfect integer upscale. The native resolution is far too thin for what the game looked like on a CRT OR for the art, so the width is integer scaled a step higher to result in a 4:3 aspect ratio (256 x 7 for 1792 and 224 x 6 for 1344 = 1792 x 1344). These will look a little thinner than the 320 x 224 games Im uploading, but the art will be crisp AND be how it looked in the old days!
Some games switch between 320 x 224 resolution and 256 x 224 resolution (Sonic 2 special stage, Lion King Stampede level, etc.). I will generally upload levels containing large sections in 256 x 224 resolution as 1440p to maintain perfect integer upscales and preferred ratios. 320 x 224 does not change ratio between 4k or 1440p. You will know when the genesis is using 256 x 224 cause the screen will shrink a little in these videos!
About the Mega SG... Its a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based game system which to explain in laymans terms (BY a layman): Its a chip dense with circuits and stuff that can be programmed to use only so many in whatever ways necessary to replicate another chip. Basically, if you can reverse engineer a genesis exactly, you can pretty much program this chip to behave like a genesis exactly. Which is what this is.
Im playing in Zero Delay mode so the game is running marginally faster. 0.15%, to be exact. Thats less than 1/7th of a single percent. Ive also cropped out the colored border Genesis games tend to have.
The sound has been tweaked slightly per FirebrandXs recommendations, Ive enabled YM2612 High Quality Mode for uncompressed audio, and I have not engaged the ladder effect or lowpass filter. This will definitely sound different than a normal genesis because of the latter option. Its essentially listening closer to what the source sound would be like before the Genesis muffles it a bit.
I also want to mention dithering for just a moment here. In Genesis games youll often see lines of color alternating here and there, this is because on an old CRT tv the screen would be a bit blurry resulting in those colors bleeding together and becoming a mix of the two. This can also result in transparencies if used correctly. Unfortunately with a clean digital image this wont happen. The only way to enable these extra colors is to blur the digital image and this certainly would not be pixel perfect as is my goal. I like to think that we are now able to see how the artists tried to achieve their effect! You can always squint your eyes a bit if you want to try to replicate the blurriness!")
![04. [RGB QHD] Final Fight (SNES) - Bay Area - Cody Run](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZcPl7wy2igo/mqdefault.jpg "04. [RGB QHD] Final Fight (SNES) - Bay Area - Cody Run
No Commentary / Practiced Run / 1440p60 (4:3 Integer Upscale) / Hard Mode
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR47Hgk7pIVGILWf8Jaqhhxzt
The video provided to YouTube is 4:4:4 and lossless! Details below in Technical Notes!
Bay area is a long stretch filled with many fights containing the same kind of enemy! This can prove to a pain depending on the matchup! Whats also a pain are barrels. Do not try to dodge them, instead throw out the panic attack if you can! I say that because they bring a LOT of input lag onto the screen and you might be mashing for your life to no avail!
The boss of this round is Abigail, a true monstrosity! This guy out reaches Cody with both his attacks AND grabs - hell nab you from from what looks like miles away! I found the best strategy is to coax him into his angry red charge by trying to create as much distance as you can from him. I then retaliate by throwing out a punch combo, but the timing is pretty tight! If he just loiters around or is looking for a simple grab I use the panic button.
Good luck. This guy can clean out all your lives in a flash! If you happen to have a katana and his friends dont make you lose it, you likely can bait him into running into it like in the double Andore arena!
Oh, and theres a break the glass mini game after this round. I didnt complete it but the idea is to line yourself up with the center of the glass (the shadows help) and then strike them. Otherwise theyll rotate and whop you back!
First videos description follows:
Originally an arcade game, Final Fight got a port to the SNES and was pretty decently done all considered! A whole level is missing and you can only play it in 1 player mode but you still get to throw your fists and squeeze the life outta some street punks all the same! I can only figure that Nintendo wanted to show they can have cool arcade games on their console as well because thats were the Sega Genesis really shined!
Im gonna play as Cody because he reminds me a lot of my go-to-character in Streets of Rage, Axel, apparently not just in looks but moves as well! No flaming uppercut though. Just some weird spinning kick you can throw out if in trouble for a tiny sliver of life.
Speaking of life, the enemies on this game can hit HARD. The weaker ones will stunlock you so if you dont use the spinkick to break out youll take a ton of damage, and its not uncommon for some enemies to regularly take a 4th to HALF your life in a single strike. Some bosses will do even more than that.
Since getting hit hurts in such a big way, the name of the game this time around is crowd control. Learning your attacks reach and how to keep everyone on one side is what will win this. One move youll overuse and abuse is your basic attack combo. It outreaches most enemies and does a good amount of damage. You can also interrupt it after the second strike by holding a direction on the d-pad to toss the punk over your shoulder knocking down everyone in your way and granting momentary invulnerability.
Crowd control!
Once you get the rhythm down the game can be rather simplistic but any slip up can punish you very badly so your attention is maintained. Bosses can be super cheap and evil hitting stupid-hard, overriding your attacks, and having invulnerability after being hit but once learned arent the worst thi g in the world. Mess up and youll easily eat through a whole continue though! And these continues send you back to the start of a round, yaaay. (If you start in area with less than 5 lives it may be better sacrificing them to start over.)
Gonna also quickly mention the horrible slowdown this game can have. If there are too many enemies and items/containers on screen the game can struggle to keep pace AND eat your button inputs in the process. This is the worst thing ever. They try to mitigate this problem by limiting to 3 enemies on screen but even this isnt always enough.
Also many item containers have randomized contents meaning you might only heal 1/10 your hp instead of 3/4. Or maybe therell be nothing at all!
Another piece of info that comes to mind is your special panic button attack doesnt come out if you attempt it after another attack. It treats it as another attack. Indefinitely. You either need to wait a moment beforehand or get hit before the special will be a special and not an attack.
Technical Notes:
TL;DR: YouTube was provided a perfect video so pixels are sharp and shapes are correct.
I went for a 4:3 output with pixel perfect sharpness via integer upscales. The video is compressed losslessly so no definition is lost.
256 x 224 - internal SNES resolution (8:7)
256* 7 = 1792 / 4 = 448
224* 6 = 1344 / 3 = 448
1792 x 1334 = 4:3
So you can fit the nearest neigbor upscales in a 1440p frame and suffer no interpolation and have it in 4:3!
***More details potentially pending.***")
![BONUS 01. [FPGA 4K] QuackShot (Genesis) - Title & Demos (Full Loop)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZoQOlk40MYw/mqdefault.jpg "BONUS 01. [FPGA 4K] QuackShot (Genesis) - Title & Demos (Full Loop)
No Commentary / 4k60 (x9 Integer9 Upscale) / High Res Audio
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR45YP4HVy8IN0stGHJCUmwOm
Full Title: QuackShot Starring Donald Duck
This is being played on an Analogue Mega Sg FPGA game console allowing for clear output in sound and audio! The video provided to YouTube is 4:4:4 and lossless! Details below in Technical Notes!
Donald finds a hidden treasure map among Uncle Scrooges books and does he share the find? Aw, phooey! That old bags got enough money as is! So Donald charters a plane and gears up for an adventure to claim it himself! With all the money he doesnt have!
Technical Notes:
TL;DR: YouTube was provided a perfect video so pixels are sharp and shapes are correct. Audio is high resolution compared to a Genesis system due to no processing constraints. Watch in 4k or 1440p if your computer can handle it.
This video has suffered no lossy compression before reaching YouTube! Its a lossless video file with no chroma subsampling (4:4:4). Essentially, its a perfect copy until YouTube works its magic which now makes it a 4:2:0 video with lossy compression, yes. However, the better the initial copy... the better!
The video was originally captured in a 320 x 224 resolution, the native square pixel resolution of most NTSC Genesis games, and then integer upscaled x9 times to 2880 x 2016 with black borders added along the outside for a clean 4k display!
This results in a pixel perfect output that is slightly wider than what you might have seen on your old CRT TV set! However, the pixels are sharp this way AND the art was designed in this pixel perfect resolution before being squashed to 4:3 back in the day. In short: Pixels are sharp AND circles are circles and squares are squares.
Some games were a 256 x 224 resolution, originally. These will be uploaded in 1440p to fill the screen as much as possible and maintain a pixel perfect integer upscale. The native resolution is far too thin for what the game looked like on a CRT OR for the art, so the width is integer scaled a step higher to result in a 4:3 aspect ratio (256 x 7 for 1792 and 224 x 6 for 1344 = 1792 x 1344). These will look a little thinner than the 320 x 224 games Im uploading, but the art will be crisp AND be how it looked in the old days!
Some games switch between 320 x 224 resolution and 256 x 224 resolution (Sonic 2 special stage, Lion King Stampede level, etc.). I will generally upload levels containing large sections in 256 x 224 resolution as 1440p to maintain perfect integer upscales and preferred ratios. 320 x 224 does not change ratio between 4k or 1440p. You will know when the genesis is using 256 x 224 cause the screen will shrink a little in these videos!
About the Mega SG... Its a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based game system which to explain in laymans terms (BY a layman): Its a chip dense with circuits and stuff that can be programmed to use only so many in whatever ways necessary to replicate another chip. Basically, if you can reverse engineer a genesis exactly, you can pretty much program this chip to behave like a genesis exactly. Which is what this is.
Im playing in Zero Delay mode so the game is running marginally faster. 0.15%, to be exact. Thats less than 1/7th of a single percent. Ive also cropped out the colored border Genesis games tend to have.
The sound has been tweaked slightly per FirebrandXs recommendations, Ive enabled YM2612 High Quality Mode for uncompressed audio, and I have not engaged the ladder effect or lowpass filter. This will definitely sound different than a normal genesis because of the latter option. Its essentially listening closer to what the source sound would be like before the Genesis muffles it a bit.
I also want to mention dithering for just a moment here. In Genesis games youll often see lines of color alternating here and there, this is because on an old CRT tv the screen would be a bit blurry resulting in those colors bleeding together and becoming a mix of the two. This can also result in transparencies if used correctly. Unfortunately with a clean digital image this wont happen. The only way to enable these extra colors is to blur the digital image and this certainly would not be pixel perfect as is my goal. I like to think that we are now able to see how the artists tried to achieve their effect! You can always squint your eyes a bit if you want to try to replicate the blurriness!")
![BONUS 02. [FPGA 4K] Blades of Vengeance (Genesis) - Game Over Screen](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZpGuDhpzI2E/mqdefault.jpg "BONUS 02. [FPGA 4K] Blades of Vengeance (Genesis) - Game Over Screen
No Commentary / 4k60 (x9 Integer Upscale) / High Res Audio
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR47pFjCqAKmP4MlsltjL3Bvo
This is being played on an Analogue Mega Sg FPGA game console allowing for clear output in sound and audio! The video provided to YouTube is 4:4:4 and lossless! Details below in Technical Notes!
Technical Notes:
TL;DR: YouTube was provided a perfect video so pixels are sharp and shapes are correct. Audio is high resolution compared to a Genesis system due to no processing constraints. Watch in 4k or 1440p if your computer can handle it.
This video has suffered no lossy compression before reaching YouTube! Its a lossless video file with no chroma subsampling (4:4:4). Essentially, its a perfect copy until YouTube works its magic which now makes it a 4:2:0 video with lossy compression, yes. However, the better the initial copy... the better!
The video was originally captured in a 320 x 224 resolution, the native square pixel resolution of most NTSC Genesis games, and then integer upscaled x9 times to 2880 x 2016 with black borders added along the outside for a clean 4k display!
This results in a pixel perfect output that is slightly wider than what you might have seen on your old CRT TV set! However, the pixels are sharp this way AND the art was designed in this pixel perfect resolution before being squashed to 4:3 back in the day. In short: Pixels are sharp AND circles are circles and squares are squares.
Some games were a 256 x 224 resolution, originally. These will be uploaded in 1440p to fill the screen as much as possible and maintain a pixel perfect integer upscale. The native resolution is far too thin for what the game looked like on a CRT OR for the art, so the width is integer scaled a step higher to result in a 4:3 aspect ratio (256 x 7 for 1792 and 224 x 6 for 1344 = 1792 x 1344). These will look a little thinner than the 320 x 224 games Im uploading, but the art will be crisp AND be how it looked in the old days!
Some games switch between 320 x 224 resolution and 256 x 224 resolution (Sonic 2 special stage, Lion King Stampede level, etc.). I will generally upload levels containing large sections in 256 x 224 resolution as 1440p to maintain perfect integer upscales and preferred ratios. 320 x 224 does not change ratio between 4k or 1440p. You will know when the genesis is using 256 x 224 cause the screen will shrink a little in these videos!
About the Mega SG... Its a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based game system which to explain in laymans terms (BY a layman): Its a chip dense with circuits and stuff that can be programmed to use only so many in whatever ways necessary to replicate another chip. Basically, if you can reverse engineer a genesis exactly, you can pretty much program this chip to behave like a genesis exactly. Which is what this is.
Im playing in Zero Delay mode so the game is running marginally faster. 0.15%, to be exact. Thats less than 1/7th of a single percent. Ive also cropped out the colored border Genesis games tend to have.
The sound has been tweaked slightly per FirebrandXs recommendations, Ive enabled YM2612 High Quality Mode for uncompressed audio, and I have not engaged the ladder effect or lowpass filter. This will definitely sound different than a normal genesis because of the latter option. Its essentially listening closer to what the source sound would be like before the Genesis muffles it a bit.
I also want to mention dithering for just a moment here. In Genesis games youll often see lines of color alternating here and there, this is because on an old CRT tv the screen would be a bit blurry resulting in those colors bleeding together and becoming a mix of the two. This can also result in transparencies if used correctly. Unfortunately with a clean digital image this wont happen. The only way to enable these extra colors is to blur the digital image and this certainly would not be pixel perfect as is my goal. I like to think that we are now able to see how the artists tried to achieve their effect! You can always squint your eyes a bit if you want to try to replicate the blurriness!")
![05. [FPGA 4K] Steel Empire (Genesis) - Stage 5 - Dama City](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/a-FEdpmhjmM/mqdefault.jpg "05. [FPGA 4K] Steel Empire (Genesis) - Stage 5 - Dama City
No Commentary / 4k60 (x9 Integer9 Upscale) / High Res Audio / Good Player
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR46PbQZRbXzsF6W-iBldSbyx
This is being played on an Analogue Mega Sg FPGA game console allowing for clear output in sound and audio! The video provided to YouTube is 4:4:4 and lossless! Details below in Technical Notes!
A steam-punk shooter on the Genesis! This one is neat because its all made in the conceit that its an old-timey war-film, so dont adjust your sets! The cutscenes are meant to flicker.
Besides the aesthetic, the game has a couple uncommon shooter mechanics: The ability to shoot in either direction, and a persistent level-up system. Each time you grab an EX item you fill up one of three slots in your status bar. Once that fills and rolls over you gain a level giving you and your wingmen additional firepower. Even if you lose a life your weapons keep their strength!
Other items include an S for addional speed, an O which grants you wingmen (options), and a B for an additional smart bomb!
Bosses with multiple weapons that van be individually wrecked are featured and are destroyed once you demolish their core!
I choose to pilot the blimp for the first couple levels simply because it has more health. I dont care much for the way it lobs bombs or its mobility. The smaller craft you can pilot zips around and can fit between projectiles more readily. Once youve leveled up a bit the health is more than satisfactory!
Technical Notes:
Check out the demo video for the explanation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPfN6ZHJR84")
![04. [FPGA 4K] Blades of Vengeance (Genesis) - All Treasure/Secrets - The Dungeons](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/agUfwPedBzg/mqdefault.jpg "04. [FPGA 4K] Blades of Vengeance (Genesis) - All Treasure/Secrets - The Dungeons
No Commentary / 4k60 (x9 Integer Upscale) / High Res Audio
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR47pFjCqAKmP4MlsltjL3Bvo
This is being played on an Analogue Mega Sg FPGA game console allowing for clear output in sound and audio! The video provided to YouTube is 4:4:4 and lossless! Details below in Technical Notes!
Im gonna make this description a little bit of an information dump for game mechanics, here goes:
Ducking. BLOCKS. Which is crazy. You are pretty much entirely invulnerable in the direction you are facing when ducking. This is a super important mechanic which makes the game far more easy to complete.
If you attack near the peak of your jump the momentum swings you up a bit higher. This isnt nearly as important for the Huntress who is already the most capable at jumping but its a neat touch nonetheless.
When paused you can select your items and also hold C (see?) and then use the d-pad to look around. This can help find pitfalls.
Speaking of pitfalls, there are no bottomless pits and perhaps only one drop which will result in an inescapable death in the game. Very odd for a platformer, but very cool from an exploratory standpoint. (Beware of fall damage, however.)
75k points nets you an extra continue. A really bombastic jingle plays once this occurs. I didnt check to see if the continue screen is unique but the Game Over screen is!
I havent mentioned the sparkles yet. There are, uh... sparkles. In the levels. Let me see what the manual calls them... Perhaps, its simply Power Ups. They kinda dance around the exact name of the sparkle itself just saying its a sparkling area.
ANYWAY
Touch the sparkle and you get a Power Up shown as a filled in diamond on top of your character bar. This makes your damage output stronger. You can hold two Power Ups at most (at first) and LOSE one if you lose a life! They are few and far between, so be careful!
If you buy the armor (and you should) in the store after the 3rd (or is it 4th?) area you character basically levels up into an entirely new class! You keep your title but the Huntress becomes a ranged attacker with a crossbow! The Barbarian trades in his axe for a really wonky looking flail. And the Wizard throws his hobo outfit away and steps into something more Sagely (He gets a stronger strong attack).
Oh, Strong Attacks. Hold Up while pressing the attack button and you do a...strong attack! Really useful for the Huntress when she has sword since its a far reaching overhead swing. Less useful when she has the crossbow because you have to hold to charge the attack for a bit and then release it for a spread shot. Its just better to rapid fire your normal shot unless you need a weird angle.
I think thats it. The items are fairly self explanatory - one blows things up, another turns them into money, one heals, one makes you invincible, etc. Again, I picked Huntress because she has the most interesting attack set whereas the Barbarian is just melee and the Wizard only ranged. Also she is center and front on the box art!
I liked my experience with this game and it was fun mapping out how to get all the treasures, its definitely worth a play if you get your hands on it!
Original Overview Description:
Its not too often you find a brainless hack and slash platformer that has some depth!
The level design is strong giving you what feels like plenty of options but still keeping you on track to reach the end. There are many secrets as well, all of which I catalogued here! I had some bullet points on my other screen telling me how to get to the next treasure so that I can complete the whole affair live - I didnt want to keep stopping the video, especially since the music continues even when paused. So if you see me standing still for a moment, thats probably why.
I chose to play as the Huntress because she is the most balanced and has the most drastic style change partway through.
Please read the description in this video for detailed
Technical Notes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUbF6VssxOE")
![BONUS 05. [FPGA 4K] Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 - File Delete (Wario Bomb!)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/apYRArZnUY0/mqdefault.jpg "BONUS 05. [FPGA 4K] Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 - File Delete (Wario Bomb!)
No Commentary / 4k60 (x15 Integer Upscale) / Experienced Player
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR45ZPut_wX53gpziSb7z1vEe
This is being played on an AnaloguePocket FPGA game console allowing for clear output in sound and audio! The video provided to YouTube is 4:4:4 and lossless! Details below in Technical Notes!
Technical Notes:
TL;DR: YouTube was provided a perfect video so pixels are sharp and shapes are correct. Watch in 4k if your computer can handle it.
This video has suffered no lossy compression before reaching YouTube! Its a lossless video file with no chroma subsampling (4:4:4). Essentially, its a perfect copy until YouTube works its magic which now makes it a 4:2:0 video with lossy compression, yes. However, the better the initial copy... the better!
The video was originally captured in a 160 x 144 resolution, the native resolution of Game Boy, and then integer upscaled x15 times to 2400 x 2160 for a clean 4k display!
About the Analogue Pocket: Its a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based game system which to explain in laymans terms (BY a layman): Its a chip dense with circuits and stuff that can be programmed to use only so many in whatever ways necessary to replicate another chip. Basically, if you can reverse engineer a Game Boy exactly, you can pretty much program this chip to behave like a Game Boy exactly. Which is what this is.
Ive turned off Frame Blending in the options because it overall softens the picture with the minimal benefit of making transparencies not flicker. Ive also chosen not to use the really cool video mode which makes it look like a Game Boy Screen because that would mess up the lossless video Im capturing. I can always add a filter later if I want to!")
![BONUS 02. [FPGA 4K] Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 - Time Up!](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bo4AxbWwOUE/mqdefault.jpg "BONUS 02. [FPGA 4K] Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 - Time Up!
No Commentary / 4k60 (x15 Integer Upscale) / Experienced Player
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR45ZPut_wX53gpziSb7z1vEe
Features a unique image and animation!
This is being played on an AnaloguePocket FPGA game console allowing for clear output in sound and audio! The video provided to YouTube is 4:4:4 and lossless! Details below in Technical Notes!
Technical Notes:
TL;DR: YouTube was provided a perfect video so pixels are sharp and shapes are correct. Watch in 4k if your computer can handle it.
This video has suffered no lossy compression before reaching YouTube! Its a lossless video file with no chroma subsampling (4:4:4). Essentially, its a perfect copy until YouTube works its magic which now makes it a 4:2:0 video with lossy compression, yes. However, the better the initial copy... the better!
The video was originally captured in a 160 x 144 resolution, the native resolution of Game Boy, and then integer upscaled x15 times to 2400 x 2160 for a clean 4k display!
About the Analogue Pocket: Its a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based game system which to explain in laymans terms (BY a layman): Its a chip dense with circuits and stuff that can be programmed to use only so many in whatever ways necessary to replicate another chip. Basically, if you can reverse engineer a Game Boy exactly, you can pretty much program this chip to behave like a Game Boy exactly. Which is what this is.
Ive turned off Frame Blending in the options because it overall softens the picture with the minimal benefit of making transparencies not flicker. Ive also chosen not to use the really cool video mode which makes it look like a Game Boy Screen because that would mess up the lossless video Im capturing. I can always add a filter later if I want to!")
![05. [4K] WarioWare Gold (3DS Capture) - Story Mode - Round 4 Games](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cTNVCMtYUAY/mqdefault.jpg "05. [4K] WarioWare Gold (3DS Capture) - Story Mode - Round 4 Games
No Commentary / 4k60 (Integer Upscale) / Direct Capture
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR46ijTot9Uw3rHjTj5CfhTMw
This is being captured from an actual 3DS console with a built in capture card.
Its a-me, Wario~! Wahahaa! (I love this game.)
Technical Notes:
Ill keep it short for the time being: My 3DS has been modified to output sound and video to my computer and Im using OBS with various scenes to change the layout of the screens in the video. The screens are ALWAYS upscaled at a whole integer value using point/nearest neighbor so no interpolation/blurring is created there. So far, so good!")
