WhiteKhakis | 03. [FPGA 4K] Steel Empire (Genesis) - Stage 3 - Sky District Zektor @WhiteKhakis | Uploaded 1 year ago | Updated 2 hours ago
No Commentary / 4k60 (x9 Integer9 Upscale) / High Res Audio / Good Player
Playlist: 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 it's all made in the conceit that it's an old-timey war-film, so don't 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 don't 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 you've leveled up a bit the health is more than satisfactory!
----
Technical Notes:
------
Check out the demo video for the explanation here:
youtube.com/watch?v=FPfN6ZHJR84
No Commentary / 4k60 (x9 Integer9 Upscale) / High Res Audio / Good Player
Playlist: 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 it's all made in the conceit that it's an old-timey war-film, so don't 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 don't 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 you've leveled up a bit the health is more than satisfactory!
----
Technical Notes:
------
Check out the demo video for the explanation here:
youtube.com/watch?v=FPfN6ZHJR84
![03. [FPGA 4K] Steel Empire (Genesis) - Stage 3 - Sky District Zektor](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/THKgs1LZUQI/hqdefault.jpg "03. [FPGA 4K] Steel Empire (Genesis) - Stage 3 - Sky District Zektor
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")
![01. [FPGA 4K] QuackShot (Genesis) - Through Mexico](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TIns1s2z92c/hqdefault.jpg "01. [FPGA 4K] QuackShot (Genesis) - Through Mexico
No Commentary / 4k60 (x9 Integer9 Upscale) / High Res Audio / Experienced Player
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!")
![06. [FPGA 4K] Blades of Vengeance (Genesis) - All Treasure/Secrets - The City](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TdGmg72NgdA/hqdefault.jpg "06. [FPGA 4K] Blades of Vengeance (Genesis) - All Treasure/Secrets - The City
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")
![EXTRA 01. [FPGA 4K] Sub-Terrania (Genesis) - HARD Mode - Difficulty Differences in Gravity](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U5CUJ9VwfvY/hqdefault.jpg "EXTRA 01. [FPGA 4K] Sub-Terrania (Genesis) - HARD Mode - Difficulty Differences in Gravity
No Commentary / 4k60 (x9 Integer9 Upscale) / High Res Audio
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR45plDi7TC7PeBUFKsd7fjxv
***This video shows the differences in difficulties when it comes to thrust and momentum. You have the same amount of time in fuel for all difficulties, but the stronger gravity in hard makes it feel like you have less and is harder to manage. Not shown here is the max speed you can reach appears to be higher on harder difficulties. ALSO your ship takes longer to stop on its own.***
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!")
![04. [4K] The Swindle (PC) - One Thief Attempt - Casino Town](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U5uKhBk2eV4/hqdefault.jpg "04. [4K] The Swindle (PC) - One Thief Attempt - Casino Town
No Commentary / 4k60 / Experienced Player
Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR44DWZlv4i_GGml2iM6kbVty
Steampunk Thievery at its finest! Procedurally generated so its always a surprise!
Last video I talked about some confusing physics in this game but failed to mention the most annoying one of all:
STAIRS.
Freaking stairs are your number one wildcard after drones. They might eat your jump, they might not! Maybe when traversing them youll be considered falling so many of your actions are delayed/unavoidable. Basically, they make it so you have no idea how reliable your movements will be. If theres a sticky situation beyond them this can be devastating. My recommendation is to try to make it so the stairs arent part of your plan whether it means avoiding them or blowing them up!
An easily missed mechanic thats helpful is the wall scramble. If you jump up towards a wall and are one block short of reaching it to stick your character will scramble up it if you are in a certain position. Its closer than not, but its still rather hard to get just right but its a powerful tool to learn!
And well end with a glitch thats new to me but when hacking a door Ive sometimes found myself frozen in place afterwards. Im not sure why this is happening but if I have a bomb in my pack I can start placing it (and cancel) to break out of the freeze. Still unpleasant when it happens. Another door related incident is if you are hacking close to one the door may open as you hack which can let unwanted robots peek in, so beware! Final door-thing: You may notice Ive been avoiding an upgrade. I forget the exact name but it lets you bust through a door damaging whoever is behind it. Its a bit wonky in execution and honestly I would rather not accidentally break a door, so I avoid its purchase.
It may sound like a bunch of criticism Im levying against the game here, but these are oddities that I feel are worth mentioning. As a whole they are controllable if you understand where and when they may occur.")
![01. [FPGA 4K] Dinosaurs for Hire (Genesis) - Level One](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UBLzP7x22Ac/hqdefault.jpg "01. [FPGA 4K] Dinosaurs for Hire (Genesis) - Level One
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!")
![01. [4K] Everspace: Encounters (PC) GYRO CONTROL - First Attempt!* - Sector 01](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UfnBd2o4Ks8/hqdefault.jpg "01. [4K] Everspace: Encounters (PC) GYRO CONTROL - First Attempt!* - Sector 01
No Commentary / 4k60 / Fairly New Player
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR47QRIEp3uYFjDSbIKZSiAjM
*This is my first attempt after a clean reset of the game following a few practice runs calibrating gyro controls and the like. Its a pretty solid go, surprisingly! Better than some of my following runs.
You know what a space exploration/dogfighting game needs? It needs to be a rogue-like/lite! I would have never thought of something like this being a thing but here we are. And its beautiful. Looking, that is. I maxed out all the settings and this thing looks magnificent.
Also, Im using gyro controls to aim/steer (yaw and pitch). The game is kinda odd in that you normally would use your mouse to move the aiming reticule across the screen and the closer you get to the edges the more you turn, but instead I mapped that to gyro. Originally I was using the cockpit view but that didnt play so nicely with certain control elements so Ive taken us outside the ship. Its actually kinda cool out here and with the odd aiming system it works out.
As for how the game plays... youve got a limited time in each section to pick up as many resources as you can while fending off baddies before super dangerous reinforcements swoop in to clean you up! Resources in early runs arent as useful because you dont have the blueprints collected yet to build the neater things, but its still a good idea to get used to the process.
And the fights can get very heated very fast. One slip-up and youll be short on energy or health or swarmed to submission! Its not a very forgiving title in that respect. I mean, it IS a rogue-like. Your best bet is to try to incapacitate as many as possible before a real fight begins and to keep moving!
Good concept, pretty game, but~... way too grindy. After playing it for a bit I feel like itll take a bit too long to pick up the credits to upgrade a ship to an amount Ill enjoy let alone all the permanent upgrades you can pick up, too. And then the resource gathering in the game takes a while too, iunno. Its good, but needs some kind of tuning to keep the game moving at a brisker pace, I think. Id almost think that if you were allowed to just sense where everything is it wouldnt be too strong a benefit because of how you have to hurry yourself before reinforcements come in. Well, maybe things are better done in the sequel!")
![03. [FPGA 4K] Dinosaurs for Hire (Genesis) - Level Three](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/V7RBzvIgqwI/hqdefault.jpg "03. [FPGA 4K] Dinosaurs for Hire (Genesis) - Level Three
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!")
![02. [FPGA 4K] QuackShot (Genesis) - Through Transylvania](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Vd47usNinZI/hqdefault.jpg "02. [FPGA 4K] QuackShot (Genesis) - Through Transylvania
No Commentary / 4k60 (x9 Integer9 Upscale) / High Res Audio / Experienced Player
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!")
