What is so special about SNES mode 7?

[Rogue Trooper]

I'd like to know WHY to this day,  the SNES hardware, in particular it's Mode 7 and sprite handling abilities, are still held in such high regard and no, this is'nt another anti-Nintendo angled thread, lol, but serious question.

Mega Drive via clever programming pulled off all manner of spectacular feats, which i've banged on about numerous times on this forum, plus previousily mention that coders behind things like Road Rash and the Strike Series had 'mixed' feelings about the hardware and having just stumbled across an Amiga programmer talking about it, i thought i'd bring it up again.

In C U Amiga:Graphic Feature, Martin Edmonson (among others) is interviewed, talks about Amiga Brian The Lion being written to emulate SNES Mode 7, talks of how the system he+team came up with compares to the SNES:

'....by the way of the Nintendo (SNES), you can rotate round in increments of 1 degree, so you can rotate through 360 positions.with our system you can rotate through 512 to 1024 (degrees), which looks smoother.It's also a much cleaner rotation than the SNES.If you randomly pick an angle, and do same on SNES, it'll look much cleaner on the Amiga-the ones on the Nintendo are broken apart and there are bits hanging off......Rotation takes any size block from 16X16 to full screen and rotates it through 1024 degrees, which is about 3X more than anything SNES can do'

So from my 'laymans' view point and that of Ex-SNES owner, i'm wondering really why (espically when SNES carts are further enhanced by extra processors in  many cases) the clever programming feats on a stock MD/Amiga do not get the 'coverage' that SNES games do, when it comes to pulling off flashy effects?.

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[TL]

I span this off into a thread of it's own rather than taking the other one off topic, I also feel this needs a thread of it's own. Feel free to change the title if you wish RT.

[Rogue Trooper]

I span this off into a thread of it's own rather than taking the other one off topic, I also feel this needs a thread of it's own. Feel free to change the title if you wish RT.

That's cool, where she goes is'nt an issue :-) was'nt 100% sure where best to put it, just thought it might make for a nice topic to get discussion going on.

[TL]

What annoys me is that people still talk about Mode 7 as some kind of wonderful innovation when arcade games were already using similar effects and the 1989 Atari Lynx could actually pull off more superior effects:

Lynx "Mode 7" Demo



And the effect used in an actual game, Beyond Games' Battle Wheels:

[Rogue Trooper]

good reply and examples there Laird.

re-reading mag scans from ACE this afternoon, where they talk about Atari's (then) new Lynx, they say it can out perform the MD, SNES and Amiga in specific areas, sprite handling being one of them, yet i never seem to hear the Lynx getting the credit the SNES does in the years since.

ACE seemed keen to get it noticed though, reviews of things like Warbirds made great note of the power of the Lynx.

[onthinice]

Although a big fan of the 8 bit Nintendo era, I can't say the same for the 16 bit era. There are some really good games on the Super Nintendo. I never noticed the mode 7 very much. Playing Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island in the last few years, has really impressed me to what the Super Nintendo could have achieved.

[TL]

good reply and examples there Laird.

re-reading mag scans from ACE this afternoon, where they talk about Atari's (then) new Lynx, they say it can out perform the MD, SNES and Amiga in specific areas, sprite handling being one of them, yet i never seem to hear the Lynx getting the credit the SNES does in the years since.

ACE seemed keen to get it noticed though, reviews of things like Warbirds made great note of the power of the Lynx.

Yes! I actually used to have that exact quote as my signature on Jaguar Sector 2 back in the day because i loved it so much!

Warbirds is another great example because, just like Mode 7, you are moving around a defined area with the landscape being scaled and rotated. Only it's more impressive because it also mixes in polygons and sprite scaling too, much more advanced than Mode 7:



There is also Cyber Virus, an FPS style game that uses the Battle Wheels engine:

[zapiy]

It was in terms of consoles at that point. Yes the Lynx and Mega CD had similar abilities but this was the best version of its type IMHO.

[Rogue Trooper]

It was in terms of consoles at that point. Yes the Lynx and Mega CD had similar abilities but this was the best version of its type IMHO.

MCD had superior abilities to SNES, yes it was an expensive add-on, but as well as the sprite handling chipsets you were looking at extra CPU, another sound chip, motor driven optical drive, on board Ram etc.Plus lot of MODE 7 SNES games needed extra processor on board the cart as SNES CPU could'nt do everything by itself.

Also, re-reading old SNES reviews, often seems SNES games credited for MODE 7 effects when in fact they were'nt even using said hardware mode, reviewers just thought, ohh that looks cool, bet that's MODE 7 without really understanding just what Mode 7 was....

[TL]

It was in terms of consoles at that point. Yes the Lynx and Mega CD had similar abilities but this was the best version of its type IMHO.

Apart from the number of colours and resolution the Lynx's Suzy utterly spanks the SNES graphics chip. The SNES can only scale and rotate bitmaps, while the Lynx can do this AND scale and rotate sprites and much faster too.

Same goes for the Mega CD, there is no way the SNES could have done the likes of Thunderhawk:

[zapiy]

I thought Mode 7 was a simple texture mapping graphics mode that allows a background layer to be rotated and scaled.

Sprites were a different thing altogether were they not?

[Rogue Trooper]

I thought Mode 7 was a simple texture mapping graphics mode that allows a background layer to be rotated and scaled.

Sprites were a different thing altogether were they not?

Think i posted the technical gubbins somewhere on here before, but the tilting of the landscape you get on MCD Thunderhawk, is impossible to do on SNES as it uses both the MD+MCD CPU's and MCD custom hardware, will have to see if i can dig out the details again.

[TL]

I thought Mode 7 was a simple texture mapping graphics mode that allows a background layer to be rotated and scaled.

Sprites were a different thing altogether were they not?

Basically yes, it's not texture mapping though. Mode 7 allows you rotate and scale bitmaps/images as playfield or background layer. The Lynx and Mega CD allow you to do this PLUS do the same with sprites as well as panning and distortion. The Lynx also has the added advantage of being able to display over a thousand sprites on screen!

[Rogue Trooper]

Core coder, talking about terrain scaling used in both Thunderhawk and Battlecorps: '..is achived by simply writing 10 lines of code to the graphics sizing chip.It's effectively a huge sprite that scales and rotates beneath you'

Also, MCD scrolls in 2-axis for it's Mode 7 type effect, SNES Mode 7 only scrolls in single axis, that's why you could'nt get the helicopter banking effect of Thunderhawk on SNES.Knew i'd put that up on here before, ;-)

[TL]

Then of course there are the Mega Drive games that use the brute power of the Mega Drive CPU to fake "mode 7".

For those that think "Blast Processing" was just something Sega made up you are wrong, it was actually based in some sort of fact as these two games show: