![]() To accomplish this feat Star Fox used the Super FX chip - a custom-made co-processor that was co-developed by Nintendo and Star Fox developer Argonaut. The smooth scaling and relatively fast-paced gameplay put Nintendo’s gray and purple box on par with what had only been done in arcade coin-op machines up to that point (such as Atari’s 1989 Hard Drivin’ and Stun Runner and Sega’s 1992 Virtua Racing) Released in early 1993 Star Fox was one of the first console games to take full advantage of 3D polygon-based technology and do it well. Real 3D polygon graphics (using Super FX chip).Shop For Rendering Ranger R2 on eBay Star Fox / Starwing Even with their large size the bosses are all interesting, detailed, and serve well as motivation to reach the end of each level. The boss at the end of level 6 is more than two screens tall. If you are drawn in by massive bosses you’ll find an abundance of them here. In R2, you can have large amounts of sprites flying around the screen without even a hint of slowdown. In addition to the massive sprites, drop-dead, stunning explosions, transparent foregrounds, and backgrounds crammed full of parallax effects, there are many situations that would typically make the SNES sweat bullets. Of course numerous tweaks were made to the graphics along the way and it shows. The brainchild of Turrican creator, Manfred Trenz, R2 was in development for over two years and transitioned from being a standard horizontal Shmup to the game we see today (a combination of Run-N-Gun and Shmup levels). This rare Super Famicom title is probably one of the finest examples of a game that will make you wonder if you’re looking at a Sega Saturn or Playstation shooter instead of something running on Nintendo’s 16-bit machine. ![]() Shop For Donkey Kong Country on Rendering Ranger R2 Donkey Kong Country also is supposedly the first SNES game to use the scanline trick to push the max on screen colors from 256 to 4096. They also developed their arcade and SNES fighter, Killer Instinct, around the same time using the same graphical process. Rare took significant financial risks in purchasing the expensive SGI equipment used to render the graphics. It was convincing enough that many a fan has been fooled into thinking the SNES really could to SGI-quality 3D in real-time. By working in 3D they were able to make sure all the animations were fluid and consistent and the SNES’s color palette was utilized excellently to keep that 3D sheen. They ported those pre-rendered 3D stills to the SNES as 2D sprites and background tiles and created a game that was not only beautiful but beautifully animated. Rare’s development teams employed cutting edge SGI hardware to render all their graphical work in quality, ray-traced 3D. Developed by Rare, the game featured pre-rendered CGI graphics that stood out from anything else offered on consoles at the time. With CD-based consoles already providing growing competition and powerful next-generation machines from Sega and Sony on the horizon, Nintendo released Donkey Kong Country in time for Christmas of 1994. Amazing Pseudo-3D graphics without Additional Hardware.I’m sure there will be some that the community will mention that may have been overlooked, but I think you’ll find that we covered a lot of ground here. We had no shortage of games to add to this list - it was actually quite a process of narrowing it down. ![]() ![]() In the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, Nintendo was notorious for dragging out the life-cycles of their consoles, which gave developers plenty of time to perfect their programming and graphical techniques to make the most of the hardware. However, with this series, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at games that were the most demanding when it came to a console’s limited system resources. I usually try to emphasize that gameplay is more important that graphical quality. Each machine has had its strengths and weaknesses, and as a programmer, I’m amazed by some of the ways developers have harnessed the power of consoles and pushed them to their limits resulting is some marvelous games. Over the years, I have been fascinated by the history of the various machines that have battled for our living rooms. In case you haven’t followed Racketboy very long, the Pushed The Limits series (see our NES, TG16, and Genesis installments) takes a look at the games that truly made the most of a console’s hardware. See Other Entries of the Games That Pushed The Limits Series Presented by Radarscope1, MrGoodbytes, Ack, Racketboy, and other forum contributors Games That Pushed The Limits of the Super Nintendo (SNES) ![]()
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