Hands On Xeno Crisis Continues Its Quest To Be Released On Every Gaming System Ever Made

"Xeno Crisis Continues Its Quest To Be Released On Every Gaming System Ever Made" . . . except the SNES, the biggest console of the 16-bit era worldwide by far, and a system more than capable of doing a great version of this game, if the developer cared to actually take the time and effort to put it on there and didn't [apparently] have some grudge against the console or something.

It really wouldn't be that difficult to port this game over, especially given all the art and stuff is already in standard 16-bit-era 4bpp 8x8-pixel tile format and such, which the SNES is literally built for (unlike many of those other consoles you've ported it to now). A couple of minor changes here and there to the level layouts and the sprite sheets and such and it would all fit on SNES. And you can bet the controls for this game would be much better than the Genesis version if mapped to the SNES' brilliant [standard] controller and implemented properly for dual 8-way movement and 8-way firing too.

But, sure, keep porting it to other retro consoles with like half the user-base of the SNES, and often much less than that. As a SNES fan who once (around the same time as the Genesis release) would have loved to have played the game on that console [above all those other retro systems you've put the game on to date], you'll not be getting a penny out of me now, no matter what you do going forward. I'm not some 10th-class citizen or whatever.

@damo Does the Cube version run natively on a Wii, or would that need to be chipped/modded as well?

I am buzzed for the near-inevitable C64 version.

@RetroGames
There certainly seems to be a date disclaimer on "every system ever made."

They are dead serious in porting Xeno Crisis to whatever console is capable of running it! They also confirmed in a magazine interview that PS1 and GBA versions are nearing completion, and BB are eyeing other platforms as well.

Here are the remaining vintage consoles (that i know of) that can possibly run Xeno Crisis without mangling Henk Nieborg's artwork: Amiga, Atari Falcon, 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn, PS2, Xbox, SNES and PC Engine.

I don’t wanna be “that guy” but the gamecube version just doesn’t count. Sorry.

@mike_intv @RetroGames I'm confident we'll see a SNES port of Xeno Crisis sooner or later. Keep in mind that Bitmap Bureau are a indie team and they are likely making these other ports as exercises to learn the hardware of each platform.

@Stocksy so a game that cannot run on GameCube doesn't count, Even though BB are providing the DOL file to make it run with the GC Loader?

@KGRAMR I am thinking pre-crash systems. Sometimes it seems that people forget there was a rich history of gaming before the NES or before the North American Video Game crash.

I'm more curious to see if they could do a Game Gear or original Game Boy version.

@Damo
GC Version shouldn't require a modchip. I'll bet you can run it just fine using Swiss.

Nice to see a proper 2D game on N64. Not enough of those. I'll be interested to hear if they've made any changes to these new versions, especially within the options. I know they were planning some updates to the PC version including options for screen shake and flashing. It would be nice if such options were kept in the newer console versions.

Does is also support double n64 controller support? Loved that on the underestimated robotron 64.

@RetroGames

whoa. you're entitled to what, now?

@JJtheTexan Enough to know that any developer who can make a single game work on [so far] nine other retro consoles certainly has the talent to make it work on SNES.

I had a guy convert something that I concepted for SNES in a separate game creation tool to work on the actual system in literally about a week using a Super Mario World ROM hack, changing it from that game to basically a shump. So, I think these guys, with all the talent and skills they clearly have and the ability to obviously work in many different development environments across many completely different systems, could manage to figure out how to port their game to SNES.

And, no offense, but you clearly don't have a clue how the resolution differences work between SNES and Genesis (seems to be a trend). Almost none of the actual pixel art would need to be changed, just how you lay it out in the levels and on some menu screens and the like so it would fit within the reduced horizontal view on SNES. It would still be the same 8x8-pixel tile-based 4bpp art assets that you could use across both versions, especially if you don't want to bother adding anything to take advantage of the SNES' much higher colour count or proper coloured transparency for example.

It's just like how you can take the core pixel art from say Symphony of the Night on PlayStation and, other than having to reduce colours a lot more on Genesis than on SNES, basically move it directly across to both the SNES and Genesis systems pretty much intact:

https://youtu.be/zOZDCwN7EwA

https://youtu.be/-WO-sr04GY8

Note: Just to clarify for anyone who's a bit ignorant about this, even though the Genesis has a higher horizontal resolution (320x224 on Genesis vs 256x224 on SNES), the actual pixel art on both systems still works in 8x8-pixel grids and is technically the exact same pixel density/size and all (not accounting for horizontal stretch one you specifically output it on a CRT), so it's still drawn at exactly the same pixels per inch resolution or whatever as on Genesis at the art creation stage, just with you usually seeing more of the level view to the sides of the screen once put into the game on Genesis. If you play the SNES version of whatever game on any modern system in "perfect pixel" mode (meaning the pixels are not stretched for 4:3 at all) and overlay it on the Genesis version, the art will typically look identical in terms of the resolution of each actual asset. Again, you just tend to see more of the view of the level on Genesis, albeit almost always in lower colour, with less full parallax layers, and with no proper coloured transparency effects, usually.

@AJB83 It's great to have new games for any and all retro consoles. It's not great to see the most popular retro home console of them all by multiple millions [other than NES] constantly get the shaft. So, I'll keep calling that out until SNES starts getting the relative amount of love it deserves from the modern indie/homebrew development community too, especially in an example like this where it almost starts to feel deliberate at some point that it's still not seen a port of the game or even had a mention of one coming in the future.

Fair is fair.

Similarly, if some random article pops up showing how some Genesis hacker or whatever has managed to get some version of a SNES game running on that system, literally just to make some point about "my machine can do it to" and maybe even to try and diminish the SNES' own capabilities and achievements in some way, then you can bet I'll have something to say about that.

Fair is Fair.

And, if I see some awesome new indie/homebrew game released on some random old home console and it isn't on SNES, I will always make a point of saying I'd like to see it on SNES too if it's entirely possible for it to be on SNES. Of course I will, as SNES is my favourite console of all time, and I would like to see any and all of these new indie/homebrew games come to it ideally. And, since it's absolutely not seeing its fair share of such development in modern times, I'll make even more of a point of it than I would for any other system, because SNES actually deserves to be seeing this kind of support above all of them as far as I'm concerned if it comes down to one or the other.

And so on.

@KGRAMR if it was a usb stick that contained the files to work on the pS mini or the mega drive mini we wouldn’t be saying it’s a pS one version or a mega drive version. This is no different. A person can’t buy it and play it on their gamecube. Might as well be a file on email.

@AJB83

"Quality games like this, no matter what system they are on, should always be celebrated."

this is my philosophy, also. 👍 thankfully ive collected and kept all the consoles ive ever had, so i can actually live by this ☺️ (and even if i hadn't / and even though i did, there's emulation...)

on a related note, i really should get into games like this! ive been playing the same old games for a very long time 😅 (when I'm not playing switch of course.) (but even then largely lol.)

anyhoo i think ill follow your lead. i havent seen or felt that sort of partisan console wars era indignation since i found out dynamite headdy wasnt coming out for SNES! ... when I was 8.

thanks for the tip 👍

It’s an excellent game and its shooting/controls struck a great balance between ‘90s arcade game and modern twin-stick shooter. It’s such s fantastic package with its sublime gfx and music/sounds fx/voice samples.

BUT it is such a shame that even on modern platforms there are no online leaderboards

It’s an unfortunate omission that really stings as far as I’m concerned

@RetroGames Super Nintendo remains quite an issue because no one has ever managed to build a proper SDK for the system. Programming on the system is not something as simple today as say making a Game Boy or Mega Drive game thanks to stuff like GB Studio and SGDK. Maybe one day...

@AeonicB You're confused about what I'm saying, or at least are going to confuse some others. They don't need to change the actual drawn art assets for the most part, just how they lay out the tiles in the actual game levels and on some of the menu screens and the like, which is completely and utterly trivial other than say the half hour per level it takes to remove a couple of the repeated tile columns from a screen and move the rest in together again to have a slightly smaller level. Otherwise though, they can, if they choose, literally take almost entirely the exact same art assets and use them on SNES as is. There's one or two places where they'd maybe want to cut some stuff down to fit in the smaller screen view, like say on the weapons shop screen, where you wouldn't be able to see all of the items plus the full soldier art in view without some moving around of the art, but that's about it. And, in a few cases where someone might mistakenly think say a boss or something like that wouldn't fit onto the SNES screen if it stayed exactly the same size, like the first boss, they could actually just pan the camera slightly as the player moves rather than change the art assets at all. If they do want to change the art assets though, it could/should be to make them look actually prettier imo, with more colours and proper transparency and such.

And you are 100% incorrect. It is an absolute certainty those SNES Symphony of the Night concept visuals as seen in that video could run on it just like you see. Are you somehow confused about how much people actually understand the SNES' specifications at this point and can therefore prepare all the art assets and such in advance for when the rest of the game would be put on SNES? This is three background layers that all fit within the SNES' colour and tile limitations, and one sprite that fits within the SNES colour and tile limitations (would most likely be animated using streaming in new tiles every frame in this case). And, to be clear, there is nothing going on there other than the three backgrounds scrolling at set speeds and a character moving left and right with some animation frames--there's literally nothing else going on there currently--this is a walk in the park for SNES to do as a starting point. There's literally nearly 2000 games on the system that pulled of such a magical feat and much more besides--it's not rocket science.

If you or anyone else here is able to code directly for SNES, try it and see for yourself. Rip the particular sprite and tile assets from the PlayStation game that you see in that video clip, convert them into SNES colours and format (the tiles already fit SNES perfectly), write some basic background scrolling code, write some very simple player movement code (it's literally just move left and right and flip the tiles depending on the direction), update the player's tiles every frame to animate, and see it with your own eyes. And then let me see it too (post a clip of that actual SNES version on YouTube of whatever).

@Shiryu Indeed. Hopefully one day.

I'm still hoping that team that made NESmaker, who were once talking about making a SNESmaker too, actually do indeed do that at some point. It will at least let a bunch of less hardcore programmer-types get into making some more basic games for the system in a far easier and quicker way than has ever been available to date. And I think that alone would mark a big paradigm shift.

Some dude in the SNESdev forums is talking about working on a new development tool, one that could end up being relatively easy to use, so it will be interesting to see what comes of that.

@RetroGames fingers crossed... and never say I don't dream big!

@Shiryu Was that article written by you then? If so, congratulations, as it's very cool. And there's some great ideas for SNES games on there.

@RetroGames Indeed, when I actually had more time to contribute to the sites...

@AeonicB This is a dumb false correlation. You don't have to literally run some SNES stuff directly on a SNES every single time to know some of the basics like whether it can display the graphic art from the SoTN SNES test as shown in that video. It can--fact. It's not a matter of question. You claiming otherwise comes across as disingenuous and as some attempt to make ignorant people actually believe it's not a given that SNES could display pixel art like it. It 100% can--it's not a debate.

I'm starting to think you're a troll who's just doing the same old stuff as a bunch of other trolls with perpetuating false narratives about SNES because you know a bunch of ignorant people who don't know any better can't just immediately shut your bull down. But I can, because I do know better.

And, not only did those shmup examples work via a ROM hack (done by one person), they also worked programmed from scratch to run directly on SNES and can be played on any SNES emulator (done by another person). And they worked exactly as intended. It's all there in the description of the videos and some of the comments. Anyone can go there and read this for themselves rather than trust your misinformation. Your misleading narrative is not helping here.

Similarly, those example prove those concepts worked exactly as intended once run on real hardware, therefore, it's entirely possible to now be very sure the guy clearly knows what he's doing and that the same is true of the other even simpler SoTN SNES example without having to do the next tests directly on SNES. It's already a proven thing. Denying that is, again, I sense the act of a troll trying to paint a false narrative because they know a bunch of people won't know any better either way and just listen to your throwing out falsities that might sound legit to them.

And, once again, stop pushing the false stretched narrative too. It's 2023. To not acknowledge that you can [officially] view SNES games and art in perfect pixel mode with zero stretch on the likes 3DS, Switch, SNES Classic Mini, every modern clone console and every modern SNES emulator is flat out lying to people about what's going on here. You matter of fact do not have to stretch games on SNES. We aren't stuck in the '90s with only 4:3 CRTs anymore. And, just to be real clear, if you somehow think that's the only way people should be allowed to view these games, you are either an elitist snob who's 30+ years out of date with such thinking, you're a troll who's trying to manipulate people who don't understand this stuff properly, or you're completely ignorant of the multitude of options available to people these days to play these games (and you really shouldn't be talking of such things if you don't even know this basic stuff).

If you're such a SNES fan, accept this fact right now: You're spreading misleading information that does the SNES a great disservice, and you're not helping the community make progress on it in any way by doing so.

Note: I'd really like to see any work you've done on SNES, at all, anything . . . because you're extremely quick to dismiss almost everything about SNES' potential or put up immediate unnecessary and usually false barriers regarding the stuff above. So, you'd have to surely have tested it all yourself at least to the level of the tests in those videos, right? Otherwise, here's the reality, the actual tests in those videos (be it mockups in GameMaker, versions build using ROM hacks, or versions coded to run directly on SNES) are more representative of what SNES can do than your words to the contrary--fact.

And the port of Xeno Crisis is another thing, but that's just about putting in the time and effort for the most part. So far we've seen literally none of which in terms of a SNES port, or even heard mention of a potential SNES port at some point in the future, and that's the truth of it.

@Shiryu There's some very cool suggestions there. Maybe one day you or someone else might give some of them a try.

@RetroGames Sorry, my dude. Came back and reread my posts and yikes...

Well, just going to delete those now.

Again, I deeply apologize to you for being a pain.

@AeonicB My only real issue was that many people who don't know any better and have no way to tell any difference between what you said and what I said will just as likely believe your version of the story and then go spread the same untrue information about what SNES can and cannot do. And, since apparently almost no one else other than me who knows better ever stands up for the SNES and corrects the spread of misinformation online, that's not great. So, as someone who's made it beyond clear that I want to see SNES get some more much-deserved indie/homebrew support in modern times, I'd like to avoid giving any more people any unwarranted excuses for dismissing it as an option, especially any based on incorrect information, as that doesn't help us get towards that ultimate goal. And, for anyone that thinks of themselves as a SNES fan at least, I'd rather see them properly supporting the SNES as best they can and at least spreading accurate facts about it rather than putting false barriers in its way. I mean, if even the actual fans aren't entirely behind the system and pushing for more indie/homebrew in a positive and supportive way, what hope is there here. At the very least though, I wish more people would simply research fully just how the SNES works regarding all this stuff, so, if they say it maybe can or cannot do something, they're entirely sure and accurate rather than incorrectly diminishing its capabilities. Far more than Genesis right now, it's the SNES that actually needs some community support.

@RetroGames With all due respect, my dude, I'm wondering if you've read my posts at all now. I acknowledge might've been a bit short, but I don't feel like you even took the time to read them fully.

My primary concern wasn't the SNES' abilities, but your use of bad examples- i.e. using a Game Maker simulated presentation instead of an actual game of the many that contain the same capabilities as that demo- and why the team would take so long on an SNES version, in regards to fully utilizing the SNES to its full ability and making it prettier.

In regards to bad examples and similarly specced games that looked nice on the SNES, all the Donkey Kong Country games come to mind. Really nice use of high resolution graphics with many layers of parallax scrolling, and were even released during the hardware's commercial life.

I'm also a huge sucker for pretty console RPGs like Phantasia. Both of these used enhancement chips, but that's precisely why the SNES is better than the Genesis in this case. It was always designed for expansion, from the word go.

There are Genesis/Mega Drive games with similar enhancement chips, but those are rare and were expensive even at that time.

Virtua Racing comes to mind, and I remember that being expensive back then. Didn't have the Genesis, still saw it shopping for games.

But there have been so many exciting homebrew expansions to the SNES that they could also be working with any of those. A physical MSU-1 with short video segments would be nice. Not expected, a pipe dream of mine, but really nice.

Just please, I'm not even disagreeing with you, but it feels to me like you're being defensive to the point where you can't see that I largely agree with you on the SNES' capabilities.

@AeonicB My dude, those examples are just as valid as any commercially-released SNES games and, as explained, have in many cases already been coded to run on SNES, so are as much a proof of what SNES is capable as any other existing games. Stop repeating the same ignorant gibberish that's trying to suggest they're not valid. The examples are totally valid and actually show some new stuff not done on SNES previously, and that's what's interesting about showing them here relative to modern times and the idea of putting new games on the console or ports from other systems that also don't exist on it yet. They can perfectly go alongside examples from existing games, which I've also posted before too, to demonstrate what the SNES is capable of and how it might be able to handle whatever new games or ports. And, imo, it's usually just more interesting seeing some new ideas and concept stuff than the same old released games that we've been able to look at on the console for 30+ years already, specifically because the new stuff might be and often is actually doing something new, even stuff some people hitherto didn't think the SNES was even capable of, which is kind of the exact point in using those examples.

@RetroGames Again, you're ignoring my point. The YouTube video you linked to isn't actually running on SNES hardware- or even high level/cycle accurate emulation!- so it's a bad example of what the SNES can do.

Even if it's perfectly designed in limitations as a good simulation, it's not implemented or running on the system. Which is why I pointed out already known releases that do the exact same things, running on actual hardware.

Once it's been ported to hardware, it'd be a good example, but as long as its running on GameMaker, it's not a fair or valid example. It's just SNES-like in execution.

@AeonicB In relation to the SoTN example (I think that's the specific one you're on about here): Again, stop pushing this completely ignorant and misguided belief that any art test/demo example has to be coded-up and running directly on the SNES [or a SNES emulator] and only that to count.

I'm sick and tired of certain snobby elitists is the SNES development community trying to dictate how everyone in this space should be doing things based solely on their own blinkered gatekeeping thinking (usually with a very nerdy-programmer slant/bias). You obviously don't have a clue about how game creation from the beginning to the end works if that's what you actually think, especially when it comes to the art creation side of things.

Have you ever worked in a games company or even made a game yourself?

There's nothing going on there the SNES can't do in its sleep. It's entirely accurate to the SNES' specs and capabilities and perfectly representative of what it can display visually, and that's all it needs to be as an art assets test/demo example of how said game would look on the console. This is often how artists start to concept and test the art assets and stuff prior to it being coded directly into a game by the programmer. It 100% counts as an example that shows what the SNES is capable of visually (including the typical background scrolling and sprite animation).

You just don't know what you are talking about, and you're misleading a lot of people plus potentially putting off a lot of them from even bothering trying to contribute to the SNES development community by pushing such a narrow-minded and exclusionary narrative.

Why would new people ever want to come into a scene with elitist snobs like you dictating that they can only do things the one way you say or everything they do is pretty much irrelevant and meaningless as you [completely incorrectly] see it. Your attitude is disgusting, and unfortunately reflective of so many people in the SNES indie/homebrew development scene (usually the gatekeeper programmer types in my experience). No wonder it's getting nowhere fast. I think it needs the elitist gatekeeper snobs like you out and more people who actually want to positively and openly contribute and move it forward in.

And I'm still waiting to see a single thing you've ever done on SNES, in any way, shape or form, beyond just telling people what they're allowed and not allowed to do in order for it to count as you see it [incorrectly] basically. . . .

@RetroGames Imagine wanting an example of something running on hardware to represent the hardware.

The fact is that what is posted is a GameMaker simulation against something that is already running on Genesis/MD compatible code. End of, that's why it's a bad example.

I learned Z80 ASM for GameBoy and SMS stuff back in the day, from the late 90's to the mid 00's. However, I'd never think to take one of my ClickTeam mockups and claim it perfectly represents the Game Boy. It doesn't and can never possibly represent the Game Boy, just a Game Boy-like simulation. That's not snobbish, that's just choosing to not misrepresent the hardware I'm working towards.

Let me know when you have a version compatible with the SNES. I'm never against SNES development, and none of my prior posts have ever implied it.

The system is just better served with examples of code running on hardware, not unimplemented mockups, especially when those mockups are comparing against other examples running on real hardware.

@AeonicB There's no point in me just repeating the same stuff again. ALL the major points are covered in my previous post, and they still hold true.

@RetroGames Same, if you don't see the issue with comparing a GameMaker prototype of a game against one running on real hardware.

I don't believe in misleading people. It's a neat idea, but SNES-like doesn't mean actually SNES until the code's there to make it work on the system. It just means it's a piece of art, a game, made within the constraints of the SNES' limitations.

I've followed the SOTN Genesis port development for awhile, and they've already detailed all the hiccups with memory issues and other Fun Technical Stuff not readily present in a mockup running on a Windows/x86 compatible machine.

Stuff that a real SNES port would have to go through, too, as the project figures out good ways to decompress or stream assets on the fly.

In other words, how will memory be mapped? Will the visuals look this good once you have to load in HUD assets? How about when music being loaded in as well? Memory and CPU have a finite limit on the SNES, an issue on any other electronic device but even more so on the SNES, and there needs to be some mix of compressed and decompressed assets.

The amount of compressed assets directly affects load times, so if you choose to stream in everything, it will load faster, but it might not even fit on a cart at the end of the day.

A GameMaker mockup won't show all the compromises made to work on the hardware, as it doesn't need to in order to run. It also won't show how fast the game will truly draw at, once it's limited by the hardware. The SNES CPU is powerful and perform lots of instructions per cycle, but it's not the fastest CPU out there.

I fully believe that you optimized the background and character art assets and determined what works best hypothetically, but that's only one step in the process of game development.

And if any of this scares people off, I'm only scaring them off from game development, not developing for the SNES. No game made has had an easy development, and each game or platform has choices to make. We're somewhat blessed now that cross-compilers exist, and that modern day systems are somewhat similar to each other, but even a cross-compiler won't optimize a game fully, and it WILL need QA and fine tuning.

After all, my problem is only with the video being a GameMaker mockup presented as SNES gameplay against a game running on a Genesis/Mega Drive, not with the SNES hardware itself.

Same as before: See my last post (and indeed posts).