Here's Our Best Look Yet At Yuzo Koshiro's Mega Drive / Genesis Shmup 'Earthion'

People are developing games for classic consoles. This makes me happy. I would love some Super Nintendo games. The sound of them is so special.

Yes! YES! So much YES!!

These dev really needs to move on from the Genesis/Mega Drive. We get it the Genesis can do this and that, it's old now. Release these on modern systems so everyone can play please. Not everyone own a freaking Genesis anymore. Unless they are willing to provide a rom for sale like the Xeno Crisis dev or release it on modern console it's pointless for this game to exist on old console. It'll probably be on a repro cart anyways and as I know with after market games via repro cart such as the Pier Solar and Xeno Crisis cartridges both carts didn't last long, the Pier Solar tend to freeze unexpectedly during battle, resetting will delete your save file and Xeno Crisis had this screen tearing that weren't in any of the ones released for modern consoles.

@Serpenterror let people make the game they want in the system they want to make them

If there's also/eventually a SNES version in the works, you can consider me personally interested in this game at that point.

@Jhena I totally hear you. There have been so many great new Genesis games in recent times, and that's cool, but I'm far more interested in seeing some more new SNES games at this point. I'll even happily take ports of some of these new Genesis titles, like this game, Xeno Crisis, Demons of Asteborg, Tanzer, Pier Solar, Phantom Gear, ZPF, etc, but I know the SNES could do some amazing stuff all on its own and especially when playing to its specific features and capabilities fully.

@RetroGames
Ports would be cool too, since I do not own a Mega Drive, but of course I would prefer games made with the strengths of the Super Nintendo in mind.

@Jhena @RetroGames Maybe I'm wrong, but I think we see more games developed for Mega Drive/Genesis than for Super Nintendo for reasons that have to do with the documentation and tools currently available for each system, as well as the raw capabilities of each console. Mega Drive can do a lot of things on its own, while Super Nintendo in many cases needed some support chips. If we think about emulators or flashcards, that is of little importance. But when thinking about releasing a physical game, doing it for Mega Drive is a more ideal option. There are even good quality cartridge boards ready to be written for less than 8€ per unit, and they work perfectly. For Super Nintendo, everything is more expensive, and the dev have to think if what you want to do can be done perfectly well without support chips.

This is amazing news, a proper old school shooter for Megadrive. Wish the Snes had some more new games. Cant believe there isn't a big indie scene for Snes. Maybe it's harder to exploit the hardware I don't know. But some new shmups for the machine would be more than welcome.

@Madcore
Your explanation sounds very reasonable and I think you are right.
Games like Starfox for example, needed the Super FX chip.

Well I guess it is time to buy some Sega consoles.

@Madcore First part, yes. The second part is basically misinformation that's been increasingly spread in recent times and mostly by people who generally lack the full understanding of what the SNES is and is not capable of imo.

Helper chips were/are great and all, but the SNES did and does not need them to produce amazing games, be it at the best quality of some of the games that originally came out for these two consoles back in the day, or even in regards to the quality of some of the new games we've seen for either of them in recent times too.

Edit: Here's examples of some classics games that came out in the '90s pushing the system, all running on the stock hardware and in 2.68 MHz SlowROM no less, so around 75% of the SNES' full CPU speed (that's 70% slower than the Genesis' CPU and 30% slower than even the Master System's CPU):

https://youtu.be/yXMNkIK4fI0?t=1261
https://youtu.be/DM9B36ZvH7M?t=223
https://youtu.be/sRBX2GbGr2M?t=152 (Slow/Fast)
https://youtu.be/Tl7D25I6yDc?t=2833
https://youtu.be/KRQgIVjLocU?t=887
https://youtu.be/sak--JiDnBA?t=14

Here's some FastROM examples (so, 3.58 MHz):

https://youtu.be/ATW5uBC62vE?t=1466
https://youtu.be/PKZxhsZjI20?t=1085
https://youtu.be/tVg8m_BYqcw?t=1740
https://youtu.be/TG-KDvn7Rl0?t=218
https://youtu.be/AtppX0LnnWA
https://youtu.be/uAE9kKj3c6s?t=51
https://youtu.be/ppW9FIyXhqo?t=64
https://youtu.be/PfkJctxcMBs?t=3190
https://youtu.be/RVzjFr6gprg?t=813
https://youtu.be/RVzjFr6gprg?t=5643
https://youtu.be/I7kJCfuHSwY?t=3570

Here's some tests that people have been doing on SNES in recent times (all on the stock hardware again):

https://youtu.be/5P8dH64m2Cc
https://youtu.be/enJLZJQhGTw
https://youtu.be/MsS6Wvuzj8k
https://youtu.be/7LAY4ulp63Y
https://youtu.be/S8hlRn1QpCw
https://youtu.be/Rf2Gbflgxus
https://youtu.be/DlrxKECsogE
https://youtu.be/oCiSEChgjC4
https://youtu.be/IyrOCNQc_rs
https://youtu.be/oc5_BZjZtzs

I think the stock SNES is a lot more capable than many people have come to believe.

@RetroGames take your time. I like to stand corrected in these conversations and learn from others when I make a mistaken statement.

@Madcore There's a few examples above now. Hopefully those illustrate what I'm saying. There's countless more examples too, but that should be enough for now.

@RetroGames thanks for those examples. As I said before, I stand correctad, and I'm thankfull for that.

@Madcore No problem. I'm happy to help the discussion around these two beloved systems remain informed and fair towards both equally.

@Axelay71 Yeah, the general [informed] consensus is that it's a lot more hassle because of a combination of terrible software development kits/tools/resources and also just that it's a more convoluted design internally, so you really have to spend a bit [a lot] longer getting to know how everything works fully before you can get the most out of it.

For example, the Genesis has a single background mode with two available background layers that everything you see in the backgrounds for every game for it has been used on (give or take some tricks using sprites to fake extra background stuff), so it's quite easy and quick to figure out how to get the most out of that. Whereas the SNES has eight different background modes to work with, and there's a load of different things to consider with each, as seen in this article:

https://inceptionalnews.wordpress.com/2022/08/26/snes-background-modes/

And that's just the backgrounds. The sprites and audio are just as convoluted too.

But, the mistake most people make is believing those things make the SNES less capable than the Genesis. They often point to the CPU speed too, and how SNES' CPU is clearly much slower, usually using examples like this to illustrate the point:

https://youtu.be/2k_jP73Ly7A

While being totally unaware of examples like this:

https://youtu.be/r7Jh_izIc8Q

In terms of raw speed overall, the Genesis does beat the SNES, and that definitely comes in handy for doing very rudimentary 3D stuff better than SNES for example. But the SNES has many things it does better than the Genesis too, such as displaying far more colours on-screen, having up to twice as many background layers for far more parallax, doing proper transparency, built-in background rotation and scaling, built-in window/shape masking, the ability to play its audio in Dolby Surround Sound, etc. And when utilized properly, those things can allow the SNES to do a lot in terms of 2D and even pseudo-3D that the Genesis either struggles with or simply can't do at all.

So, in the end, it all balances out for the most part, with each console having advantages and disadvantages in some ways when compared to the other.

@retrogames
Do you know why the colors in Super Nintendo games look more vibrant than in Sega games? Aladin for example. And is the soundchip or what is called, better in the Super Nintendo compared to the Mega Drive?

@Jhena The main reason the colours look better on SNES is because Genesis has a master palette of 512 to choose from, with normally 64 of those on-screen at once. And those 64 on-screen colours on Genesis are shared across both the sprites and backgrounds. Whereas SNES has a master palette of 32,768, which is 64 times as many as Genesis, and can normally display 256 of those on-screen at once, with 128 usually assigned to sprites alone and the other 128 for backgrounds. And in two of its eight available background modes, the SNES can even use all 256 colours in every single 8x8 background tile on-screen, with the sprites simply sharing them at that point. In it's single background mode, the Genesis can show 16 colours max per 8x8 tile. The SNES has built-in colour math too, which means it can easily mix colours on top of others for far more on-screen than the standard 256, and this can also be used to create some pretty advanced transparency effects too, as well as some other interesting stuff. The Genesis can also use more colours via a highlight/shadow mode, but it can't do hue-shifting with those, so the colours tend to look dull and often have that "Euro" aesthetic to them when this is used to increase the colour range.

So, when it comes to colours, the SNES is leagues ahead of the Genesis.

The sound chip is a hotly-debated topic. Many Genesis fans absolutely think it is superior to the SNES when it comes to sound, whereas many SNES fans absolutely think it is superior to the Genesis when it comes to sound.

The technical truth is that Genesis is superior for the more digitized/synthetic sounds that its FM synthesis allows as standard, whereas the SNES is superior for creating more natural/real sound due its use of PCM samples. And both have their issues, with Genesis sound often being quite harsh and tinny, and SNES sound often being a bit muffled. Genesis technically has more sound channels if you also use the legacy Master System chip in there, but SNES has more standard sound channels and can do official Dobly Surround Sound. So, take your pick.

Personally, I'm on the SNES side of the audio fence.

@RetroGames
Thank you for the thorough reply. No wonder Super Nintendo games look so colourful, compared to Mega Drive games.

All I can say about the sound is, that I prefer the Lion King on the Super Nintendo over the Mega Drive. The sound of the Super Nintendo is definitely great. I love listening to soundtracks on Youtube from time to time.

@Jhena Yeah, I'm generally of the same mind when it comes to sound. I'm a SNES music man at heart, but I know the Genesis can definitely do some great audio too.

I guess it comes down to, do you prefer music like this:

https://youtu.be/7XBJGVvYSBM
https://youtu.be/GTdZedIqU98
https://youtu.be/AhaVbQ4fpmc
https://youtu.be/7NqV_6EngB8
https://youtu.be/hUcmkDTuU_I
https://youtu.be/Ae1GGe_28HE

Or music like this:

https://youtu.be/D27lmgtU7zc
https://youtu.be/-VzLxWBho-8
https://youtu.be/BWn4uqPkbPQ
https://youtu.be/MjwJpyH2K1w
https://youtu.be/uWEVeqcgD60
https://youtu.be/E5g-QHq925o

Random examples, and I know there's plenty of other great tunes from each console, but I think they're all pretty good picks.

I think with Genesis you have to work a bit harder to avoid it sounding a bit tinny and artificial, and with SNES you have to work harder to avoid it sounding a bit soft and muffled.

Note: There's also the sound fx and the likes of voice samples to take into account too. And it's important to remember that a game's audio is the sum of all those parts rather than just the one element of music in isolation.

One big problem with the audio issues on Mega Drive is bad written or bugged audio drivers, or a lot of software where composers only uses the presets of the GENS audio library that comes at the time with the standard devkit issued by Sega of America, leaving it with a sense of bad sound design. Romhacks like those for Street Fighter 2 SCE that restored the audio, or compositions like the ones from Yuzo Koshire, or games like Ristar or Shinobi III, shows the true capability of the audio on Mega Drive. But, as you said, people needed to work pretty hard to take that advantage.

@RetroGames
Great tracks. After listening to all of them, I really could not pick a side.

@RetroGames Sega fan here, including the audio. First, I just wanted to say your explanations seem quite fair. I've been on the other end, explaining things when people have misconceptions about the Genesis. I go out of my way to be fair, like how pointing out how shadow & highlight mode is more limited than a lot of explanations imply. Not just with audio, the entire console is all of its parts working together. What I wanted to add on is that back when the consoles were current, there were the business considerations that sometimes limited the results. In the case of the SNES, the sample-based audio was limited by cartridge sizes for much of the system's life, and fluctuating costs. On the Sega side, as was mentioned, a lot of composers couldn't get the best out of the Genesis because they weren't familiar with FM programming like a lot of the Japanese composers were. There's a lot of nuance with these comparisons. Enjoying the games is most important. While I have a preference for the Genesis, the SNES has some games that are among my favorites as well and the system in general does many things well.

@sdelfin Yeah, that's why I'm happy to see a bunch of new games coming out for the Genesis that have been able to show what it's fully capable of without the time and cost limitations that were imposed on all developers back in the day. And it's resulted in some very impressive new titles. It's also why I'd love to see a lot more modern SNES games made with those restrictions removed too, and where those modern developers have really gotten to grips with all the technical aspects of the system. I mean, it's 2022 and we've still not really seen anyone genuinely test the limits of any of the background modes on SNES outside of the oft-used Mode 1 and Mode 7 for the most part, which is disappointing. I think it would be very interesting to see what both these consoles are truly capable of when pushed to their limits in modern times.

@RetroGames Yeah, definitely cool to see the old consoles unshackled by cart size limitations. Even when just looking at hacks, I've come to appreciate the MSU-1 which kind of gives a sense of what the SNES CD would have been like since, as I understand it, didn't add processing like the Sega CD did, so the experience is likely closer. And there are FastROM hacks that can make a big difference and show that some games were held back just for that reason. I originally hated Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts until I tried it with such a hack, and ended up really enjoying it. And the nice thing about that is that it is the stock SNES, just allowed to run at full speed. Many SlowROM games don't have any significant issues in the first place too. I have a chart on that saved somewhere that I've been meaning to go back to.

@Madcore Yes, this is similar to the limitation that almost all SNES sound guys worked within at the time, where very few of them used the more advanced method that Masaya Hashimoto and Yuzo Koshiro discovered, which resulted in much higher/better quality audio than most games on the system*.

When you listen to Actraiser's OST, you can really hear just how good the SNES can sound in the right hands:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRkCKC5bs-s&list=PL418577FA04484F92

I've read that the Donkey Kong Country composer, David Wise, used a similarly novel method to really get the most out of the SNES' audio capabilities, which definitely comes across in the music there too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XBJGVvYSBM&list=PL3qKGTUJcGDoHJGloGV4OdsqY-NNlxfvi

Just shows that both these systems can be pushed further than most people realise, and both likely still have a lot more left to give. SNES certainly has a load of untapped potential that, as of yet, is still waiting for some modern indie developers to really squeeze it out of the system.

*'"In order to get around the SNES' 64 KB memory limitation, which limited the number of instruments that can be used and prevented the reloading of samples, Koshiro developed a sample loading system that worked with the ROM cartridge memory, swapping samples from the ROM data on the fly. This allowed him to "load parts of the music gradually as needed, and also change it quickly between stages or parts of a stage, which the original system couldn't do it with its restrictions."' - Wikipedia

@sdelfin There's a great resource that lists all the games on SNES that use either SlowROM or FastROM:

https://www.jensma.de/snes__/index.php?search=8853

It shows just how many games weren't allowed to run at their full potential on the console, especially a lot of the early titles, which all could have been much better if the publishers had simply spent a few extra pennies for the FastROM cartridges.

For example, you can see the difference doing nothing other than moving the game to FastROM and optimizing the code a bit better has made to the once notoriously slowdown-heavy Gradius III here:

https://youtu.be/oc5_BZjZtzs

Note: For the record, the SNES is apparently pushing all 128 sprites around on-screen at once during some moments with a load of bubbles there, and they're all bouncing around and off each other and breaking into smaller bubbles and so on, which takes up a load of processing resources.

And this is a simple but great demonstration of the difference between a SNES game running in SlowROM and the same game running in FastROM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpDjlVdP7MA

@RetroGames totally agree with you, especially on the cpu side of things. The Snes sometimes gets a rough deal with some with regards to slow down. Never bothered me that much. But when you look at games like Rendering rangers, Space Megaforce, DK series, Macross, no extra chips in carts these games are rock solid, proves that a lot of devs were lazy in there programming. Dont get me wrong I love the Megadrive as well.

@Axelay71 Macross is really good. My favorite shooter on the SNES. I was so happy to find it because it was more my style than the other shooters that are popular on the system. The whole thing about the issue of slowdown you mentioned is a good example of perception becoming reality for many. It's like how common it is to hear people say the Genesis had a "bad" sound chip. And I know why they say it, because plenty of games sound bad(and plenty sound great)....much like how plenty of SNES games slow way down(and plenty run great), but it's those negative examples that stick.

@sdelfin yep totally agree 👍

Yep — getting this. Wow this looks really good. I'm more on the "not-bullet hell" shmup camp so it's already got that going for it for me. Plus, those colors 😍

@ChromaticDracula Yeah, I kinda hate bullet hell games, so I'm already happy when I see a new shmup that isn't one.

Would also really like to see it on SNES too though.

PS. If anyone is curious as to how that cool ship coming towards the screen effect is being achieved, I expect it's just using a bunch of pre-drawn animation frames similar to the rotating ship in Rendering Ranger R2, which likely took up quite a bit of memory space back then, but this isn't such a big issue in modern times with generally much larger cartridges available for these new games:

https://youtu.be/Tl7D25I6yDc?t=698

The time is not yet, but the time will come when "new" Retro games will become something big. Mainly seeing this requirement of AAA with monetization and DRM.

Bullet hell. Whelp, lost me. Hopefully it has something for the non-bullet hell shmup lover...

It does look really nice so far. Like others, I'm not too keen on bullet hell. I tried that style and didn't enjoy it as much as traditional shooters. With that said, since the Mega Drive has sprite limits, I'll be curious to see just how bullet hellish is can be. Some might consider Grind Stormer to have too many bullets, but I think it's not over the edge in that regard and enjoy it. If this ends up similar to that, then I'd probably enjoy it.

I see nothing wrong with this! Being able to create games for much older games in this day and age shows dedication, and creativity. Not many own Sega Genesis consoles these days, but this would be a fun collector’s game!

It's coming along very nicely.

I don't think it's ever going to come to SNES at this point, but I really wish it would.

And a whole lot more games for that matter.

Looking good! Shooting all the things is coming along!

Ooooph, this looks utterly stunning and I'm so happy to see a shmup that's not a bullethell. This feels more like R-Type and Gradius which is great to see.

I like the name, but the title needs a redesign, as I literally couldn't figure out what it said just by looking at it directly and only got what it said when I actually checked the name in the tweet.

PS. Crazy to think that cloud background there with all the parallax was done using just two background layers, some priority shifting, and some row/line scrolling. Looks very nice.

PPS. I still want new indie/homebrew games like this on SNES!

This is looking better each time we get a little more information. Still very shocked Ancient is making a new Mega Drive game after all the years. I didn't even know they were still around if I am honest. So I am guessing this has more of a budget behind it too and will likely be released on all or most currently available platforms.

My favorite composer. I'll be buying this, and I can't wait.

I'm getting Axelay vibes from the short gameplay video just shown. Three weapons that are seemingly mapped to ABC.

This looks pretty damn good. I'm excited.

@Serpenterror

yeah, people should stop making XBOX and Playstation games, because i dont have those consoles. pointless!

Put it on Steam, I'll buy it!

This looks incredible! My wallet is ready for a physical cartridge. I see 2024 on the title screen, so I guess we have some time to wait.

Looks like R-Type and Sol-Deace to me, which isn't a bad thing, but isn't terribly exciting to me. I guess part of it is I prefer vertical shooters to horizontal.

I'd love a new Story of Thor game.

I'll pick up the Genesis version! I love that it is still getting physical releases. My most recent ones were Ultracore and Xenocrisis.

Really want this for Mega Drive, shame it's coming from Limited Run Games and their Japanese company, as I'm really not a fan.

I just realized what game this actually is. I’ve been waiting for more news on this! It looks amazing and I can’t wait!!

I am so excited for this release, but why o why did they choose Limited Run? They are awful.

This game is looking incredible. Beautiful pixel art. The music is really good too.

Apparently Yuzo Koshiro does not age.