Doing SNES homebrew, something that is a huge limitation that doesn't get brought up a lot is VRAM size and DMA speed. Only 16kB is available for sprite animations, and only 4kB-5kB can be updated per frame. Also, sprite patterns are arranged in a grid of 32 rows and 16 collumns, and you need to upd...

I found an article mentioning Lucas Arts using Konami's ZAMN engine for one of their games. I'll try to find where I've heard about games that copied from Gradius 3. If I can't find an internet source, I'll post some disassembled code.

https://books.google.com/books?id=AGT1A ... ne&f=false

In order to show proof, I'd have to use a debugger to trace the ASM code, and then I have to find places where the code was copied. I've done it a while ago but I no longer have the data for it. I remember reading some articles from developers (I forgot what company) stating they disassembled Gradiu...

The other strange this is that Konami (and all the companies who copied off of them) programmed their SNES games differently than how they did their NES and Sega Genesis games. There were several tricks Konami used in their NES games to get around the limitations of the system, such as keeping bulle...

That's because Irem used the same engine as Gradius 3 instead of writing their own engine.

Blast processing is easy to program on the SNES. All you have to do is follow this article:

https://wiki.superfamicom.org/snes/show/General+Advice

The biggest reason why there was slowdown in SNES shmups, is because Treasure and Konami wanted every single developer to program their games THEIR way. If there is anybody to blame for slowdown in SNES games, it's Treasure and Konami's fault.

Strange, but i like Gunstar Super Heroes more than original Gunstar Heroes. I just can't stand Treasure's programmers just because of the utter BS they write in their interviews, such as claiming the robotic joints are "software rendered by the CPU in real time." If that's true, why do th...

Old thread, but the OP makes some good points that I can totally agree on. The fact that it took programmers a year at least to get their head around collision routines that didn't drag down the entire system. OK, technical reasons play into it, but there are no technical reasons that can't be overc...

It seems to me that neither aesthetic nor technical detail are the true meat of graphics. When a reviewer says "good graphics" they typically mean simply that they like how it looks, and often how it animates and moves as well. That's it. Just like with any other visual art or medium opin...