Slashdot Mirror
HD Emulation Mod Makes 'Mode 7' SNES Games Look Like New (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Gamers of a certain age probably remember being wowed by the quick, smooth scaling and rotation effects of the Super Nintendo's much-ballyhooed "Mode 7" graphics. Looking back, though, those gamers might also notice how chunky and pixelated those background transformations could end up looking, especially when viewed on today's high-end screens. Emulation to the rescue. A modder going by the handle DerKoun has released an "HD Mode 7" patch for the accuracy-focused SNES emulator bsnes. In their own words, the patch "performs Mode 7 transformations... at up to 4 times the horizontal and vertical resolution" of the original hardware.
The results, as you can see in the above gallery and the below YouTube video, are practically miraculous. Pieces of Mode 7 maps that used to be boxy smears of color far in the distance are now sharp, straight lines with distinct borders and distinguishable features. It's like looking at a brand-new game. Perhaps the most impressive thing about these effects is that they take place on original SNES ROM and graphics files; DerKoun has said that "no artwork has been modified" in the games since the project was just a proof of concept a month ago. That makes this project different from upscaling emulation efforts for the N64 and other retro consoles, which often require hand-drawn HD texture packs to make old art look good at higher resolutions.
The results, as you can see in the above gallery and the below YouTube video, are practically miraculous. Pieces of Mode 7 maps that used to be boxy smears of color far in the distance are now sharp, straight lines with distinct borders and distinguishable features. It's like looking at a brand-new game. Perhaps the most impressive thing about these effects is that they take place on original SNES ROM and graphics files; DerKoun has said that "no artwork has been modified" in the games since the project was just a proof of concept a month ago. That makes this project different from upscaling emulation efforts for the N64 and other retro consoles, which often require hand-drawn HD texture packs to make old art look good at higher resolutions.
One thing I saw when I upgraded my Amstrad CPC 1512 to a 486 with a SVGA Display 320x200 16 color games just didn't look as good any more. Mainly the high resolution high DPI monitor made these pixel nice little squares. Where the Amstrad had a low DPI where each pixel were a bit rounded and a little grainy. This made dithered 16 color graphics look much more realistic, when the EGA dithered the colors, it felt like a 128 color display.
So now with 4k displays, We should be able to emulated the old low DPI displays and see the games much closer to to how we use to see them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I was a Segamaniac on that time, but I was really impressed that Nintendo could get mode 7 and zoom using a processor with a clock a way lower than Genesis. To add those 2 features on SegaCD, Sega engineers said they required to add an additional M6800 processor. Anyway, I've wrote a (alert: very fanboy and passionate) history about SNES here: https://raelcunha.com/snes-his...