[Richard Shead]

Somewhat of a technical achievement considering the hardware limitations but because of those said limitations, the ol' Megadrive ain't nearly powerful enough to do the Duke 3D name any justice. Hell, even the Saturn version had to cut some serious corners.

I do realize that this was- and is- an illegal "port"(in the loosest of terms possible), but I still thought some of you other fanatics might be interested.

[Hendricks266]

Duke Rocks, on 18 August 2014 - 09:01 AM, said:

Somewhat of a technical achievement considering the hardware limitations

Not really. This game is thought to use the Zero Tolerance engine, unlike Doom 32X which was actually Doom.

[Richard Shead]

Hendricks420, on 18 August 2014 - 09:31 AM, said:

Not really. This game is thought to use the Zero Tolerance engine, unlike Doom 32X which was actually Doom.

I suppose you're right...though to be fair, Duke 3D was a much more advanced game than DooM to begin with. While the 32x version of DooM was faithful, I don't think there's any way that the BUILD engine could have been accommodated.

[ReaperMan]

I know this has been brought up before, but just in-case you weren't aware this is far more impressive then Duke 3D on the Genesis.

[Ahcruna]

ReaperMan, on 18 August 2014 - 12:08 PM, said:

I know this has been brought up before, but just in-case you weren't aware this is far more impressive then Duke 3D on the Genesis.

Mind = Blown

That version is miles better compared to the GBA version (which I actually liked)

This one is nice too.

[oasiz]

The cart doesn't really have any expansion in it so a straight comparison with 32X Doom isn't quite fair.
Considering that it's powered by the stock 68k, it's pretty impressive.
It might use the zero tolerance engine but not without some major modifications, the drawing area for instance is much smaller in ZT.

Most of the videos also look horrible since those are usually done with emulation, meaning where the color stripes would normally blend it shows as stripes. The composite output from the MD was notoriously bad, with vertical dithering you could do all kinds of stuff like fake transparency (sonic waterfalls and this).
Here is a rough mockup from a google image on what it usually looks like on real hardware, without RGB that is. (right)


While it still suffers from conversion arficts, I'd say that they did pretty well considering the color limitations of the system. Game play balancing and music is a bit lacking at parts but if you approach it as a Wolf3D clone, it actually fares quite well. You have parallax sky/floor to fake space sections, different kinds of doors, buttons, elevators etc.. bunch of stuff that appeared in ROTT.

I am not saying that everyone should instantly love it but I found it pretty impressive once I gave it a try, with a real system and the 3-button game pad even (controls are actually quite ok).

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

DN3D on the Genesis would be impressive if it was an actual port instead of various DN3D resources glued together into Zero Tolerance.

[ReaperMan]

The Genesis could hardly even handle Doom with the 32X.

[OpenMaw]

Being illegal doesn't exactly help matters, had it been officially endorsed with some kind of a mission state officially in place, I would have made it a game that would better fit the system.

Like a Contra style side scroller with Duke. The hardware just isn't built for these game. Even the SNES with the use of a chip extension and slightly better hardware, couldn't really do it justice.

[Lunick]

It actually got bought by a company last month http://pikointeracti...-genesis-games/

[ReaperMan]

Lunick, on 18 August 2014 - 07:15 PM, said:

It actually got bought by a company last month http://pikointeracti...-genesis-games/

Piko+ isn't run the same guy who did the Hover-tank 3d and Keen dreams kick starter is it?

[TerminX]

Commando Nukem, on 18 August 2014 - 06:57 PM, said:

Being illegal doesn't exactly help matters, had it been officially endorsed with some kind of a mission state officially in place, I would have made it a game that would better fit the system.

Like a Contra style side scroller with Duke. The hardware just isn't built for these game. Even the SNES with the use of a chip extension and slightly better hardware, couldn't really do it justice.

I'm pretty sure it was legal, I think GT Interactive licensed the game to them in the first place and the rumor that it was illegal started when someone asked Joe Siegler about it and he didn't have any answers/couldn't get any from George or Scott because it was a GT deal. I mean, c'mon, it was released by Tec Toy... I don't really believe the official licensed Sega distributor of Brazil (of not just games, but console hardware itself) would get on board with producing pirate carts that massively infringed on what was a very hot trademark at the time. Furthermore, if it was illegal they would have no doubt gotten sued by GT... remember, even unauthorized level compilations like "Nuke It!" spawned lawsuits.

[High Treason]

ReaperMan, on 18 August 2014 - 12:08 PM, said:

I know this has been brought up before, but just in-case you weren't aware this is far more impressive then Duke 3D on the Genesis.

Not a game, but more impressive still;

Running on my own MK-I Mega Drive... Not clear now whether it was on the Signetics one or the Motorolla one.

[Lunick]

ReaperMan, on 18 August 2014 - 09:07 PM, said:

Piko+ isn't run the same guy who did the Hover-tank 3d and Keen dreams kick starter is it?

No no haha. Hovertank's rights were bought by someone called Havoc on some Wolf3D forum. Piko is currently working with Blzut to help get Super 3D Noah's Ark Greenlit

[Micky C]

What's so special about this Super 3D Noah's Ark anyway?

[Richard Shead]

Micky C, on 19 August 2014 - 04:36 AM, said:

What's so special about this Super 3D Noah's Ark anyway?

It was endorsed by God.

[Ahcruna]

Micky C, on 19 August 2014 - 04:36 AM, said:

What's so special about this Super 3D Noah's Ark anyway?

Apparently it is supposed to have better level design than Wolfenstein 3D as far as I've heard people say.
Personally I never got through the first level because of lack of interest.

[ReaperMan]

Micky C, on 19 August 2014 - 04:36 AM, said:

What's so special about this Super 3D Noah's Ark anyway?

Goats.

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

Micky C, on 19 August 2014 - 04:36 AM, said:

What's so special about this Super 3D Noah's Ark anyway?

It has the automap from the SNES version of Wolf3D. It makes navigating much easier.

[OpenMaw]

TerminX, on 19 August 2014 - 03:33 AM, said:

I'm pretty sure it was legal, I think GT Interactive licensed the game to them in the first place and the rumor that it was illegal started when someone asked Joe Siegler about it and he didn't have any answers/couldn't get any from George or Scott because it was a GT deal. I mean, c'mon, it was released by Tec Toy... I don't really believe the official licensed Sega distributor of Brazil (of not just games, but console hardware itself) would get on board with producing pirate carts that massively infringed on what was a very hot trademark at the time. Furthermore, if it was illegal they would have no doubt gotten sued by GT... remember, even unauthorized level compilations like "Nuke It!" spawned lawsuits.

The more you know...

[Person of Color]

Are you guys sure that's Zero Tolerance? They look nothing alike.



>Those TI PSG door opening sound effects

FUUUUUUCK IT SOUNDS SO GOOD.

The versatility of the Genesis never ceases to amaze me. A quarter of a century later and we still haven't tapped it's full potential. It's a truly brilliant piece of hardware.

[Duke of Hazzard]

That Wolf3D Genesis port is brilliant. I assume this proves that a better job could've been done with the official SNES port, considering the SNES isn't any weaker than the Genesis. The SNES handled Doom acceptably, although memory constraints meant that sprites, textures and sound samples had to be cut. The SNES also couldn't handle the code for the BFG sparks, so the BFG shot became just a huge very damaging blob instead.

Duke3D was IMO too much even for the next generation consoles, let alone the Genesis. They should've ported the old Duke Nukem platformers instead. IMO the big problem with a Build game would be button assignment. I remember playing Duke64 back in the day and the controls were a mess.

The Tec Toy port is actually worse than what I thought it was!

[Person of Color]

You guys need to downloaded the latest version of the Wold3D port, turn the filtering on high, and enable the FPS counter. The higher detail does not effect the framerate, it looks to me like the filtering just puts a grid over things then forces the Genesis VDP (Video display processor) to jitter the screen. It actually looks very smooth and PC like. It gets 15-20fps on average, but movement feels interpolated and the controls feel straight outta DOS, no latency whatsoever.

[Person of Color]

ReaperMan, on 18 August 2014 - 06:27 PM, said:

The Genesis could hardly even handle Doom with the 32X.

That was a rushed launch day port. The 32X software renders everything - the only new hardware feature it adds is a better frame buffer. It has two 23MHz Hitachi SH2's and 512K RAM. You can stream data from the cart to help bypass the RAM limitation, obviously.

Bad code = bad graphics. Without any hardware to fall back on it truly is garbage in/garbage out.

Also, the Wolf3D port proves that Doom could have sounded great using the YM2612/TI PSG. As does the second video.

[Jimmy]

That 32X tech demo just looks like some kind of tech demo for Rogue Squadron on the N64. Holy shit.

The Doom soundtrack sounds like some weird club music.

[Ahcruna]

D: ...
That's insane, the tech demo looks better than some Saturn games, that was very impressive actually.

[Person of Color]

Yeah Doom 32X could have been PC perfect. The game logic itself isn't very CPU intensive at all. Everything could have been thrown towards rendering.

As for those tech demos looking better than the Saturn, throw in game logic and watch them choke. The frame rates are already way behind the Saturn.

The 32X sucked, period. The two most advanced games are DarXide and that cancelled X Men game. Even if you force DarXide into NTSC mode in an emulator, it still crawls. X Men never got past alpha, but the fixed perspective is proof the 32X can't keep up.

[Idiotska]

Geez. The aliens look like they're from a terribly interlaced VHS tape, and that screen tearing..

This is hard to watch. Why, TecToy? Why, Brazil?

[OpenMaw]

I'm still not even sure why Sega wasted the money with the Sega CD and 32X given the window of time between their release and the Saturn. Just seems like it would have made more sense to spend that money and energy on augmenting the Sega Saturn hardware, and marketing. Someone with a more reaching knowledge of the Sega history care to shed some light on that?

[ReaperMan]

Commando Nukem, on 29 August 2014 - 05:11 AM, said:

I'm still not even sure why Sega wasted the money with the Sega CD and 32X given the window of time between their release and the Saturn.

I think that they wanted to extend the life of the Genesis, but it was really a stupid idea.