Most technically advanced NES & Super NES games?

[farfel]

Games that push the consoles to the limits?

[tritium]

NES Super Mario Bros 3.
SNES DK Country.

-Tritium

[Ed Oscuro]

Hm. Akumajo Densetsu, Shin Megami Tensei II and other chip-extended FC games "cheat" in a way by using special mappers, but I guess they can be said to count. Recca/Summer Carnival '92/whatever it's called, that's one. SMB3 is great stuff too.

Super NES? Holy cow. DOOM and Yoshi's Island push that Super FX chip big time, and in terms of awesome amounts of detail (even for a later release) Demon's Blazon is not anything to laugh at, either. I found Takara's Maten Densetsu pretty darn interesting; Otogiriso's successor - er - is certainly a contender as well.

[Dangerboy]

Yoshi's Story on SNES gets my vote....I could not believe the amount fo stuff they crammed into that game graphically. I always felt DK and KI 'cheated' with their graphics.

NES? Hmm...

Mike Tyson's Punch Out for the huge characters....

Man I am just drawing blanks....I guess SMB3 for the huge ship levels...

[fishsandwich]

Dirt Trax FX pushes around a lot of polygons for a SNES game... I'd guess that any game with a built-in chip to speed up processing is going to be more technologically advanced than a game that is chip-free. It looks like crap now, but it was way cool back in 1995 or whenever it was. Confuses the hell out of emulators, too.

Street Fighter Alpha 2 has great animation (something about a built-in chip again, this time doing something with the memory compression) but there's a lot of slowdown.

Wasn't Ultimate Stuntman for the NES pretty near early 16-bit in terms of graphics, or was I high at the time?

Fish Sandwich

[MegaDrive20XX]

Akumajo Densetsu by a land slide...(CV3)

but Super Mario Bros. 3 as well

Ninja Gaiden I thought pushed the limit, to have an excellent storyline, cut scenes like a movie...


SNES.

Stunt Race FX, Star Fox, Chrono Trigger (Look at those colors!), DOOM...I still dunno how they did that..F-Zero's usage of the Mode 7 graphics

[TRM]

Wasn't Ultimate Stuntman for the NES pretty near early 16-bit in terms of graphics, or was I high at the time?

No you weren't high. It was great, graphics wise.

[Jive3D]

Recca was incredible in terms of what the NES can offer. That's almost a constant on my GBA Flashcard.

[Quickclaw]

Wasn't Ultimate Stuntman for the NES pretty near early 16-bit in terms of graphics, or was I high at the time?

No you weren't high. It was great, graphics wise.
The playability factor is equally so.

[Nez]

Super Mario RPG, along with Donkey Kong series.

Super Ghouls and Ghosts soo much lag!

[TheRedEye]

Gotta give a nod to Kirby's Adventure on the NES.

[Bratwurst]

Gotta give a nod to Kirby's Adventure on the NES.

Game has one of the largest licensed circuit boards for the NES doesn't it?

[PDorr3]

Kirby's adventure and SMB3

Kirby's dreamland 3, yohi's island, mario rpg

[AFGiant]

Gotta give a nod to Kirby's Adventure on the NES.

my sentiments exactly.

[o2william]

I echo pretty much everything else others have said, and would give a nod to Space Megaforce on SNES (a shmup). I don't know if I'd call it the most technically impressive game, but it's got TONS of stuff moving on screen at once with very little slowdown.

@Fish Sandwich: Ultimate Stuntman is really impressive. Not quite 16-bit-looking IIRC, but good, and maybe the game with the most varied gameplay I've ever seen. Each and every level seems to play differently. For some reason, I have a hard time getting it to work in my toploader. :(

[Ed Oscuro]

Man I am just drawing blanks....I guess SMB3 for the huge ship levels...
Every time I'll come up with another title I'll forget it again, just as quickly LOL

Holy Diver is decent enough, but I wouldn't call it "pushing the limits." Recca, and anything 3D, are somewhat closer to my definition.

Little side note - a while back somebody mentioned Shadow of the Ninja (yeah, I already posted that) as being nearly a 16-bit game. I look and go, "What? That's classic NES. Five color sprites. Well, sprites are supposed to be three colors, but you can cheat." Anyhow. I suppose it might look like a bad early TG-16 or Genesis game, but it looks brilliant on the NES all the same.

[Sibs]

For NES, I'd say either Super Mario Bros. 3 or Battletoads.

For the SNES, I'd say Final Fantasy III for 2-D games and Super Mario RPG for the 3-D ones.

[davidleeroth]

Judging by the amount of lag; Super R-Type. :)

[Castelak]

The original Star Ocean for the Super Famicom get's my vote. Never released statewise, but you can get an english patch for a rom...

Anyways, the effects in it are very impressive. Very nice shadowing and there are even water reflections! I wish it was released here. :/ C'mon SquareEnix... port to GBA!

[suppafly]

NES: Battletoads, Super Mario Bros. 3, Shadow of the Ninja

SNES: DK country 1-3, Actraiser´s graphics still amaze me too

[kai123]

For NES, I'd say either Super Mario Bros. 3 or Battletoads.

For the SNES, I'd say Final Fantasy III for 2-D games and Super Mario RPG for the 3-D ones.


I don't think that Super Mario rpg was 3d. I think it just used rendered sprites. Starfox would be a 3d game because of the polygons.

[suppafly]

Well...i think he meant that it "looks" 3-d, independently of how the programmers did it :)

[thehistorian]

I always felt DK and KI 'cheated' with their graphics.

Ditto.. technically it's just rendered sprites.. nothing that pushed the system any further.

Uniracers really pulled off dual screen for two players pretty well and it's crazy fast in some areas..

[Jive3D]

Mario RPG had the Isometric view, similar to Megaman Battle Network. They pulled that one off VERY well.

Did it have a chip to accelerate anything like the Super FX, etc?

[Ed Oscuro]

The original Star Ocean for the Super Famicom get's my vote. Never released statewise, but you can get an english patch for a rom...
I don't know much about Star Ocean yet, but Tales of Phantasia...wow. I can't believe they put in that music frontend! x_X

So much animation...the mind is baffled...

[downfall]

Yet another one of these topics, and I'm still first at giving some of the following games props ;) :

NES - Batman: Revenge of the Joker - Hands down the most impressive graphical feat on the NES.

NES - Dragon's Lair - It is horrible and slow, but the animation is smooth and Dirk is huge on the screen - good stuff.

SNES - Yoshi's Island - I just played through it recently, and it literally made me say *WOW* again! Just plain awesome graphics.

[Berserker]

I always felt DK and KI 'cheated' with their graphics.

I agree, I never liked the way that stuff looked, same reason I never really got into Mario Kart 64, though granted that was only with the characters.... I think it's ok to use "tricks" as long as they're done with a certain sense of... proportion that works with the game itself... Yoshi's Island is a great example of this. They use all kinds of FX Chip effects in that game, but it's done in a certain way that... let me think... embraces the technology to enhance the game, rather than just utilizing tricks like pre-rendered graphics to fool the eye. I really liked Donkey Kong Country as a game, I still might play it from time to time. But I think that older console games like this, games like Yoshi's Island, who sort of embrace what they are, which is a 2D game, while sprinkling some nice little tidbits of 3D for effect, instead of trying to "pretend" that it's a 3D game, will ultimately make it stand the test of time.

Ok, end of unnescesarily long technology/game-design balance idealism rant. phew.
My votes:

Yoshi's Island
Starfox
Stunt Race FX
Doom. Ok, Doom I originally wasn't going to put in a vote for, as it was basically just corner-cutting and downgrading of a great PC game into something... worse. But, that's not the issue. the fact that you can play this game on the SNES is enough to warrant a mention here. I'll also have to try all these japanese titles everyone seems to be mentioning...

As for NES, well I'm not really sure. 3D Worldrunner maybe? It's a bit harder for me to try and gauge which games are pushing the limits in terms of 2D here. My guess would be TMNT2, and perhaps Snake's Revenge?

... did someone mention Mario RPG as a "3d game"? I can't believe everyone doesn't know the whole concept of pre-rendered graphics... well, actually I can, as my two younger sisters didn't grasp the whole concept until I explained it to them while they were playing Mario Kart 64. No, the graphics in Mario RPG aren't real 3D. They're just flat pictures made to look 3D. Sort of like when Wile E. Coyote paints a flat picture on the wall that looks like a train tunnel... yes, I just went there. Also, there is no Santa Claus.

[Iron Draggon]

I'd have to say Axelay for SNES. It must've pushed the hell out of it for a game with only 6 levels and no special effects chip to achieve the effects.

[max 330 mega]

nes- shadow of the ninja

snes- i guess possibly clay fighter??

[Mark III]

SNES:
-Probably have to go with Chrono Trigger for sheer eye candy
-Super Punchout was cool too for the large, well animated characters.
-Out of this World blew me away the first time I saw it, but now it loks pretty damn ugly.

[Crush Crawfish]

For NES, I'd have to say Kirby's Adventure, Mr. Gimmick, Super mario Bros. 3, Recca, and Moon Crystal.

For Snes, I'd say Yoshi's Island, mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, Kirby's Dream land 3, and Ganbare Goemon 4.

[Ed Oscuro]

-Out of this World blew me away the first time I saw it, but now it loks pretty damn ugly.
Actually, I tried out the Genesis version recently - wow! It's hard to believe they pulled that off on the Genny. Flash-style vector graphics!

[NintendoMan]

For the NES:
SMB 3 - Definately pushed the most in my opinion
Maniac Mansion

SNES:
Donkey Country 1-3
Yoshi's Island
Super Mario World

[Lord Contaminous]

http://tomato.fobby.net/romimg/lagrange.gif
http://tomato.fobby.net/romimg/lagrange2.gif
http://tomato.fobby.net/romimg/lagrange4.gif
Lagrange Point (Famicom)
This game is home of the almighty Konami VRC7, the most powerful of the Japanese Famicom sound expansion chips. It's so powerful that it mimics PC Engine/Turbografx 16 music, or 16-bit sound and music in general. The only 8-bit game to miraculously pull that off.

[jerkov]

Somebody already mentioned Batman: Return of the Joker for the NES, and that does have extremely impressive graphics. I never found that game all that much fun to play, though; the original was a much better game.

The Jungle Book is another graphically impressive NES game. Almost appears to be 16-bit quality. Another graphically impressive game is Micro Machines; the stages had an incredible amount of detail for an NES title. I also thought Electronic Arts pulled off a good port of The Immortal, which featured some incredible animations on the NES.

I consider it somewhat surprising, but a few pirate Famicom games really impress me. I have a Street Fighter 3 cart, and the size of the character sprites and the detail in the backgrounds is very impressive for an 8-bit cart. There is a good amount of flicker deal with, so it's not perfect, but not bad for a Hong Kong original. Not up to the quality of the arcade or SNES versions, but a lot more than I thought the NES could handle. I also got a game labelled as Super Aladdin 3 in the mail; this is a Hong Kong original, and the graphics are VERY impressive. Sometimes pirate carts are just simple hacks of other games, but there are a few great games out there that are totally original. I'm still blown away by how good this Aladdin game is; it looks and plays almost like a 16-bit title.

Another game that impresses me is Super Spy Hunter. So much shit going on all at once, although there is a lot of slowdown to deal with. I guess that game pushes the system TOO hard.

In terms of gameplay time, I'd have to give the nod to a game like Dragon Warrior 3 or 4. Those are probably 30-40 hour RPG's right there, not bad for an 8-bit title.

SNES, I only have about 50 games for it, so I can't really comment too much on what seems to push the limits the most......the version of Street Fighter Alpha 2 for SNES always did impress me, especially with the detailed backgrounds. Not a bad version, considering that the game was best suited to the 32-bit consoles.

[Sotenga]

Allow me to mention the glorious parallax scrolling and drum samples of Crisis Force, one of Konami's finest Famicom shmups. The enemies and bosses are glorious too. Also, I consider Journey to Silius on the NES to be very advanced, at least in the music department. I still consider Super Castlevania IV to be a technological marvel on the SNES, as well as Dracula X, though the latter could have used more beautiful Mode 7 transparency effects like the fire in stage 1.

[badinsults]

Most people in the snes emulation community would say that Super Metroid is one of the most advanced snes games without any special chips. There is a reason why there is a pause between rooms.

[Jehuty]

One game that amazed me graphically was Gremlins 2-NES with it's near 16-bit graphics, large boss sprites some nice audio and I think 7 layers of parralax scrolling in tiny windows of some levels.

Not the most graphically impressive but a game that had very good animation on the SNES was MegaMan and Bass.

[evildead2099]

It never saw its completion, but am I the only one who anticipated what Colour Dreams' Hellraiser game was to have been on the NES?

[Ed Oscuro]

Oh yeah, that one. That would've been amazing :)

Like SNES Wolfenstein, running on the NES!

[evildead2099]

Not only would the game have been a technological marvel, but it would have easily been one of the goriest games ever to have been available for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game's license says a lot about the sort of subject matter that players would've had to deal with. Colour Dreams had some very violent animations prepared which the Big N had no way of censoring due to the unlicensed nature of the game.

[jerkov]

Has anyone ever dug up any screenshots of Hellraiser?

[soniko_karuto]

the music on bucky o hare is awesome!!

(ducks behind desk).

[hydr0x]

The original Star Ocean for the Super Famicom get's my vote. Never released statewise, but you can get an english patch for a rom...
I don't know much about Star Ocean yet, but Tales of Phantasia...wow. I can't believe they put in that music frontend! x_X

So much animation...the mind is baffled...

yep, i 2nd those, along with Treasure Hunter G, Seiken Densetsu 3, all extra-chip games of course (Yoshis Island, Starfox, SF Alpha 2, Megaman X....)

anyone saying Super Mario World here.... what the hell are you thinking of???? that's a 4Mbit game that pushs NOTHING

i don't think DKC is pushing the SNES to its absolute limit either