ADG Episode 12 - Thexder

[@Amandadances1983]

Thexder kid right here! Played it on our Tandy 2000! I would just let the credits run to listen to the song over and over and use my dogs paws to play air piano. Rock on, Willy! (R.I.P. my dog from the late 80's early 90's)

[@fumapetas]

Great Channel ! There is an explanation for the dithering: this game was created for japanese computer series PC-88, which only had a 600x200x8 color graphics mode when this game was released. So this dithering techique is used extensively in PC-88 games. Probably, the publisher of the PC version thought that the additional work of updating the graphics to 16 color EGA mode was not worth the cost. This is the same case of Firehawk and Silpheed

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

Yeah, these were the few Japanese computer titles to find their way to the west.

[@shdon]

It is surprising that they had the Tandy mode in there though. That also runs in 320x200x16. It would not have taken al that much effort to run in EGA mode 7 rather than 8.

[@greenaum]

Ah! That makes sense! What doesn't make sense though is an 8-colour mode. 8 colours take 3 bits to store, and the PC-88's RAM was 8-bit like it's processor. Any other computer would use 4 bits, 16 colours, with 2 pixels squeezed into each byte. What did it do with the extra bits?

[@greenaum]

Ok I looked it up and the 8-colour graphics mode is only 160x100 pixels. On a terrible computer with a slow CPU. They wouldn't have ported the graphics across from that, it'd make no sense. So that's likely not the reason.

[@raydeen2k]

I remember seeing this at a Radio Shack back in the day and freaking out because it looked a bit like Robotech (and I was a HUGE fan at the time). A few years later I got a Genesis and the game 'Alicia Dragoon' which was also a Gamearts game. Same mechanics but this time you played an anime-esque sorceress who also could choose from a handful of pets that could level up as you did. Both great games. I did get Thexder on the PC in '92 or so when it was a bargain bin title and also got Thexder 95 later on for Windows but it didn't quite have the same fun factor as Windows games from that time just weren't quite there yet.

[@realtrisk]

The reason the EGA mode is only using ~6 colors is because it is emulating the original PC-8801 game's graphics. The PC-8801 only had 8 total colors onscreen. Sierra would have had to completely rework the graphics to make use of more colors.

[@pillarnexustheancientgladiator]

This one brings back a lot of memories: fun, frustration, and the drive to do better each time I play. Another Game Arts game, Alisia Dragoon, feels like Thexder lite; another protagonist with a homing weapon, but less difficulty.

[@MageFromAntares]

First nice channel, and an informative video like all that I had previously watched on this channel. But there is something that I can add as an explanation why they used dithering and not just redefined the palette as you suggest at 14:36. Even as a child playing with these games I have noticed that low resolution EGA games always used the same colours, while the higher resolution EGA games have generally had their own palettes. I have only recently discovered the reason behind this, and it is because the original EGA adapters from IBM and their clones have been backwards compatible with the CGA monitors which were only capable of displaying the 16 colours of the CGA palette. So game makers using the lower resolution modes seldom used colours other than the 16 predefined ones, as they might not display correctly. (In fact I have heard that the original EGA card enforced this for the low resolution modes even when connected to an EGA monitor, so they would only get the nearest colour in the original 16 colour palette instead.) So some of these colours they get through dithering would be unreachable with that limited 16 colour palette. (This still doesn't explain why they aren't used the other colours during dithering to make the game more colourful.)

[@Pixelmusement]

+MageFromAntares This is a very old video. I've since learned that the reason for the colour limitations was mostly due to limitations of the MSX where the game originated and so the assets were simply ported with those limitations still in place, rather than being redesigned to take advantage of EGA's superior capabilities in terms of colour fidelity, probably due to time constraints. The sequel does things a little better. ;)

[@greenaum]

As far as the colours go, yellow and green are only used in your power meter at the bottom. So that leaves 4 colours. You think maybe they used a 4-colour mode and switched the palette for the bottom scanlines with the player information? Can you do that on EGA? I'm pretty sure there's no scanline interrupt, but could you perhaps set the timer chip to do it?

[@Pixelmusement]

That's not something you can do on EGA, BUT, that may be what was done on the Japanese hardware the game was originally made for... All I know is the way the palette works in the EGA mode is a holdover from its origins. In fact, many Game Arts titles seem to work in this fashion.

[@wolvenar]

Dang. So long ago now. Both your video and when I first played this. I still have it on my Tandy(s)

[@danoz25]

Great seeing Thexder reviewed! This is among the first games I remember having played as a young kid.

[@jong2359]

I bought this game for $2.99 at Wal-mart when Pentiums came on the market. I only had a Tandy 1000, but it ran this game just fine. This was pretty much the pinnacle of gaming for people running well under 10mhz.

[@KingIsaacLinksr]

Huh, this is a unique game, never heard of it before.m

[@Retrokid1998]

This is my favorite episode

[@Miglow]

Nice video. I actually still have the original discs and instruction booklet. However I don't have high hopes that the floppy discs are uncorrupted.

[@pilli10]

Had a strange cd-rom of shareware, freeware and short demos and there was a game with this name that had 16 bit look to it. So sad I can't find the compilation CD anywhere. I even found an earlier edition of the compilation CD in a toy store as a freebie back in the early 2000s. It was the first one I got back in the late 90s that peaked my interest in DOS games.

[@samalcis]

Excellent job on the color comparison

[@Pixelmusement]

Incidentally, I forgot to take gamma correction into consideration in this video. Though when I went back to the original screen captures and applied gamma correction, the colour fidelity stayed the same. I make a note of this in Episode 20 when I cover the sequel. :B

[@charlymop]

I kinda like the CGA version, it almost looks like it was drawn with 4 colors ball pen.

[@Teabone3]

I haven't heard "tandy" in so long lol

[@cbthethird]

We had one in first and second grade, though non of us knew how to use such "advanced" technology then. Not even the teachers, The Tandy just sat and collected dust in the corner.

[@antdude]

Fun game, but hard! I never finished it like its sequel.

[@Lovuschka]

What program did you use to do that color comparison?

[@Pixelmusement]

+Lovuschka An old copy of Paint Shop Pro. It has a colour counting feature as well as palettization features, so it made the process really easy. I DID forget to take gamma into account (which I remedied for the second game) but upon testing that again I found it didn't make a difference to the colour count.

[@Lovuschka]

@@Pixelmusement Yes, you said that with the gamma somewhere in that video or the next one. Thanks for the reply!

[@SeekerLancer]

I've got the Famicom version of this which isn't quite as good but was developed by Squaresoft of all people.

[@Pixelmusement]

+Christopher Blair Ooooh, you actually OWN it? Then here's a fun trick you should try: On the title screen hold Left and A, press reset, then hold Right and A and press reset, then Up and A and press resent, then Down and A and press reset, then after all of that, hold Start and press reset... yes, I know, this sounds ridiculous, JUST TRUST ME ON THIS ONE... :o

[@executivebexley252]

It's a bit red, white and blue!!

[@Pixelmusement]

Picard: "The French, more properly, used the same colors in the order blue, white and red." ;)

[@BrianPicchi]

What is the title screen image supposed to be?

[@Pixelmusement]

+TanRu Nomad I think it's supposed to be the surface of the planet you've infiltrated.

[@AndrewTJackson]

Seven years after you've uploaded this video, I'm guessing TMNT. Ask me why I know that. :-/

[@Pixelmusement]

Nah. Instead I'll ask why you think it's only been seven years since this video first went up since it originally was uploaded to Blip back on August 13th, 2010! ;)

[@AndrewTJackson]

@@Pixelmusement Lol! Touché! :-)

[@pilli10]

All megadrive like

[@viinikellari]

Lol.. didn't know that Turrican (released on c64 in 1990, also on amiga and atari as far as I remember) is a ripoff of this character. Turrican's ship is also ripped of from this game. The beam weapon too.

[@markg5480]

Likewise. I always thought Turrican was a rip-off of Metroid, but this game is very close to home

[@Dino2yoyo]

teenage Mutant ninja turtle.

[@theoveranalysticjake378]

What program did you use to combine the colours of the dithered pixels?

[@Pixelmusement]

+TheOverAnalysticJake I just did it using an old copy of Paint Shop Pro which I still use for many graphics editing purposes. Now, I did fail to take gamma correction into account in this video, but later on when I covered Fire Hawk, the sequel to Thexder, I went back briefly to test if that made a colour count difference here in the original game, but it did not. :P