Games That Pushed Older Systems to the Limit?

I've always been interested in games that made their respective systems do things that seemed impossible. Not games that did this via graphical chips in the cartridges themselves (Star Fox, Stunt Race FX for the SNES; Virtua Racing - Genesis), but games that did so through ingenious coding. Someone brought this up on another forum and some of the examples they gave were:

2600: Solaris, Double Dragon
NES: Summer Carnival '92 Recca
Genesis: Ranger X, The Adventures of Batman & Robin

I'd add:

Genesis: Alien Soldier (and the rest of Treasure's Genesis output, with the exception of Light Crusader), Red Zone (this game bragged about its technical prowess as soon as you started it up)

NES: Crisis Force

What games would you add?

 

man Ice Climbers pushed the NES to it's limit.

 

What's so special about Alien Soldier on the Mega Drive? or any other Treasure game apart from Gunstar Heroes? None Push the Mega Drive much to be honest.

I'm very tired at the moment but if I had to pick something for Mega Drive I'd have to go with Vectorman. 1and 2. I can't stand the game personally but it does push out some very nice graphical effects.

Yakumo

 

a few that comes to mind:

wipeout 3 on the psx is surely one of these
gran turismo 4 on ps2
donkey kong country

 

DKC does nothing interesting with HW... Vectorman does very little aswell.

Panoroama Cotton on MD does some very nice job managing the VDP
Adventures of Batman & Robin and Red Zone on MD are full of nice effects aswell.

Super Spy Hunter on NES does some neat things.

 

As already mentioned Red Zone has some lovely graphical effects and is very impressive.

GunStar Heroes has already been mentioned but Dynamite Headdy should get mentioned too some lovely 3D effects and scaling and rotation on the bosses etc.

CastleVania Bloodlines/New Generation and Contra Hard Corps both on Megadrive also deserve a mention. Particularly loved the stage in Castlevania that had like 4 separate planes of scrolling where part of your character would be scrolling at one rate and another part at another rate. Very difficult to explain.

Toy Story on Megadrive had some impressive stuf in it too.

Whether it pushed the system to the limit or not I was always impressed with Sonic R on Saturn. Fast, smooth, detailed visuals with really clean texturing.

Good shout on WipeOut 3 on PlayStation.I guess Driver 2 as well would be worth a mention.

Didn't Eternal Champions Challenge from the Darkside on Sega CD use more colours than normal (256 using Shadow and Highlight or some such).

God of Warand God of War 2 on PS2 - Shadow of the Colossus as well.
Not sure if any of these push the system o its limit but all feature some nice graphical effects and impressive visuals etc overall.

 

GTA: San Andreas on PS2, pushed console to the limit, due to it's immense map size.

 

How about Thunder Force IV on MD?

All these horrible slowdowns, fantastic game though...

 

Resident Evil 4 for the Gamecube? Don't know if it really pushed it to it's limits but it was in my opinion one of the best looking GC games.

 

Star Fox Adventures did some crazy stuff on the little cube, just like Conker's Bad Fur Day before it on the n64 (Factor 5 offerings qualify on most of their projects)

 

Maybe I just took Alien Soldier's ungrammatical announcement too literally? "VISUALSHOCK! SPEEDSHOCK! SOUNDSHOCK! NOW IS THE TIME TO THE 68000 HEART ON FIRE!" I remember being impressed with the chunky sprites it threw around.

I agree with Bloodlines. Something about it always struck me as kind of ugly, though. I hated that top-heavy Belmont sprite, especially how he'd climb stairs. Something about that flaming blue whip looked off, too. It was almost like they'd taken a non-Castlevania team and told them to make a Castlevania game. (I have no idea if this was the case!)

 

I think Kirby pushed the NES to its limits.

There also some NES game called Metal Slader Glory that I believe pushed the NES to its maximum performance, it had some pretty detailed anime cutscenes - IN AN NES GAME!

 

I second the Kirby post. Even 15 years later I was astonished by the mass of details and the amazing graphic tricks they tickled out of that 10 year-old hardware.

Famicom:
Recca (definitely)
Crisis Force

Neo Geo:
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
Metal Slug 5

PC-Engine:
Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire

N64:
Conker
Banjo Tooie

PS2:
God of War 2
Shadow of the Colossus (although the areas are lacking details, but the creatures are far beyond awesome)

 

Killzone (PS2)

 

Here's my shortlist of graphically impressive titles:

Toy Story (MegaDrive)
Darxide (32X)
D-Xhird (Saturn)
Le Mans 24 Hour (Dreamcast)
Wip3out (PlayStation)
Killzone (PlayStation 2)

The following are commercially unreleased, yet still worthy of honourable mentions:
Scorcher/A+M+O+K (32X)
Shenmue (Saturn)

P.S. Didn't someone once claim that Virtua Racing could have easily been reproduced on MegaDrive without the extra SVP chip?

 

Head Hunter - Dreamcast.

Not sure what it did technically but I thought it had a quality about it which took the DC to a new level.

 

Hmmm, for N64: Conker's Bad Fur Day, Banjo Tooie, and Perfect Dark maybe.

 

Here is a pretty good list of games that pushed systems to the limit http://www.racketboy.com/retro/limits.htm

 

Hmm, I htink I'll nominate Pitfall 2 on the 2600.

Lynx: Warbirds pretty much blew me out of the water...but I swear half the games on that system pushed it to to awesome lengths...though some went too far (I'm looking at you, Steel Talons, you fully 3D awesomefest, you).

Genesis/MD -- The couple of FPS games seemed to take it pretty far.

 

I think you might need to define what you mean by "to its limits", or at least the replies should have justification.

Just because a game has slowdown doesn't mean it is pushing the console to its limits. It can mean poor coding which is using the system in an ineffective manner.

You could push the system to its limits by having really nice looking graphics, but only use 8 bit mono sound. I mean, you can push one component to its limits but not others. You could say thrashing the CPU is pushing it, or using all the RAM, or having nicer graphics or more stuff on screen, better lighting effects, a decent engine that runs efficiently.... all sorts of factors. Then there are the other factors. For example, Saturn Bomberman uses the multitap to have 10 players simultaneously. Now, you might have another Saturn game that is, say, one or two player and really pushes some complex lighting and shading. However, can you say it is pushing the system to its limits if, for example, it doesn't make use of the multi-tap, the RAM expansion or even the save facility?

I remember reading an interview with a Saturn programmer who was really proud of his lighting effects in a particular game, and people always commented on them. I have a feeling it might have been Hexen or Exhumed.