[jonhohle]

The Sega CD is my favorite console and I was fortunate enough to have one growing up. Silpheed was unlike anything else. Unlike most FMV games, Silpheed actually felt like controlling a movie. During the first level when laser blasts are tearing through the fleet gigantic ships filling the screen with debris, I could barely believe what I was seeing.

As the article points out, while it is an FMV game, it tries to fool you into thinking it’s a polygon based game. The Sega CD had no 3D capabilities at all (just 2D rotation and scale). But GameArts pulls off the FMV so convincingly, down to the aliasing, that it’s hard to understand (at least to my 12-year old self) how it could be anything other than 3D rendering.

It’s often panned as not the best shooter, but the gameplay was secondary to the experience. I don’t know how it would play for someone who didn’t experience it at the time, but it will always be one of my favorites on the system.

[ndiddy]

Yeah Silpheed is a great example of designing a game around the strengths of its target hardware. Because they were able to focus the art design around what could be streamed at high quality off a 1x CD drive, the FMV works a lot better than it did in games like Night Trap and Wirehead that tried to shoehorn live action video into a console that wasn't capable of displaying it at a decent quality. The actual gameplay is similar to an early 1980s arcade game like Galaga, but I agree with you that the presentation makes it worth playing at least a few levels of Silpheed even now.

[xutopia]

I remember when people would talk about a new game they hadn't yet tried and the first question was "How are the graphics?". They truly did amazing work back then to push the limits of systems so they could present things that the machine wasn't expressly built to accomplish.

[Eric_WVGG]

The soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal. I pull it up on Youtube once a year or so just for kicks.

Silpheed by Sierra On-Line for the PC — ported from the Japanese PC-8801 — was similarly good, possibly the first game I played with a proper sound card. The MT-32 version blew my twelve-year-old mind.

[sillywalk]

> Silpheed by Sierra On-Line for the PC — ported from the Japanese PC-8801 — was similarly good, possibly the first game I played with a proper sound card.

I had a similar experience, as it came bundled[0] with the soundcard for my IBM PS/1 286, and it even had speech(!) during the introduction.

[0] https://pixelatedarcade.com/tech_attributes/overview/ibm-ps-...

[montag]

Agreed :) lots here to play with: https://chiptune.app?q=silpheed

[1auralynn]

I have a fond childhood memory of singing along to one of the songs with my little brother a lyric we made up "One.. more... hit and you're dead, one more hit and you're dead"

[jandrese]

Watching the video linked at the end of the article my first thought was "Starfox, eat your heart out", but watching the gameplay I noted that at its core its a really basic shooter and it can be quite hard to keep track of the enemies and projectiles with the background going nuts like that.

[glimshe]

I just saw a video of it. Impressive. Were the enemy ships hand drawn 3D plastered on sprites? Or was there some actual realtime 3D rendered by the CPU? The boss ship I saw looked like realtime 3D.

[toast0]

There's no realtime 3D. This boss fight [1] looks super impressive, but the boss structure is FMV, your ship and bullets and stuff is all sprites overlaid on the FMV. (and the FMV is decoded to sprites too)

(Stated confidently to ensure a correction if I'm wrong)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMO_tdlUvnc

[zedr]

I think there is realtime 3D used for the player and enemy "sprites" (really 3D objects), including the end of stage bosses. They are small and extremely simple, as this was the maximum the Genesis/Megadrive's 68k CPU could handle. The final boss fight is the exception.

Silpheed was amazing back in the day. It was one of the first titles that really showcased what CD drives could add to games in terms of cinematic experience. The live orchestral music gave it an epic feel and the mecha-design of the SA-77 is beautiful and modern even by today's standards.

[toast0]

I'd be very surprised if player and enemy graphics are realtime 3D. Those look very much like typical sprites where you use different sprites for different angles.

The player ship rotates, but it only is 'rendered' at a handful of angles. This is a very common technique, but here they've used an art style to make it look like realtime 3d.

It's like stun runner on Lynx [1]. The Arcade stun runner was polygon based; but the Lynx doesn't have a chance, so there's just a ton of sprite options for rotation and a lot of work to make it look the part [2].

[1] https://youtu.be/4PEAzBtaStk?si=QXWf9KDUBjQRgoDh&t=204 [2] https://forums.atariage.com/topic/194231-lynx-stun-runner-3d...

[zedr]

I'm sure they are 3d models and are rendered using the CPU. You can check by entering the secret Options Mode and selecting the Polygon Test, which will allow you to freely rotate your ship and the enemies, including the end of level bosses (except the final one). Screenshot: https://www.vizzed.com/vizzedboard/retro/user_screenshots/sa...

Fabien seems to be unaware of this, by the way.

This is also why the game play is so bland. The number of 3d objects and their complexity was severely constrained and did not allow for varied or more sophisticated game elements.