The SEGA Genesis (aka Mega Drive) was launched at the tail end of the 1980s, bringing a new level of performance to the console world. At the time, 2D graphics ruled the roost, outside a few niche titles here and there. Decades later however, the demoscene continues to work in earnest. The Red Eyes demo is a great example of what can be done when pushing the Genesis hardware to the limits.
The demo features full motion video and an impressive 3D sequence. It’s quite a feat to pull this off with the limited resources of the Genesis platform. [Remute], [Kabuto] and [Exocet] have laid their secrets bare in a technical document, describing in explicit detail how it’s all achieved.
There’s plenty of juicy reading material here. There are palette hacks to produce high-quality greyscale images, rendering tips to produce the smooth 3D rendered sequences, as well as optimizations to create the best possible sample playback using the onboard YM2612 sound chip. It’s a tour de force of development, and it’s astounding to look behind the curtain to see just what can be achieved.
If you’re thinking about tinkering with the Genesis yourself, you might find it useful to have a dev kit on your bench. Video after the break.
Very impressive demo!
It was not just the wrong side of the disk, though ????
Probably because at this resolution, the bottom of a floppy wouldn’t look any different from the top.
Even though it’s decades since I’ve used a 5.25″ floppy, the idea that he might be touching the media through the hole makes me get all up tight!
I didn’t get the point of inserting the floppy backwards, I’m sure there was some clever thought behind it, please explain it to this dummy :)
They’re showing how insanely tired they are. Even less technical minded people who lived in the 5,25″ floppy era would never do that.
The video seems to show a C64 and 1541 drive.
yep it does, I don’t really get that part as I can’t. I can’t imagine a link to the SEGA Genesis. But other then that it is a nice demo with much interesting approaches to some challenging problems.
Amazing demo it’s like something you’d normally see on an Amiga which has a more powerful graphics chip and more ram to work with.