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Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
subdirectory_arrow_right Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (Platform)
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"Blast processing" is a marketing term coined by Sega of America to promote the Sega Genesis as the cooler and more powerful console compared to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was such an effective campaign that it caused Nintendo to spend millions of dollars to ramp up their own smear campaign to rebut the claims, helping to create the textbook example of a "console war" between two rivaling video game companies through aggressive marketing and advertising. It is true that Blast processing as presented in advertisements at the time does not exist in any released Genesis game, but its creation was based on a real, low-level progressive processing method that ultimately went unused by developers in their games.

The basic idea is that the hardware's video processor is "blasted" continuously, with the Genesis' 68000 processor working flat-out to change the color of every individual pixel during an active scan, a process where the "guns" on a CRT screen move from left to right and then down to the next line and so on. It was believed at the time that this function could be used to increase the Genesis' somewhat constrained color palette to showcase 256 color static images if timed right (this number would be exceeded by other developers like Jon Burton from Traveller's Tales who later discovered the trick).

Sega of America Senior Producer Scott Bayless claimed that Sega technical director Marty Franz first discovered the trick by "hooking the scan line interrupt and firing off a DMA [direct memory access] at just the right time", as firing it off at the wrong time would result in the scan lines appearing out of phase. This timing/synchronization issue, on top of the more pressing issue of the feature using all of the 68000's CPU time (meaning that while you could run the feature, you couldn't actually play the games that use it), effectively made it useless for cartridge games, and no shipped Genesis games ever used the feature. It’s speculated that it could have been used for Sega CD games, as the add-on had its own CPU that could run the feature, but this also did not come to pass.

The people responsible for the name "Blast processing" are Bayless and Sega of America's PR team. They interviewed him about the specs of the console, and he described to them how the feature could "blast data into the DAC's [digital-to-audio converters]". When talking about how the name came about, he assumed the PR team just liked the word "blast" without understanding what Bayless was explaining, and Blast processing was invented by them to more easily and vaguely sum up the technical capabilities of the Genesis when marketing it. Bayless later expressed reservations about the phrase, calling it "ghastly".

It should also be noted that this feature was apparently not exclusive to the Genesis. In 2020, former Sculptured Software programmer Jeff Peters claimed that they discovered a similar technical trick on the SNES before Sega started using the phrase, but it was focused on audio rather than graphics. He claims that when porting Mortal Kombat to the SNES, Sculptured Software encountered an issue where the amount of graphics data being put onto the cartridge meant that sound had to be cut back drastically. To overcome this problem, Peters and his team used a homegrown system which allowed them to read sounds from the cartridge one at a time and blast them directly to a buffer in the sound memory. While the two tricks were achieving different things, it's interesting to note that both were possible on either console, despite Sega's insistence that only the Genesis could achieve Blast processing.
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Advertisement/Commercial, Console Difference, Console Wars, Development, General, Inspiration, Real Life, Technology, Theory, Version Difference
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month December 21, 2022
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Super Mario Advance
Super Mario Advance (2001)
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Attachment Super Mario Advance was a launch title for the Game Boy Advance and opens with a short cutscene featuring the playable characters walking and pulling up the game's logo from the ground. The cutscene features them walking in a small lit square, with the rest of the screen being dimmed until the characters are in place to start pulling up the logo, when the borders slowly brighten. The resolution of the bright square is 160x144 pixels, the screen resolution of the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color, with the fade-in meant to demonstrate the increased resolution of the Game Boy Advance.
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Console Difference, General, Technology
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month February 3, 2022
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Sonic CD
Sonic CD (1993)
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In a 1993 interview with the game's planner Hiroaki Chino in issue no. 7 of Marukatsu Mega Drive, he was asked what the biggest changes were in Sonic CD compared to past games that were released on cartridges? He responded:

"One place in particular where you feel the difference is the special stage. We used the Mega CD’s sprite rotation abilities for that. Also, a single regular stage will have past, present, and future to contend with… we could only bring that volume to life with the CD format—if you do a simple comparison with Sonic 2, it’s 3x the volume. But when you add in the secrets and other things, overall, I think it’s safe to say it has about 4x the volume."
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Development, General, Real Life, Technology
person ProtoSnake calendar_month October 5, 2021
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Sonic the Hedgehog 3
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994)
subdirectory_arrow_right Sonic & Knuckles (Game)
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Attachment The game was meant to be longer, but due to time constraints, the high manufacturing costs of a 34 megabit cartridge with NVRAM, and Sega's commitment to a major McDonald's Happy Meal promotion featuring a sweepstakes to win a copy of the game, the decision was made to split the game into two games, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and Sonic & Knuckles. Evidence of this split can be found in the level select menu (sound test), where levels from the second game (such as Flying Battery, Mushroom Vally, and Sandopolis) can be found.
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Bonus Content, Development, Early Idea, General, Merchandise, Music, Sweepstakes, Technology
person gamemaster1991 calendar_month May 6, 2013
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