Hardcore Gaming 101

Desktop publishing, especially after the release of the LaserWriter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserWriter

It used to be really hard to get printer output to look the same on the page as what you saw on the screen, and the small details matter when people are laying out a complicated magazine (or whatever) page and need text to flow around images and other design elements. There was a whole Adobe-vs-everyone battle over things like outline (as opposed to bitmap) font technology since they controlled the standard for PostScript fonts as used by printers like LaserWriter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript_fonts#Type_1

Then Apple created TrueType, and it is the biggest feature of System 7 that I never see anyone talk about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueType

Then still lots of back and forth over things like Adobe's multi-master fonts vs TrueType GX which despite being part of the "failed" QuickDraw GX actually lives on in OpenType today:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_master_fonts

https://atadistance.net/2016/09/20/truetype-gx-model-lives-on-in-opentype-variation-fonts/

https://tidbits.com/1994/09/26/preliminary-practical-primer-to-quickdraw-gx-part-iii/

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e: "magazine page" is what always comes to mind because it makes me think of the Diehard GameFAN story:

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/gamefan/GameFAN.htm

"he calls the layout artist (which was probably Jacob Riskin or George Weising at the time), 'my trusty [Macintosh] Quadra operator'.…

Japan in the 80s and into the 90s was like a vision of a an alternate future where technology could keep growing and happening infinitely. Some really interesting features from that time period. If people in the West thought all the 8-bit micro computers was hard to deal with, in Japan there were nearly countless models by many companies, sometimes competing with themselves! This went on into the 16 and 32-bit eras even. Japan really had a stunning alternative view of the future.

Do you want to buy a NEC PC-9801 or a Sharp X68000? How about a nice FM Towns from Fujitsu, the first home computer with a built in optical drive? But all my friends have a MSX computers! Okay, should I get the MSX 2+ or the turboR, from which manufacturer? I like Panasonic's model, but I heard Yamaha's has a good music interface. My friend has an old Fujitsu FM-7, but man the X1 Twin looks cool with it's integrated PC Engine! http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/JPNcomputers/Japanesecomputers.htm

Amazingly, not a single one of these machines made it to the U.S. Commodore and Atari were simply far too dominant. Jack Tramiel even addresses keeping the Japanese out of the U.S. market as a principle concern. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gmODkpnjO0

Also, not a single one of these architectures lives on today. I think the FM-Towns (an almost PC clone) and the Sharp X68k series went on the longest. But it's a tremendous surprise that so many personal computers were available, in a country that's never…

Well, people have already mentioned TV Tropes and Reddit, but they're definitely two places I can spend hours on end browsing for content.

Other than that:

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ - If you like obscure games, this will keep you reading for hours. The amount of Japan only arcade games you probably never knew you wanted is insane.

http://www.spriters-resource.com/ - And its various associates for 3D models, textures and sounds. I can easily get sidetracked just looking for examples of strange games, tilesets or enemy sprites. If you're making a fan game or game mod... you'll probably spend more time here than actually making the game.

Various Wikis in general. Super Mario Wiki, Zelda Wiki and Bulbapedia can keep you reading for weeks if you're a fan of those franchises.

https://tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor - A very large wiki for unused content in games. There's a lot of fascinating stuff there, and just looking for ridiculous developer rants can take up a fair amount of my time.

For example, this rather amusing rant about warez teams and the demoscene:

https://tcrf.net/Final_Fight_(Amiga)

Forums in general. If I find a new forum, I'm probably not doing anything else for the next weekend or so while I try (and sometimes fail) at catching up on what happened over the last ten years.

http://www.suppermariobroth.com/ - Yeah, it's pretty obvious what my focus is when it comes to the internet. But it's basically one very long feed of Mario tech gimmickry and…

Your analysis appears correct, as several sources write that Gunstar Heroes uses multi-sprite bosses [1][2].

F1 on the Mega Drive owes its existence to an earlier game for the Atari ST, Vroom [5]. The brainchild behind that game, "Dan McRae", talks in a video interview [3] about how he arrived at that particular version of the game from his earlier revisions on older platforms -- where techniques shown in Lou's Pseudo 3d Page [4] apply, to more advanced techniques [6] similar to the ones presented in this submission.

F1 on the Mega Drive was done by the same dev studio that collaborated with McRae on Vroom, and at least one of the same programmers, but presumably had to do some advanced tilemap trickery specific to the console. Unfortunately, compared to other games in this series, there is very little information on the technical aspects of the Mega Drive version.

[1] http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/gunstarheroes/gunstarheroes.htm
[2] http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sega/genesis/best-sega-genesis-graphics-sound
[3] https://youtu.be/ZTd-fFScLGA
[4] http://www.extentofthejam.com/pseudo/
[5] https://youtu.be/ZTd-fFScLGA?t=7m33s
[6] https://youtu.be/ZTd-fFScLGA?t=10m28s

It's interesting that, on long running and well regarded (but obviously, not authoritative) site "HG101’s Top 47k Games of All Time" [0], the top 50 ranked titles includes virtually no games - 1? 2? 3? arguably - of a technically more advanced pedigree (than the Switch's capabilities), in terms of applied processing grunt, 'graphical fidelity', etc.

Expand that analysis further, to the top 100, and it remains true.

'Regard accumulated over time' would clearly be a factor in that bias, but not a definitive one. Relatively modest processors like the A57, and (vastly) weaker, are still the home of the majority of human video gaming enjoyment.

[0] http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/hg101s-top-47k-games-of-all-time/

I remember seeing info about XBAND in hardcore (import) gaming magazines like GameFan and Electronic Gaming Monthly, but hardly any info in more mainstream mags like GamePro. Never heard much of anything in Nintendo Power, but it’s a glorified first-party game ad vehicle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameFan

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/gamefan/GameFAN.htm

https://archive.org/search.php?query=GameFan

https://www.polygon.com/2014/9/29/6867993/egm-electronic-gaming-monthly-history-kunzelman

http://alifewellwasted.com/2009/01/23/episode-one-the-death-of-egm/