Ginga Fukei Densetsu SapphireGinga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire (or just Sapphire from here on out) is one of the single rarest releases for the PC-Engine/Turbografx-16. Some say it was handed out at a game show, some say it was just a very limited release, who knows. It goes for over $300 on Ebay, but the good news is you can find a CD image of the game on the internet relatively easy or if you want to be totally legal about it, the game was re-released as part of a compilation on the Sony PSP. As a shooter, it received rave reviews. As an extremely rare late release on behalf of NEC, the legend of this game reached mythical and ridiculous porportions. In 1995, when it was released, PC Engine fans in the western world only received word-of-mouth about the game, and the lucky few westerners who were able to obtain their own copy were more than happy to embellish the technical achievements of this game while keeping other fans in the dark. All these are claims fans have made about the game. One of them is complete bullshit, try to guess which one:
If you guessed the last one, pat yourself on the back. For years, PC Engine fans held the wrong idea that a PC-Engine programming super-guru managed to coax real-time 3D effects from the venerable 8-bit system. "Not even the Super Nintendo could manage this," I remember one forum post state. They covered their ears and hummed to themselves, or they shouted down any dissenting opinion. They pretended not to hear whenever someone pointed out the blindingly obvious: that it's amazing how much 4bpp graphical info you can fit into 2 megabytes of RAM. Sapphire basically pulled off the same thing Donkey Kong Country did -- pre-rendered graphics.
See this image? It's from a tile viewer. While the tiles don't line up, the first level boss is painfully apparent. If you're curious, you can download the game and look with a tile viewer and find the rest of the "3D" boss graphics arranged around the iso.
Sorry to ruin your illusions.
It's still a really great shooter, though!
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