“Terranigma” Kicks Off New 4K Retro Play Series!
Services like YouTube and the evolving nature of our multimedia technology create a drive to constantly improve our media quality to deliver the absolute best entertainment possible. In the last three or so years of producing media content I’ve always pushed the envelope, and now that I have a display and system that can record and encode at Ultra High-Definition quality, I believe that it’s time to start stepping my game up.
Recently, a name for a new line of videos came to me: Retro Play 4K. This stems from back in October 2014 when I experimented with rendering Castlevania: Lament of Innocence for the PlayStation 2 at six times the native resolution to produce crystal clear quality for YouTube. I started to wonder: What if I took the time to showcase certain retro games (10+ years old) in very high resolutions to show what they could look like if rendered with modern technology.
The result in this first video of Terranigma for the Super Nintendo stands for itself. Even on a non-4K screen, the viewer should be able to see a much crisper picture and greater color fidelity. Further, most pixelation is gone here and the image looks smoother and of production quality. The intro to the video shows the original display resolution (around 320×240), so when compared to the actual video in this production, it’s quite the stark contrast.
But why is Terranigma the first game to be part of this experiment? Well, I have a love for Quintet and their games, and since I’ve already done full playthroughs of ActRaiser, Soul Blazer, and Illusion of Gaia, it made sense to me to go ahead and continue with the next game in the series.
Terranigma, which was released in Europe and Japan in 1996, tells a wonderful story that continues the theme of death and rebirth from the other games. In this introductory video, we explore the village of Crysta which soon befalls a strange and terrible fate, and then set out into the odd world beyond the town gate on a quest to save our people and “restore the Earth.” Here, we visit two of the five towers that we will eventually have to set foot in, and get accustomed to the game’s general play style.
So, sit back, relax, and enjoy as this great, under-appreciated SNES action-RPG is rendered for you in stunning quality for you to get immersed in!
