> How were the programmers able to achieve no flicker or slowdown that plagued so many > shooters on the snes?
Better programming. Look at Recca on the NES. The humble hardware of yesteryear can do amazing things when programmers truly understand the hardware and are creative.
I believe R.Belmont once stated something about early SNES games not being appropriately coded to take advantage of CPU wait states (I hope that I'm in at least the correct ballpark with that terminology) and essentially the CPU was just overtasked.
Basically, if Gradius III was coded later in the SNES' life span, much of the slowdown could have been mitigated by more efficient use of the system's resources.
Damn shame really. Gradius III was biggest let-down for me at launch. Loved the music, but the flicker/slowdown was awful. I got past it and enjoyed the game anyhow, but it could've been so much better. I was hoping the Gradius III/IV collection on the PS2 would've contained a cleaned up SNES version of GIII, but twas not meant to be
> Damn shame really. Gradius III was biggest let-down for me at launch. Loved the > music, but the flicker/slowdown was awful. I got past it and enjoyed the game anyhow, > but it could've been so much better. I was hoping the Gradius III/IV collection on > the PS2 would've contained a cleaned up SNES version of GIII, but twas not meant to > be
Just take a look at Rendering Ranger R2. No slowdown, tons of sprites and background layers: