The 20 Most Stunning Mode 7 Uses in SNES Games

⚠️ All gameplay recording, game curation and opinions included in each video, as well as design or editing is completely done by me

Before there were polygons, there were sprites, but in-between the sprites and the polygons there was Mode 7! Let's see the most eye-catching graphics in Mode 7 games on the Super Nintendo catalogue. All with SNES specs and specifics commentaries for every game!

Intro and Outro Music

Timeline

00:00 Intro
00:16 Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
00:40 Super Metroid
01:04 Secret of Mana
01:28 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time
01:53 Super Turrican 2
02:17 Super Mario Kart
02:41 Run Saber
03:05 Terranigma
03:30 Pilotwings
03:54 Street Racer
04:18 Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
04:42 Axelay
05:07 The Adventures of Batman & Robin
05:29 Chrono Trigger
05:55 F-Zero
06:19 Super Star Wars
06:44 Super Soccer
07:05 Contra III: The Alien Wars
07:32 Final Fantasy VI
07:56 Super Castlevania IV
08:21 Outro

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Curation isn't just about digging up neat games, but it's also about preservation, interpretation, and using one's knowledge to make it relevant to people. With my videos I want older gamers to look back and remember the influence of video games on their lives, and new gamers to understand the larger context of the series they're playing for the first time today.

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#BITSANDBEATS #supernintendo #snesmode7

[BitsBeats]

Special Mentions for Star Fox, Actraiser and Kirby Super Star

[jwill]

That spinning room in Castlevania IV always blew my young mind.

[beauwalker]

"A Link to the Past" also used Mode 7 for it's map screen feature, and in the intro sequence.

[CharlesHepburn]

Please keep in mind that some of these games (Yoshi's Island & Pilot Wings) used additional chips in the cartridges to perform sprite rotation and scaling and/or multi-axis background rotation and scaling. Also, some games (like Super Mario RPG) used a co-processor chip inside the cartridge that was actually more powerful than the SNES's built-in CPU to help out with complex work. My point being, Mode 7 doesn't deserve ALL the praise here... it must share the praise with cartridge chips; not to mention clever programming.

[MeowieGamer]

Yoshis island actually uses mode 7 and the super FX chip in combination for sprite and background scaling. It looks nice

[Dosunceste]

The Chrono Trigger section shown in the video is notable because it was one of the rare instance in which th sprites were resized (shrinked to be precise) in software without the help of additional chip, while the background used Mode 7 (in games likes F-Zero the sprites changes size because there are sprites of different size in memory/cart and are swapped in and out depending on the distance, there isn't a real scaling).
Games missed but that must be cited when talking about Mode7 are: Ballz (for the floor in a faux 3D fighting game which would later be a very popular usage on Sega Saturn), Kirby Super Star (Fatty Whale boss), Wolfenstein 3D (the raycasting engine compute the visual in the CPU at half the resolution and then blow up by Mode7 for free, the visual were blocky but the framerate was "good" considering SNES wasn't really designed for that kind of rendering and that no additional chip was inserted in the cart) and last but not least S.O.S. (known as Septentrion in Japan).

[zaricot]

Yoshi's island example here is interesting as it mixes two features : the background is a mode 7 layer while the sprite of the bird is managed by the super FX 2 chip (the snes couldn't rotate of zoom sprites natively).

Axelay is always quoted as a famous mode 7 game...but it isn't really. The gameplay uses a raster effect to compress scanlines hence that "roller finish" without true perspective. The game uses twice the mode 7 : for the boss ED 209 and (spoiler alert) in the ending scene.

[Edos]

what i found more amazing about old game programming is the tricks used to avoid the limitations of the cpu

for example in mario kart the program makes more calculations while the tv beam is in the black region in the middle.

[pinglefaz]

I used to think it was updated graphics and all that other stuff, but now seeing this makes me appreciate the games I had played more

[rjmario]

F-Zero still looks great. I really like the colors

[akhandtripathipyz]

The spinning room in castlevania is gorgeous

[greensun]

...Jurassic Park, Zelda - A Link to the Past, Mortal Kombat 2 - there are so many!

[douglasmurphy]

Another thing about Mode7, especially for those not watching this video in a higher res 60hz mode, is that in games such as Fzero and Mario Kart, the still frames are heavily pixelated but the image is "filled in" by the smooth 60 frames of animation per second.

[hiimdaisy]

0:56 - Secret of Mana
1:20 - Turtles in Time
2:09 - Super Mario Kart
3:46 - Street Racer
5:00 - The Adventures of Batman and Robin
6:35 - Super Soccer

[awanderer]

Nice video, thank you! While Axelay does use Mode7 in places (e.g for the walker boss), the scene shown here doesn't at all, that's simply a line scrolling effect on regular backgrounds. Same goes for the Batman & Robin segment afterwards. Just because it looks like 3d doesn't mean it uses Mode 7.

[Michael_Geyre]

Axelay vertical parts were not made using mode 7
Try it on an emulator, showing gfx informations, you'll be surprised
It's just a raster effect (also, it explains why perspective is wrong)
2nd stage boss head has been made using mode 7, but it's a common mistake to believe that axelay has been made using mode 7

[Nikku]

The Axelay footage does not use mode 7 at all. Axelay itself does use mode 7 for a later part of the game, but those segments as pictured in the video are not mode 7.

[nathanstrik]

4:40 - This first level in Axelay uses a cool graphical scanline manipulation trick, but it's not mode 7.

[kistar]

Awesome video, some awesome titles too! Yoshis Island must be one of the most underrated game on the SNES. Super metroid one of the best ever created.

[HappyHeart]

7:30 Not to mention how mode 7 made flying airships have a pretty neat aesthetic. 😏