I exchanged email with the coder of the TurboGrafx Phantasy Star project.
One of the things I asked him was if he planned on implementing any kind of
sprite masking, so that the characters could stand 'behind' parts of the
background, like trees or other structures. His reply was:
"The Genesis had multiple background layers and the Sega Master System had a
priority bit for each block in the background. The Turbo Grafx has neither,
so I thought it would be more trouble than it's worth. There was some trick
where you could overlap sprites and make the background come out on top (it
might have on the NES and not the TG) so I guess it is something I could add
eventually."
Genesis has an extra background layer over the Turbo, right. (Not with
SuperGrafx, though, heh) SMS has a priority bit setting the Turbo lacks?
That's a blow!
Anyway, I think I can see the trick he's talking about being used in games
like Ys 4. In the MagicEngine emulator, switching off the background plane
allows you to see weird black sprites covering the parts of the screen where
the background ordinarily 'covers' the character sprite.
Anyone know this trick?
C2H4