To make the screen scroll like a rolling scroll, there is a principle behind it.
"Scrolling," as the name suggests, means letting the game screen unfold from one side to the other, gradually revealing what lies ahead — just like unfurling a scroll.
The appearance of scrolling transformed 2D games, giving them a sense of exploration almost like an open world.
It can be said that ever since 1984, when Namco ported Xevious to the Famicom, video game history took a great leap forward.
Back then, scrolling was thought to be something only high-performance arcade machines could handle.
Yet in 1984, a newcomer at Namco, Endō Masanobu, took over the half-finished port of Xevious.
At the time, the port was halfway done, and everyone said the same thing: "It's doomed. There's no way to reproduce arcade scrolling on a home console."
Endō volunteered to take responsibility for the rest of the development.
It was a daring gamble — Namco had nearly given up on the project, and if he failed, the full responsibility would fall on him alone.
But Endō succeeded.
In 1984, before scrolling shooters were even a genre on home consoles, he managed to implement one — bringing scrolling gameplay into the living room.
Xevious became the earliest scrolling game on home consoles. Which meant: if they wanted to surpass it, they had to release a scrolling game before Xevious hit the market.
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At Atlas Studio, Kobayashi Tetsu pulled over a whiteboard for the team.
"To implement the technique I mentioned, we first need to understand how current home consoles convert code into graphics."
"From the screen-mapping unit, we read the preset graphic codes. Then, using the selected graphics bank, we fetch the background data stored at the corresponding addresses to generate the on-screen image."
"In other words, to implement scrolling, we need to turn the output from a fixed, tile-based display into something fluid and lively."
"If we take the center of the screen as the origin and expand outward, we can divide the display into four quadrants — 00, 01, 10, and 11."
"And the essence of scrolling is ensuring smooth transitions between these four sections."
Kobayashi paused to catch his breath.
"The SG-2000's capabilities are roughly on par with the Nintendo Famicom, so it's safe to say that we can implement scrolling. The only issue is that the SG's PPU is slightly weaker — we can't simply copy the FC's approach."
He wiped the board clean with his sleeve and drew again.
"For now, we'll simplify the screen into just two halves — 00 and 01, left and right. As long as we can switch freely between these two sections, the technique will be considered successful."
It wouldn't be the very first scrolling game in history — but it would be the first on home consoles.
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If there is scrolling, it means the entire scene must exist as a single continuous world.
Anyone who has played Contra has this impression: the screen slides steadily from one side to the other, containing an entire level within a single seamless scene. This implies one thing — the level isn't stitched from many screens; it is one long image.
This demands a lot from the artists.
At his drafting table, Kitagawa Takeshi was drawing according to Kobayashi Tetsu's instructions.
Salamander had six stages. Beyond outer space, the game also ventured into fleshy, organic "insides," and mechanical warship interiors.
Not only did the team need long, continuous scenes — they also needed distinctive visual design for each.
Take the space stage: space is vast and empty. Poorly designed, it would just be a big black backdrop.
Making it look like space was a real challenge.
Kobayashi, watching from behind, reached out and pressed Kitagawa's drawing tablet.
"Kitagawa-kun, hold on. You can't draw it like this."
Kitagawa looked up, silently questioning: What, you understand art now?
"I don't understand art," Kobayashi admitted, "but I understand games. If the drawing is too detailed, it takes too much space. And we don't have much space. The SG's PPU is like the FC's — only 2KB. It won't fit such a big graphic."
He gestured at the board. "You need to learn material reuse."
Kitagawa murmured, "Material reuse…"
"For example, this one here… and this…"
Kobayashi sketched a few rough shapes. They weren't pretty, but they conveyed the idea.
"The same tile — colored green — becomes grass. Colored white — it becomes clouds."
"The same brick — in its default color it's a brick, in silver it becomes steel plating."
"Reuse as much as possible. Instead of drawing tons of unique assets that may never be used, recolor and repurpose existing ones so we conserve storage."
This was a classic early-game-development trick: reuse assets to save space.
In Super Mario Bros. 2, most assets appeared across multiple levels — clouds shared graphics with bushes, bricks shared graphics with metal blocks, shell sprites doubled as items and scenery…
Early developers did everything they could to economize.
Kitagawa had experience drawing gigantic GG illustrations, so Kobayashi wasn't worried about artistic quality — but he did need Kitagawa to internalize the importance of saving memory for in-game assets.
After settling things with Kitagawa, Kobayashi checked on Masuko Tsukasa's progress. Things were moving smoothly there. Kobayashi didn't know much about electronic synthesis, so after watching for a moment he returned to help Nakamura Yuji work on the scrolling system.
The difficulty was significant. To understand early scrolling, think of it like this:
The visible portion of the screen is the "active area." Off-screen areas exist too, but remain hidden until the screen moves to them, at which point they load in — while previously used areas are hidden again.
Because of this, if a player walks back and forth in the same place, the repeated loading slows the process and causes stutter.
That's why early scrolling games only allowed forward movement and no backtracking. True free exploration only appeared in later generations.
For now, Kobayashi Tetsu and Nakamura Yuji were working on mastering the fundamentals of early scrolling.
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