Battle of the Ports

[+Black_Tiger]

16 hours ago, SlidellMan said:

I bet that if Capcom hired either Elite, the Rozner brothers, or any other home computer developer who had actual skills and passion; the Amiga, ST, C64, and Master System versions would have been almost as good as the Genesis/Mega Drive port at the very least.

 

The only Strider port that Capcom might have been involved with is the X68K.

 

I think that the first non-Nintendo/PC Engine console game that Capcom was involved with was SFIISCE.

[M-S]

I wonder if the changes to the Mega Drive version were on purpose and not hardware limitations, like Hiryu's sprite being different. And if so they could have done a port way closer to the arcade and just chose not to. For example, if you compare most CPS1 games like SF2 and Gn'G to their Mega Drive, SNES and PCE ports it's very clear that these consoles aren't powerful enough for the original games. But Strider isn't as advanced in graphics, a lot of the stages don't have a background, and the ones that are there wouldn't be that hard to replicate on the Mega Drive, the only downgrades they had to do probably were due to the small size cartridges they used.

[The Usotsuki]

Sculptured Software would've been a good choice to go with too.

[Hwlngmad]

On 8/18/2023 at 8:20 PM, Yakumo1975 said:

It's time for another remastering of a video!
Battle of the Ports Remastered - Strider (ストライダー飛竜) Show 474 - 60fps

 

Good stuff as always.  Definitely the best versions are the Genesis / Mega Drive, X68000, and PS1 versions.  Also, I agree that other systems should have been able to put out better versions of the game.  However, at least there are good versions out there for everyone to enjoy.

[SlidellMan]

@Yakumo1975 I wanted to say this with regards to your Silpheed episode: Game Arts still exists and released a hi-def collection of the first two Grandia titles. With the death of founder Takeshi Miyaji, they should consider doing the same with Silpheed, Lunar, Thexder, Firehawk, Faria, and the rest of the Grandia titles.

[Yakumo1975]

6 hours ago, SlidellMan said:

@Yakumo1975 I wanted to say this with regards to your Silpheed episode: Game Arts still exists and released a hi-def collection of the first two Grandia titles. With the death of founder Takeshi Miyaji, they should consider doing the same with Silpheed, Lunar, Thexder, Firehawk, Faria, and the rest of the Grandia titles.

Nice one but it's a shame they are just releasing remakes and acting as a publisher for other companies like Gung-Ho, YUCK!  Who knows, maybe one day they'll return with an all new in-house developed IP.

[Yakumo1975]

1 coin PC and many more gaming pickups plus YOUR buys as well!

 

 

[M-S]

Found this hack that makes the MD port much closer to the arcade, it isn't finished yet, but some of the changes are very welcome, in the gameplay level it's already identical or better at some parts, but the background buildings still don't have all of the tiles from the arcade, I wonder if it's already pushing the console to the maximum or if it can get even better. Considering the low quality of the other 8/16-bit consoles, would it be possible that Sega asked Capcom to tone down the graphics of this game so they could make a good port? Maybe this could be why the other ports were handled by inexperienced developers.

[SlidellMan]

Speaking of Tiertex' handling of Strider:

https://lscmainframe.kontek.net/features/afindlay.html

A little insight into Tiertex was needed.

[Yakumo1975]

14 hours ago, M-S said:

Found this hack that makes the MD port much closer to the arcade, it isn't finished yet, but some of the changes are very welcome, in the gameplay level it's already identical or better at some parts, but the background buildings still don't have all of the tiles from the arcade, I wonder if it's already pushing the console to the maximum or if it can get even better. Considering the low quality of the other 8/16-bit consoles, would it be possible that Sega asked Capcom to tone down the graphics of this game so they could make a good port? Maybe this could be why the other ports were handled by inexperienced developers.

Capcom had nothing to do with the Mega Drive port.  All Capcom Mega drive ports before Street Fighter 2 were converted by Sega. 

The reason for the less than arcade quality tile work is all down to memory on the cartridge.  They Mega Drive could easily have more variation but at the expense of more memory.  Back in the very early 90s memory was expensive so using less was a good thing. 

 

There's also a Ghouls'n Ghosts remake for the Mega Drive which replaces the original graphics with those of the Arcade and it looks stunning.  Again, the game originally looked weaker due to a lack of memory.  That game is only 4mbit.

[M-S]

6 hours ago, Yakumo1975 said:

There's also a Ghouls'n Ghosts remake for the Mega Drive which replaces the original graphics with those of the Arcade and it looks stunning.  Again, the game originally looked weaker due to a lack of memory.  That game is only 4mbit.

I saw that, it's this one, right? 

What makes me really confused is that Wikipedia says the CPS-1 can display up to 4096 colors at once, while the Mega Drive can only do 64, then how is it possible to get it to be so similar to a system that is so powerful? Maybe the 4096 is referring to later games like SF2 Turbo: Hyper Fighting and Mega Man: Power Battle, while the first few games could only display like 96 colors at once.

These hacks that make games closer to the arcades got popular ever since the developer of Castlevania SOTN 16-bit released a tutorial on how to make very detailed MD games, I haven't seen many hacks like that for the NES and the SNES though.

[Yakumo1975]

16 hours ago, M-S said:

I saw that, it's this one, right? 

What makes me really confused is that Wikipedia says the CPS-1 can display up to 4096 colors at once, while the Mega Drive can only do 64, then how is it possible to get it to be so similar to a system that is so powerful? Maybe the 4096 is referring to later games like SF2 Turbo: Hyper Fighting and Mega Man: Power Battle, while the first few games could only display like 96 colors at once.

These hacks that make games closer to the arcades got popular ever since the developer of Castlevania SOTN 16-bit released a tutorial on how to make very detailed MD games, I haven't seen many hacks like that for the NES and the SNES though.

Yep, that's the one. 

The Mega Drive can actually display up to 128colours at once with some cleaver programming but that's still far below the CPS1. 

But, colour can easily be customised to give similar results without many people noticing. 

For example, when looking at a Capcom CPS1 title, can you count more that a few hundred different colours being used?  Absolutely not.  Most of that colour is in shading and this is how cleaver art direction can help bring similar results with less colours. 

[Jess Ragan]

Amiga game developers had to master making the most of limited color palettes. For all its flaws, Fatal Fury Special on the Sega CD (created by FunCom, a former makers of Amiga games) looks much more lush than Fatal Fury 2 on the Genesis, despite having the same color limitations.

[Yakumo1975]

Featuring a TSMC chipset, The UMIDIGI A15 is a good entry level device

[Yakumo1975]

Another odd but addictive Taito shooter - This is Syvalion on this week's Battle of the Ports.

 

 

[SlidellMan]

Fun facts about Syvalion.

1. The arcade version originally was going to be released in the US, but Taito America cancelled it fearing that it would be too weird and out there.

2. Syvalion was also known for emergent gameplay by loading up numerous story scenarios. One of which ties it to Darius.

Sources can be found at https://syvalion.fandom.com if you want to look. (RIP Fukio Mitsuji, creator of Syvalion, Bubble Bobble, and Rainbow Islands.)

[Yakumo1975]

On 9/3/2023 at 5:53 AM, SlidellMan said:

Fun facts about Syvalion.

1. The arcade version originally was going to be released in the US, but Taito America cancelled it fearing that it would be too weird and out there.

2. Syvalion was also known for emergent gameplay by loading up numerous story scenarios. One of which ties it to Darius.

Sources can be found at https://syvalion.fandom.com if you want to look. (RIP Fukio Mitsuji, creator of Syvalion, Bubble Bobble, and Rainbow Islands.)

It doesn't surprise me that Taito cancelled this one as it is very odd. 

It also explains where the US SNES version was cancelled. 

[Yakumo1975]

They say it's military grade. Let's freeze it!
The Oukitel RT6

 

[Yakumo1975]

This game was ,massive back in the day but are any of the versions actually great games?

 

[Yakumo1975]

I can't believe it has taken me this long to cover this game. And in a rare event,, all footage is taken from real hardware. No emulation. Well, besides the arcade version.

This is Battle of the Ports, Fighting Vipers

 

[Yakumo1975]

Can this seriously be considered an Out Run game?

Out Run Europa on this week's Battle of the Ports

 

 

[SlidellMan]

I'm surprised that Sega never made a proper Mega Drive/Genesis version of Outrun Europa. Eventually Probe Software did get better at game design in the mid-to-late '90s with the Extreme-G games.

[Yakumo1975]

The final retail version of the X68000 Z unboxing and quick test.

 

 

[Yakumo1975]

Sega brought homed a surprisingly good port.

 

 

[Yakumo1975]

Can the Headwolf Fpad 3 satisfy?

 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2023 by Yakumo1975