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Post by zyrobs on Aug 24, 2015 2:27:50 GMT
Since when does a bit of slowdown in a game make a game horrible? Metal is definitly worth getting on the Saturn. Tons of fun and the slowdown which is minimal (usually on some of the boss fights) does not detract from the gameplay or experience. If anything it heightens the sheer explosive mayhem unfolding, in a positive way. So needless to say I disagree with Zyrobs. It doesn't have a "bit" of slowdown. It has constant, non-stop slowdown. Everywhere but on the beginning of the first few missions, the game slows down to a crawl. It basically runs at half speed for nearly the entirety of the game. If you've never played the original version then you may not be bothered about it, but I can 1CC the game in the arcade, so the Saturn port is just awful in comparison.
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sych
"Living for the fantasy" -NIGHTS INTO DREAMS- The Classic Saturn Gem!!!
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Post by sych on Aug 24, 2015 13:09:29 GMT
Since when does a bit of slowdown in a game make a game horrible? Metal is definitly worth getting on the Saturn. Tons of fun and the slowdown which is minimal (usually on some of the boss fights) does not detract from the gameplay or experience. If anything it heightens the sheer explosive mayhem unfolding, in a positive way. So needless to say I disagree with Zyrobs. It doesn't have a "bit" of slowdown. It has constant, non-stop slowdown. Everywhere but on the beginning of the first few missions, the game slows down to a crawl. It basically runs at half speed for nearly the entirety of the game. If you've never played the original version then you may not be bothered about it, but I can 1CC the game in the arcade, so the Saturn port is just awful in comparison. That is not the case at all. The slowdown isn't constant and only happens in certain sections of the game, mainly on boss levels. Occasionally you'll get it when you jump into the mech veichles and when the air strikes come. I've been playing Metal Slug on a regular with my youngest brother for a few years now, it's been a tradition of ours when we meet up, we embark on our Metal Slug challenge and the slowdown has never been a major issue. I've never played the original but I'm sure as you say that it's 10xs better than the Saturn port, no argument there. But that doesn't make the Saturn port horrible or unplayable in any way. The gameplay is still intact and the fun factor is still there. Obviously this comes down to personal preference and you're entitled to dismiss it as a bin fodder Saturn game. But if we are gonna go down the road of dismissing Saturn games for the occasional slowdown then half the Saturn's 2D library is in trouble. For example, of the ones I've been playing recently: Darius Gaiden Thunderforce V Guardian Heroes (this has the same if not even more slowdown than Metal Slug) Hot Blooded Children The Original Streetighter 2 from Collection. All have slowdown issues. Are all these games bin fodder as well?
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Post by Tatsumaru on Aug 24, 2015 14:00:03 GMT
Yeah, from all the versions I played, the Saturn one is the best port. Unless you don't care about the art galery and combat school, then the PSP anthology is the best port.
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Post by bradcap1 on Aug 24, 2015 15:48:19 GMT
Since when does a bit of slowdown in a game make a game horrible? Metal is definitly worth getting on the Saturn. Tons of fun and the slowdown which is minimal (usually on some of the boss fights) does not detract from the gameplay or experience. If anything it heightens the sheer explosive mayhem unfolding, in a positive way. So needless to say I disagree with Zyrobs. Me too. Love Metal Slug on Saturn.
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sixbuttons
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Post by sixbuttons on Aug 24, 2015 23:04:37 GMT
I did read somewhere how the PS1 could only do 2D this way: Make polygons and put sprites over them. Sounds extremely bizarre, but hey, Sony is known for complicated hardware up until the PS4. There is a very mild truth to this, but not in the way you think. What Capcom actually did was to outright replace certain effects with polygons, in order to save as much memory as they can - the hit sprites in Alpha 3 for instance become hit polys. Not especially noticable or damaging to the game. Texturing a polygon as a sprite would deliver all the same kind of issues that textures had at the time, no matter the polygon shape or texture quality. The characters all universally remain sprites in Alpha. Alpha 1 and 2 are very meh conversions on PS1, but they pulled the rabbit out of the hat for Alpha 3 all things considered (even with all those frames dropped). I actually prefer that version to the Dreamcast game for some reason, although the Saturn dumps on them both. Oh Capcom, why could you not say goodbye to the Saturn with Alpha 3 instead of Final Fight Revenge? What an incredible way to piss on a beautiful legacy.
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Post by xDerekRx on Aug 25, 2015 0:01:36 GMT
I did read somewhere how the PS1 could only do 2D this way: Make polygons and put sprites over them. Sounds extremely bizarre, but hey, Sony is known for complicated hardware up until the PS4. There is a very mild truth to this, but not in the way you think. What Capcom actually did was to outright replace certain effects with polygons, in order to save as much memory as they can - the hit sprites in Alpha 3 for instance become hit polys. Not especially noticable or damaging to the game. Texturing a polygon as a sprite would deliver all the same kind of issues that textures had at the time, no matter the polygon shape or texture quality. The characters all universally remain sprites in Alpha. Alpha 1 and 2 are very meh conversions on PS1, but they pulled the rabbit out of the hat for Alpha 3 all things considered (even with all those frames dropped). I actually prefer that version to the Dreamcast game for some reason, although the Saturn dumps on them both. Oh Capcom, why could you not say goodbye to the Saturn with Alpha 3 instead of Final Fight Revenge? What an incredible way to piss on a beautiful legacy. I always wondered, how is Final Fight Rev? Ive watched videos before and it looked ok for a 3D game. Its also interesting because its all in English and made by Capcom USA. The price of the game is dumb however.
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NeoGeoNinja
Shadow Warrior
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Post by NeoGeoNinja on Aug 25, 2015 22:59:00 GMT
Funny thing about the PS1 needing to do polygons even for 2D... People don't mention this much anymore, but if you check out gaming magazines from the months leading up to the PS1 launch, there were actually a few rumors that the PS1 couldn't do 2D well, just as there were rumors that the Saturn couldn't do 3D well. The Saturn and Playstation actually do 2d the exact same way, and the PS1 is actually faster and more powerful at doing so. The Saturn only did 2d games better because it had a dedicated background processor with extra memory, plus it got the RAM expansions later on. Just to confirm, this has been mis-quoted and, I never ever said this
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sixbuttons
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Post by sixbuttons on Aug 26, 2015 11:12:41 GMT
The Saturn and Playstation actually do 2d the exact same way, and the PS1 is actually faster and more powerful at doing so. The Saturn only did 2d games better because it had a dedicated background processor with extra memory, plus it got the RAM expansions later on. Is that right? I thought the PlayStation's main 2D weakness (outside of the lack of RAM of course) was its inability to rotate and scale in hardware. That's where PS1 developers found it more effective to incorporate polys in aid the rotation (placing the sprite as a separate object in a quad made up of two transparent triangles and rotate the poly?) rather than get the CPU to do it all and why sprites inevitably look worse than their Saturn counterparts during those processes, because it's not native to the sprite. They are still sprites though.* This obviously has ZERO effect whatsoever on Street Fighter - that's all down to RAM of course - but it's why 2D specific games like Silhouette Mirage which have no major RAM overheads on Saturn start to struggle - when you've got that many sprites bounding all over the screen constantly rotating and scaling as well as the big bosses (the fish comes to mind, as does the stage with the limo driver) slowdown at seemingly innocuous demands. If you're using 3D maths to rotate 50 sprites onscreen at once there's going to be trouble on a slower CPU. It shouldn't be RAM related there at all because the PlayStation has significantly lower overhead demands on its RAM because of the less complicated architecture. Whilst Drac X obviously has very heavy actual 3D use so where scaling and rotation is used on that game it doesn't impact performance. * I am aware of how that sounds, but I am by no means a technical guy. Just think of it as a layman's understanding! Aug 25, 2015 1:01:36 GMT 1 xDerekRx said: I always wondered, how is Final Fight Rev? Ive watched videos before and it looked ok for a 3D game. Its also interesting because its all in English and made by Capcom USA. The price of the game is dumb however. Unbearably poor. Bad enough against the CPU as they just sit in the corner and block. Vs? Unplayable. There's no flow to the attacks at all, movement is off and laggy, rounds take forever and you can't build any real advantage (love those super attacks that only deal 20% of damage), no element of strategy and... I'm not a graphics whore, but FF Revenge is exceptionally dreadful in these stakes. And it needs the 4MB cart! Why!?
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Post by zyrobs on Aug 26, 2015 17:55:18 GMT
The Playstation can rotate/scale sprites exactly the same as the Saturn. You give it the 4 corners of the sprite, and the texture coordinates, and it will plot it into the framebuffer. Only difference is that the Saturn drew the sprite "line by line" (which wasted speed and caused transparency artifacts), while the Playstation GPU internally broke down the quadrangle to two triangles and rendered it as that.
However both of these were handled by the VDP1 and PS1 GPU internally, so they had no impact on CPU speed whatsoever. Rotation was only done in the CPU for computing the 4 corners where you wanted the sprite to be drawn at, which was negligible on both systems.
The PS1 GPU is actually way stronger at doing sprites than the Saturn, due to being so much faster and capable of doing many more effects, including better transparency modes, better shading, higher colour counts, etc. That's what Castlevania leveraged very heavily. I also used the lowest possible screen resolution, so it had more space in memory for sprites, since on the PS1, you use the VRAM for the framebuffer, while the Saturn has them separate. This is important because this resolution mode was 256x224, while the lowest resolution on the Saturn is 320x224, so everything had to be stretched out... part of the reason why the graphics look crap. It also mixed in 3d backgrounds and nonstop transparency effects, which were bread and butter on the PS1.
Only reason why the Saturn was a better 2d machine was because it included a second graphics chip for doing arcade-style tiled backgrounds with old school special effects (like line scroll). This chip had its own extra memory too. On the Playstation, you had to brute force the backgrounds as sprites as well, which wasn't really difficult, but it used a significant portion of the memory, and doing special effects on it wasn't as simple. That's why, for example, Darius Gaiden had less psychedelic backgrounds on the PS1.
The VDP2 however actually hindered a few things like transparency and shading, due to the way the two chips shared data between each other. This also made porting Castlevania much more difficult. If the team did a better job, then they could've made the game look much better, say, as good as Silhouette Mirage or Cotton Boomerang. But still not as good as on the Playstation.
But the whole "Playstation was bad at 2d because it drew flat polygons" thing? That's just a myth.
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sixbuttons
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Post by sixbuttons on Aug 26, 2015 22:08:07 GMT
Really interesting. Thanks for that!
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Post by The Elite MYT on Apr 3, 2016 8:42:28 GMT
Back on topic to CV, is there a way to unlock Maria (like with Richter) or is she selectable from the start?
Also, does anyone know of a useful translation guide for the weapons and whatnot? Gamefaqs doesn't have one and can't seem to see anything else.
I have the hankering to play some 'vania and it has been quite a while since I played SOTN!
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Post by caseh on Apr 4, 2016 10:50:24 GMT
Back on topic to CV, is there a way to unlock Maria (like with Richter) or is she selectable from the start? Also, does anyone know of a useful translation guide for the weapons and whatnot? Gamefaqs doesn't have one and can't seem to see anything else. I have the hankering to play some 'vania and it has been quite a while since I played SOTN! Maria is selectable from the start as is Richter. It doesn't play like SOTN with these characters mind, as in there is no RPG element.
No need for a translation guide, install Google Translate on your phone and use that but be prepared to use it a lot.
Also, if you have an XRGB mini you may want to give this a miss or play without it hooked up. It feels like it takes an age to view the map screen and that is amplified by the XRGB losing sync briefly as I guess the item menu/map screen is displayed in a different resolution.
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Post by The Elite MYT on Apr 4, 2016 10:56:27 GMT
Well I've played the game a load in the past so I kinda know what to do and where to go, but I kinda want to go for 100% item completion, so translation would help! Also I'll probably need it for the Maria controls as that would be new to me. She was awesome in Rondo so looking forward to that! I'm not sure what this XRGB is you're talking about so I probably don't have it. But yeah I'll probably pick this up. With a 100% completion run, and beating the game with Richter (again) and Maria, this will probably last me a while
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eisenmann
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Post by eisenmann on Apr 13, 2016 10:31:42 GMT
I finished sotn several times on the ps1. Great game. I tested the saturn version because the extra content seems awesome. But in my opinion the ps1 looks better and the japanese text can get in the way. Both version have pros and Cons. If You know the game and know what to do, get the saturn version. Best is to get both. But even the ps1 version is not that cheap. At least in EU. Otherwise...the xboxlive and psn digital releases are good too.
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exodus
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Post by exodus on May 8, 2016 0:24:43 GMT
I beat it on the Saturn for the first time, so... I'd say it's nice enough, but it's the place I played it originally. It's not worth the extras really, unless you're a crazy superfan - the extra dungeons are pretty tacked on. the slowdown does get REALLY annoying. If you could get it for $20 bucks I'd say go for it, but if it's pricey now, I probably wouldn't.
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