Battle of the Ports

Starting another great Saturday with a battle of the ports. Yeah

 

Good way to start the week end I normally upload around 2 to 4pm Japanese time so it's ready for the western world when the wake up.

 

Yakumo-sama: what a smashing great episode And your complaint about the one button and up on the joystick , has become a mantra in some ways. Or we can always make this a drinking game. Every time you mention the mantra, then take a drink of your favourite beverage. After all it was a great episode

 

Brilliant episode, what a beast!!! Must have taken you a lot of time!!!

Well done and thank you for making this show, always makes my Saturday mornings

 

Thanks guys. Yep, this particular show took a very long time to put together.

 

Bubble Bobble Episode was great. Thank you for your hard work Yakumo

 

No problem. As mentioned elsewhere, I don't want to be doing another one that log again for a while

 

I don't quite understand Yakumo's hatred for pressing up to jump, but then again I did play a lot of PC platformers as a kid.

 

Because it's not a precise method of doing jumps, especially in platforming games. I also grew up playing computer games and found it odd the first time I played a console game having to press a button to jump but I realised that it actually made the platform games more fun and easier to control.

 

Wow Yakumo, comparing 27 versions was crazy!

Kudos to you, i can't even imagine the ammount of time / work it takes to make them.

 

Cheers Johnny. Lets just say I started on this episode a few weeks back it took a long time.

 

Kudos for putting these together! I was just looking through the archive and noticed that you did Mortal Kombat II last month, so I thought I'd comment.

Were you using emulators for the PSX/Saturn footage? If so, that may explain some of the loading discrepancies. The Saturn version's loading is pretty bad: I didn't notice it in the video, but the game freezes slightly the first time you use a projectile during a match (e.g. Raiden's lightning), which can really throw off your timing. Probe also removed almost all of the voice samples from the Saturn version to speed it up compared to the PSX version, where having the announcer is at least an option. It's also somewhat notable for having a really dumb AI compared to the arcade version; e.g. Sub-Zero's freeze almost always works against the computer, whereas the arcade AI always ducks. Having dumber AI can be a good thing for the MK series, since it's known for having a perfect-play AI, but having a stupid AI takes away from the fun factor, too. This game really doesn't work well on disc-based systems thanks to Shang Tsung, though. I guess they never found a way around the loading times for his morphs, which is why he hasn't had a true morphing ability in any of the games released exclusively for home consoles.

I will say that my port of choice is the 32X version, despite also being a Probe development. As someone who played the "Megasis" version extensively, it's a pretty big upgrade in the sound department, as well as having a wider palette. From all the comparisons I've watched, it seems more faithful to the arcade than the Super Nintendo version in terms of sound quality, as all the sound effects tend to get cut off at least 500 ms early in that version (not to mention the pitch being raised on most of the voice samples). The SNES has a wider variety of sounds, though.

 

The Saturn and PlayStation versions were both running on real hardware connected to the PC via the Framemister Xrgb mini. The loading is indeed real on those games although I edit a lot of loading times as there's nothing worse than watching a video of a loading screen.

 

I guess the worst thing about the Saturn version is that it should run a lot more smoothly considering how badly it got gimped in the name of increasing the loading speed. At least the Megasis version plays smoothly without making you wait all the time, even if it's eerily silent. I guess we know why Probe Software is no longer with us. Were you running any of the ports in PAL mode? Some of them seemed to be running in slow motion. In a way I suppose arcade purists could call that a feature, since most of the home versions are sped up compared to the arcade for some reason.

 

PAL mode, Yuck! No, everything was in NTSC mode. Every time I feature a Saturn or PlayStation game it's running g on real hardware. Most of the Mega Drive and SFC stuff is too. I try to avoid emulation whenever possible.

 

There's been a few new Battle of the Ports since the forum went down. Here they are.

Samurai Spiritis

Fantasy Zone


Virtua Fighter

 

There were also videos on the new Manga Soko and Taito Station Arcade!



Oh, and my games room.


Man, thats a lot of videos.

 

Thanks Yakumo, for the newer videos and for the forums notification that got sent to me via e-mail, I swear I can't enter the forums index through the main page.

 

I really like that Fantasy Zone episode, I didn't see on the opening page that you included the MD version but was glad you included it at the end. Indeed the best Fantasy Zone game out there

 

Awesome new videos Yakumo. I used to love Samurai Shodown. The first time i saw Virtua Fighter at the arcades was incredible as well. Most people today have no idea how it was groundbreaking back in the day.

Also, thanks a lot for the Taito Station and Manga Souko, always enjoy these videos. Plus your game room is very cool and well organized.