Saturn Marvel Super Heroes and RAM Cart Question

Many Saturn games support or require one of the two RAM cartridges. But Marvel Super Heroes is the only one (as far as I know) that saw a US/EU release and it was one that supported the RAM cartridge but didn't require it. I was just wondering, did the US version of MSH still have the programming to use the 1MB or 4MB cartridges or did they cut it out?

 

Dunno about the US version, but the PAL version does have the option in the menu.

 

Well then I guess it's fairly safe to assume that the US version probably retained the option too. Maybe if the Saturn hadn't died out as soon in the US maybe we would have gotten to see the RAM cartridge games. =(

To keep the topic going though, does MSH look or perform noticably different between No RAM Cart, 1MB RAM Cart, and 4MB RAM Carts? I recall reading somewhere someone was of the opinion that they didn't notice any difference for it or Cyberbots which was another with 1MB and "3MB" mode, not sure if it ran without a RAM cartridge at all though.

 

I'm not sure about MSH as I never had it for Saturn, but with a lot of other 2D fighters I could notice a difference between have no cart and having the 4MB in. I never had the 1MB cart though so I can't say about that. The 4MB cart is nice, it can give you as close to an arcade experience as your going to get on a Sega Saturn, Saturn handles 2D really well.

 

Well, I can't notice any difference between the modes, even though there supposedly is.
MSH has pretty ridiculous load times for a game that uses the cart, too.

 

There are a few (and I do mean a few) extra frames of character animation with the RAM cartridge, plus there is less slowdown. The best place to notice any improvements is by having two large fighters on screen at once, such as Juggernaut, Hulk or Blackheart. I believe that a deal was very nearly agreed between Capcom and Sega Europe that froze out regular publisher Virgin Interactive so this upgrade could be packaged with a PAL version of X-Men VS Street Fighter for an early '98 release, but sadly talks stalled at the last minute when a suitable value could not be decided on. For the record, it was suggested that Sega were looking at a £49.99 asking price while Capcom felt they would not receive enough from this low figure and suggested raising this level by another thirty pounds. On the subject of 4MB RAM compatible games for a moment, does anyone know if there is any truth to the rumour Last Bronx flickers less or has slightly higher quality scrolling background layers with the upgrade present? I know that Final Fight Revenge needs the card to be inserted so it's not as if 3D fighters weren't built around this hardware, though I can't tell any difference myself with Last Bronx and you'd think more would have been made of this in Japan at least where the card was officially available...

 

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Damn right, MSH on Saturn was a HUGE disappointment after seeing all the other 2D fighters on Saturn. I just couldn't believe how slow it was, and how long the loading times were. At least X-Men: COTA was released before the RAM carts came out, but there's no excuse for how badly MSH was butchered on the best 2D system out there at the time!

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that the AI on default settings is stupidly easy to beat.

 

Does anyone have any idea why Final Fight Revenge uses the 4MB Ram cart? That game is bloody awful in EVERY way. Looks like crap,plays like crap and sounds like crap. There's nothing in it at all that pushes a stock Saturn, never mind one with a 4MB Ram upgrade.

Yakumo

 

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Makes sense :nod: Most if not all that Capcom US produced was cack.

You managed to finish the game? You poor thing. I gave up it was that bad.

 

By seeing MSH VS SF, I think it's pretty clear that with the 4MB RAM cartridge and the level of experience they'd gained by then that the system itself could have certainly pulled off near perfect versions of any CPS1 or CPS2 games. It probably could have pulled off NeoGeo games like KoF98, Garou, maybe even Metal Slug 3 which would have made the Saturn one seriously awesome system to own for NeoGeo ports. As it stands really the only NeoGeo ports to Saturn I find interesting are Metal Slug and Puzzle Bobble.

I guess it's a shame Capcom's Saturn development teams took so long to really get the Saturn hardware mastered.

 

There are loads of Neo Geo conversions for Saturn. Heres a list

Fighter's History Dynamite (1MB cart)
Galaxy Fight
Garou Densetsu 3
Magical Drop (was the 1st game actually on the Neo Geo?)
Magical Drop II
Magical Drop III
Metal Slug (1MB Cart)
Ragnagard
Real Bout Fatal Fury (1MB cart)
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special (1MB Cart)
Samurai Spirits Bushido Retsuden
Samurai Spirits 3 Zankuro Musouken (1MB Cart)
Samurai Spirits Amakusa Kourin (1MB Cart)
Stakes Winner
Stakes Winner 2
The King of Fighters '95 (Custom RAM cart)
The King of Fighters '96 (1MB Cart)
The King of Fighters '97 (1MB Cart)
Twinkle Star Sprites (no cart and miles better than the Neo Geo version)
Waku Waku 7 (1MB Cart)

There's probably a few more too that I've missed out on. Most of the above conversions are very good. Proabbly the worst being is the very bad Garou Densetsu 3. that conversion is a joke. Very poor animation, poor controls and shitty loading.

Yakumo

 

Waku Waku 7 on saturn is very poor.
The background are so low res they look like stacks of lego bricks

 

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Garou and Metal Slug 3, no way, and KoF98 is almost as big as MS3...

Really? You don't even like the Real Bout games? Because I think they're awesome and seriously underrated. Neither of the Puzzle Bobble games on Saturn are Neo ports BTW, 2X and 3 were both on the Taito F3.

 

It doesn't matter how big they are, it just matters how many assets are needed to be loaded into memory at once. It's very hard for us without source code to know that. Maybe if you had a customized emulator you could potentially log the resources used in each scene, but again they could always adjust things to make it work. Worst case scenario, maybe they'd have to make a bigger RAM cart.

And yes really, I never cared for Fatal Fury. I liked KoF 98, KoF 99, and the ones beyond that are ok but not really my thing. I liked Garou MotW and some other NeoGeo fighters, but most of what got ports to Saturn weren't anything I'm a fan of. I didn't realize that PB2X was a F3 port, but I knew PB3 was F3 but just lumped it with NeoGeo I guess.

 

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Shuma Gorath's Chaos Dimension causes the background layers to become a mess of flickering horizontal bands on my PAL Saturn, which I don't recall happening in the arcade original - was this supposed to have been some kind of warping effect or just a further glitch to emphasise how poor this conversion was?