Mega Drive. Yeah!

[Oh Danny Boy]

Mostly it’s down to memory limitations at the the time, most games came one what? 8mb? Now they are limitless. No need to downscale anything when you can produce  100mb plus carts which would have been impossible back then.

[Rex Grossman]

3 minutes ago, Oh Danny Boy said:

Mostly it’s down to memory limitations at the the time, most games came one what? 8mb? Now they are limitless. No need to downscale anything when you can produce  100mb plus carts which would have been impossible back then.

 

A big game for the MD at the time* was 4mb.

 

Edit

*in it's lifetime, not when GnG was released.

[Mr Monday]

We’ve got to be careful some people mean bits and other bytes  

 

Is there really that much criticism online about arcade conversion in the 16 bit era?  Surely most people are well aware of the constraints the developers had at the time and take that into account?

 

I’ve seen more critique of Western micro ports but those guys probably had to base their work on an afternoon of an arcade cabinet on free play and not much else.  At least the consoles usually had the same company porting it or had more access to source code and other assets. 

Finally- Me hyping a modern rom hack doesn’t mean I think the original version is shit.

 

 

 

[Alexlotl]

1 hour ago, ianinthefuture said:

Distinctly remember one (maybe all) of the Street Fighter II ports being a copy of the arcade game insomuch as they played the arcade game and made the port based off of what they saw/felt/heard while playing.

 

This was basically standard practice for UK microcomputer ports of the arcade games. The dev studio would be loaned an arcade machine, but no access to any source code or assets. I'm sure I remember reading about at least one port being done from VHS tapes of the gameplay.

 

I suspect for the Sega in-house Capcom ports, there was some closer cooperation going on, though.

[Rex Grossman]

56 minutes ago, Mr Monday said:

We’ve got to be careful some people mean bits and other bytes  

 

Is there really that much criticism online about arcade conversion in the 16 bit era?  Surely most people are well aware of the constraints the developers had at the time and take that into account?

 

I’ve seen more critique of Western micro ports but those guys probably had to base their work on an afternoon of an arcade cabinet on free play and not much else.  At least the consoles usually had the same company porting it or had more access to source code and other assets. 

Finally- Me hyping a modern rom hack doesn’t mean I think the original version is shit.

 

 

 

 

None of this was directed at you. There is always - and this instance is no exception - stuff on Reddit, forums, social media etc - about how the rubbish the old version was like the developers and publishers dropped the ball. Completely ignoring space constraints, strict deadlines, the fact that people know how to get more of the hardware now and that it was often tricky to get access to coin-up assets. This is almost always from retro gamers who were not around when the original was released.

[Rex Grossman]

48 minutes ago, Alexlotl said:

I suspect for the Sega in-house Capcom ports, there was some closer cooperation going on, though.

 

I think it's been said that for those Sega ports they didn't get as much access as they would like. Although I'm sure they had more than Western developers got.

[Goemon]

The crux for me is that in my young head I assumed that there were no restrictions and the devs were always working to there full potential.

 

Talks like budget, timelines, dev size etc, which are common chat now weren’t really discussed back then, so when I saw a port of a game, I thought everything was being done to make sure it was the best it could be, which wasn’t the case.

 

Looking at some of the new indie games make me realise how much potential was in these older systems, had the situation been different. 
 

I guess we’re lucky that people still choose to make games for these old systems. 
 

Also makes me realise that Ancient working on this new shooter really has the chance to be something special.

[fatnick]

8 hours ago, Oh Danny Boy said:

Mostly it’s down to memory limitations at the the time, most games came one what? 8mb? Now they are limitless. No need to downscale anything when you can produce  100mb plus carts which would have been impossible back then.

 

Strider was the first game to be released on a 8mb cart. That meant the whole thing had to be squeezed into 1mb 

 

The 68K itself can only address about 4MB directly, so anything above that means you need to tech in the cart to switch the banks of ROM memory the processor can see.

[bplus]

8 hours ago, ianinthefuture said:

Distinctly remember one (maybe all) of the Street Fighter II ports being a copy of the arcade game insomuch as they played the arcade game and made the port based off of what they saw/felt/heard while playing.

I could be wrong but I thought the arcade team did the snes version. And eventually capcom brought the megadrive version back in house after the first team to attempt didn't do too well.

 

 

[bplus]

Just now, bplus said:

 

Is this new version of gng a fresh port or a hack?

 

The original was great too. Mean machines gave it a great review too.

[Mr Monday]

1 hour ago, bplus said:

Is this new version of gng a fresh port or a hack?

 

The original was great too. Mean machines gave it a great review too.

It’s a rom hack of the original game.  He’s making a lot of changes to the code though so he can fit more tiles into VRAM.  There are lots of details of his progress in this thread

 

 

https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?35772-The-Official-aMaru-Thread-Amazing-Mega-Drive-Hacks!

 

[Goemon]

10 hours ago, bplus said:

I could be wrong but I thought the arcade team did the snes version. And eventually capcom brought the megadrive version back in house after the first team to attempt didn't do too well.

 

 

Yea, this is how I understood it. Sega reversed engineered Capcom games themselves to release on the MD as Capcom didn’t want to do it but from what I’ve read when they were doing it for SF2 and Capcom weren’t happy with what had been produced and so brought the game in house to do it themselves.

 

There’s Beta versions of the Sega made ones out there and in some cases look quite different (I’m thinking of the black bar at the top of the screen where the hud was)

[Mr Monday]

There’s also a later version of the SF2 Turbo prototype that removed the black bars from the HUD.  In some ways it’s better than the released version.  I think both the SNES and MD games use the same assets as the PC Engine version.

 

 

[bplus]

2 hours ago, Mr Monday said:

There’s also a later version of the SF2 Turbo prototype that removed the black bars from the HUD.  In some ways it’s better than the released version.  I think both the SNES and MD games use the same assets as the PC Engine version.

 

 

Was the one on the left developed by capcom too?

[ianinthefuture]

16 hours ago, bplus said:

I could be wrong but I thought the arcade team did the snes version. And eventually capcom brought the megadrive version back in house after the first team to attempt didn't do too well.

 

 

Probably just the Amiga version then.

[bplus]

17 minutes ago, ianinthefuture said:

Probably just the Amiga version then.

Ha! I was surprised that retro gamer said the Amiga version was ok. I haven't played it but judging by YouTube vids it looks diabolical!

[Mr Monday]

1 hour ago, bplus said:

Was the one on the left developed by capcom too?

I can’t remember the full story but this video explains it all

 

 

[ianinthefuture]

7 hours ago, bplus said:

Ha! I was surprised that retro gamer said the Amiga version was ok. I haven't played it but judging by YouTube vids it looks diabolical!

Cheeky self promotion is go:

 

 

 

[phillv85]

Are there any ODE options for the Mega CD? Particularly the Mega CD 2. I have one with a dead CD-ROM that I wouldn’t mind getting back to being useable, but I don’t need it to have a working CD drive as I have a Mega CD 1 and Multimega.

[Colonel Panic]

The mega Everdrive Pro will play MCD games. 

[bplus]

14 hours ago, ianinthefuture said:

Cheeky self promotion is go:

 

 

 

That was great

[bplus]

21 hours ago, Mr Monday said:

I can’t remember the full story but this video explains it all

 

 

As was this too

[bplus]

That's really interesting about ssf2 on the Amiga. It definitely looks like decent version.

[phillv85]

1 hour ago, Colonel Panic said:

The mega Everdrive Pro will play MCD games. 

Nice, I assume it needs the MCD attached for the processors etc.?

[Colonel Panic]

13 minutes ago, phillv85 said:

Nice, I assume it needs the MCD attached for the processors etc.?

 Nah, it emulates all the extra hardware on a chip inside the Everdrive. So it doesn’t even need the MCD2! Maybe not quite what you were looking for! 😄

[phillv85]

36 minutes ago, Colonel Panic said:

 Nah, it emulates all the extra hardware on a chip inside the Everdrive. So it doesn’t even need the MCD2! Maybe not quite what you were looking for! 😄

Haha no, not quite then, but it does make any ODE solution pretty much obsolete.

[Shimmyhill]

Speaking of EverDrive carts… why are there so many variations of them, are there models to avoid and ones to snap up!? I can see the mentioned EverDrive pro as many fancy features so that one is obvious but all the other variants 🤷🏼‍♂️

 

I have mine all setup with the OSSC now and getting a very decent image, I’m thinking of getting a new RGB scart lead with stereo sound plug - retro gaming cables seem to come up often, go to brand or others to consider?

 

 And finally, I have been running a few PAL carts switched to 60hz and generally they run fine but there is an occasional stutter - ive read up on it and its down to the outputs not exactly matching NTSC timings - has anyone gone to the lengths of replacing the crystal oscillator to resolve this esp the claimed dual mode ones?

[Goemon]

10 Arcade ports being worked on for the MD

 

 

[bplus]

2 hours ago, Goemon said:

10 Arcade ports being worked on for the MD

 

 

Is puzzle bobble being worked on? I have this silly idea that when I'm retired, I'll port that. (I don't have the required IQ to do that, but still!)

[bplus]

8 hours ago, Shimmyhill said:

Speaking of EverDrive carts… why are there so many variations of them, are there models to avoid and ones to snap up!? I can see the mentioned EverDrive pro as many fancy features so that one is obvious but all the other variants 🤷🏼‍♂️

 

I have mine all setup with the OSSC now and getting a very decent image, I’m thinking of getting a new RGB scart lead with stereo sound plug - retro gaming cables seem to come up often, go to brand or others to consider?

 

 And finally, I have been running a few PAL carts switched to 60hz and generally they run fine but there is an occasional stutter - ive read up on it and its down to the outputs not exactly matching NTSC timings - has anyone gone to the lengths of replacing the crystal oscillator to resolve this esp the claimed dual mode ones?

I could be wrong, but pal carts probably stutter at 60hz if they already been optimised?

 

Pal megadrives do have a very hard to notice issue that when switched to 60hz and running NTSC games. Not sure it counts as stuttering though. 

 

I'm definitely not an expert on this subject. Though I did mid my pal machine and I own a jap one too.