Devil's Crush MD vs TG16

[Keranu]

Lol at the s-video remark.

[esteban]

Did this happen to anyone else?

"I remember when the SNES version of Final Fight hit the streets. It sold like hot cakes and though it had been eagerly anticipated, many were returned the same day. No Guy? No two player mode? Levels missing and names changed? Flicker and slowdown all over the place? Many of my friends swore a Sicilian curse at Capcom that day and were bitter over it for a long time."

hahahahaha. You're finding the gems . This definitely seems to be written from the perspective of a later-era, not the perspective of when the game actually came out.

As I explained in another thread (the one in which Genesis / SuperGrafx GnG is revealed NOT to be arcade perfect): back then, these were the closest console games had ever gotten to the arcade. People didn't return games because they lacked 2-player modes, characters, a few frames of sprite animations, a level, the original character names, etc. I seriously doubt folks were returning Final Fight SNES en masse. It was awesome to play arcade games at home, period. Some ports were superior than others, for sure...

RANT:
Many contemporary reviews of older games suffer from a lack of perspective, and a lack of context. For example, "slowdown" and "sprite flickering" should be put into context.

Slowdown / sprite flickering was annoying, but, in general, it certainly didn't make games unplayable (unlike, say, poor hit detection, or poor controls make a game unplayable). Slowdown / flickering in Gradius III (SNES) -- I wasn't going to return the game. I still loved it, slowdown and all. Now, I'll admit that slowdown in a shooter is not as detrimental as it is other genres (i.e. vs. fighting games), but I can't think of too many games that were RUINED by slowdown / flickering.

Heck, all of Konami's games during the 8-bit and 16-bit era (which, in general, kicked ass) suffered from slowdown / flickering at some points. It was never a huge problem, because the games kicked ass. They were a blast to play. Yes, I like Gradius III SNES. I still haven't beaten it, but, by golly, I will one of these days.
END RANT

[FM-77]

You're saying Sega-16 is biased? Aren't you biased? I keep hearing Genesis sucks on this site. TG16 is aaalways better.

 

[esteban]

You're saying Sega-16 is biased? Aren't you biased? I keep hearing Genesis sucks on this site. TG16 is aaalways better.

 

I know you're not totally serious. But since I'm waiting in the hotel lobby, I've got some time to kill (and I want to get the most of the $10 I spent to get internet access today, those bastards!), allow me to babble ...

Actually, I never said TG-16 is always better .  And we love Genny (well, a lot of us, anyway).  I think most of us were all bringing up specific points / instances in which we disagreed with sega-16. We are simply reacting to sega-16, which is claiming Genny versions as the best version ever.

We are saying, "Hey, we take issue with points A, B, C, and _________ in your comparison."

If the author of the review acknowledges just a portion of our insights, then the Genny version is no longer "hands down" the best one. Rather, it's still a debate. We may never be able to agree on what the "best one" is, but that's not the point, as far as I am concerned.

The point, IMO, is to present an analysis that fairly addresses all of the strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncracies between different versions -- to better inform readers. I want to appreciate everything each version offers.

For example, I truly believe that the sega-16 reviewer did not *really* give the chip tunes from Dungeon Explorer a chance (or, the person writing the review isn't too fond of chiptunes). Either way, it's a travesty to say that the Sega-CD DE Red Book is "better than" or "gets the edge over" the original HuCard tunes. I like the SegaCD soundtrack -- but it is truly, truly generic compared to PCE DE 1 and PCE DE 2 soundtrack. On its own, I can totally enjoy the SegaCD soundtrack... but when you make your analysis relative to the PCE games... forget about it!

Of course, I'm not saying that everyone should love the chiptunes -- but I would like folks to give them a chance before dismissing them . My apologies to the sega16 reviewer if he did give the tunes a chance. I still enjoyed reading his article!

[Keranu]

Steve is one of the least biased people on this board, and it's just one of the reasons why we love him so much. (the other reason being him often linking to his Turbo Play scans)

By the way, I never really hear people blantly say "Genesis sucks" on this board and from what I can tell, most people here love the Genesis, myself included.

[Black Tiger]

Steve is one of the least biased people on this board, and it's just one of the reasons why we love him so much. (the other reason being him often linking to his Turbo Play scans)

By the way, I never really hear people blantly say "Genesis sucks" on this board and from what I can tell, most people here love the Genesis, myself included.

I'm actually surprised how non-fanboy pretty much everyone here is.

Especially considering how much of an underdog the Duo is considered to be.

Personally, I find it a lot cooler when some who loves the Jaguar or 3DO talk about how it's better in some ways than other consoles than a Playstation fan trashing Sega and Nintendo.

[sunteam_paul]

I don't think I've seen much bias on this board at all. We all seem to be multiple console owners, and appreciate each one on its own merits.

On the subject of Dungeon Explorer music, I even prefer some of the original chip sounds to the DE2 arranged versions. The chip music in DE has a lovely quality to it.

[Zeon]

The chip music in DE has a lovely quality to it.

I don't know about everyone else, but I absolutely LOVE DE's chip music, it has some of my favorite chip music on the PCE.

There was this one song in the game, that my dad really liked (and still does to this day). In fact, he liked it so much he would turn our surround sound system ALLLLL the way up, almost blasting the speakers out whenever we got to that part in the game. It was so loud that in our back yard you could hear it very clearly and the walls of the house would shake. He liked that game a little too much now that I think about it...

As for the Sega cd version (which I also own) I felt that it's music was bland, forgettable, and extremly generic. In fact, there is this one song that we thought, and still think, sounds perfectly like elevator music. I believe it was the part of the game where there was ice and you had to carefully shoot a block of ice to correctly "carve" it to move onward.

As for the game itself, we felt it was a disappointment compared to the one on the PCE. Sure we played through to the last boss (I can't remember if we ever beat it), but it just wasn't the same.

I guess it felt more like a uninspired generic gauntlet clone whereas DE for the PCE seemed to have expanded more on the original formula, had more depth, more replayability, and more of a feel of adventure. But that's just me, feel free to disagree.

I like the first DE for PCE the best, even slightly over DEII which is also a great game.

[esteban]

The chip music in DE has a lovely quality to it.

There was this one song in the game, that my dad really liked (and still does to this day). In fact, he liked it so much he would turn our surround sound system ALLLLL the way up, almost blasting the speakers out whenever we got to that part in the game. It was so loud that in our back yard you could hear it very clearly and the walls of the house would shake. He liked that game a little too much now that I think about it...

[Keranu]

Hahahaha, that story of your dad blasting the speakers was hilarious!

Dungeon Explorer really did have an incredible soundtrack. Before I really tried playing through the game, I didn't think the soundtrack was nearly as good as everyone said. But man when you have made it to at least the second dungeon, the music REALLY gets amazing from there! The soundtrack gets better the farther you get, so just when you think you have heard the coolest song in a video game, another one comes which is just a closer step to heaven .

[Black Tiger]

The chip music in DE has a lovely quality to it.

I don't know about everyone else, but I absolutely LOVE DE's chip music, it has some of my favorite chip music on the PCE.

There was this one song in the game, that my dad really liked (and still does to this day). In fact, he liked it so much he would turn our surround sound system ALLLLL the way up, almost blasting the speakers out whenever we got to that part in the game. It was so loud that in our back yard you could hear it very clearly and the walls of the house would shake. He liked that game a little too much now that I think about it...

As for the Sega cd version (which I also own) I felt that it's music was bland, forgettable, and extremly generic. In fact, there is this one song that we thought, and still think, sounds perfectly like elevator music. I believe it was the part of the game where there was ice and you had to carefully shoot a block of ice to correctly "carve" it to move onward.

As for the game itself, we felt it was a disappointment compared to the one on the PCE. Sure we played through to the last boss (I can't remember if we ever beat it), but it just wasn't the same.

I guess it felt more like a uninspired generic gauntlet clone whereas DE for the PCE seemed to have expanded more on the original formula, had more depth, more replayability, and more of a feel of adventure. But that's just me, feel free to disagree.

I like the first DE for PCE the best, even slightly over DEII which is also a great game.

DE's music is one of my fave game soundtracks of all time.

As excited as I was to hear CD versions of a lot of tracks in DEII, I was dissapointed with the instruments they picked for several.

Both in skilled use of the PCE's sounds and in actual composition, the soundtrack matches anything else out there.

If you haven't played all the way through, just use the debde debda code and pick the Bard. You can then listen to every song in the game by using his magic.

[Kaminari]

Many contemporary reviews of older games suffer from a lack of perspective, and a lack of context.

Can't agree more, Steve. Notice how reviewers usually use the past tense? "This was a great game", "You could do this and that", "The music was wonderful", etc. They rarely describe the game in the present, except for reminding that "It is an old game".

And it's always infuriating to read a retrogame review which ends with: "Of course, by today's standards, the graphics suck". As if the reviewer had forgotten that by today's standards, there are truckloads of recent games which suck as well. Talk about perspective.

[Keranu]

Nice post as always, Kami, but I was hoping you would post your opinions on the sound between the TG16/PCE and Gen/MD of Devil's Crush !

[sunteam_paul]

Many contemporary reviews of older games suffer from a lack of perspective, and a lack of context.

Can't agree more, Steve. Notice how reviewers usually use the past tense? "This was a great game", "You could do this and that", "The music was wonderful", etc. They rarely describe the game in the present, except for reminding that "It is an old game".

And it's always infuriating to read a retrogame review which ends with: "Of course, by today's standards, the graphics suck". As if the reviewer had forgotten that by today's standards, there are truckloads of recent games which suck as well. Talk about perspective.

Whenever I settle down to do a review for my site, I seem to automatically enter 'PC Engine mode' as though I'm reviewing the game at the time it came out, judging it by the standards of the machine itself. I always feel a bit odd about mentioning 'later' consoles in reviews of PCE stuff.