So whats the deal with the arcade card?

[T2KFreeker]

Yeah, but wasn't the Super Famicom port exceedingly bad? 

The SFC version was a pretty good port, but it was pretty obvious that it was a port to lower quality hardware. From what I've been told the PCE version is damn near arcade perfect, but I haven't played it myself.

Actually, the Super Famicom/Super Nes port of Fatal Fury was horrid! It really was about as bad as you could get for a 16bit port. Funny as it was, the CART version of the game for the SNES had load times, the framerate was god awful, and the sound was terrible. The Genesis version actually blew it out of the water. Before anyone really get's in a huff about the Genesis VS SNES argument, realize that this was not the SNES's fault, but rather that Takara really had no clue at the time and didn't utilize the SNES hardware resulting in a terrible port. The sound in the Genesis version isn't the greatest either, but the framerate was much smoother and the characters retained way more of their animation frames. Check it out.

SNES: 

Genesis: 

[SignOfZeta]

We're talking about Fatal Fury Special, the third game in the series. Fatal Fury 1 wasn't even made for PCE.

The SFC/SNES version of FFS is fine. It's letterboxed, like almost all 16-bit home ports were, and the sound is really "SNES"; so if you hate that muffled reverb, stay away. IMO it's substantially better than the Sega CD version, which suffered from severally cut animation.

As for the SNES not being a good system for fighters...excluding the Neo Geo, what was better? It was the best system for fighters for some time. The Genesis was by far the worst fighter system of the 16-bit years. The PCE was a fun distraction since it had the original home games like Flash Hiders, Advanced VG, and Asuka. It also had the best Neo Ports, but only for about a year. After that SNK stopped porting to concentrate on promoting the Neo CD, which didn't work, and by then everything was on Saturn.

The SNES had the most up to date home versions of Street Fighter II...except for when SFII' was released on PCE, which became irrelevant once SFII' Turbo came out a month later for 2,800 yen less. It also had Fighter History (two of them), Gundam Wing: Endless Dual, Turtles Tourniment Fighters, the Ranma games (one of the three was actually good) more Neo ports than the other systems, and a bunch of fanboy shite ranging from Mortal Combat to Pretty Fighter.

[SignOfZeta]

Regarding the price of the AC. Original sale price of the Duo version was ¥12,800, the Pro version was ¥17,800.

For some reference, most PCE games at the time were between ¥4800 and ¥6800. Most SFC games were ¥9,800, a Square RPG like Chrono Trigger was usually ¥12,800.

Back then an American dollar would buy you about 107 yen. Those were the days!

So at the time, straight up, the Duo ver was about $119, the Pro version about $166. Of course it wasn't possible to buy anything from Japan without getting slapped with a huge markup back then, so it would have been more. It wasn't long before they could be had at a discount or for used prices though, so $120 or so for the (much more common) Duo version was about average, from what I remember.

So basically a guy in Japan could buy the SFC version for $100, or a ACD+game+Avenue 6 for around $220. I liked Fatal Fury quite a bit, but I went with the Nintendo version.

[BigusSchmuck]

So basically a guy in Japan could buy the SFC version for $100, or a ACD+game+Avenue 6 for around $220. I liked Fatal Fury quite a bit, but I went with the Nintendo version 

Still cheaper than buying a Neogeo and the game at the time. I remember Fatal Fury 1 for the snes, pretty terrible considering only player 2 can play as the bosses and only in vs mode.
I wonder what the arcade card into looks like, guess I will find out when I get it...

[Edmond Dantes]

I wonder what the arcade card into looks like, guess I will find out when I get it...

The Arcade Card doesn't have a special startup screen.  It looks just like a regular system card.

Thought you should be warned.  At first, I thought mine was broken.

[SignOfZeta]

So basically a guy in Japan could buy the SFC version for $100, or a ACD+game+Avenue 6 for around $220. I liked Fatal Fury quite a bit, but I went with the Nintendo version 

Still cheaper than buying a Neogeo and the game at the time. I remember Fatal Fury 1 for the snes, pretty terrible considering only player 2 can play as the bosses and only in vs mode.

Wasn't that how the Neo version worked? I remember you could only play as the three bros in one player mode. You could play two players and team up against a boss. That part was rad.

Now that I think about it, I really need to buy that MVS cart. It had the crazy arm wrestling thing in it too.

[BigusSchmuck]

Wasn't that how the Neo version worked? I remember you could only play as the three bros in one player mode. You could play two players and team up against a boss. That part was rad.

Now that I think about it, I really need to buy that MVS cart. It had the crazy arm wrestling thing in it too.

No took that out in the snes version, what I meant to say in vs mode, player 1 can be the 3 main characters only and player 2 can be the bosses. No teaming up, I was one of those unfortunates to own the old snes cart....  Anyway to get back on topic, anyone thought of doing some homebrew stuff with the arcade card? Might be interesting to see what people could come up with...

[Edmond Dantes]

The arm wrestling bonus rounds are in the PS2 version as well, if you don't wanna go through the trouble of getting a consolized MVS.

[Liquid Snake]

can anyone list complete AC games?

[BigusSchmuck]

http://www.pcecp.com/index.php?mode=catalog&action=normalsearch
and
http://www.pcecp.com/index.php?mode=catalog&action=search

[SignOfZeta]

The arm wrestling bonus rounds are in the PS2 version as well, if you don't wanna go through the trouble of getting a consolized MVS.

I already have an MVS (it's not heavy, it's my brother), which makes this ommision unforgivable.

[nat]

Here's the link I post up every couple months whenever this question comes up:

http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=3547.msg51364#msg51364

[Supremo_Lagarto]

Curious, I know it was made for Neo Geo ports and the ever so awesome Sapphire, but whats the story behind it? Why did NEC make so few games for it and what made them stop developing more games like Sapphire? Yeah I know they had another system (PC-FX), but come on, this thing could have easily competed with the likes of the next gen consoles at the time! Makes one wonder...

The division of NEC that sold the Duo basically went bankrupt shortly after the Arcade card was released. That is why there were no more games for it. End of story.

[SignOfZeta]

Curious, I know it was made for Neo Geo ports and the ever so awesome Sapphire, but whats the story behind it? Why did NEC make so few games for it and what made them stop developing more games like Sapphire? Yeah I know they had another system (PC-FX), but come on, this thing could have easily competed with the likes of the next gen consoles at the time! Makes one wonder...

The division of NEC that sold the Duo basically went bankrupt shortly after the Arcade card was released. That is why there were no more games for it. End of story.

No doubt. With all the money they pumped into the KOF '95 port and Sapphire's real-time 3D engine, how could they make a profit?

Seriously, this is not a true statement.

[Supremo_Lagarto]

Curious, I know it was made for Neo Geo ports and the ever so awesome Sapphire, but whats the story behind it? Why did NEC make so few games for it and what made them stop developing more games like Sapphire? Yeah I know they had another system (PC-FX), but come on, this thing could have easily competed with the likes of the next gen consoles at the time! Makes one wonder...

The division of NEC that sold the Duo basically went bankrupt shortly after the Arcade card was released. That is why there were no more games for it. End of story.

No doubt. With all the money they pumped into the KOF '95 port and Sapphire's real-time 3D engine, how could they make a profit?

Seriously, this is not a true statement.

I didn't say NEC went bankrupt, I said a small DIVISION of NEC (NEC Avenue). The Duo really was discontinued in 1994. Most of those games came out...

...in 1994.


Not a coincidence (companies don't design a lot of games for discontinued systems).

NEC itself is a huge company and has been for decades. They pulled the plug on the console division because it was no longer as profitable as their other divisions.


This is just reality.