Games you hate or love that most people don't

[esteban]

There's still a lot of hype surrounding the PCE version of R-Type. Obviously the graphical power of the system does not match the arcade version, I expected that; but playing it there was a lot of animation missing and the timings are quite badly "off", making it very different to play than the arcade version.

Damn, where is AirRaidX when you need him?

[Keranu]

There's still a lot of hype surrounding the PCE version of R-Type. Obviously the graphical power of the system does not match the arcade version, I expected that; but playing it there was a lot of animation missing and the timings are quite badly "off", making it very different to play than the arcade version.

Damn, where is AirRaidX when you need him?

Haha, yes.

[Necromancer]

Games I love but people seem to hate

Yokai Douchuuki
Genpei Tourmaden
Tower of Druaga
Cadash
Populous
World Court Tennis

Games i hate on the pce:

Detana!! twin bee
martial champion
The kung fu
shinobi

I guess that Cadash falls onto my love column too (wow, that sounds awful).  It ain't "arcade perfect", but it's still a damn good game.  Anybody who hates this game has poor taste, so there. 

[nat]

Obviously the graphical power of the system does not match the arcade version,

I'd argue that the PCE/Turbo is quite capable, in fact, of an arcade-perfect port of R-Type. Especially if the Arcade Card were utilized.

At the very least they could have done something about all the f*cking flicker.

[Keranu]

I guess that Cadash falls onto my love column too (wow, that sounds awful).  It ain't "arcade perfect", but it's still a damn good game.  Anybody who hates this game has poor taste, so there. 

It ain't arcade perfect, but better than the arcade .

[gundarN]

Obviously the graphical power of the system does not match the arcade version,

I'd argue that the PCE/Turbo is quite capable, in fact, of an arcade-perfect port of R-Type. Especially if the Arcade Card were utilized.

At the very least they could have done something about all the f*cking flicker.

R-Type arcade version is a very precise game to play (R-Type II more so), you really need to be pixel perfect when things get tougher (Stage 4 onwards). Actually converting that is a pretty tricky programing job I would imagine, though not impossible. I guess it just depends which version you get used to playing first; I got the PCB and PCE versions at pretty much the same time, so have put more effort into playing the arcade version.
Certainly for it's time, the PCE versions is very capable, I think it's just dated now as it's a compromised conversion. Granted, not everyone has access to the arcade version and I don't know much about how it plays on MAME or R-Types.

[Joe Redifer]

The Turbo version of R-Type has a shitload of flicker and only one plane of scrolling.  It is impossible for the machine to have a graphically perfect version of that game.  The Arcade Card does not add sprites.  If you try to have multiple planes of scrolling, the flicker would only become about 2-4 worse than it presently is.  The Turbo just isn't powerful enough.  It's too weak, FACT.

That being said, I like the Turbo version of R-Type a hell of a lot more than I do the arcade.  I like the colors a bit better and I like the soft PSG sound more than the hard-edged abrasive sounds of the arcade version.

[Black Tiger]

R-Type was just an early game/port on PCE. So early, that 4 meg cards hadn't even been invented yet. A visually equal port wouldn't have been so tough for later developers.

There are plenty of other Turbo/PCE games that do everything that the arcade R-Type does, multi-layers and all.

Since R-Type is strictly horizontal, the simple sliding bg with sprite pieces trick would've been enough for the scrolling bg.

It doesn't matter though, since the port we got is still a nice game.

[Arjak]

Games I love but people seem to hate

Yokai Douchuuki
Genpei Tourmaden
Tower of Druaga
Cadash
Populous
World Court Tennis

Games i hate on the pce:

Detana!! twin bee
martial champion
The kung fu
shinobi

Hey, cool! Me too! And I thought I was just crazy or something...

I have to agree that the Druaga series is not as bad as people will make you think it is. I guess it's just one of those games that you have to learn to appreciate. But the one for Playstation 2, Nightmare of Druaga, now that's a good game. It's a lot like Nethack, only without the masochistic difficulty. And it was released in America, which is a plus (for me, anyway).

[Keranu]

The Turbo version of R-Type has a shitload of flicker and only one plane of scrolling.  It is impossible for the machine to have a graphically perfect version of that game.  The Arcade Card does not add sprites.  If you try to have multiple planes of scrolling, the flicker would only become about 2-4 worse than it presently is.  The Turbo just isn't powerful enough.  It's too weak, FACT.

As far as I know, it's not so much the hardware that causes the flicker as it is the programming. I think nodtveidt once even told me that it's possible to program a demo which shows the max number of 64 sprites on screen moving without flicker, or maybe that was for slow down. It seems that all the Irem games for TG16 suffer bad flicker even with only a few sprites on screen.

[SignOfZeta]

I bought the Gameboy Color version of R-Type was pissed as hell that it was loaded with flicker. You can play it in "color enhanced" mode...but it just adds more flicker! Its so bad that you can't even see enemy bullets sometimes. You just explode and die for no obvious reason. Really it can only be played in b/w mode.

I know that the GBC could have done a flicker-free version of this game, and I feel the same way about the PCE.

Flicker is the main reason that most of my favorite NES games are pre-MMC.

[Digi.k]

R-type for PCE is a fantastic arcade conversion and release early in the pc engine's life.  Yes I was a little miffed as the early levels didnt have any parallax scrolling but somehow stage 5 did.....

Before that I had r-type on the Amiga 500 and the pc engine version just trounced all over that.

Seems like most pce irem games had a lot of sprite flicker and a few others too on hucards.  I dont think I've ever seen sprite flicker on the cd-rom games....well its much less occurance than HUcard games

[ccovell]

As far as I know, it's not so much the hardware that causes the flicker as it is the programming. I think nodtveidt once even told me that it's possible to program a demo which shows the max number of 64 sprites on screen moving without flicker, or maybe that was for slow down. It seems that all the Irem games for TG16 suffer bad flicker even with only a few sprites on screen.

The hardware doesn't cause flicker; it does something worse!  Sprites disappear completely if there are more than 16 sprites (256 pixels in total) before them on a horizontal line on the PCE.  (Count how many segments in the "snake" on stage 2 there are on any single line...)  So the game code/programmer has to cycle the objects into the different slots in sprite RAM so that the lesser-priority objects aren't always invisible.  Of course, this causes flicker for the rest of the objects, but at least everything's mostly visible now.

Irem games flicker a lot for several reasons.  Of course, they could have coded the games a bit better, but Hudson did the R-Type port, so...
Anyway, a lot of Irem games run in a wide horizontal resolution, around 352 (?) pixels wide.  This means that a lot more objects/sprites are likely to land on the same line than if it were running in a resolution like 256 pixels wide.  Add to that the fact that the maximum number of sprite pixels on one scanline is 256 and you have about 96 pixels of space on the screen where sprites cannot appear without employing flicker.

[Keranu]

Yes, the 16 sprites per line is a killer!

[gundarN]

I'm no expert on this; but I think the arcade version of R-Type uses a slightly higher resolution than other games.

E.g.

R-Type: 384 x 256 pixels
Ghosts 'n Goblins: 256 x 224 pixels
Rainbow Islands: 320 x 224 pixels
Wonder Boy III: 320 x 224 pixels
Street Fighter Zero 2: 384 x 224 pixels

I know I have to resize my monitor more for the R-Type games than others. This is bound to have an effect when trying to replicate the arcade version in the home.

And there is a little flicker on the arcade version, only really when you destroy an end of stage boss though and the screen fills up with explosions; not when you actually play the game.