Could the TG handle Mortal Kombat 2 or 1 ?

[peonpiate]

It had a insane port of SF2 CE, on par to what the SNES had, which was amazing considering how much older the TG is than the SNES. That got me wondering, could it do Mortal kombat 2 justice ? Or even Mortal kombat 1 ?

I know graghics wise it seems capable of doing MK 1 ok, as it has more colors than the Genesis, but speedwise...its cpu isnt 16 bit, and MK is more demanding than SF was due to the characters being larger, and more photo realistic looking. Thats not even looking at MK 2 which is far more demanding than MK 1 was.

From what i can see, TG could do better sounds than the Genesis on MK1/2, but graghics would fall back some due to slower processor. Kind of middle of the road. but im not the expert on TG!

Any thoughts on this ?

[guyjin]

Actually, in terms of Millions of Instructions Per Second (MIPS), the Turbografx 16 is faster than the Genesis.
So yes, it could have done MK 1 or 2 easily.

[Mobius]

The fact that the graphics in MK are more photo-realistic than SF doesn't make a difference, either.  It's all just sprites being pushed around the screen.

[spenoza]

Had any company been interested in porting it I think the TG-16 could well have supported an excellent port. The question is, would the Super CD format have sported enough memory for matches or would it have required an Arcade CD? I doubt any company would have been willing to have produced a larger, SF2-style HuCard.

[nat]

It had a insane port of SF2 CE, on par to what the SNES had, which was amazing considering how much older the TG is than the SNES. That got me wondering, could it do Mortal kombat 2 justice ? Or even Mortal kombat 1 ?

I know graghics wise it seems capable of doing MK 1 ok, as it has more colors than the Genesis, but speedwise...its cpu isnt 16 bit, and MK is more demanding than SF was due to the characters being larger, and more photo realistic looking. Thats not even looking at MK 2 which is far more demanding than MK 1 was.

From what i can see, TG could do better sounds than the Genesis on MK1/2, but graghics would fall back some due to slower processor. Kind of middle of the road. but im not the expert on TG!

Any thoughts on this ?

I heard at one time that NEC/Hudson was actually approached before both Nintendo and SEGA for exclusive rights to the Mortal Kombat franchise. For whatever reason they declined the opportunity, and the rest is history.

I don't remember the source, so the validity of this information may be questionable, but I'm pretty sure it's legit.

But to answer your question-- yes, it definitely could've handled a port just fine, in any case.

[awack]

The best way most of us can predict how MK would have turned out, is to compare fighting games that came out on both the PCE and Super Famicom, Street Fighter 2, Godzilla and Flash Hiders/Battle Tycoon flash hiders.

So thats one hu card and two super cd games, no need to compare the arcade card fighting games, that would be over kill, and even though Godzilla and Flash Hiders were made by the same companies and came out later on the super famicom, they both ended up being better on the PCE in my opinion.

Those two cd fighting games are not even the best of the super cd fighting games, that in my opinion would go to Asuka, a much better game than MK 1.

[Joe Redifer]

If what Nat says is true, then the Turbo could have been a whole lot more popular (smacks forehead).  At the same time, I hate Mortal Kombat.  It would have looked better than the Genesis versions color-wise.

[Black Tiger]

It had a insane port of SF2 CE, on par to what the SNES had, which was amazing considering how much older the TG is than the SNES. That got me wondering, could it do Mortal kombat 2 justice ? Or even Mortal kombat 1 ?

I know graghics wise it seems capable of doing MK 1 ok, as it has more colors than the Genesis, but speedwise...its cpu isnt 16 bit, and MK is more demanding than SF was due to the characters being larger, and more photo realistic looking. Thats not even looking at MK 2 which is far more demanding than MK 1 was.

From what i can see, TG could do better sounds than the Genesis on MK1/2, but graghics would fall back some due to slower processor. Kind of middle of the road. but im not the expert on TG!

The TG processor speed and sprite pushing cababilities are almost the same as the Genesis. Its actually the SNES, which has a fantastic MKII port, that has a slow cpu.

If you'd like to see how well the TG/PCE can handle street fighting games with large sprites and lots of animation, take a look at the PCE Neo Geo ports.

[peonpiate]

Ive seen the Neo ports and they are great, but they use the Arcade card do they not ? I had a stock TG16 in mind, as in America atleast, addons sell pretty poorly historically [segacd/32x etc].

It seems like it could have been do'able, better than the Genesis one atleast. But im going to wager that a MK2 port on TG wouldnt come very close to the SNES version...as that port was just unreal at the time, nearly a carbon copy in every aspect. Sound wise in particular I dont think the TG can compete with a SNES without its CD drive [im kind of biased in that regard..snes sound/music has always stood out to me over the TG/genny back in the day].

So stock TG16 if it used a huge 20 meg hucard could come close i take it.

[malducci]

Yeah, 20meg hucard or some variant there of. The hucard slot has audio input pins, so they could have added some small additional audio hardware. Sound fx and voices would have been easily doable. I did a mock up of MK1 char selection screen and Johnny Cage - all PCE compliant but that's as far as I went with it.

[Black Tiger]

Ive seen the Neo ports and they are great, but they use the Arcade card do they not ? I had a stock TG16 in mind, as in America atleast, addons sell pretty poorly historically [segacd/32x etc].

It seems like it could have been do'able, better than the Genesis one atleast. But im going to wager that a MK2 port on TG wouldnt come very close to the SNES version...as that port was just unreal at the time, nearly a carbon copy in every aspect. Sound wise in particular I dont think the TG can compete with a SNES without its CD drive [im kind of biased in that regard..snes sound/music has always stood out to me over the TG/genny back in the day].

So stock TG16 if it used a huge 20 meg hucard could come close i take it.

The visuals would've only been a matter of memory and competence by the developer. Chances are they wouldn't have added any background scrolling effects(not that I remember much in the game).

Its a similar deal with the sound. The TG-16 can run high quality(for the time) sampled sfx through any of its sound channels at once. If the publisher was willing to allow the game enough memory, the voices would've been clearer than the SNES port and the music would've sounded comparable to the other ports if they used samples for a couple channels.

Its all hypothetical, but when talking about "possibilities", if the SNES can do something 2D-wise(sprites on bgs), then the TG-16 & Genesis would have no problem doing the same. And in many cases even the NES and SMS could too.

Also, the SNES port is very well done for SNES, but is pretty far off from the arcade. Its only a near-carbon copy by EGM standards.

[nodtveidt]

There is rumored to exist an actual prototype of MK for the PCE, but I don't know anyone who's actually seen it. I had one guy email me a couple of years back claiming to have some screenshots but he disappeared...of course. In any event, one part of the rumor states that they were going to use MK to bring the Arcade Card stateside, which makes sense considering MK is a US game and we were in desperate need of the Arcade Card and its great games over here. But alas...it never happened, and the rest is history. Converting MK for the PCE would be a mind-numbingly easy task...it's one of the simplest fighters available, and the extra storage of the Arcade Card would make it virtually child's play. Shang Tsung's final battle would be a relatively easy feat to accomplish...I've already thought about how it could be done. Even MKII could be done with ease on the Arcade Card. MK3? Probably as well. The Genesis really showed how limited it was when it came time for MK3, but with the additional storage memory of the Arcade Card, I honestly believe that the PCE could pull it off where the Genesis fell a bit short.

[Keranu]

I too think the TG16 could've handeled MK1 and 2 no problem. If the Genesis and SNES can handle them, then so can the TG16 really. I also don't really see MK being any more hardware demanding than SFII', but I never really compared them graphically.

[Black Tiger]

Here are some screenshots in PCE resolution and palette with on-screen colors reduced well below what would be required for the background tiles-









Even an average Turbo/PCE developer should be able to pull off this level of graphics quality. Without theorizing how the players could be cobbled together with various sized sprites, if Bonk III can toss around a couple giant Bonks this size-



...along with enemies, power ups, etc... then (proportionately) arcade sized players should also be no sweat. Even if the developer was so lazy that they left the bgs totally flat and pushed the life bars and timer either to the top of the screen or striped them SFIICE-style.

I had a stock TG16 in mind, as in America atleast, addons sell pretty poorly historically [segacd/32x etc].

Historically, the TG-16 in general sold poorly and the CD-ROM wasn't an add-on for the TurboDuo. Worldwide, CDs were the more successful/popular format for the Turbo/PCE, so there's no reason that MKII shouldn't have been done on CD. In which case the music would be arcade-superior and the sampled sfx would be about as good as the SNES version, but with higher quantity.

Its hard to see how a decent MKII port on Turbo/PCE couldn't have been the best at the time.

[Joe Redifer]

I am willing to bet that a HuCard Mortal Kombat would have run in the 256-wide resolution.  This would have the effect of reducing flicker and requiring less pixels to make the same sized sprite (as it appears on the TV screen).