PCE, SNES and Genesis, screen comparison.

[Black Tiger]

I'm bumping to post something I put together during the lull before the Darius 2 comparison.

From left to right:

PC ENGINE - MEGA DRIVE - SUPER FAMICOM



































The MD version has eratic choppy scrolling/animation for character sprites. The MD version has windows that appear in stages and on either side of the screen depending on where you stand. The default window bg is clear, but a dozen different solid colors can be selected.

Not only does the SFC version have NES graphics, but it sounds like it sampled NES instruments and filled in the rest of the music with "stock" SNES sounds. It also uses the mosaic effect and if you've ever wondered what it'd look like used in an NES game, now you can see.

Knocking out the Capcom games, Chiki Chiki boy, Ghouls & Ghost, Strider and now Forgotten Worlds, then there is Street Fighter 2, which i might do but if you want to see a really good comparison of that, just visit Black Tigers site.

Just to keep this thread complete, here are screens of each stage.


From left to right:

PC ENGINE - SUPER FAMICOM - MEGA DRIVE


























Now that I have a new CRT monitor, I can see in places where the conversion to gifs produced artifacts and/or lost shades. These are still pretty good for comparing though. I'm glad that I finally switched over to 'pngs.

[spenoza]

PCE Ryu has a more awesomer red fireball, yo!

Also, I do like the increased screen real-estate and larger graphics of the MD Dragon Slayer. I hate the colors, though. There's just SO MUCH dithering it's insane. Shame about the animation, too. PCE wins big time, then.

[esteban]

To get back to the Darius screenshots... I am really surprised... I never realized the differences were so stark. I've played all the ports of the Darius games, but the side-by-side comparisons reveal the cold, hard truth: pce owners prefer billboard-sized score counters.



Have we done Wonderboy III: Monster Lair yet?

[Joe Redifer]

Going by the still pictures alone, I think the Mega Drive Dragon Slayer looks best with the PCE a close second (I like the character design in the PCE version more, though).  The SNES is a far, far, far third.  If the MD version scrolls choppily then it is probably the most annoying to play, though.

[Tom]

If you play through the Megadrive one of DS:LOH, you'll notice the lack of colors... or I should say the whole 16 colors they decided to use (and dither).

[Tatsujin]

Have we done Wonderboy III: Monster Lair yet?

no, but the winner is allready decided by a landslide (unless some Game Fan morrons comming over and dizz the game to no end again, b'coz its missing 2nd layer).

[ParanoiaDragon]

It seems like the Turbo version (of Legend of Heroes)still could've looked better then it does, no doubt, however, I'm thinking they didn't make it better, maybe because it loads the entire map of the game(Tom, do you know if it does this?).  Or perhaps, they just wanted to make it basically a port of the original, kinda like what was done with Popful Mail.  Speaking of which, someone should do a comparison of the MD & PCE Sorcerian's.

[Tatsujin]

Wow, I didn't realize that the PCE & MD Hellfires were so different. I thought that they were both fairly straight ports from the arcade. I prefer different versions for each shot. I don't remember how much extra variety, animation, etc the PCE version has, but if I were to judge them strictly by these screens and taking into account that (I believe) the MD version has some parallax and the PCE doesn't, I'd say that the MD version looks better overall.

SD2 does have some AWFUL boss flicker

Really? I never experienced this. I only got the game recently and made the equivalent of two runs through each on real hardware and Magic Engine. It really stood out to me how little flicker there was considering the size of the bosses and when it was obvious they were sprites and not tiles. Even a boss like this didn't flicker for me-



Of course, I don't view flicker/break up as an unacceptable or bad thing, only when it affects the gameplay. If the price for getting a screen filling boss is the occasional thin horizontal stripe cutting out or appearing transparent for a fraction of a second, it's fine with me and I'd gladly take that over a flicker-free SNES game with tiny sprites to avoid slowdown.

The only other explanation I can think of is that maybe I just happened to play some flicker-light routes on real hardware and the game has unadvertised SuperGrafx support like Super Darius 1 that automatically kicked in on Magic Engine.

i remember that the stong flickers appeared more in the big long fossils, which almost covers the whole horizontal screen. of course, concidered of how big those bosses are, and mostly done by using pure sprites, it is damn impressive of what we got with SD2 on our PCE

anyway, will give it another try soon, to make a better statement. it's been just way too long since

[guyjin]

What the hell is up with the SNES version of dragon slayer? It's like they weren't even trying. 

[Tatsujin]

What the hell is up with the SNES version of dragon slayer? It's like they weren't even trying. 

it's like a direct PC-88 port

[Black Tiger]

What the hell is up with the SNES version of dragon slayer? It's like they weren't even trying. 

it's like a direct PC-88 port

It looks like the PCE version is actually based on the PC-88/MSX version, and then enhanced like Ys and Popful Mail. The Mega Drive version is a faithful looking port of the PC-98 version. The PCE enemy art looks fairly faithful from what I could find for both PC-88/98, but at least the slimes are redrawn in the MD version. The SNES version appears to be a scapped Famicom port that got moved to SFC.

[Necromancer]

If it weren't for dither city, I'd prefer the Genesis version of Dragon Slayer.  The only thing that the SNES version has over the PCE version is the enemy backgrounds (as does the Genny).

[ParanoiaDragon]

I like the slimes in the MD version.


Somebody compare the 2 console Sorcerian's!

[fragmare]

First off, those pics of Afterburner look FAR too dim.  They look much brighter on a real TV so I don't think that is a good way to display them.

Welp, it's about as good as you're going to get with trying to fake aspect corrected NTSC scanlined screenshots on a computer screen.  Emulators basically do the same thing.  they blur/interpolate the screen, sometimes add the NTSC artifacting, then they just add in a black line every other line with a preset transparency and then some emulators adjust the final brightness/gamme up a little bit.  That's basically what I've done with the Afterburner images.

[awack]

Somebody compare the 2 console Sorcerian's!

I'm only doing games i own, which means I'm not going to be able to do other games such as Popful mail, since i don't own the sega cd version, maybe some one else can do it, i would like to see that one myself.

Well, thats it for capcom games as far as i know, and as for Konami, i think there is only Snatcher left.


OK, lords of thunder, i tried to show that the lack of color and added scrolls are not the only differences in the sega cd port, which are apparent in some of the screens, like the missing scarab, bg tile etc.

Good looking game here.           

           pce                                               genesis