Final Fight PCE

[Black Tiger]

Not that I have anything to add to this.What game is that btw?The Legend Of Xanadu?

You betcha!

[spenoza]

Pretty and interesting video, though there certainly aren't many enemy sprites sharing the screen with the main character.

[Black Tiger]

Pretty and interesting video, though there certainly aren't many enemy sprites sharing the screen with the main character.

Yeah, depending on how the layering effects are done, balancing sprites can come into play. That game just doesn't happen to use many enemies for the boss areas, even during static bg sections. But the fact remains that the PCE can do all kinds of crazy parallax and other effects.

No matter how an effect is achieved, it's still just a trick/illusion. The PCE not having a method other consoles use for a second bg layer built-in simply means that it uses other methods to do the same thing or something similar.

[awack]

Another good example of parallax would be Shockman 3, the first level.

One interesting use of parallax is the first boss fight(Dragon) in Rondo of Blood, sprites are used for the towers that overlap the back ground but as soon as you walk all the way to the end where the Dragon Will swoop down out of the sky, the towers(sprite) magically become tiles, obviously to reduce flicker, i believe this is used in other parts of the game as well.

[Digi.k]

Konami did it with Parodius and Twin Bee.. but then in my opinion NEC Avenue are no Konami.....

the final stage of detana twin bee!?! should be less than a min long
http://s14.photobucket.com/albums/a348/kwoksta/?action=view&current=twinbeescrolling.flv

stage 3 detana twin bee
http://s14.photobucket.com/albums/a348/kwoksta/?action=view&current=twinbeemovie2.flv

[Black Tiger]

Konami did it with Parodius and Twin Bee.. but then in my opinion NEC Avenue are no Konami.....

NEC Ave produced some of the very best parallax and graphics in general for PCE.

[Tatsujin]

the xanadu vid looks nice BT (especially the nice transparent effect), but imagine the same trick used in final fight, with building-tiles over the whole vetical screen and with 5+ big sprites on screen brawling -> no way


i never said, parallax is not possible on the PCE as many great game have proven this. but there are definitly some limits. i am also aware of almost all the tricks available

[awack]

In the first shot i marked the 4 layers of scrolling, #4 the walkway platform(sprite) #2 large buildings(bg tile) #3 smaller buildings in the distance(bg tile) #1 sky, mountains and water(bg tile).


In the second shot, i show a large number of sprites.... main character, missile, jet pack robot, small purple robot, walkway platform, large robot with missile launcher and large space craft.

[Digi.k]

the xanadu vid looks nice BT (especially the nice transparent effect), but imagine the same trick used in final fight, with building-tiles over the whole vetical screen and with 5+ big sprites on screen brawling -> no way

Didn't the SNES version had no more than 4 characters on screen??  If they took that route for the pce version reducing the number of sprites on screen I'm sure it coulda been done..

[Black Tiger]

the xanadu vid looks nice BT (especially the nice transparent effect), but imagine the same trick used in final fight, with building-tiles over the whole vetical screen and with 5+ big sprites on screen brawling -> no way

There are many PCE games that already do the kind of parallax needed without sprites, such as Lords of Thunder. The Sega-CD version looks like the backgrounds might actually be completely redrawn. The simplified skyscraper bg in it would be much easier to do on PCE with animated tiles than the more complex arcade version.

Even if a port was done like Forgotten Worlds with static bgs, it'd still look very nice compared to the popular Sega-CD version-



Even if it were done at 256 x 224 it'd still look very nice and would be at least as detailed by not losing color or having to dither so much-




Even if the sprites were kept at the same narrowed-from-the-arcade proportions of the Sega-CD version, in the rare case that there are four enemies onscreen in a co-op game and everyone happens to line up together, it's not much over the PCE horizontal pixel limit, so it wouldn't result in flicker too often-




But the same infrequent scenario in a 256-wide port would be well under the limit-

Didn't the SNES version had no more than 4 characters on screen??  If they took that route for the pce version reducing the number of sprites on screen I'm sure it coulda been done..

That's right, but in a single player game, the Sega-CD version only has up to 5 at a time.

[handygrafx]

Not sure about a PCE HuCard version, but a PCE SCD version could've looked closer in terms of color and background detail (minus parallax)  than the MegaCD version, which lost ALOT of color and SOME graphic detail.  As Black Tiger mentioned, MegaCD version is redrawn.  It's only a rendition of the arcade, with less detail, not a pixel-exact port.

Of course, the X68000 version lost zero color or detail, and truly *looks* pixel-exact to the arcade ^__^

MegaCD|SegaCD vs Arcade


SFC|SNES  vs Arcade


GBA


X68000 vs Arcade



99.9% of people (nearly everyone) believed that the MegaCD-SegaCD version of Final Fight was arcade-exact, or damn close to it, and thus, it was the closest home version during the 1990s, until Capcom Classics Collection in recent years.  That's because all they knew of in the 90s were the two SFC-SNES versions (FF and FFGuy).  So in comparison, the MegaCD-SegaCD version *seemed* perfect compared to the Nintendo versions.  Almost nobody had ever heard of the Sharp X68000.  Even most people that knew about the obscure Japan-only SuperGrafx, did not know about the even lesser-known X68000.   It just did not exist to people.   

Anyway,  the MegaCD-SegaCD version of Final Fight was certainly the best home *console* version of Final Fight.  It retained all of the features of the arcade (all levels, all selectable characters, 2-player play), and on top of that it featured superior music and an exclusive animated intro that no other version, not even the arcade, had.   Like so many other things in life, all of this combined to BLIND most people into thinking the MegaCD-SegaCD version was more exact to the arcade than it really was.    Indeed it was an outstanding rendition of Final Fight, the best that could be bought domestically in the United States, and even those in Japan who did not own a X68000.   

Compared to IBM PCs and even Amigas, the X68000 was the Neo-Geo of home computers. Thank God the games didn't cost $200~$300. It's just the hardware that was expensive, much more so than the Neo-Geo itself.  I think a X68000 cost $1000 to $1500 at least,  in the range of a LaserActive.  I could be off by a few hundreds bucks, but does it matter, at THAT kind of cost? I think no.

To be clear, the X68000 Final Fight wasn't 100% exact in every way,  it did not put as many enemies on-screen as the arcade, I think only 5-6 at most, instead of the arcade's 7-8,  but still more than SFC-SNES's 3 and MegaCD-Sega's 4.

Anyway.... The creators of the PC-Engine family of hardware, Hudson, did contribute to the design of the Sharp X68000, at least it's OS, and perhaps (not confirmed) maybe its graphic chip(s) also.

If (oh man, IF!) NEC & Hudson had ever come up with a true 16-bit PC-Engine 2  (say in 1990 or 1991), rather than the modestly upgraded 8-bit SuperGrafx of 1989, I would've hoped for X68000-quality results.   The PCE/TG family would've become legendary, in the same sense as the Neo-Geo did.

I wish there had been a X68000 version of Forgotten Worlds.  I'm sure it would've been almost-exact, in the same sense that X68K  Ghouls 'N Ghosts, Strider, Final Fight and SF2CE were.

The X68000 is very much what I had wished the SuperGrafx (or PC Engine 2) had been.

[Tatsujin]

here and only for the common amusement:

Amiga:


C64:


at least they both had a simultaneous 2p. mode

[handygrafx]

X68000 destroys the Amiga in the same sense that the Neo-Geo destroys the PCE, MD, SGX, SNES, SegaCD   

To be fair to the Amiga, that's NOT the best the Amiga could do, that's really only Atari ST quality right there.
I'm certain the Amiga could've done MegaCD+ quality, though certainly not as good as Arcade or X68000.

[Tatsujin]

as i said, it's only for amusement purposes, since the amiga version was utterly crap:lol:

the best on that was its sprite size. when i frist saw some screens in the mags back in time, i thought, hella yeas, that will become a superb amiga game. but once you started the game and seen the whole thning in "action", your expectations felt down into the deepest possible basement. unbelievable crap that.

for sure the amiga could have done so much more, but even then, gamewise it was hard to beat the PCE, MD, SGX, SNES, SegaCD fractions. the 68k is out of any range anyway, since that was a $5000 hardware, saturated with just the best components available at the time. no amiga or low cost game hardware could have had just he smallest change against it.

and since the hardware was so uber awesome, they didn't had to redrawn and reprogram the whole thing from scratch, merely just adapt the whole code to different machine and finish was the arcade perfect port!

[blueraven]

wow the c64 version eh? Was that released simultaneously with the mega cd? And was it in ANY was playable?