Greatest HuCard of all time - Poll

[spenoza]

Parasol Stars is slipping! Come on, you can do better than that!

[MasonSushi]

i voted Parasol Stars. Its the reason I got the system.

[termis]

SF2CE is the pinnacle of HuCards, but since it's not on the voting list, oh well.

[CDJ]

PC Genjin 2!

[SignOfZeta]

I thought this was going to be difficult...then I saw Bomberman '94.

[SignOfZeta]

SF2CE is the pinnacle of HuCards, but since it's not on the voting list, oh well.

Technically its pretty impressive since its the biggest, and since it does things Super CDs could never do. It isn't actually all that fun though...to actually play...in 2011, IMO. The bigger picture has to be considered, and in the grand scheme of things once SFII' Turbo was released I played Champion Edition about two times.

For a true SF fan back in the day the lifespan of this HuCard was only about a month between its release in June and the SFC release of Turbo in July. And honestly since the game cost almost $150 (plus a $50 controller) that cash was better spent in the arcade playing a CPS version of Turbo while waiting for the home version.

The timing for SFII' on PCE really sucked

It is cool that it was the only home version of SFII' for a long long time, until the Capcom Collection series came out for PS and SS, I think, but in 1992 I was only interested in the newest update. Now that all 5 versions of SFII are really damned old, I still don't care to play SFII'. I vastly prefer Super Turbo and, on occasion, The World Warrior (just because its so massively unfair), or Rainbow Edition. SFII' is great if you, for some reason, don't have 50 other version of Street Fighter II in your possession, but its honestly kind of useless now. I'd rather player other fighters on PCE like Asuka, Flash Hiders, or AVG. Sure, they are inferior games, but that haven't been totally superseded like SFII' has been.

[Vecanti]

SF2CE is the pinnacle of HuCards, but since it's not on the voting list, oh well.

Technically its pretty impressive since its the biggest, and since it does things Super CDs could never do.

I've heard that before and I always wondered from a technical stand point what people meant by that.  What Does SFII do on HuCard that would not be possible if it were on a Super CD?

[SignOfZeta]

The Super System Card doesn't have enough RAM to load both characters, the BG, and all the sounds from a then-modern fighting game all at once. That's why the Arcade Card was invented.

Fighting games are massive RAM hogs, which is why almost nothing ported to Playstation survived animation cuts.

[awack]

Just to add to what SignOfZeta said which is absolutely right.

SFII has 12 levels/fighters, what you have to understand, is that you play two fighters/levels at once, but you only access the CD once per level...so thats almost one load for two levels.

So why do Side scrollers(a couple) and shooters end up better on the DUO as far as unique sprite frames, sprite size and unique BG tiles are concerned...because some of the best CD games have two loads per level(level and Boss)
To put this into context, remember that a single CD access per level(level and Boss) of 64K/Half a meg (CDROM2) is enough to compete with 8 meg cartridge games.

Thats a bit of an over simplification, because design/memory allocation can come into play.

[Black Tiger]

Although 2 megs would be tight for any kind of SFII port, what I've heard from programmers is that because the sprites are so animated and so fast, that they can't use compression either. Too bad the Arcade Card wasn't released sooner...

The Super System Card doesn't have enough RAM to load both characters, the BG, and all the sounds from a then-modern fighting game all at once. That's why the Arcade Card was invented.

I think that the sounds could be done with adpcm. They wouldn't be as clear as the HuCard SFII though. But I'm sure that the ACD fighters would've just stuck wih adpcm.

SF2CE is the pinnacle of HuCards, but since it's not on the voting list, oh well.

Technically its pretty impressive since its the biggest, and since it does things Super CDs could never do. It isn't actually all that fun though...to actually play...in 2011, IMO. The bigger picture has to be considered, and in the grand scheme of things once SFII' Turbo was released I played Champion Edition about two times.

For a true SF fan back in the day the lifespan of this HuCard was only about a month between its release in June and the SFC release of Turbo in July. And honestly since the game cost almost $150 (plus a $50 controller) that cash was better spent in the arcade playing a CPS version of Turbo while waiting for the home version.

The timing for SFII' on PCE really sucked

It is cool that it was the only home version of SFII' for a long long time, until the Capcom Collection series came out for PS and SS, I think, but in 1992 I was only interested in the newest update. Now that all 5 versions of SFII are really damned old, I still don't care to play SFII'. I vastly prefer Super Turbo and, on occasion, The World Warrior (just because its so massively unfair), or Rainbow Edition. SFII' is great if you, for some reason, don't have 50 other version of Street Fighter II in your possession, but its honestly kind of useless now. I'd rather player other fighters on PCE like Asuka, Flash Hiders, or AVG. Sure, they are inferior games, but that haven't been totally superseded like SFII' has been.

I didn't get SFII' the week it shipped, but it was still several months and what seemed like an eternity during that generation, until Turbo arrived for Genesis and SNES. Both of those games contain Champion Edition though, so the PCE port isn't really the only
version of CE.

Champion Edition is still my favorite version of SFII to this day and I chose it over all others to buy as a dedicated cabinet from an arcade vendor around the time that Alpha 3 was current. Even if I preferred 'Turbo, the PCE game was the only portable 16-bit port until the Nomad was released and it got a huge amount of play time on my TE.

[Arkhan]

I think that the sounds could be done with adpcm. They wouldn't be as clear as the HuCard SFII though. But I'm sure that the ACD fighters would've just stuck wih adpcm.

You can only play one sound at a time with ADPCM.  That would immediately suck as soon as one person throws a hadoken and the other throws a sonic boom

HADOSONICBOHADOSONIHADO

etc. etc.

thas what you'll hear.

and then the punching effects too. 

HADO*WHUMP*

YOGA *SwooooosH*

etc. etc.

it would be retarded

[termis]

Yeah, back then, Turbo was the version to play -- and this was still true as new versions kept on coming out -- but as time passed and the idea of "playing the latest & greatest version" no longer became relevant, CE version eventually reclaimed its status as being my favorite.  If I had to explain, in retrospect, the additions in Turbo seems a bit... I dunno, tacked on.  For example, Chun Li's fireball, and Ryu/Ken's air-spin kicks just doesn't seem "natural" at all.  It all just seems a bit hodge-podgy just to go against all the hacks in its time.   And couple other minor gripe include strange default color schemes (Purple gi on ken, drab gray on Chun Li, strange flesh tones of Blanka/Dhalsim, etc...), and the default speed being too fast IMO (though it seemed right at the time, but in retrospect, I think the too-quick pace de-emphasizes some of the strategy of the game) - yes, I undertand it can be adjusted, but not in the arcades, and fast was the way people were used to playing Hyper by the time it hit homes anyway.

And it's true that the timing+cost of the PCE version really wasn't worth it to vast majority of folks at the time.  No argument there.  And even now, if I want to play CE, I'll pop in SF collection in my saturn most of the times.  Still, I'll pop in CE in my PCE once in a while just to marvel at what the little 8-bitter did.  But hey, we don't live in the past, and we now enjoy the systems/games for what they are now.

Edit: just noticed Zeta said Super Turbo, not Hyper Fighting.  For me, by the time Super Turbos came around,  my interest was waning in SF2 (I think this was generally true too, since the first SSF was kind of a flop IMO).  I was under the impression that Hyper Fighting was the version of choice for most folks this day, but I could be wrong...

[Vecanti]

The Super System Card doesn't have enough RAM to load both characters, the BG, and all the sounds from a then-modern fighting game all at once. That's why the Arcade Card was invented.

Fighting games are massive RAM hogs, which is why almost nothing ported to Playstation survived animation cuts.

You think so? I look at an entire level of Lords of Thunder or this level in Gate of Thunder,
and I just seems like the one SFII background and few sprites pale in comparison. Now maybe the CD is loading data as the level is playing and there is just no pause as you go through the shooter and you can't notice it and that wouldn't work with SFII type game? 

[Bonknuts]

The Super System Card doesn't have enough RAM to load both characters, the BG, and all the sounds from a then-modern fighting game all at once. That's why the Arcade Card was invented.

Fighting games are massive RAM hogs, which is why almost nothing ported to Playstation survived animation cuts.

You think so? I look at an entire level of Lords of Thunder or this level in Gate of Thunder,

and I just seems like the one SFII background and few sprites pale in comparison.  

 'Zeta has it right. There's not enough CDRAM for an identical copy of PCE SF2 hucard to run via Suoer CD 3.0. Lords of Thunder and Gate of Thunder have 'tiled' style backgrounds. I.e. A lot of the level is made with reused tiles. SF2 has a lot of unique detail. But ignoring that, and assuming the whole BG was loaded into VRAM (which is the case on the hucard version), the sprites themselves is the real problem. There's just waaay too much unique frames of animation of two players to fit. GOT and LOT also use compression on the sprites, and decompresses them in real time as a back ground process (from what I saw in the debugger), and even compressed, it doesn't match that of SF2's # of frames of animation. None of the SF2 games on cart for the 16bit systems could be decompressed in real time, that's why the carts are big and all the sprite frames are uncompressed. You need fast as possible access to the frames for vram updates. 256k isn't going to cut it. I mean, the code has to use some of that ram too. You'd need 512k to 640k to do it properly and equivalent (handle 2 chars frames + code). The arcade card started proto working stage development stages in summer-ish 1992. I wouldn't doubt it that SF2 was probably projected for it. But the AC was delayed (AoF was already finished and ready by fall 1993). But there's no direct evidence of that, just speculation.

Now maybe the CD is loading data as the level is playing and there is just no pause as you go through the shooter and you can't notice it and that wouldn't work with SFII type game?

 It's not. It's playing CDDA tracks. They could have streamed data via the sub channel, but they didn't (no game does and only CD+G's did that). But you can easily test this for your self. Take the disc out (open the lid) while playing any level of GOT. You can play through the level without the music. The only game that I know of that streams the level is the Tenchi wo Kurau game, and it used chiptunes because it needs access to the CD for data (can't play CDDA tracks at the same time).

[SignOfZeta]

Edit: just noticed Zeta said Super Turbo, not Hyper Fighting.  For me, by the time Super Turbos came around,  my interest was waning in SF2 (I think this was generally true too, since the first SSF was kind of a flop IMO).  I was under the impression that Hyper Fighting was the version of choice for most folks this day, but I could be wrong...

Super Turbo didn't have the massive PacMan-scale popularity of the earlier versions (didn't even have a contemporary home version, unless you count DOS/3DO), but it was the game to play at least until Street Fighter Zero came out.

You have to realize that the true 2D fighting game fans haven't stopped playing Street Fighter and KOF since SFII was released, and there was a 10 year gap where only one Capcom 2D fighter came out for consoles. So what are they playing every day? Rock Band? Call of Duty? f*ck that shit!

Until SFIV and MvC3 came out it was primarily, MvC2 and CvS2 (most popular) then probably Super Turbo (DC/XB/PS3 version or arcade re-release), Third Strike, and SFZ3. Most people broke out Super Turbo a least once in a while. Its true that things don't "match", some moves have too many frames of animation to blend in with the old stuff, the voices are all f*cked up, etc, but its a little better than Turbo was. As a game it is really really good. The damage is still high compared to a new game, but nothing compared to SFII' where a well placed (or lucky) throw or 100 Hand Slap can shave off %30.

The SNK fans had something to play pretty regularly until KOF XI. Then there was a huge wait, then the putrid but promising KOF XII, and now a huge wait. People really want a home version of KOF XIII, but it might never happen.