Greatest HuCard of all time - Poll

[awack]

oops, i forgot these two large characters, similar but very different in outline and detail.


the four legged creatures middle right. Looks even more impressive in comparison than before



God, im an idiot, i keep leaving large charcters out of the WOT sprite sheet, like i said, a monster of a shooter.

[Arkhan]

Well if you drop some of the animation frames, thered be less overhead.

Its not like other versions of the game didnt do this.  

and no matter what you do it would never turn out like this pile of f*ck


Repeat a bit more tiles than the arcade, drop the animation frames some, itd be ok.  I bet chiptunes would still fit in.  You use the built in stuff, and all the music from SF2 could fit in like <16k of space.

also


Here is another reason why I hate when jackass Europeans touch Japanese games.

Why is Ken's music playing in Vega's stage.  more importantly why are they all f*cked up rehashes, and who thought the guitars sounded good?

They sound like 3AM infomercial guitars.

[Vecanti]

Between a 2meg hucard(rom) vs 2meg CDRAM (ram)? No, no difference. But what you're missing is that the the SF2 game itself doesn't neatly divide each stage area into evenly divided parts. If you forced it into such, something would have to give. And like I said previously, rom has the direct ability to reuse any asset of the entire rom for whatever purpose. It's a form of compression. And it's makes design mechanism that still gave advantages to hucards over CDRAM. And it's not like that 20meg hucard has lots of wasted space, because it doesn't. It's packed. Even the BG tiles are compressed (which, with a rom that size you'd figure there wouldn't be a need to for such relatively small screens).

Yeah, but you don't have worry how efficiently you split and load it with CD. You can duplicate things if it's going to make it easier to load in to 2meg chunks later. You only have to worry about the single biggest point where you need the most data at once to have a complete level.  

So with the idea of NEC creating a Demo HuCard of SFII  it's really as simple as saying it's would be a limit of fitting 1 Level and just 2 characters into >2meg HuCard as well then?  1 level and 2 characters being the time I can think of there being the single point that most memory would be used/needed in SFII.

[Black Tiger]

Yeah, but you don't have worry how efficiently you split and load it with CD. You can duplicate things if it's going to make it easier to load in to 2meg chunks later. You only have to worry about the single biggest point where you need the most data at once to have a complete level. 

Since you're talking about technical advantages/disadvantages: You don't have to worry how efficiently you split and load it with a HuCard either.

So with the idea of NEC creating a Demo HuCard of SFII  it's really as simple as saying it's would be a limit of fitting 1 Level and just 2 characters into >2meg HuCard as well then?  1 level and 2 characters being the time I can think of there being the single point that most memory would be used/needed in SFII.

Yeah, it's the same challenge whether it's cart/HuCard or CD. You're just trying to fit enough of the original game within a certain amount of space. With Super CD, you technically have 2 1/2 megs of space to work with and adpcm uses compression, so if the sample quality can be adjusted (can it?), the same quality samples should take up less space using adpcm than pcm. I don't know if you need more code to use adpcm samples though... But Bonknuts already pointed out that the character sprites alone, with no game code, sound or backgrounds, pretty much uses up 2 megs of space.

[SignOfZeta]

I dunno, the more I look at it, MAYBE they could have done a SCD release of SF2.

I mean, if they could port it to the Commodore 64, they can port it to the SCD

Well, yeah, but they wanted it to not be shit.

Asuka and AVG are impressive, but I'm pretty sure if someone went through the effort to make one of those massive sprite sheets for these games and compare it to SFII' you'd see a huge difference.

SFII' is a six button game, three punches, three kicks. Three when standing, three different ones when crouching, three different ones when jumping, and often times three different ones when jumping diagonally. Also you have three different strengths of special (usually the same animation, but different timings and speeds need to be coded). You also have way more speech and the backgrounds have destructible obstacles, line scrolling floors, and animated elephants and bicycles and people and stuff.

In addition to being a f*cking great game just from a gameplay perspective, SFII was also pure graphical overkill from hell when it came out, which is partially why it was so successful. All the home versions are extremely good, considering the limitations. Even the b/w Gameboy one is surprisingly decent. They could have made something like Super Fighter 3 (bootleg FC cart) or the C64 game, but they are (or were) Capcom, and they don't put out much crap (well, now they do). If the PCE one was more like the C64 one it would have been extremely unpopular. Bad, not just for Street Fighter and Capcom, but bad for NEC. Keep in mind that the SFC version of SFII had been out for some time and it was very close to the arcade. A C64-quality version would have really made the PC Engine look like an 8-bit relic.

[Arkhan]

I wasnt saying they make it C64 quality, I was just saying if they could manage that on the C64, the SCD should be able to handle a better game.

Its one of those never-going-to-know-for-sure things, unless someone decides theyre going to try and do it.

but even then, I doubt it would ever see completion.

and now that I think about it anyways, who cares if it wasnt on CD?

the card is easily accessible and playable.

[Bonknuts]

Yeah, but you don't have worry how efficiently you split and load it with CD. You can duplicate things if it's going to make it easier to load in to 2meg chunks later. You only have to worry about the single biggest point where you need the most data at once to have a complete level.  

 Correct. You don't have to worry about global efficiency side like you do on a cart rom project. But I think that's obvious. What's not so obvious, is just is how limiting 2megabits of ram can be, compared to a rom project. Sure, ADPCM can save space that you would normally store for samples (assuming your game/etc is using SFX samples), or as slow ram (cause it's much slower to access) giving you a total of 2.5megabits is no samples used. It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure you can't read ADPCM while it's playing. You can only write to it while it's playing (huvideo does this to stream ADPCM from main memory to ADPCM memory). IIRC, it's because the play pointer register and the read pointer register are shared, but the write pointer register (that forms the address) isn't. I.e. you can't do 2.25megabit normal (2megabite fast, 0.25 slow) and 0.25megabit for sample playback via ADPCM controller combination at the same time. But I could be wrong, I'd have to look into it. ADPCM 8khz takes up less space than 7khz 5bit pcm, so it's an advantage to use ADPCM to store and play samples over normal interrupt+DDA method of the cpu. And ADPCM play takes almost no cpu resource too in comparison, which means no complex dual interrupt system (VDC and TIMER, both out of sync/phase) ).

 Many CD titles are self contained areas/levels with redundant data. So it's faster to load a level/area/whatever, instead of seeking all over the place for different packets/chunks of data (funny, Rondo does exactly this though, making the loading longer than it should be). And lazily, they simple recopy/paste enemies from other levels of the game into these sections, when they could have added something unique to each level sprite or tileset, etc. A strength of the CD format severally missed out on, on most titles IMO.

So with the idea of NEC creating a Demo HuCard of SFII  it's really as simple as saying it's would be a limit of fitting 1 Level and just 2 characters into >2meg HuCard as well then?  1 level and 2 characters being the time I can think of there being the single point that most memory would be used/needed in SFII.

 Correct. Though, you could make it even more painful but save some memory if you have the winning poses/etc part of the match as a 'load' section as well, but that would mean next rounds would have loads too (where as additional rounds of the same characters and same level would need no reloading if no character loose screens appeared,etc). If NEC upgraded the SCD 3.0 memory to logical additional 256k via cart instead of a funky number like 192k (which means multiple chips), then it's pretty likely that you would have seen a version SF2 on Super CD. And maybe only SCD. Dunno. There's no denying that SF2 port to SuperCD would have suffered some cuts in character frames of animation as it is now, but that it's only speculation as to if that's the main reason why they didn't do Super CD version. Maybe there were other influencing factors, like making an impressive hucard, making it available to all PCE systems CD or not, including portables, etc. But one would think, that if the the 2megabit CDRAM limit *wasn't* a huge factor as I and others are pointing out, then why wasn't there a slightly crippled SCD release of it at the same time or relatively close? But then again, why didn't we see any additional SF2 games for the ACD that had none of either projects limitations - yet saw impressive ports of Neo Geo games?

 Also, Bonk 3 SCD game has missing frames of animation for giant bonk that couldn't fit into memory (or specific level design requirements, maybe most levels but not all). Yet the hucard version has the additional frames.

[nodtveidt]

Many CD titles are self contained areas/levels with redundant data. So it's faster to load a level/area/whatever, instead of seeking all over the place for different packets/chunks of data

This is what I do, since it seems logical... reseeking multiple times, even in the same general area, is an expensive operation.

[spenoza]

But then again, why didn't we see any additional SF2 games for the ACD that had none of either projects limitations - yet saw impressive ports of Neo Geo games?

Capcom ports for the PCE were almost universally programmed by NEC Avenue or some other company that was not Capcom. Capcom basically didn't get involved with the PC Engine, so decisions about platform and such were up to NEC/Hudson.

But let's think about the release timetable a little bit. Street Fighter II hit the SFC in June of '92 Street Fighter II' on PCE was released exactly 1 year later. A mere month later the SNES got Street Fighter II Turbo, skipping the '/CE release altogether. The MD lagged another 2 months in getting Street Fighter II' Plus: Champion Edition. While the PCE had the first release among the 3 consoles of the SF2 upgrades, it was also the only version not programmed by Capcom.

Further complicating this is that a single month after the MD release of SFII' Plus Capcom released Super Street Fighter II to arcades, with several new characters and upgrades to graphics, animation, and sound all around. NEC Avenue could likely have released an Arcade Card version of SFII' Plus/Turbo/Champion, but the Arcade Card didn't come out until March of '94, meaning that 5 months AFTER the release of Super SF2 to arcades players would be getting, essentially, the Genesis/SNES version of a slightly upgraded SFII' in a form available only to a more limited audience of gamers (those who bought the Arcade Card and already had a CD unit or Duo). And a mere 3 months after the release of the Arcade Card (June '94, one year after the release of the SFC SF2T), Capcom brought Super SF2 to the SFC.

The argument could be made that the Arcade Card could accommodate a more than passable port of SSF2, but I imagine the license cost to NEC Ave or Hudson would be large enough that it wouldn't have been worth the cost, disregarding the development time and the limited potential for sales. It could have boosted Arcade Card sales greatly if it had been released before the SFC version, but arriving later and with the hardware burden it would have required, it would have been a tough sell, even if it had been better than the SFC version and, later, the MD version. The Neo Geo licenses from SNK were probably much cheaper and helped differentiate the system, especially given how relatively badly the SFC and MD dealt with those ports (NEC Ave and Hudson were both much better dev houses than the companies that licensed the Neo Geo titles for the SFC and MD).

In the end, the PCE version of SFII' on Hucard was well placed to take advantage of the tail end of the PCE's market presence, and beat all other SF2 upgrades to market. It was available for anyone who owned any form of PC Engine compatible hardware, meaning more potential for sales. Given how few Arcade Card games were released, it was clear that the PCE dev houses knew the system's days were limited and were thus not eagerly embracing licenses or original IP left and right. I really think NEC Avenue handled the SF2 property on the PCE as well as could be expected, if not better. Had they taken any other approach I think they would have seen less success.

[awack]

Also, Bonk 3 SCD game has missing frames of animation for giant bonk that couldn't fit into memory (or specific level design requirements, maybe most levels but not all). Yet the hucard version has the additional frames.

Yep, memory allocation, how much memory you want to use and where. They decided to use a large chunk, not just for one, but for two large sprites Simultaneously, the lesson in my oppinion, is how not to design a game..no matter what level, you will be walking past the same brick, rock or tree trunk over and over and over again, character sprites have 2 or 3 frames each, Bosses are large, but not much better animation wise.

And lazily, they simple recopy/paste enemies from other levels of the game into these sections, when they could have added something unique to each level sprite or tileset, etc. A strength of the CD format severally missed out on, on most titles IMO.

I might be wrong, but I'm guessing production time/cost. If you look at the average side scrolling action game, they have around 200 to 600 unique sprite frames, the absolute best, range from 700 to 1000 frames, Rondo has about 2900 frames, of which somewhere around 2600 are unique...not only that, but many are very detailed, try and draw several frames in the style of say Aladdin(cartoony) and then try in the style of Rondo/SOTN.



Level 3, almost looks like an entire game.






there are are quite a few more unique tiles than whats in the shots like this shot, but I'm just giving an idea.




Hell, they didn't even care if it was all visible to the player, I'm guessing they were thinking about putting a window there.

BG layer on                                          BG layer off





I started ripping Asuka, but fighting games are just so damn boring to rip. Every time i play it, i find a new move you can pull off, the game is really hurt by the two button setup. I'm probably the only person who feels this way, but i prefer Asuka over SFIICE, its faster, more going on on-screen at once, great combination moves and other things like being able to step to the side to dodge.

[Arkhan]

As a whole, Asuka 120% and Advanced VG are both more fun than SF2CE to me.

nostalgia and chiptunes are the only things keeping SF2CE interesting for me.

[Bonknuts]

Further complicating this is that a single month after the MD release of SFII' Plus Capcom released Super Street Fighter II to arcades, with several new characters and upgrades to graphics, animation, and sound all around. NEC Avenue could likely have released an Arcade Card version of SFII' Plus/Turbo/Champion, but the Arcade Card didn't come out until March of '94, meaning that 5 months AFTER the release of Super SF2 to arcades players would be getting, essentially, the Genesis/SNES version of a slightly upgraded SFII' in a form available only to a more limited audience of gamers (those who bought the Arcade Card and already had a CD unit or Duo). And a mere 3 months after the release of the Arcade Card (June '94, one year after the release of the SFC SF2T), Capcom brought Super SF2 to the SFC.

 It might have come out in March '94, but the card was supposed to come out in fall '93 (design wise, it was final and ready, etc). It was delayed because of production reasons (IIRC, relative to cost.. the ram ICs). The Arcade card started out mid-to-late '92, was upgraded and working/finalized mid '93 (the original arcade card has missing a lot of key features and required the CPU to be in slow mode (1.79mhz) to access the data ports). Art of Fighting was finished by fall '93 and ready for release. I can't say for other titles, as I don't have access to the source code for that project. But it wouldn't be unthinkable for other titles as well. That puts a different time frame to all of this. AoF came out in late '92, and it would've been released almost a year to date for ACD (though they had the direct source code for the Neo Geo version. I can see it in the comments and parts of the translation to 6280 code). SF2 game series were mostly upgrades to existing engines. Much easier to tweak and modify and existing engine that to build a game from the ground up. The turn around/dev time to produce the additional games in the series wouldn't have taken as long, since they already had SF2 CE developed and released. More profitable from that standpoint, and most profitable to produce a disc than a hucard with a custom mapper and lots of rom. But then again, your target audience is smaller. But, the more A list games you have for the new format - the more popular it becomes and the base increases (every potential Duo unit and user, was a potential buyer for the upgrade). They also should have played the benefit bi-compatible card more often of the ACD (SCD titles the loaded much less when using the ACD).

I might be wrong, but I'm guessing production time/cost. If you look at the average side scrolling action game, they have around 200 to 600 unique sprite frames, the absolute best, range from 700 to 1000 frames, Rondo has about 2900 frames, of which somewhere around 2600 are unique...not only that, but many are very detailed, try and draw several frames in the style of say Aladdin(cartoony) and then try in the style of Rondo/SOTN.

 They could have added small changes in detail to the enemies. I don't mean any major stuff and something more than just palette swaps. Once the original set was pixel'd, making more unique changes for additional sets would more of a trivial thing relative to starting from scratch. I'm not saying this with specifically Rondo in mind (though my comment about it was specifically the rather strange poor load scheme used), but generally to all CD games for the PCE. Sure, there are some exceptions but most don't feel like much of any advantage from the CD storage format itself (other than cinemas, adpcm streaming, or CDDA tracks).  Some of those frames of animation you count aren't specifically a 'pixeled' frames (they use palette and/or multiple sprites overlaying via script or such). I'm specifically referring to pixel'd frames of animation (because they almost always take up most space to store each frame than the other method mentioned).

[fragmare]

Where the hell are SF2:CE and Nectaris/Military Madness?!  Better question... where the hell is Ninja Spirit?!?!?!  In lieu of those, I voted Devil's Crush.  The music is amazing, and the replay value is better than anything else on this list, except for maybe Bomberman 93/04 in Battle mode.

I'd also like to point out that many of the enemies in WoT/LoT use "ball n' chain" sprite mechanics, which require next to no animation frames stored in RAM/VRAM.  All you need is a body, a head, and a somewhat circular sprite you can chain together to form the "neck".  The actual animation of said enemy is just executed in code by moving around those three sprites.  Simple but effective... elegant, really.  Dracula X, on the other hand, is a marvel... there are so many animated frames, it's ridiculous.  Then again, it accesses the CD quite frequently.

I'll be pretty honest here and just say fitting two SF2:CE characters, the background tiles, voices, and code into 2Mbit (256KB) of RAM (at least without sacrificing animation frames) is pretty impossible.  Have you ever gone through and looked at all the SF2 characters' frames?  There are a LOT.  Consider that each 16x16 sprite uses 128 bytes of RAM/ROM.  Each SF2 character frame is comprised of ~16 of those sprites (give or take, depending on the particular animation frame).  That's 2KB.  Let's say each SF2 character has 64 unique animation frames (a pretty conservative estimate).  That's 128KB.  Double that, since there are two characters on-screen, and that's your 2Mbit (256KB) of RAM used up in character animation ALONE... that's not even counting background tiles and code.  Perhaps if the Super System Card was 3 or 4Mbit, they could have pulled this off... but as it was, HuCard was the obvious choice for mass appeal without sacrificing the game's integrity.

[Vecanti]

Yeah, I see what you are saying. I was looking at it from even if each sprite was 1meg each, the system with SCD card + console ram is 2.5meg.  There are 12 characters.  20meg card - 12meg = 8meg for the rest of the game.  There are 14 levels(with bonus rounds), battle over screen with lots of talking (counting 10 to 1) that loads separately, 12 character endings that load separately, the opening screen animations, the setting screens and character selection screens, and so forth.  You dived that 8 meg by all that other stuff.  Are you loading .5 meg of stuff for each of just the 1/14 of the levels?  If so 14 x .5 is 7meg +12meg for characters that is 19meg.  That leaves 1 meg for all the other endings, openings, selection, etc.  And still leaves room for it to be theoretically doable.

[SignOfZeta]

I'm sure that a version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo/Super Street Fighter IIX could have been done with the arcade card, and it would have been the best version of SFII until the PS and SS versions came out. It would have been better than the 3DO since while the 3DO version had larger sprites, it also had really pathetic backgrounds (missing things even the SNES ver of SFII had).

But would it have sold? Well, probably? Its hard to say. Capcom decided that Super was good enough for SFC and MD and that Super Turbo wasn't necessary. I found this really f*cking frustrating back in the day. If they felt that it wouldn't make money on the SFC then...its hard to make the case that it would have made any money as an Arcade Card release. It did get released on 3DO...a PCE version would have made more money than a 3DO version, wouldn't it?

Either way, it sure would have been nice.