Nostalgia

Gunstars is out on XBLA tomorrow I think (just US though). Will have online co-op and leaderboards I\'ve been told. I\'ll try the demo as I\'ve never played it before.

I\'m also waiting for Sonic 3 to be released and also Sonic and Knuckles. Got the first 2 Sonics on XBLA and am glad that Sega are including the \'lock-on\' feature when you have them all which sadly wasn\'t included in the Ultimate Mega Drive Collection.



( Edited 10.06.2009 10:41 by wAyNe - sTaRT )

I'd feel like a mug if I bought any of the megadrive sonics AGAIN, I have been tempted though just for the gamer points

I definitely wouldn't want to buy them again either... I already have the GC Sonic collections and most of them on MegaDrive anyway.
After that having them on Ecksbawks just for Gamerpoints and leaderboards just feels like a waste of MS Points that could be used on Sonic Unleashed dlc.

I've got Sonic Mega Collection also. The only reason I got them on the 360 was so that I would always be able to just play them whenever without the need of plugging in the GC controller and memory card into the Wii and also getting the game out etc. It's nice and convenient for me this way.

The less barriers between me and the classic Sonics the better.

I have them on homebrew channel so I can use the Wiimote with them , also have them on my DS, so yeah I don't need to purchase them again.

My bad on Gunstar Super Heroes - I thought it was a port. The reason I said that it's the worst versions is because the GBA/DS has a much lower screen resolution than the Mega Drive, and Mega Drive/SNES ports to these platforms have always suffered as a result.

Martin_ said:
My bad on Gunstar Super Heroes - I thought it was a port. The reason I said that it's the worst versions is because the GBA/DS has a much lower screen resolution than the Mega Drive, and Mega Drive/SNES ports to these platforms have always suffered as a result.

Sure, but when the resolution is a third less, there is an inevitable loss of detail. Gunstar Heroes' main attraction is arguably the lovely visuals and the hectic gameplay. I wouldn't want to play it at a resolution of 240 x 160 on such a small screen with so much going on. It would be a worse experience, I feel, extra content or not.

Martin_ said:
Sure, but when the resolution is a third less, there is an inevitable loss of detail. Gunstar Heroes' main attraction is arguably the lovely visuals and the hectic gameplay. I wouldn't want to play it at a resolution of 240 x 160 on such a small screen with so much going on. It would be a worse experience, I feel, extra content or not.

While most GBA/DS "ports" I own I've played little of the originals, I believe that a handheld version of something great is even greater; which is why I'm so ecstatic about FFVII finally being easily available on PSN.

FFVII on PSP will not lose anything in terms of graphics or detail from the original version, though. So there is a difference. As for GBA/DS, I tend to know the originals well enough to notice the loss of detail. Some characters lose their facial features and everything in their GBA/DS ports, while others will maintain the size of the sprites, at the cost of everything being bigger and taking up more screen space, thus the player's view of any given scene is a third smaller.

In a hectic side-scrolling shooter like Gunstar Heroes, I imagine this would matter quite a lot. To me it would, anyway. I would never get the GBA/DS version of a game ported from consoles. Though I'm not a very big fan of portables, anyway, and avoid them wherever possible. For this reason, I bought a Super Game Boy for my Super Famicom. Let's me play old Game Boy games on my telly!

Well like I said before, had a game been made specifically for the GBA it would probably work better with the GBA's limitations, like Gunstar Super Heroes and the Megaman series.

And, wouldn't the Super GameBoy have the same ratio problem as the GB anyway? Otherwise I would have suggested the GameBoy Player for the GC. Alas, when played on a bigger screen there's a loss of quality. The animations on Sonic Advance look a bit ugly because of all the noticable enlarged pixels, but when played on a GBA they look excellent.

The Super Mario Advance games and Link to the Past where perfect ports on the GBA.

I was so suprised when I played Sonic Genisis on the GBA to find it had been completly butchered, there was some other 3 in 1 mega drive pack that wasn't ported very well either.

Made me relise there must have been a fair bit of work inolved getting it to feel right on such a small screen.

SuperLink said:
Well like I said before, had a game been made specifically for the GBA it would probably work better with the GBA's limitations, like Gunstar Super Heroes and the Megaman series.

Of course, but we were talking about ports, not exclusive GBA/DS games. It was my mistake about Gunstar Super Heroes, it's not a port. It is, however, heavily-derived from the Mega Drive game. Upon watching videos, they've gone down the 'retain sprite size, less viewable scene' route. This means that the game becomes more difficult (for the wrong reasons), since you've less time to react to enemies and projectiles.

SuperLink said:
And, wouldn't the Super GameBoy have the same ratio problem as the GB anyway? Otherwise I would have suggested the GameBoy Player for the GC. Alas, when played on a bigger screen there's a loss of quality. The animations on Sonic Advance look a bit ugly because of all the noticable enlarged pixels, but when played on a GBA they look excellent.

The ratio is the same, yeah. It's not really a problem for the sorts of Game Boy games I like (Super Mario Land 2, Tetris, etc), since they are original games for the machine. There's no "loss of quality" with viewing Game Boy games on a proper screen, you can just see them clearer. Also, the Super Game Boy adaptor for Super Famicom is a bit unusual in comparison to the Game Boy Player for GameCube. The latter makes the games fill the screen, whereas the Super Game Boy presents the games inside the frame of a faux Game Boy..

.. which I like. It's bigger and easier to see than on an actual Game Boy, but it's not stretched beyond belief.

As for the debate over ports, I guess I'll just show you what I mean, rather than try and explain, because I don't think you really understand. The Mega Drive has a screen resolution of 320x224, most SNES games have a resolution of 256x224 (a scant few use the SNES' 512x478 mode), whilst the GBA/DS has a resolution of just 240x160.

Here's a few quick knock-ups I did in GIMP (a photo-editing package!) to visualize the difference, and the two main options available to developers who are porting Mega Drive/SNES games to the GBA/DS..

The original Mega Drive screen shot, at 320x224.

This is one of the options available - reduce the resolution of everything in order to maintain the same amount of viewable play area the gamer can see (well, the aspect ratio is slightly shorter, but that's hardly the biggest concern). As you can tell, the quality of the sprites is effected greatly. Very little detail remains distinguishable. The main character has lost his mouth, his eyes look comparatively huge, his hair doesn't look right, etc. All the enemies have lost similar details, and the stages of course also lose a lot of detail.

In short - everything's still there, just at a much lower resolution. This is probably the better solution of the two in gameplay terms. Sure, it doesn't look nearly as good, but it should play more or less the same, which is the important thing. They'd obviously have to re-jig the font for the score and text to make it legible.

This is the other solution in GBA/DS ports. All the detail is retained, at the cost of a huge loss of viewable play area for the gamer. To visualize the difference even better, I took a screen cap of the cropping process. Just so no-one gets confused (it's pretty straight-forward, but..), the light square in the middle represents what would be viewable on the GBA/DS screen, and the dark areas surrounding it represent what is no longer present that was in the original version..

Unfortunately, this is the solution that is most-commonly used for GBA/DS ports of games from the Mega Drive/SNES. I feel that while fidelity is retained, the loss of viewable play area is a real significant loss (especially in the case of hectic action games like Gunstar Heroes, Metal Slug, etc). Clearly, neither solution is ideal.

You can say what you like about believing that "a handheld version of something great is even greater", but that's really just biased nonsense. Objectively - the handheld ports of these games (on GBA/DS, not PSP) are inherently inferior, as compromises in either gameplay or graphics have to be made (sometimes companies go for a mix of the two). This ultimately makes the original versions the definitive versions, regardless of your preference for handhelds.

It's also worth mentioning that the GBA sound chip is not as good as the SNES sound chip, but is still sample-based I believe, so also cannot replicate the synthesized Mega Drive soundtracks very well. This is the reason why a lot of these ports have original or re-arranged music, even though they're just ports.

I don't mean to sound all high and mighty. Hope y'all enjoyed the comparisons!

I see what you mean, but after playing so many ports I really don't believe they're that bad. Maybe it's just the types of games I have.

And, the GameBoy Player has a faux GBA screen. You can set it to full screen if you want but it's entirely optional. =p

While were on the subject of ports, the GBA ports of the Donkey Kong Country games were really awful compared to the SNES versions. The visuals looked really bad in places and the colours looked washed out (apperantly done so it showed up better on the GBA screen). The sounds weren\'t so good and the music had completely lost its quality that the original version had. The experience was just lost, in my opinion.

There\'s nothing better than playing the DKC series on it\'s original platform.

Comparison

SNES - Lockjaws Locker

GBA - Lockjaws Locker

Both taken at the same place. Notice the GBA version looks really bright and washed out, as I mentioned above. The sprites don\'t look very good either.



( Edited 10.06.2009 11:32 by Marzy )

Yeah, the Earthworm Jim ports suffered in a similar fashion (although the screen brightness was normal, not ridiculous like DKC). It\'s worth mentioning that SNES ports\' visuals (to say nothing of audio) aren\'t quite so effected by the resolution issue, since the SNES\' most common resolution (256x224) is already quite a bit narrower than the Mega Drive\'s number o\' pixels (320x224).

So from a SNES port-only point-of-view, GBA/DS ports stand to lose less (visually) in translation to these handheld platforms. Their screens are only 16 pixels narrower than SNES, but still quite a lot shorter. Of course, there\'s always the inferior sound.

SuperLink said:
I see what you mean, but after playing so many ports I really don\'t believe they\'re that bad. Maybe it\'s just the types of games I have.

I never said they were \'bad\'. They\'re mostly perfectly satisfactory ports, for what they are. They serve their purpose well enough. On a long train ride, I\'d certainly wack out the GBA and play Street Fighter Alpha 3. I just wanted to point out that what you were saying (\"a handheld version of something great is even greater\") was a load of bollocks. GBA/DS ports of games from higher-resolution systems will always be second-fiddle to the original versions, which can be regarded as the \'proper\' versions, if you like.

Due to these little nuggets of wisdom, I would never choose a GBA/DS port of something over the original version, unless it is technically being \'ported up\' (like from the Atari 2600 or whatever). I\'m not a big fan of truncated games. Your choice of genre may make it less noticeable, I don\'t know. I should think it\'s probably more to do with the fact that you love handhelds rather than your choice of games.

Most of these old 2D games are side-scrollers, and any side-scroller which has it\'s field-of-view cropped is inevitably going to suffer. They could take steps such as lessening the amount of enemies, and/or making the game easier, to amend the greater difficulty which comes with a more limited view of any given scene in any given game. However, this means that the gameplay has changed, and it\'s no longer the same experience.

Either way you cut it, if you just want to talk facts, than these ports to GBA/DS are not the definitive versions. You may still love them to death, that\'s perfectly fine. I think you\'ll find that Zelda looks and sounds better on the SNES than it does on the GBA though, if you actually compare them. The GBA version is a really sweet port, but is inherently inferior to the original versions by virtue of the limitations of Nintendo\'s handheld hardware.

You can still really love the GBA port (and the GBA port of ALTTP is an excellent port), but going around saying it\'s superior just because it\'s on a handheld is really stupid of you. What\'s superior about the GBA version of A Link to The Past? It is the same game with worse graphics and worse sound. So how is it better? I discount Four Swords as part of the port, as it\'s a completely separate and original game.

All in all, you\'re awesome, but you could probably do with toning down the bias that has been kind of prevalent in your posts, of late. You can have whatever preferences you like, but you must also accept the true nature of things. For instance - I really enjoyed the PSone port of Street Fighter Alpha 3, but I\'d never say it\'s better than the original arcade version. Sure it looks more or less the same, but there\'s many missing frames of animation, etc.

SuperLink said:
And, the GameBoy Player has a faux GBA screen. You can set it to full screen if you want but it\'s entirely optional. =p

I didn\'t know that. My mate has one, and he must only ever have it set to full-screen.



( Edited 10.06.2009 13:04 by Martin_ )

Gunstar Heroes is now on the UK XBLA (I\'m presuming the US too) along with 5 other Mega Drive / Arcade games.

-Sonic 3
-Comix Zone
-Altered Beast
-Shinobi(Arcade)
-Phantasy Star 2

400 points each I think. Sonic and Knuckles won\'t be out for a few more weeks.

I\'ve already completed Sonic 3 again getting all the achievements which were even easier than Sonic 2 unfornately. Even though it\'s like the 15 billionth time I\'ve played through it, I yet again enjoyed every second of it.

( Edited 10.06.2009 16:43 by wAyNe - sTaRT )

The first three Sonic games are pretty orgasmic. I have Sonic and Sonic 2 on my Mega Drive and Xbox 360, and I have all the pre-Saturn Sonics (nearly) on a couple of collections I have for my PS2. After Sonic 3 & Knuckles (it's supposed to be a single game), the decline kicks in.

It\'s a shame, because even though Sonic 2 has that special feel to it, I honestly believe Sonic 3 & Knuckles is the peak of the series.

- 3 playable characters
- Huge game with loads of stages
- Pretty good story
- Great music

Hard to believe it dropped so far after one great game like that. Thankfully the Advance titles maintained a level of greatness, but they can\'t reach S3&K.

( Edited 11.06.2009 10:28 by SuperLink )

I think everyone agrees the first three games are where it's at, as far as Sonic is concerned. I think it's a matter of taste whether you prefer Sonic 2 over 3, or vice-versa. While I appreciate the bigger complexity of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and regard it as a damn fine game, I see Sonic 2 as the pinnacle. I think the complexities distracted in some small way from my enjoyment of S3&K. Although there is probably some element of bias in this conclusion, since Sonic 2 brings back so many nostalgic memories, for me. It was advanced enough beyond the original, but still maintained a sense of simplicity.

I got my Super Famicom stuff today! It's fucking sweet! Yoshi's Island is so beautiful. Probably the best example of a primary-coloured game done right. Not great big bland blocks of colour, but rather it's all sketched with crayons. Lovely looking game. Did it have a co-processor on the cart (Super FX, DSP1, etc)? It seems rather too good looking to be standard Super Famicom graphics.

Both consoles are yellow as fuck, though. The seller assures me that the vast majority of SNESs/SFCs that haven't been kept in the box for the last 15+ years will have yellowed, so it's sort of unavoidable. According to him. I'm not that fussed. The widened cartridge slot makes it look ugly, anyway.

Having bought quite a bit of Mega Drive and SFC/SNES gear lately, I've seen first hand the advantage of proper plastic cases. Most of my Mega Drive games are near-mint. Most of my Super Famicom games look quite knackered (though they all work, which is the important thing).

Nintendo should never have gone down the cardboard box route for storing the cartridges in. Few boxes survive, and they're so fragile and awkward that even when people had the box, they just kept the cart loose anyway. Which means even with a lot of boxed SFC/SNES games, the carts will seem quite worn.

The Nintendo build-quality is in good evidence here, though. Nothing was boxed (not the consoles or anything), yet it all functions nicely. Fortunately, the battery-backup system in all the carts for saving games still work, too. For how much longer remains to be seen! It's no big deal to open them up and put new batteries in, though.

Martin_ said:
I think everyone agrees the first three games are where it's at, as far as Sonic is concerned. I think it's a matter of taste whether you prefer Sonic 2 over 3, or vice-versa. While I appreciate the bigger complexity of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and regard it as a damn fine game, I see Sonic 2 as the pinnacle. I think the complexities distracted in some small way from my enjoyment of S3&K. Although there is probably some element of bias in this conclusion, since Sonic 2 brings back so many nostalgic memories, for me. It was advanced enough beyond the original, but still maintained a sense of simplicity.

Also S3&K was at a point in time where Knuckles was actually likeable. Although he remained likeable until pretty recently (Dan Green).

As for cardboard boxes, they were pretty bad, but then again PS1 and DreamCast boxes fell to absolute pieces, and carts were a lot more sturdy than discs!
I did like the MegaDrive boxes though. They felt like such an oddball now I look at it again.

I didn't find PSone boxes that bad (though have seen a fair few with cracks across the front), though the Dreamcast boxes were awful. If you managed not to break them, the hinges still got fucked pretty quick, which means the box comes apart.

The SNES and N64 boxes were just awkward to use and were made of such a fragile material.

It was a sequal and was actually pretty good. Think it's only downfall was that it was single player and very short.

o said:
It was a sequal and was actually pretty good. Think it's only downfall was that it was single player and very short.

I pretty much bought it just for Gunstar Heroes, but the others are a bonus, as although I have another '6 in 1' cart for my MD, it shares none of it's games with this one. Been playing loads of Gunstar Heroes, this morning! The graphics are fantastic for the Mega Drive. Added bonus - it runs fine in 60Hz! Won't be bothering to get an NTSC cart of 'Heroes, then.