Street Fighter Alpha 2 - (SNES)

Loved Alpha 2 on the SNES for all the reasons I was supposed to. No alternatives. A lot of weird hindsight about that game. People really don't remember how common inferior ports were during those days. All console ports for a long time were inferior ports of arcade games.

I knew it wasn't arcade perfect but I had access to an SNES so I rented and played the crap out of Alpha 2.

DynamoManX posted...

bmbmpw posted...

Vegeta1000 posted...

bmbmpw posted...

Vegeta1000 posted...

considering the obvious hardware limitations.

People keep saying this.

I looked things up and got some awesome comments in these forums and it seems the main issue is memory, only that. Had nintendo wanted to have say a 96mbit cart, the game would look the same, sans custom chip and no lag.

The SNES handled SF2T's speed and SSF2's bulk and graphics without breaking a sweat so yeah....

SFA2 is beyond those games. It's a miracle that the SNES was even able to handle the game.

How is it so beyond them?

The SF2 games were largely developed on CPS1 hardware (SSF2, which was the first CPS2 title, still carried over most of the CPS1 spritework from the previous three installments). SFA2 however was built from the ground up for CPS2, and had much more memory-and-CPU intensive animations and data.

The 16-Bit SF2 ports, which were among the best of that era's arcade ports, were still noticeably cut down from their coin-op counterparts, and were actually pushing the SNES and Genesis to their brink. (SNES SSF2 was missing some of the announcer's voice samples in order for Capcom to fit the game into a 32-meg cart). I think that's one of the reasons (apart from the horrible U.S sales of the SSF2 ports) why Capcom didn't port over Super Turbo to both consoles; they'd reached the max cart sizes of that era.

SFA2 circumvented the cart limit by utilizing the S-DD1 chip, but even w/o the chip the port would've brought the console to its knees...it was well beyond the SNES' capabilities.

Are you sure about that? i remember a Street Fighter Alpha having a CPS Changer release ( before the final CPS2 release).

bmbmpw posted...

DynamoManX posted...

bmbmpw posted...

Vegeta1000 posted...

bmbmpw posted...

Vegeta1000 posted...

considering the obvious hardware limitations.

People keep saying this.

I looked things up and got some awesome comments in these forums and it seems the main issue is memory, only that. Had nintendo wanted to have say a 96mbit cart, the game would look the same, sans custom chip and no lag.

The SNES handled SF2T's speed and SSF2's bulk and graphics without breaking a sweat so yeah....

SFA2 is beyond those games. It's a miracle that the SNES was even able to handle the game.

How is it so beyond them?

The SF2 games were largely developed on CPS1 hardware (SSF2, which was the first CPS2 title, still carried over most of the CPS1 spritework from the previous three installments). SFA2 however was built from the ground up for CPS2, and had much more memory-and-CPU intensive animations and data.

The 16-Bit SF2 ports, which were among the best of that era's arcade ports, were still noticeably cut down from their coin-op counterparts, and were actually pushing the SNES and Genesis to their brink. (SNES SSF2 was missing some of the announcer's voice samples in order for Capcom to fit the game into a 32-meg cart). I think that's one of the reasons (apart from the horrible U.S sales of the SSF2 ports) why Capcom didn't port over Super Turbo to both consoles; they'd reached the max cart sizes of that era.

SFA2 circumvented the cart limit by utilizing the S-DD1 chip, but even w/o the chip the port would've brought the console to its knees...it was well beyond the SNES' capabilities.

awesome reply. Tag to reply later

You're completely right.

However, ports weren't arcade perfect back then. For example, this is SF2 on the SNES:

http://www.fightersgeneration.com/np5/gm/sf2-s3.jpg

And this is the arcade version:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ePJsX2YdqAs/hqdefault.jpg

Some were even more dramatic, for example, this is mortal kombat for the SNES: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PzM2CoRaJj8/maxresdefault.jpg
And in the arcade: http://images.designntrend.com/data/images/full/83306/mortal-kombat-arcade-kollection.jpg?w=780

The animation loss was always similar to the graphics quality loss too. My point is, whether it was CPS1 or CPS2, everything would have to be redone and/or watered down for the SNES anyway

Yeah, MK1 on the SNES was meh, but I found it easier to look at and play compared to the Genesis version. Bigger character sprites AND way better sounding music.

BombermanGold posted...

Yeah, MK1 on the SNES was meh, but I found it easier to look at and play compared to the Genesis version. Bigger character sprites AND way better sounding music.

I never got to play MK1 on the genesis until a couple months ago. I recall seeing lots of pictures and reviews in gaming magazines and they made them look almost the same. Boy I was wrong.

The Genesis version is very inferior. It's lacking most of the voices and it almost looks and feels like an "alternate" version (such as, an amiga or game gear version) instead of a "serious" one like the SNES one