Would Darkstalkers be possible on SNES?

[calgon]

I think right off the bat the music would take a big hit, but seeing Street Fighter Alpha 2 on snes, makes me think this would be possible.

[Kitsune Sniper]

And seeing Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the SNES... I'm glad they never even attempted to port it.

[Vlad]

And seeing Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the SNES... I'm glad they never even attempted to port it.


Explain, plz. I think Capcom did a huge effort and the outcome was satisfactory.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Explain, plz. I think Capcom did a huge effort and the outcome was satisfactory.

Slowdown? Load times? Chopped off, scaled down graphics? Awful music? Controls that felt off? (Though this was common with 16-bit generation console ports.)

The entire Darkstalkers series had beautiful music and graphics. So did SFA2. But after seeing the complete mess that was made with the SNES port? I'm glad they didn't even start to do that.

[Sothy]

No.

They stopped making SNES games awhile ago.

[calgon]

I liked the SFAII port. Obviously, it's not the definitive version of the game, but it's still playable and fun. The load time is less than two seconds.

But I do echo your opinion on the music. It sounds very muted.

[kedawa]

It could have been done and I don't think it's fair to use SFA2 as proof that it couldn't.

SFA2 was botched on SNES. There's no reason why it had to be so slow and choppy when Super SF2 (which used the same CPS2 hardware as SFA2 and Darkstalkers in the arcade) was very playable and had only occasional slowdown.

Capcom has a nasty habit of trying to shoehorn every little detail into their console ports even if it ruins performance.
Just look at CvS Pro for PS1, it looks like garbage because they just forced the DC versions assets onto hardware that can't handle them, instead of replacing them with something more appropriate. The reult is a dithered, pixelated mess.
They did the same thing with the Genesis SF2 ports. Instead of reshading the graphics to match the reduced color pallete, they just recolored the backgrounds and made almost everything the same color. (What I mean by that is that if there was something that used 4 shades of red and something that used four shades of green, they just made both use the four shades of green, instead of just reshading to two shades of red and two shades of green. Just look at chun li's background and you'll see what I mean.)

[Ze_ro]

I think the basic message here is that the ports of SSF2 and SFA2 show that a SNES version of Darkstalkers was definitely possible, although some shortcuts would obviously have to be taken.

Capcom probably knew it would take a good bit of work to get the conversion right, and since the arcade version wasn't particularly popular in North America, it wasn't worth doing. After all, they skipped over Super Turbo and SFA1, so skipping Darkstalkers probably wasn't a difficult decision.

Personally, I think the SFA2 port was pretty well done given the circumstances. There was never any chance of it being arcade perfect, but I think they got the gameplay right for the most part.

--Zero

[Steven]

I think the basic message here is that the ports of SSF2 and SFA2 show that a SNES version of Darkstalkers was definitely possible, although some shortcuts would obviously have to be taken.

Capcom probably knew it would take a good bit of work to get the conversion right, and since the arcade version wasn't particularly popular in North America, it wasn't worth doing. After all, they skipped over Super Turbo and SFA1, so skipping Darkstalkers probably wasn't a difficult decision.

Personally, I think the SFA2 port was pretty well done given the circumstances. There was never any chance of it being arcade perfect, but I think they got the gameplay right for the most part.

--Zero


Great post. My thoughts to a tee. DS would have been possible, but with some significant cuts. I too thought SFA2 port on SNES wasn't so bad. If you compare it to its 32-bit "brothers" of course you'll laugh. On its own merits? It was an impressive port given the circumstances IMO

[BydoEmpire]

Of course they could. You can port almost any game to any system - the SNES had a bajillion 2d fighters. Of course it's going to take a hit in graphics and sound, but you could still get the game. If you can do Ms Pac Man on the 2600 and have it look and play pretty well, you can do Darkstalkers on the SNES.

[j_factor]

I was just about to say, if they can do Mortal Kombat games for Master System, they can do Darkstalkers for SNES.

A concern though, would be cartridge capacity. Street Fighter Alpha 2 for SNES was on a very large cartridge (for the system) and used some crazy ridiculous compression schemes. The only reason that port was even done, was because of how popular Alpha 2 was, and because of the continuing viability of Super Famicom software in Japan. I don't think such a port of Darkstalkers would've been worth the effort.

[xplics]

Explain, plz. I think Capcom did a huge effort and the outcome was satisfactory.

It was a great port for the SNES at the time but if you look at the quality of the arcade translation compared to say the saturn version at the time there was big differences in graphics, gameplay speed, options etc.

[Zebbe]

Anything is possible on the SNES. Just put a Super-duper-FX chip in the cartridge and your creativity won't be hold back by any limits!

[Ed Oscuro]

A SuperFX style chip would go a long way - of course the Alpha games already had that custom chip, but perhaps one with more capabilities would go a ways.

In any case, yes, you can do it, of course. It's not going to run at the same resolution. The music - I don't think that's going to be as great a gap as people might think, as the Darkstalkers I'm thinking of has that fairly unremarkable mid-90s Capcom sound that doesn't rely too much on a sound chip's capabilities, and focuses more on setting out a tune (if that makes any sense).

[CosmicMonkey]

SNES CD Rom? We're probably never gonna know the exact specs of the SNES CD unit and if it would have added any extra graphical/processing hardware. But if it did have extra custom hardware inside (like Super Super FX chips :p) then I'm sure a CD enabled wonder-SNES would easily have been able to handle a pretty decent port of the game. In fact, imagine if the unit had been released and Capcom had released CD versions of SSF2X and SFAlpha2.

And a decent home port of Alien vs Predator on CPS2.

[MegaDrive20XX]

Not by far I'd say, but ironic that the 32X almost had Darkstalkers.

[Kitsune Sniper]

It was a great port for the SNES at the time but if you look at the quality of the arcade translation compared to say the saturn version at the time there was big differences in graphics, gameplay speed, options etc.

Even for the SNES it was sub-par. As mentioned earlier in this thread, compare SFA2 to Super Street Fighter II. That was one hell of a good port. After seeing that particular game's quality, SFA2 is like... Street Combat.

[Ed Oscuro]

SNES CD Rom? We're probably never gonna know the exact specs of the SNES CD unit and if it would have added any extra graphical/processing hardware.
Of course it would've; that's part of why we didn't see it - Sony and Nintendo kept revising the specs upwards as time went on, and that eventually outlived the partnership.

[DreamTR]

ALpha 2 was pure poo on SNES. It was $$$ too, $69.99 IIRC. SSF2 on SNES had great gameplay for what it was, including speed options not available in the arcade PCB.

As far as the Genesis one goes, the gameplay was great on that as well, but still had Genesis style gameplay. I saw no issues with it as a SF player.

[kazuo]

Not by far I'd say, but ironic that the 32X almost had Darkstalkers.

Ironic? No.

Would have been awesome? Yeah, as long as it wasn't a shovel port job like MKII and Primal Rage... ugh