Question about Street Fighter II console ports

[Graham Mitchell]

I was playing the PC-Engine port of Street Fighter II: Champion Edition tonight. It's a unique HuCard--theres an elevated "bump" on the surface to accomodate extra memory, like the Tennokoe Memory Bank. It's a very nice port, and is arguably better than the Genesis version.

But after playing it, something occurred to me. SFII required a lot of memory to port to home console, and just about every version was groundbreaking in the size of the cart. The SNES version weighed in at 16 megabits, and was the first SNES cart to do so. (Side note...I remember being part of a focus group for Nintendo and testing that game. It was an EPROM running on a Super Famicom at the time, and the board was so tall they had to take the SFC's out of their cases or it wouldn't fit.)

What I don't understand is why SFII was such a large game? It looks nice, but I don't think the visuals are necessarily any flashier than launch SNES games like F-Zero or Super Mario World. The only reason I can think of is that every character has probably close to 100 frames of animation in their repertoire, and maybe the hardware for all these machines wasn't sufficient on it's own to process this efficiently. (Really, with so many unique poses for each character, the game looks significantly more lively than most other PC-Engine games.)

I can speculate on this all day, but does anybody have a clear answer?

[BiggerBoo]

I hate to just basically SPAM my own speculations, but I've always wondered the same thing, and just assumed that it's because it was made so early on in the 16-bit era's chronology. There probably just wasn't as much knowledge of the limits home consoles could push in then than there was in, say, the latter years. I mean, I'm really just making an educated guess, but it seems like it always works that way, there's always unrivaled gems that come out late in a console's life that just blow the early works out of the water, in a technical aspect, due to trails which, back then, hadn't been blazed.

[tomaitheous]

I've taken my SF2 hucard apart. The bump isn't for the extra memory, it's that the black card part on the hucard, is a little longer than normal and they wanted a typical label area, so they used a raised bump to do that.

As far as why SF2 games are so large, a big part of the reason is all the unique frames of animation. On typical console video games, there's a lot of redundant and duplicate parts of enemies and their frames. Another big reason why SF2 carts are so big, is that all the sprite animation is uncompressed (compare this with other console games that have everything compressed). The reason for the uncompressed frames, is so there is enough time to update the frame to vram. If the frame was compressed, it would require X amount of time to decompress it into ram, then send it to vram during vblank. The Genesis, PCE, SNES don't have enough ram on the CPU side to cache (decompress) all the frames needed for a match, either. So you end up with uncompressed sprite frames that take up the majority of the rom. Why do I know this? Because I've looked into the roms to see how they were put together.

[Xian042]

I know sound samples eat a crap-ton of memory. Gamers would have cried foul if they didn't hear an authentic "HADOKEN!" So to keep most of the sound samples, recreate the music, and all the animations of decent sized sprites would run up a meg count pretty high.
Look at Star Control for the Genesis. The graphics and music and gameplay and such were standard, but it had a ton of awseome sound effects and voices, these sound bytes alone took up more memory than most entire early genny games.

I also remember hearing that perspective scrolling floor was a problem too

[Graham Mitchell]

I've taken my SF2 hucard apart. The bump isn't for the extra memory, it's that the black card part on the hucard, is a little longer than normal and they wanted a typical label area, so they used a raised bump to do that.

As far as why SF2 games are so large, a big part of the reason is all the unique frames of animation. On typical console video games, there's a lot of redundant and duplicate parts of enemies and their frames. Another big reason why SF2 carts are so big, is that all the sprite animation is uncompressed (compare this with other console games that have everything compressed). The reason for the uncompressed frames, is so there is enough time to update the frame to vram. If the frame was compressed, it would require X amount of time to decompress it into ram, then send it to vram during vblank. The Genesis, PCE, SNES don't have enough ram on the CPU side to cache (decompress) all the frames needed for a match, either. So you end up with uncompressed sprite frames that take up the majority of the rom. Why do I know this? Because I've looked into the roms to see how they were put together.

Mystery solved! So it is something like I suspected. Very interesting.


I know sound samples eat a crap-ton of memory. Gamers would have cried foul if they didn't hear an authentic "HADOKEN!" So to keep most of the sound samples, recreate the music, and all the animations of decent sized sprites would run up a meg count pretty high.
Look at Star Control for the Genesis. The graphics and music and gameplay and such were standard, but it had a ton of awseome sound effects and voices, these sound bytes alone took up more memory than most entire early genny games.

I also remember hearing that perspective scrolling floor was a problem too

So this brings up an interesting point with respect to the SNES. The SNES's sound chip utilized wavetable synthesis, which, as I understand it, means that sound samples were manipulated in terms of pitch, etc., to make the music. If that's the case, most SNES games contained a lot of samples. Perhaps that's why a lot of launch SNES games were hitting 8 megs while the average Genesis game was only 4. (Look at Castlevania IV. The visuals are amazing, but a lot of that is mode-7 mediated. The sound, on the other hand, must have taken up a huge amount of memory.) This and the fact that they probably weren't compressing a lot of the samples.

[Az]

The SNES's sound chip utilized wavetable synthesis, which, as I understand it, means that sound samples were manipulated in terms of pitch, etc., to make the music.

Which brings up some head scratchers:

AFAIK, the original SFII port for SNES was the only version to feature samples that varied in pitch according to the button press. This was like the arcade game, for example a jab sonic boom was more slowly announced than a fierce one. You can check this out the sound test. Was that done by hardware manipulation, or were 3 different samples on the cart? Can anyone verify?

Why on earth are both Sega versions larger in cart size, yet have atrocious samples? Barring any Capcom/Nintendo conspiracy, why would something with lower quality samples and a lower color count require more memory?

Any why did no magazine, anywhere, critique the huge black bars on the SNES version? Yet, on the initial Genesis port screens they blasted it for having the lifebars set on a black bar at the top?

[dendawg]

Which brings up some head scratchers:

AFAIK, the original SFII port for SNES was the only version to feature samples that varied in pitch according to the button press. This was like the arcade game, for example a jab sonic boom was more slowly announced than a fierce one. You can check this out the sound test. Was that done by hardware manipulation, or were 3 different samples on the cart? Can anyone verify?

IMHO, the fact that there are 3 different samples in the sound test seems to confirm that there were 3 different samples on the cart. It doesn't seem to me that neither the SNES, Genesis, or TG16 were capable of on the fly resampling.

[WoodyXP]

Barring any Capcom/Nintendo conspiracy, why would something with lower quality samples and a lower color count require more memory?

Code.

[Purkeynator]

The Master System version of SF2 must have really broken down some size barriers...

[Graham Mitchell]

Why on earth are both Sega versions larger in cart size, yet have atrocious samples? Barring any Capcom/Nintendo conspiracy, why would something with lower quality samples and a lower color count require more memory?



Well, what versions are we comparing here? The "Special Champion Edition" version, which was the 1st version released on the Genesis, was 20 megs, right? The initial SNES release was only 16, but you couldn't play as the bosses, and there was only one playable speed. I think that's where the extra 4 megs went. That and the full intro screen.

When SF2 Turbo came out on SNES, I think it was 20 or 24 megs (despite the fact that, in my opinion, it actually looked a little flatter and less vibrant than the first version.)

[zektor]

I am guessing the sound samples (voices) are consuming space the most. There is a lot of detail to the game as well which of course factors in, but I am willing to bet that the game's size would drastically be reduced had the voices been removed and maybe the music downsampled. But then again, who the hell wants that? ;)

[Arkhan]

IMHO, the fact that there are 3 different samples in the sound test seems to confirm that there were 3 different samples on the cart. It doesn't seem to me that neither the SNES, Genesis, or TG16 were capable of on the fly resampling.

Its probably one sample that is played back at various pitches.

Its no different than the instrument samples being played back at different pitches.

I don't think at least.

[ccovell]

I also remember hearing that perspective scrolling floor was a problem too

I don't think any of the systems that SFII came out on would have a problem with the perspective floor. It's simple line scrolling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_scrolling#The_raster_method) that even an NES or GameBoy can do. It also isn't Mode 7. Millions of early '90s idiots (and their virtual dogs too) tended to call it Mode 7, along with tons of other effects that also weren't Mode 7. (Hi, Axelay!)

[XYXZYZ]

AFAIK, the original SFII port for SNES was the only version to feature samples that varied in pitch according to the button press. This was like the arcade game, for example a jab sonic boom was more slowly announced than a fierce one.


Actually the arcade games just had the one pitch. In fact I remember hating that pitch variation in the SNES version because it was not accurate to the arcade game. Along with the "low life meter" music simply speeding up the normal music instead of playing alternate music like the arcade game.

[kedawa]

The sprites are tile based, so not every frame of animation is made up of unique data, but there's still enough to fill up a cart with ease.

[tomaitheous]

The sprites are tile based, so not every frame of animation is made up of unique data, but there's still enough to fill up a cart with ease.

Normally, yes. But no so much on SF2. Plus, you *need* as much bandwidth as you could possibly get in a single frame upload. So the sprites are stored as a single frame, and that means any redundant sprites cells (if there are any in that frame). It's all about bandwidth. Take a look at the rom in a tile editor and have a look for yourself.


I am guessing the sound samples (voices) are consuming space the most. There is a lot of detail to the game as well which of course factors in, but I am willing to bet that the game's size would drastically be reduced had the voices been removed and maybe the music downsampled. But then again, who the hell wants that?

They take up some room, but not nearly as much as sprites in this game. And don't forget, there is a lot of animation "sheets" for this game too. That takes up some memory (though still not near as much as the sprite frames). SNES samples are 4.5bits per sample. PCE is 5bits per sample. Don't remember what the Genesis stored the same rate at, but probably somewhere between ~5-6bit (for mixing purposes). PCE samples are 5bit at 7khz (bit packed, but not compressed). That's 4.3k per second. Not really that much space. I would assume the other two ports are around that number in size per second as well.

[Az]

Double post

[Az]

Well, what versions are we comparing here?

SNES versions: SF2HF (2 1/2 mb), SSF2 (4 mb)
Genesis versions: SF2SCE (3 mb), SSF2 (4 1/2 mb)

With the exception of a few minor cinemas both are pretty much identical in content.

Don't forget the beta version of SF2SCE floating around for the Genesis, clocking it at 2 mb that is pretty much the entire game minus some voice samples.


Actually the arcade games just had the one pitch. In fact I remember hating that pitch variation in the SNES version because it was not accurate to the arcade game. Along with the "low life meter" music simply speeding up the normal music instead of playing alternate music like the arcade game.

I stand corrected, you are 100% right. What an odd element to include.....

[kedawa]

Genesis SSF2 is 40Mb which is 5MB.

Speaking of the 2MB SF2CE 'arm wrestling' beta for genesis, I believe it's the only SF2 cart that had the proper 'fast' music instead of speeding up the regular BGM.
I've actually spent a lot of time tinkering with that ROM, changing colors and text and whatnot.

[Xian042]

one thing I noticed about the Genesis version, when you threw two simultaneous fire balls, there would be two distinct "HADOKEN"s, the SNES version would share one sample. Not sure if this is the case in late SF games

[Ze_ro]

Another big reason why SF2 carts are so big, is that all the sprite animation is uncompressed (compare this with other console games that have everything compressed).
Well, Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the SNES used compressed graphics... but that needed a special chip in the cartridge, and had load times here and there.

As for sound quality... why not compare the sound dumps? I'm not very knowledgeable about the video game sound scene... but seems like comparing the .gym and .spc would be the easiest way to answer these questions.

--Zero

[Eyedunno]

When SF2 Turbo came out on SNES, I think it was 20 or 24 megs (despite the fact that, in my opinion, it actually looked a little flatter and less vibrant than the first version.)
I agree with this. It's still the only SNES SF game I don't own.

[tomaitheous]

Well, Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the SNES used compressed graphics... but that needed a special chip in the cartridge, and had load times here and there.

Which is kinda of ridiculous, as just more rom would have been cheaper (or at minimum the same price but less complexity). A few later gen SNES used that setup, but I think it was more of an anti-piracy thing more than anything else.


As for sound quality... why not compare the sound dumps? I'm not very knowledgeable about the video game sound scene... but seems like comparing the .gym and .spc would be the easiest way to answer these questions.


Too many variables between the formats. One is a log register format, while the other is a block of code/sample/data from the original. Neither are going to be exact representations of how much music/sample data is used on the cart (though the SPC format would be closer for speculation, but there's still a lot of redundant data).

[Eyedunno]

Which is kinda of ridiculous, as just more rom would have been cheaper (or at minimum the same price but less complexity). A few later gen SNES used that setup, but I think it was more of an anti-piracy thing more than anything else.
Indeed. I'm still wishing somebody would make a hack (and preferably hacks of both the Japanese and U.S. releases) that is not only PowerPak-compliant, but also eliminates or at least drastically reduces those load times. As it stands, the game is a pretty good tech demo of sorts for the SNES, but the load times really suck.

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

This thread reminded me of this project:
http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/223
What ever became of it?

[c0ldb33r]

This thread reminded me of this project:
http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/223
What ever became of it?
Oh my Dog, that's amazing. I'd love to get my hands on that!

I expect that we'll need a flashcard for it? Or burn it to CD and use it with the Arcade card. Actually, in that little interview, they said they would use the Supergrafx for extra scrolls and the extra elephant - why not just rely on the arcade card for those?

[tomaitheous]

This thread reminded me of this project:
http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/223
What ever became of it?

The new BG's didn't compress at or less than the original BG sizes, so a new compression scheme was needed. We were going to use "pucrunch" because we had got it working/ported to PC-Engine, but it's a fair amount of worked to add our own code hooks for special case BGs (as well as find an area in ram temporarily for the decompression ring buffer). I lobbied Ryphecha of Mednafen to get an extension to the original SF2 mapper. Something that's backwards compatible (there's a theory that the SF2 mapper itself supports higher than 20megabits, but the traces need to be mapped out on the original rom to find out for sure). Anyway, I couldn't get it supported in mednafen (which is the PCE emulator with a debugger). As for the real system, the mapper is super simple. It can be made with only 2-3 off shelf TTL parts/chips. SF2+ mapper would support up to 68megabits. So that put a damper on the mood of things. We did a lot of work on those BG touch ups, so I do want to put them back into the rom someday (beautiful legal PCE BGs - even converted and everything into raw PCE format).

Anyway, there's also Blanka's stage that was redone as well:
http://alexandria66.2mhost.com/~pcengine/pics/sf2blanka_compare.png

And Bison's (US name, Balrog is the Japanese name IIRC) stage. And I think we started on Ken's stage too.

[betamax001]

I was just reading that article about remaking it for the PCE, and I thought how come SF2 never came out for American Turbo Grafx? It was huge back then. It seems like a no brainer to me.

[Eyedunno]

And Bison's (US name, Balrog is the Japanese name IIRC) stage.
US Bison (dictator) = JP Vega
JP Bison (boxer) = US Balrog

[tomaitheous]

US Bison (dictator) = JP Vega
JP Bison (boxer) = US Balrog

Heh. I always get them mixed up (even though I've logged a lot of hours on the Japanese PCE hucard version). To anyone's who's interested, there's a good chance the SF2+ mapper might be coming out for mednafen emulator (which is great news). So I can continue the project. To the original thread starter, sorry for derailing the topic. I'll start a new one if I need to post any further on this side stuff.

[XYXZYZ]

I was just reading that article about remaking it for the PCE, and I thought how come SF2 never came out for American Turbo Grafx? It was huge back then. It seems like a no brainer to me.

I remember buying a Capcom Fighter Power stick at Electronics Boutique in the SF2 SNES heyday, and they were trying to move the last of their TG16s for $30. I'm still kicking myself for not buying it.

When was the PC Engine SF2' out, was that 1993? Anyone else have any better recollections of what the TG16's market status was at this time? Just going on that memory mentioned above, I'd assume TG16 was dead in the water by then. But I'm rather fuzzy on that...

[c0ldb33r]

likely mail order only

[PC-ENGINE HELL]

I remember buying a Capcom Fighter Power stick at Electronics Boutique in the SF2 SNES heyday, and they were trying to move the last of their TG16s for $30. I'm still kicking myself for not buying it.

When was the PC Engine SF2' out, was that 1993? Anyone else have any better recollections of what the TG16's market status was at this time? Just going on that memory mentioned above, I'd assume TG16 was dead in the water by then. But I'm rather fuzzy on that...


Its hardware was still being sold (not very well) in retail at some stores in 1993, with some doing it at discount on the TG-16 and TG-Cd decks. My first TG-16 was picked up right after xmas 92 for 50 bucks at Toys R Us. They continued to sell them at that price all through 93 in my area until they sold out completely. Even places that did not have any systems in stock tended to have games still until late 94/very early 95 when the software was hitting clearance en masse. As for Sf 2 Champion Edition, it was released for Pc-Engine in 93.

Regardless of how well it was doing on the market at that time, it had the games that best suited me, and I will never regret picking up one before getting a Genesis or Snes, as I had far more fun with it then I ever did the other systems. I didn't even plan for sure to get a Genesis until Mortal Monday was confirmed (9-13-93 I think). After that was confirmed I saved up and bought a Genesis in Oct 93 (one of the core decks offering the free Sonic 2 mail away). If not for Mortal Kombat I'd probably not even have bothered with getting a Genesis.

Would have meant I'd have missed out on some awesome games, but I really was pretty happy with what the Turbo offered at that time. I didn't even bother with getting a Snes until spring 94. Up until then I would get games for that system now and then and play them on my brother in laws deck for a bit, then trade them off.

[tomaitheous]

If I remember right, Gamefan magazine had a couple of pages on the PCE SF2. EGM might have too, but I'm not 100% sure on that. All the gamers I knew, read EGM but anticipated Gamefan's release every month, so even the guys that didn't have a PC-Engine or Duo knew/read about these import titles. Babbage's (SP) was the store down here for get new TG/CD stuff. They carried TG/CD stuff till their end, iirc. Toys 'r us had TG/CD stuff too, but they weren't as reliable.

[NE146]

I remember buying a Capcom Fighter Power stick at Electronics Boutique in the SF2 SNES heyday, and they were trying to move the last of their TG16s for $30. I'm still kicking myself for not buying it.

When was the PC Engine SF2' out, was that 1993? Anyone else have any better recollections of what the TG16's market status was at this time? Just going on that memory mentioned above, I'd assume TG16 was dead in the water by then. But I'm rather fuzzy on that...

It was definitely still being actively sold in the US, and as far as I was concerned was still very viable. Back then though I had no concept of what "the sales" were, I just knew they were out there in the stores and I would pick up games for it regularly. Those were some great gaming days since I had all 3 consoles at launch and could pick and choose my games freely between the big 3. :p

Incidentally although I had SF2 for the TG16 (using the adapter shown below) I never really played it because I bought a controller for it in Japan but when I got home I realized it didnt fit the turbografx. I never ended up getting an adapter and it's still unused NIB :( Ditto for SF2.

http://www.users.uswest.net/%7Ebapcruz/Img_9368.jpg