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 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