Question about Dreamcast games by SNK, NEO geo and Takara

[Packerfan66]

1. Why are the SNK fighters that came over to the Dreamcast worse then the original games on the NEO GEO? I've been told they are kinda blurry, animation is missing and the music is different. WHy is this if the Dreamcast is a superior system then the original NEO GEO? Are they just ports that don't utilize the Dreamcast strength or is it from poor programming?

2. Why are you NEO GEO games so expensive when they first come out? I would think Nintendo 64 games would need way more memory and be more complicated to make then the NEO GEO. I don't know anything about the NEO GEO software.

3. WHo is Takara and why did they screw up so many SNES translations? Were they a company that bought the rights to SNK games to make on the SNES or were they SNK's own ramming team. I'm guess the programmers were just terrible because fatal fury, samurai shown and King of the Monsters are so average on the system. The constrol is not the same and graphics are pretty crappy. I know it is for an inferior system but come on Capcom made awesome Street Fighter games.

Right now I'm buying SNK fighter that came to the dreamcast as a poor man's NEO GEO.

[Ze_ro]

Why are the SNK fighters that came over to the Dreamcast worse then the original games on the NEO GEO? I've been told they are kinda blurry, animation is missing and the music is different.

Well, I don't know anything about any blurriness... perhaps the game is getting some bilinear filtering from the 3D hardware. I've never noticed this personally.

As for missing animation and music, I'd guess it's because of memory constraints. The Dreamcast has something like 16 megs of ram, so all the frames of animation have to fit in there (alongside the backgrounds, the program itself, and other stuff). If there are too makes frames of animation, then well, too bad. You can't load data off the disc in the middle of gameplay, so you're forced to reduce the number of frames.

On the NeoGeo, you can access the entire cartridge just as fast as you can access ram... so you can stick as much animation on the cartridge as you want without worrying.

It's a limitation of having a CD-based system.

Personally, I never noticed any missing animation or music myself... but I'm not a hardcore SNK fan, so I don't pay that much attention. Even if the animation isn't as good, it's still perfectly acceptable.

Why are you NEO GEO games so expensive when they first come out? I would think Nintendo 64 games would need way more memory and be more complicated to make then the NEO GEO.

Well, buying a NeoGeo game means you're essentially buying a whole, complete arcade game. This might not mean as much anymore, since the hardware has aged so much over the years, but the point still stands. You're getting a complete, perfect version of Samurai Showdown 5, so you pay for that perfection.

Nowadays, you can blame the niche market, and competitive NeoGeo collectors who are willing to spend that much on the games.

As for N64 games, believe it or not, NeoGeo cartridges hold more data (Well, the more recent ones certainly do anyways), and are more complicated. N64 games were also mass-produced in much larger quantities, so you get cheaper prices as a result.

WHo is Takara and why did they screw up so many SNES translations?

I might be wrong about this, but I believe that Takara was actually just SNK publishing games under a different name, or a division or subsidiary, or whatever corporate term applies ... this is sort of the same thing as Atari making NES games, but labelling them as "Tengen" games. They also made Genesis, Gameboy, and Game Gear games.

As for the games being "screwed up"... you'll have to be more specific. The NeoGeo is arguably more powerful than a SNES, so you can't do all the huge sprites, fluid animation and scaling graphics and such and expect it to perform as well. There's no way the SNES versions could ever be 100% perfect.

Maybe they just weren't as good at programming the SNES as companies like Capcom and Nintendo, or didn't put as much time into polishing their games... or maybe they pulled a Coleco and intentionally made the games worse so that the NeoGeo would look better in comparison (although that seems like a rather cynical opinion to me).

--Zero

[jaydubnb]

1. Why are the SNK fighters that came over to the Dreamcast worse then the original games on the NEO GEO? I've been told they are kinda blurry, animation is missing and the music is different. WHy is this if the Dreamcast is a superior system then the original NEO GEO? Are they just ports that don't utilize the Dreamcast strength or is it from poor programming?

Dont let the uber-hardcore Neo heads who say that a DC version is an "inferior port" prevent you from enjoying the games: from what I've seen of the DC ports, they are pretty damn good translations and even with a few missing animations here, an alterted song there, paying $300 less can make up for it. Besides, long as the gameplay is intact, that the important thing, no? Oh, in case you dont already have it, pick up Mark of the Wolves. Best DC fighter, EVER.

[junglehunter]

King of the Monsters was average on just about every system so you're not missing much, IMO.

Oh, in case you dont already have it, pick up Mark of the Wolves. Best DC fighter, EVER.

Agreed. Get 2 for that matter.

[CRV]

I might be wrong about this, but I believe that Takara was actually just SNK publishing games under a different name, or a division or subsidiary, or whatever corporate term applies ... this is sort of the same thing as Atari making NES games, but labelling them as "Tengen" games. They also made Genesis, Gameboy, and Game Gear games.

Takara's a Japanese toy company, the guys behind Transformers. They still make games, like the Choro-Q ones, but their American division seemed to come and go fairly quickly.

[leonk]

1. Why are the SNK fighters that came over to the Dreamcast worse then the original games on the NEO GEO? I've been told they are kinda blurry, animation is missing and the music is different. WHy is this if the Dreamcast is a superior system then the original NEO GEO? Are they just ports that don't utilize the Dreamcast strength or is it from poor programming?.

How are you connecting your DC to your TV? The DV can be connected via RF, RCA, S-Video and even VGA! The video quality goes up in that particular order.

I've actually played a few fighters on the DC, and that's the first thing I noticed. The DC is really a poor mans version of the Neo Geo! But the quality is truly amazing.

2. Why are you NEO GEO games so expensive when they first come out? I would think Nintendo 64 games would need way more memory and be more complicated to make then the NEO GEO. I don't know anything about the NEO GEO software.

I think the biggest problem here is the way SNK conducts business. They seem to work on "pre-order" basis and low yields. 10 year ago, this was acceptable because the memory these carts use were very expensive, and SNK didn't want to get stuck with a warehouse full of carts.

But memory is dirt cheap now, but the companies mentality remains. Go figure.

As far as comparing N64 carts to Neo geo, have you ever compared the sizes? The Neo Geo carts are HUGE.. They're almost the size of 1/2 the N64 system!! A lot more memory to work with.

[Packerfan66]

What I meant about Takara making inferior versions of SNK games is that the control seems way off and animation is very choppy. I didn't realize the SNK carts had so much memory in their games. I would think a game like Zelda or Mario 64 would hold much more memory then say Samurai shodown 5.

[jaydubnb]

What I meant about Takara making inferior versions of SNK games is that the control seems way off and animation is very choppy. I didn't realize the SNK carts had so much memory in their games. I would think a game like Zelda or Mario 64 would hold much more memory then say Samurai shodown 5.

SNK's meg counts are always overblown. Did the remarkably average SNK vs Capcom: Chaos really require 708 megs? Me thinks not. Looks nice on packaging though

[Ze_ro]

SNK's meg counts are always overblown. Did the remarkably average SNK vs Capcom: Chaos really require 708 megs? Me thinks not. Looks nice on packaging though

Well, they're talking in megabits of course, since bigger numbers sound more impressive. 708 megabits = 88 megabytes. Considering the number of frames of animation, and the number of characters, I think that seems about right. If you find the pirated rom for the game, that's how big it is.

Whether or not the game NEEDED to be that big, well, who's to say? I don't think the graphics are compressed on the cartridge, so they probably could have cut the cartridge size in half... but I doubt the NeoGeo is fast enough to decompress each frame on the fly anyways. Certainly, you could have made the game just as fun with less animation... but fluid animation has always been one of the strong points of NeoGeo games. Without that, we might as well just play SNES Street Fighter 2.

I would think a game like Zelda or Mario 64 would hold much more memory then say Samurai shodown 5.

One of the big advantages to having 3D graphics is that you really don't have to have EVERY frame of animation drawn beforehand. Instead of having 800 different drawings of Link on the cartridge, they just draw each "piece" of Link, and store 800 different positions for each piece of him. This ends up being less data overall, but more work for the system.

Arguably, the only reason the NeoGeo has had such staying power (Aside from the support of ravenous fans) is that the enormous cartridge sizes have allowed it to keep 2D games looking reasonably good, since they jam so many frames of animation in there.

--Zero

[Ed Oscuro]

SNK's meg counts are always overblown. Did the remarkably average SNK vs Capcom: Chaos really require 708 megs? Me thinks not. Looks nice on packaging though :)

Well, they're talking in megabits of course, since bigger numbers sound more impressive. 708 megabits = 88 megabytes. Considering the number of frames of animation, and the number of characters, I think that seems about right. If you find the pirated rom for the game, that's how big it is.

Jay knows about this stuff. He's saying the game could've been done in a much smaller cart. I won't say one way or another, but I have been hearing it's remarkably average (edit: holy cow, I didn't realize he wrote using those exact same words...alright, back to you, Ed...) and even "lousy." That doesn't affect mega count, of course, but impressions sure help.

[buttasuperb]

Well, it's possible the SvC coulda been 708 megs, but there is no way in hell Samurai Shodown 5 is 708 megs like they claim. Samurai Shodown 4 was only 378 megs, and 5 only really added 5 characters, 5 or so backgrounds, and 3 bosses, 2 of which used half the sprites of someone else. And now they are coming out with SS5 special which has the bosses from the last 3 Sam Sho's playable, and maybe more than that. Kinda funny considering the meg limit for Neo is supposedly 708.

As for DC ports, hell yea for the money they are great, well worth owning. However, for whatever reason something always gets lost in a port, or changed. I just prefer to play the game the way it was originally made and intended, on MVS

[Ze_ro]

Well, yeah... SVC Chaos is pretty average... but the animation is one of it's strengths, so if you take that away, the game suddenly becomes rather crappy really. A 350 meg version would probably have been considered terrible.

As for Samurai Showdown 5... the rom dump is indeed 88 megs. I'm not sure what exactly is taking up all the space though. The characters are bigger than SNK's other fighting games, so maybe this is a part of it? (Hell, Kusaregedo probably takes up a good 20 megs on his own :P )

Does anyone have any further info on SS5 Special? I'm hoping they add back some of the stuff that was taken out from SS4, like Slash and Bust mode and some of the extra moves and such... as well as an english translation of the storyline.

--Zero

[ubersaurus]

As far as I know, SS5 Special has new backgrounds, nicer aesthetics (better looking rage bar and life bars, etc.), the 3 SS5 bosses playable, Amakusa and Zankuro playable, possibly more characters, and concievably, minor character changes to balance it some more.

[jaydubnb]

SNK's meg counts are always overblown. Did the remarkably average SNK vs Capcom: Chaos really require 708 megs? Me thinks not. Looks nice on packaging though

Well, they're talking in megabits of course, since bigger numbers sound more impressive. 708 megabits = 88 megabytes. Considering the number of frames of animation, and the number of characters, I think that seems about right. If you find the pirated rom for the game, that's how big it is.

Jay knows about this stuff. He's saying the game could've been done in a much smaller cart. I won't say one way or another, but I have been hearing it's remarkably average (edit: holy cow, I didn't realize he wrote using those exact same words...alright, back to you, Ed...) and even "lousy." That doesn't affect mega count, of course, but impressions sure help.

Yeah, like Ed said, I was speaking mainly upon impressions. I'm pretty certain that about 1/2 of the 708 went directly into the Hugo sprite lol Alas, if as much attention was given to the dull backgrounds and hit detection...

And I agree with what Butta said about SSV Special. At this point, I think that SNKP is slapping "708" on everything and just shipping em out. 708 is BIGGER, BADDER, BETTER!!!