Neo-Geo ports on the Genesis

As I start to build an outline/guide (because, why not?!) for owning as many Neo-Geo games as possible WITHOUT actually owning any official SNK hardware, I wanted to get everyone's opinion on the Neo ports that appear on the Sega Genesis. Are there anything special about them? Extra modes, options, features, etc...

We have Fatal Fury 1+2, Art of Fighting, King of the Monsters 1+2, World Heroes, Samurai Shodown, and ViewPoint. Am I forgetting any?

I suppose you could group the Sega CD ports of Fatal Fury Special and Samurai Shodown into the mix too.

Generally, I think the ports are pretty good. Takara did the cartridge ports, except for World Heroes I think. Samurai Shodown is visually one of the most impressive arcade ports (good sample quality as well), but the high fidelity graphics come at a price since it doesn't use as many unique animations for attacks, and this ultimately impacts the gameplay and simplifies it a bit.

http://abload.de/img/samuraigeng2qmq.gif

The CD ports were handled by JVC. The sprites are even larger with more animations, and the games also utilize all of the screen real estate without any black bars or anything, which makes them look utterly fantastic for 16-bit fighters. It's interesting to note the stylistic differences between how Takara and JVC ported the graphics though. In some cases I think the background artwork in the CD version actually looks worse drawn than the cartridge one, and the choice of colors sometimes feels less optimal as well (I think the cartridge ship level looks better, for instance). And ironically the sample playback on the CD version is actually worse quality than the cartridge version.

http://abload.de/img/samuraicd13qdn.gif

Street Smart ported by Treco and Super Baseball 2020 ported by Electronic Arts are two others. "anything special about them? Extra modes, options, features, etc..." The first thing to come to mind over the SNES is the the use of the awesome six button gamepad MK-1653 is better. IMO

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Originally Posted by EyeDeeNo76

Street Smart and Super Baseball 2020 are two others. "anything special about them? Extra modes, options, features, etc..." The first thing to come to mind over the SNES is the the use of the awesome six button gamepad MK-1653 is better. IMO

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I thought that Street Smart was pre-MVS SNK. Thanks for the Super Baseball 2020 reminder!

Fatal Fury 1 lets you use the bosses as well as the three main characters of the Neo original, but I don't rate the port since IMO it's very poor.

Fatal Fury 2 is a great version of the game only hampered by running in lo-res, however rather than copying the arcade gameplay verbatim it supes up the combo potential greatly. Some people prefer this to the arcade version for this reason. It also lets you use the 4 boss characters like the arcade Fatal Fury Special.

Viewpoint misses some enemies from the original and has a lot of slowdown.

Takara didn't do the cartridge port of Samurai Shodown though, Sega did (Takara did publish it outside Japan, though). And yeah there are parts where it's better than the CD version (aside from generally working better), thinking about the waterfalls in Tam Tam's stage here (full blown animation in the cartridge version, lame palette rotation in the CD version - how did that even happen when the latter is supposed to have less issues with memory usage?)

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Originally Posted by Sik

Takara didn't do the cartridge port of Samurai Shodown though, Sega did (Takara did publish it outside Japan, though). And yeah there are parts where it's better than the CD version (aside from generally working better), thinking about the waterfalls in Tam Tam's stage here (full blown animation in the cartridge version, lame palette rotation in the CD version - how did that even happen when the latter is supposed to have less issues with memory usage?)

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Carts have unlimited memory, cost is the only issue. CD games are bottlenecked by a limited amount of space for any single game segment. That's why ambitious Neo Geo ports weren't attempted for PCE CD formats until they had 3 times the segment space of the Sega-CD (as opposed to 1/12 or 1/3). And some assets still got sacrificed.

Yeah but fighting games usually strip stuff because character animations eat up an absurd amount of the cartridge space and you can't even compress their graphics since they need to be constantly streamed (there's a reason why two-frame backgrounds are so common), in fact this is probably why Earthquake is missing (besides the fact that the video hardware would probably struggle with two Earthquakes simultaneously). This is also the reason why fighting games usually use the low resolution mode, to reduce the size of the graphics in ROM (ironically, Samurai Shodown is the exception to the rule).

The Sega CD has it better since it only really needs to keep data for two characters (besides the fact some graphics can be kept exclusively in VRAM, as well as the MD's own 64KB of RAM, which gives some more room). Sega just put more effort than usual with their port, honestly =P

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Originally Posted by Sik

Takara didn't do the cartridge port of Samurai Shodown though, Sega did (Takara did publish it outside Japan, though).

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Development of the Mega Drive version was actually carried out by Saurus and System Vision (Saurus is the only one credited in-game). And Takara only published it in North America, in both Japan and Europe it was published by Sega. In fact, no Takara game either fully or partially was ever published by Takara in Europe, it always had to be done by Sega Europe which sometimes had some issues like Fatal Fury 2 being published in Australia and not in Europe.

The Game Gear version though, that one was developed by Takara itself.

Having played most of them at one point or another, there was a couple i thought were not too bad... But honestly, theyre total garbage compared to the NEO•GEO versions. They were not really much cheaper to buy either, all those games are or were very cheap on both MVS and home carts.

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Originally Posted by Sik

This is also the reason why fighting games usually use the low resolution mode, to reduce the size of the graphics in ROM (ironically, Samurai Shodown is the exception to the rule).

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There is another ones like Art of Fighting, but in the end my feeling is most of this ports did'nt use genesis hardware too well,
look at eternal champions... big characters, good animation and frame rate.

By far SS, FF2 and AOF is the best SNK fighters on the system.

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Originally Posted by Pyron

By far SS, FF2 and AOF is the best SNK fighters on the system.

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But cheaper, significantly better, and easier to find on a real NEO•GEO.

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Originally Posted by CasetheCorvetteman

But cheaper, significantly better, and easier to find on a real NEO•GEO.

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But in the 90's is not cheap have one AES in home, i played alot SNK games on arcade and i loved get it in my house.

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Originally Posted by Pyron

But in the 90's is not cheap have one AES in home, i played alot SNK games on arcade and i loved get it in my house.

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Yeah i know it wasnt cheap, i had one myself!! Was rediculously expensive. But these days, those games are not expensive at all, and there is absolutely no disputing the fact theyre infinately better than any port.

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Originally Posted by Pyron

There is another ones like Art of Fighting, but in the end my feeling is most of this ports did'nt use genesis hardware too well,
look at eternal champions... big characters, good animation and frame rate.

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Of course it's easier when you're building the game for the hardware from the ground up, and not downscaling a higher quality version.

You can sort of tell the kind of tricks they used to get the good animation in Eternal Champions, like not all of the character's tiles changing for each animation frame (usually stuff like the lower body/legs remaining static for light punches)