Capcom: Genesis vs Arcade: how do the ports measure up?

Well, "Mega Man X2" and "Mega Man X3" simply used a C4 chip, which allowed for some minimal transparency and wireframe effects that made very little difference in the games (I know because I owned these two rarities).

Most of the cart chips available for the SNES were developed or offered by Nintendo. Few developers came up with their own.

Sega chose not to go that route and instead made full-fledged add-ons, but that's another story.

In a show of karma however, Capcom barely touched on the SNES' successor N64, leaving it high and dry for the PS1 & Saturn. So did many of Nintendo's elite third-parties: Square, Enix, Konami, Toei. They all balked at the cart format and jumped ship.

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Originally Posted by TmEE

The game's BGMs do not touch PCM channels at all in case of SSF2...

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I thought the music was all 6 channel FM. And when you need a sample it switches to 5 channel mode. Enabling the DAC.

In this case you can get the drums going (although FM).And on channel 6 you have either a chord member or sub melody.Anyhow something you won't miss or isn't important to the song during playback.

The snes has something similar playing the FX on the less important channels.

I mean that BGM does not use PCM drums etc.... music is using all 6FM channels, but when its PCM time (some SFX), then the channel would get cut for the duration of SFX...

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Originally Posted by Aarzak

I agree. Although the Genesis port of "The Punisher" (which happens to be Capcom's last game for the Genesis) was farmed out to an American developer, Sculptured Software. Capcom themselves could've probably done a better job. Their ports of other CPS1 beat-em-ups such as "King of the Dragons", "Knights of the Round" and "Captain Commando" for the SNES were good and played well. Genesis Punisher not only looked like crap (SoR2, from late 1992 and also a 16 MEGA POWER cart like Punisher, looked MUCH better) but played like crap as well compared to the awesome coin-op. And, like SoR3 it was censored from the original too.

I admit I do like the Genesis' renditions of Punisher's soundtrack.

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The Genesis version does have a good soundtrack for Punisher. In fact, it uses the U.S. soundtrack version as opposed to my World version Punisher pcb that has a soundtrack that borrows heavily from Captain Commando. Like you say, the Genesis version of The Punisher not only looks lackluster but the controls are very stiff in comparison to the responsive controls of the arcade version.

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Originally Posted by jetlag

I thought the music was all 6 channel FM. And when you need a sample it switches to 5 channel mode. Enabling the DAC.

In this case you can get the drums going (although FM).And on channel 6 you have either a chord member or sub melody.Anyhow something you won't miss or isn't important to the song during playback.

The snes has something similar playing the FX on the less important channels.

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That's funny. You're telling this to TmEE who wrote his sound and music engine for the Genesis ;)

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Originally Posted by Mark Robert

The Genesis version does have a good soundtrack for Punisher. In fact, it uses the U.S. soundtrack version as opposed to my World version Punisher pcb that has a soundtrack that borrows heavily from Captain Commando. Like you say, the Genesis version of The Punisher not only looks lackluster but the controls are very stiff in comparison to the responsive controls of the arcade version.

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Wait........the World version contains a different soundtrack or a different rendition of the soundtrack? Need to go check that out.

Genesis Punisher also lacks the Giant Swing move from the coin-op, replacing it with some lame triple throw.

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Originally Posted by Aarzak

Well, "Mega Man X2" and "Mega Man X3" simply used a C4 chip, which allowed for some minimal transparency and wireframe effects that made very little difference in the games (I know because I owned these two rarities).

Most of the cart chips available for the SNES were developed or offered by Nintendo. Few developers came up with their own.

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I guess you are right on that one... Fact remains, they did develop 9 games for MD/Gen (of which Sega handled some...) and 34 for SFC/SNES. An enormous difference. And there was only one exclusive of those 9 MD games, which was a remake/compilation of old NES games + some extra levels... Yep, I still stand by what I said: Capcom hated the Mega Drive.

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Originally Posted by Zebbe

Yep, I still stand by what I said: Capcom hated the Mega Drive.

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Yup. It was pure hate. I mean, it probably had nothing to do with the small return on the investment of developing such games for the MD... Remember, this is Capcom of Japan and the MD was a distant third. But then again, PCE was #2 for a long time and Capcom didn't handle any (iirc) ports to the PCE directly. I guess Capcom hated PCE too.

<shakes his fist at the dirty bastards at Capcom of Japan>

I'm gonna have to side with Zebbe on this one.

Megaman X3 (iirc) has a embedded rom. Trying to dump the cart resulted in the device housing the embedded rom to self destruct. I have no idea if this is through a version of the C4 chip or not.

Very interesting video comparing the coin-op and Genesis "Punisher"......I want all of you guys to check it out. Video quality's superb too!

The Genesis version is definitely darker... and louder! It really needs some more MEGA POWER and perhaps some better programmers and artists, but overall not horrible, I guess.

The hits and sounds definitely lack the "oomph" of the coin-op. I like how the screen shakes violently after every big hit.

It may not show it in that clip, but the port really does control pretty badly.


There was a pre-production version of this port which looked much brighter and seemingly had more frames of animation, making it more faithful to the coin-op. It's briefly seen in this preview:

As bad as a port that The Punisher is, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t enjoyed shooting and dropping grenades on the thugs in two player mode.

When you are a fan of something, be it comic books or movies or whatever, you tend to find a way to like the trash spawned by it.

And after a couple of brewskis, nobody cared about the semi-responsive controls. :daze:

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

Yup. It was pure hate. I mean, it probably had nothing to do with the small return on the investment of developing such games for the MD... Remember, this is Capcom of Japan and the MD was a distant third. But then again, PCE was #2 for a long time and Capcom didn't handle any (iirc) ports to the PCE directly. I guess Capcom hated PCE too.

<shakes his fist at the dirty bastards at Capcom of Japan>

I'm gonna have to side with Zebbe on this one.

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There was more than the Japanese market. Sega was always number one in Europe and for many years in the US. They had big potential there and the Sega port of Ghouls and Ghosts shows that, and even SFIISCE did. But when they pretty much only did half-assed ports, it's no big wonder they didn't get much return on the investment.

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Originally Posted by Joe Redifer

Level 3-1, for example, is far more faithful to the arcade than the SuperGrafx version (as are the blowing trees in the first level).

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I'd like to stress that I am not AirRaidX in disguise, but I found the blowing trees looked much nicer and smoother in the SGX version than the arcade.

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Originally Posted by Zebbe

There was more than the Japanese market. Sega was always number one in Europe and for many years in the US. They had big potential there and the Sega port of Ghouls and Ghosts shows that, and even SFIISCE did. But when they pretty much only did half-assed ports, it's no big wonder they didn't get much return on the investment.

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When Street Fighter came out on Genesis, it was promoted with "Sega and Capcom team up!" With this image:

http://www.imageurlhost.com/images/b...hc5sxqdp2r.jpg

And yet, after plastering this image around, the next four Mega Man games (6, X, 7, X2) were all exclusive to Nintendo. Additionally, The Wily Wars didn't come out here (although it was on Sega Channel), nor did the non-SNES versions of X3. And in non-Mega Man terms they still didn't give Sega much support. What's weird about it is most of their SNES games weren't anything that the genny would have that much trouble with.