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[digoutyoursoul]

I wish we were getting a new Final Fight, especially how decent Streets of Rage 4 turned out

 

[RoboFu]

I wish we were getting a new Final Fight, especially how decent Streets of Rage 4 turned out

The closest you will get is the single player mode in SF6.

 

[Seider]

No it wasn't. That was the arcade launch date.

The console versions were released in mid-94 and were outliers. It's generally regarded that Capcom lost money on them due to the cost of manufacturing the carts and sales being below expectations. I can't think of another Sega cart bigger than 24Mb from '94; they really didn't start showing up before '95 as they were too expensive to manufacture without making a game financially risky.

You are right that the Megadrive game was launched in june 1994 and not in september 93... but that still was a 40 megabit game, not a 24 Mb rom.

Sega could have launched Final Fight on MD in 1994 using a cart size similar to Super Street Fighter 2.

 

[Seider]

Only SegaCD game i was shocked with it was Batman Returns and its batmobile levels. It was awesome and it couldnt be done on Megadrive in a cartridge.

I dont understand why we didnt see more games using scaling like in that game. Only FMV games everywhere.

And about Final Fight MD... i think the interesting thing of developing it in 2024 is showing that Megadrive is capable of doing it. And that target was completed with 100% success.

 

[Daniel Thomas MacInnes]

I'm really looking forward to this new Genesis Final Fight, and I'm thankful for skilled programmers and artists who make such projects possible. They do it all for pure love, and how can anyone not respect that?

As to whether this will be "better" than the 1993 Sega CD version is impossible to say. Apples to oranges. In the end, more Final Fight is more than welcome.

 

[mansoor1980]

SOR2 might be better than the console ports of Final Fight but arcade Final Fight is the better game. It has a deeper moveset (infinite punch, cross-ups, dash jumping), deeper scoring mechanics (alchemy) and an insanely clever enemy AI that hasn’t been replicated on any belt scroller since. The bad guys actually use teamwork to beat you.

No port of FF has captured the nuances of the arcade game, including this new MD one. I think it was serendipitous that the game turned out the way it did.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

I dont understand why we didnt see more games using scaling like in that game. Only FMV games everywhere.

Because CD was mostly a solution to a problem that didn’t even exist in the first place.
It offered way more data than any developer knew what to do with. So many of them just filled that space with better music and FMV, because they were already convinced that realism was the future of gaming and what people wanted from games. And ain’t nothing more realistic than actual video.

Arcade-perfect ports would have been one of the best possible uses of the CD format in the early 90s. But by then arcades had evolved way beyond the capabilities of the base consoles, and the only arcades to benefit from CD would have been those from years prior - such as Final Fight. Come 1993, nobody cared about OG FF anymore. The scrolling beat-em-up genre itself had largely been wiped out by the success of one-on-one fighters.

Nothing about this is more ironic than the PC-Engine port of Street Fighter II. The console had by far the most thriving CD ecosystem of its generation. At one point, every new PCE game was getting released on CD. A CD version of SFII would have been the definitive home version of the game by a country mile. But they ultimately decided to put it on the biggest PCE card ever made, to maximize sales.
And this was ultimately the reason the Mega CD was so underused: you still had to own a base Mega Drive to play it, and the peripheral sold so little compared to the base console, that most games had to release on cartridge anyway to reach the widest audience. This is why the CD exclusives were mostly about the live/anime videos, and most other CD games were just ports of cartridge games with improved graphics and better audio.

As for this new edition of FF, it’s definitely impressive. I’m happy that people are still squeezing juice from old hardware, even if it’s mostly because they’re not constrained by the size limit of commercial cartridges.

 

[nkarafo]

Because CD was mostly a solution to a problem that didn’t even exist in the first place.

It was only a "problem" for publishers in that they wanted to be as cheap as possible. By pushing the crappy CD technology on us would mean lower production costs/higher profit margins for them.

Thankfully early CD consoles weren't great and didn't sell well, so cart based consoles were still dominating meaning they still had to release cart games.

CDs were only ever good as storage/installation discs for PCs. Nothing more.

Arcade-perfect ports would have been one of the best possible uses of the CD format in the early 90s.

Maybe not exactly arcade perfect though. Remember, CD based consoles are still limited by their RAM. You can't stream assets in real time fast enough like you can with cartridges so you can only use as much data as the RAM can fit at any time and i doubt the PCE had enough RAM to fit all the detail and animation frames the arcade version had.

 

[s_mirage]

You are right that the Megadrive game was launched in june 1994 and not in september 93... but that still was a 40 megabit game, not a 24 Mb rom.

Sega could have launched Final Fight on MD in 1994 using a cart size similar to Super Street Fighter 2.

Technically possible, yes. Commercially viable, I don't think so.

SSF2 being that big was an outlier, and despite its high profile it was also a commercial flop, due in no small part to the exorbitant cost of producing such big carts. Final Fight was an old game by then, and there's no way that it would have received a cart that size unless Sega liked losing money even more than it seemed to.

Cost is likely the reason that the SSF2 mapper was never used again. The SSF2 development board had capacity for 64Mb of ROM, so it's reasonable to assume that Sega were toying with the idea of bigger carts, but nothing ever came of it.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

It was only a "problem" for publishers in that they wanted to be as cheap as possible. By pushing the crappy CD technology on us would mean lower production costs/higher profit margins for them.

True, but costs were often cut anyway by using carts with the lowest possible memory, which is kinda the reason this thread exists at all.
Many early arcade ports (and original console games, too) would definitely have benefited from larger memory, but bigger carts were too expensive, especially for third parties. There’s very good reasons Nintendo tried the rewritable discs path in the mid 80s, and NEC and Hudson went full on CDs so early. You could have more memory than the average cart would give you (and hence bigger games with less corner cutting) for much less. RAM and loading times were the biggest downsides, but the PCE compensated with RAM expansions.

I don’t think CDs were necessarily crappy, just used and marketed the wrong way. But I think this has gone off-topic enough.

 

[cireza]

Because CD was mostly a solution to a problem that didn’t even exist in the first place.
It offered way more data than any developer knew what to do with.

8 and 16 bits CD consoles were never about filling 700 MB with pixel-art data produced in the way it was back then. It was to remove the limitation, and allow developers to not cut anything. The rest of the available space could be used for whatever they felt like, be it videos or music.

Arcade-perfect ports would have been one of the best possible uses of the CD format in the early 90s.

CD format has always been a poor fit for arcade games that stream a lot of animation. They were great enablers for games with a lot of content, videos, music etc... which all works very well with adventure/role playing games.

This is why the CD exclusives were mostly about the live/anime videos, and most other CD games were just ports of cartridge games with improved graphics and better audio.

This is largely exaggerated and there are a lot of exclusive games that are not FMVs, not on MegaDrive. And even games available on base MegaDrive would be largely enhanced in many cases and have excellent soundtrack on top of other enhancements.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

1) 8 and 16 bits CD consoles were never about filling 700 MB with pixel-art data produced in the way it was back then. It was to remove the limitation, and allow developers to not cut anything. The rest of the available space could be used for whatever they felt like, be it videos or music.


2) CD format has always been a poor fit for arcade games that stream a lot of animation. They were great enablers for games with a lot of content, videos, music etc... which all works very well with adventure/role playing games.


3) This is largely exaggerated and there are a lot of exclusive games that are not FMVs, not on MegaDrive. And even games available on base MegaDrive would be largely enhanced in many cases and have excellent soundtrack on top of other enhancements.

True, but point 1) and 2) are kinda contradictory. What good was removing limitations, if the most popular genres of games of the era were a poor fit for the format? Of course games like Lunar were the best-case application for the CD format, in every possible respect (big worlds, sprawling adventures, lots of text + animated cutscenes and high-quality music). But those were niche, at least in the west. It’s ironic how the very same features made FF7 such a strong exclusive for PlayStation and spearheaded the JRPG boom, a few years later.
Like I said, NEC and Hudson foresaw the limitations of their hardware and of the cartridge format, and went all-in on CDs when the base console couldn’t cut it anymore. CDs made a lot of sense for the PCE. Less so for SNES and Genesis, for many reasons (most of them purely commercial).

As for point 3), the problem there was that the enhancements made possible by the CD format weren’t enough for most people, when the same games could be played perfectly fine on carts, and without the need to buy an expensive add-on. Same reason why SF2 ultimately came out as a cart on the PCE, and there was no CD version for the Sega CD. Very few cared much about animated (not FMV) cutscenes and enhanced audio, considering that a lot of people were still playing on small CRTs, possibly limited to mono speakers.

In the case of Final Fight, it was so late that on hindsight, it made little commercial sense and was probably more of a flex by Sega to show people what they missed with the SNES version. The marked had moved on a lot in the 4 years since the original arcade release.

 

[Holammer]

Only SegaCD game i was shocked with it was Batman Returns and its batmobile levels. It was awesome and it couldnt be done on Megadrive in a cartridge.

I dont understand why we didnt see more games using scaling like in that game. Only FMV games everywhere.

And about Final Fight MD... i think the interesting thing of developing it in 2024 is showing that Megadrive is capable of doing it. And that target was completed with 100% success.

Game Sack Joe noted a detail I never really thought of in the Batmobile stages (timestamp). Plain billboards would have been enough, but they went the extra mile.

 

[SmokedMeat]

I needed this over thirty years ago. Not now.

 

[cireza]

True, but point 1) and 2) are kinda contradictory.

I disagree. We are looking a two entirely different aspects : the amount of memory you have, and the ability to instantly access to that memory. We can all understand that one will suit better RPGs and large content games, and the other games with lots of animations.

But those were niche, at least in the west.

MegaDrive was getting a lot of RPGs. In fact, most of them made it to the West. And it was not only about JRPGs. We had games such as Dune, Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master, Dark Wizard, Wing Commander, Rise of the Dragon, Snatcher etc... All very good fit for the format, and more inspired from PC games or strategy games.

Same reason why SF2 ultimately came out as a cart on the PCE

And ultimately it limited a few things (most certainly the size of the sprites), especially as Nec had these RAM expansions. But this is more of an exception than a rule. Fighting games were a poor fit for CD consoles unless you had the RAM expansions. It simply wasn't made for these types of games.
You have two ports on SEGA-CD, without additional RAM, that are the only ones to retain the full sizes of sprites from the Neo Geo games : Fatal Fury Special and Sam Sho. Again, these are a good example of how the cartridges versions were constrained : by the ROM cost.

Very few cared much about animated (not FMV) cutscenes and enhanced audio

You simply don't know about this. The MEGA-CD was an add-on for enthusiasts and older people with more income and wanting a premium audio/video experience. And it served this purpose perfectly fine. It was made to be plugged to an audio setup and would play music CDs as well.

 

[nkarafo]

Game Sack Joe noted a detail I never really thought of in the Batmobile stages (timestamp). Plain billboards would have been enough, but they went the extra mile.

Which game has the more impressive driving stages? Batman Returns or Adventures of Batman and Robin? I would pick the later myself.

I always found it funny how the console has 2 Batman games with sprite scaling driving stages.

 

[RoboFu]

Sega cd added more than just more storage. It added more ram and an upgraded graphics processor which could do scaling and rotation on both tiles and sprites. It had a much faster cpu and could push more sprites on screen than the base genesis. Sadly all that extra power was rarely used as NA was all about pushing FMV as the next big thing.

 

[AngelMuffin]

So the only enhancement the Sega CD hardware brought to the original port was the ROM size?

That's good enough for me i guess. Still better than using the hardware for FMVs only.

And CD quality sound.

 

[dave_d]

Sega cd added more than just more storage. It added more ram and an upgraded graphics processor which could do scaling and rotation on both tiles and sprites. It had a much faster cpu and could push more sprites on screen than the base genesis. Sadly all that extra power was rarely used as NA was all about pushing FMV as the next big thing.

And an improved audio system above and beyond red-book audio. FWIW it adds 8 channels of PCM audio vi a RF5C164 but so few games actually use it for anything.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Because CD was mostly a solution to a problem that didn’t even exist in the first place.
It offered way more data than any developer knew what to do with. So many of them just filled that space with better music and FMV, because they were already convinced that realism was the future of gaming and what people wanted from games. And ain’t nothing more realistic than actual video.

Arcade-perfect ports would have been one of the best possible uses of the CD format in the early 90s. But by then arcades had evolved way beyond the capabilities of the base consoles, and the only arcades to benefit from CD would have been those from years prior - such as Final Fight. Come 1993, nobody cared about OG FF anymore. The scrolling beat-em-up genre itself had largely been wiped out by the success of one-on-one fighters.

Nothing about this is more ironic than the PC-Engine port of Street Fighter II. The console had by far the most thriving CD ecosystem of its generation. At one point, every new PCE game was getting released on CD. A CD version of SFII would have been the definitive home version of the game by a country mile. But they ultimately decided to put it on the biggest PCE card ever made, to maximize sales.
And this was ultimately the reason the Mega CD was so underused: you still had to own a base Mega Drive to play it, and the peripheral sold so little compared to the base console, that most games had to release on cartridge anyway to reach the widest audience. This is why the CD exclusives were mostly about the live/anime videos, and most other CD games were just ports of cartridge games with improved graphics and better audio.

As for this new edition of FF, it’s definitely impressive. I’m happy that people are still squeezing juice from old hardware, even if it’s mostly because they’re not constrained by the size limit of commercial cartridges.

It wasn't just about the amount of storage the point was also the cost of manufacturing CDs compared to Cartridges.

You could get Arcade perfect ports on CD even in the early days but that was usually on a super expensive FM Towns Marty.

Outside of the super expensive Sharp 68000 the Mega CD version of Final Fight was the best way to play the game at home and do much better than the other home versions.

 

[Holammer]

Which game has the more impressive driving stages? Batman Returns or Adventures of Batman and Robin? I would pick the later myself.

I always found it funny how the console has 2 Batman games with sprite scaling driving stages.

AoBR is probably the better, but the areas are flatter without hills compared with Returns. The animated bits made for the game is another interesting feature, detailed animation with the proper voice actors. It's considered a lost episode among Batman TAS fans.

 

[Futaleufu]

I don't see how this makes the SEGA-CD version bad or whatever. SEGA-CD game was released 31 years ago and we could enjoy it for all this time. It had all 3 characters, 2 players simultaneously, a stellar soundtrack, excellent gameplay etc... It was, and still is, an amazing port.

This new MD port is certainly great, but it would have never existed back then because of the ROM size has most probably reached beyond 32 Meg.

Unlikely, the arcade game is less than 32 megabits

 

[Team Andromeda]

AoBR is probably the better, but the areas are flatter without hills compared with Returns. The animated bits made for the game is another interesting feature, detailed animation with the proper voice actors. It's considered a lost episode among Batman TAS fans.

I don't agree, sorry. Batman Returns is smoother, the art direction is better , it plays and controls better and the music is better too. It's like playing a classic SEGA coin up in your home.

John O'Brien was the man for the ASIC chip and he improved his engine even more witb the 3D sections to Cliffhanger which for me is the smoothest and best examples of Mega CD ASIC scaling and rotation effects.

I will say Adv Of Batman and Robin as amazing quality FMV, it's even better than a lot of the early SEGA Saturn FMV.

It must be using an amazing Codec

 

[Drell]

I want this version with the CD soundtrack, I guess it would be possible with those MD+ games.

 

[BennyBlanco]

I wish we were getting a new Final Fight, especially how decent Streets of Rage 4 turned out

I always preferred Final Fight to Streets of Rage. Haggar rules.

 

[RoboFu]

I would like to throw in another final fight game I have always had fun with. Mighty Final Fight no the NES. Surprisingly it plays very well for a 8 bit beatem up.