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Iron D

2805th Post

Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master

"X-men:CotA" , posted Tue 13 Nov 19:31

I'd really like to own this game for a home system. I've heard that all of the home versions for this game suck, in that they are missing a lot of the animation from the arcade version.

The version I'd be most likely to get is the Saturn version. Can anyone confirm if the Saturn version is worth getting or not? I am concerned about missing frames of animation, but if the Saturn version has enough of them intact, I'm thinking it might still be worth getting. In particular, how are things like Sentinel's fighting stance and Magneto's "shadow-hands".

And lastly, this game doesn't have any compatibility with the 4 mg memory expansion cart, right/

Er.....

Replies:

shindekudasai
173th Post

Regular Customer

"Re(1):X-men:CotA" , posted Tue 13 Nov 21:40

quote:
I'd really like to own this game for a home system. I've heard that all of the home versions for this game suck, in that they are missing a lot of the animation from the arcade version.

The version I'd be most likely to get is the Saturn version. Can anyone confirm if the Saturn version is worth getting or not? I am concerned about missing frames of animation, but if the Saturn version has enough of them intact, I'm thinking it might still be worth getting. In particular, how are things like Sentinel's fighting stance and Magneto's "shadow-hands".

And lastly, this game doesn't have any compatibility with the 4 mg memory expansion cart, right/

Never had this one on a console, but I did own the PC version and I don't remember it being any different than the arcade. I wish I still had it to compare, tho ... I'll see if I can find a torrent tonight, and get back to you.

Wither Blister Burn + Peel

Ishmael

2989th Post

Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master

"Re(2):X-men:CotA" , posted Wed 14 Nov 01:27

Come to think of it, does MSH suffer from the same animation loss when it was brought over to home systems? I also wouldn't mind revisiting those games but I wouldn't want the home experience to be too jarring.

nobinobita
203th Post

Frequent Customer

"Re(3):X-men:CotA" , posted Wed 14 Nov 02:10

quote:
Come to think of it, does MSH suffer from the same animation loss when it was brought over to home systems? I also wouldn't mind revisiting those games but I wouldn't want the home experience to be too jarring.

If my memory of old issues of Gamefan serves me correctly, then there's no arcade perfect console port of Xmen: COTA. The Saturn one was definitely missing some frames (i know cos Nick Rox made one of his famous ballpark estimates stating the game had maybe 80% of the animation). I don't think Capcom did any perfect home ports until X-men Vs. Street fighter. I could be wrong on that though.

Also, is it me or are most of the characters missing animation in MVC2? I could swear they're all smoother in their original CPS2 games, especially characters like the Sentinal or Omega Red. I've never run them side by side to check though.

Gojira

2256th Post

Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master

"Re(4):X-men:CotA" , posted Wed 14 Nov 04:23:

I have the old PC version of CotA, and it had a 8mb option and a 16mb option. The 16mb option was much smoother and had most (all?) of the animation. Unfortunately it doesn't work on XP or Vista as far as I can tell, so I switched to emulators. The Saturn version IIRC was like the 16mb option.

As for MvC2, I'm pretty sure there is nothing missing. I mean in general there were cutbacks on older characters because of the limitations of the DC 1GB storage media, but I believe the Naomi had the same storage limitations so cuts were the same in both versions. Plus they developed the arcade and home versions simultaneously with the intention of having a perfect home port.

[this message was edited by Gojira on Wed 14 Nov 04:25]

JJWE

566th Post

New Red Carpet Member

"Re(5):X-men:CotA" , posted Wed 14 Nov 06:29

AFAIK the Saturn port of CoTA does suffer cuts here and there, but probably nothing as massive as the cuts made to the various PSX ports of the Capcom fighters. I'm not going to dig out my Saturn and my copy of the game to verify that though. MSH used some sort of cartridge, if I'm not mistaken, but the RAM used in it was slightly slower than that used in the console itself, causing some slowdowns here and there. Otherwise I think everything was there(?). I never got to play it though, but I remember that the PSX port was horrid.

And I think that what Nobinobita meant was that there were frames cut between MVC2 and previous games that the characters starred in, and that's certainly true. It's not exclusive to MVC2 though, it happened in previous "vs" games as well.

--- http://ngmc.retrogames.com

crazymike

1389th Post

Red Carpet Executive Member

"Re(6):X-men:CotA" , posted Thu 15 Nov 04:20

quote:

And I think that what Nobinobita meant was that there were frames cut between MVC2 and previous games that the characters starred in, and that's certainly true. It's not exclusive to MVC2 though, it happened in previous "vs" games as well.

I think frames were cut because frankly the older Marvel characters had so much more animation than the Street Fighters it would make them seem too out of place more than they already are.

Nice to see COTA and MSH getting some love, I still find them much more entertaining then the cut and paste V.S. series as a whole. My local coney island still has a MSH cabinet and I wish I could pilfer it in the middle of the night from them.

shin ramberk

319th Post

Bronze Customer

"Pushing the CPS2 to the max..." , posted Thu 15 Nov 04:36

So what is the consensus here in regards to this whole business on cutting animation. Did latter CPS2 games have animation cuts? If yes, then was the reason for this because (a) space/memory limitations on the CPS2 or (b) artistic decision to maintain the same level of animation between SF and Marvel characters?

My memory is fuzzy, but I would like to believe that COTA and MSH characters did have more animation in these games then in latter games. But I'm unsure...

I also tend to believe that Capcom reached the limitation on what they could do with the CPS2 board with MvC. The reason I believe this is because of the number of characters and features included in MvC in comparison to MvC2. MvC2 is what MvC1 should have been all along, I'm thinking. Either Capcom was not yet ready to abandon the CPS2 board or they had not yet decided what board to use next. It probably would have seemed weird and backward to build a game on the CPS3 using CPS2 animation and art. I also think its an easy guess to say that the Naomi board was cheaper to manufacture and sell then the CPS3.

This brings back memories... When COTA, SFA and MSH were new games. Life was more exciting then... :/ sigh.

http://ramberk.blogspot.com

Gojira

2256th Post

Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master

"Re(1):Pushing the CPS2 to the max..." , posted Thu 15 Nov 05:06

Oh, duh me. I should have realized what he was asking when he mentioned CPS2.

quote:
So what is the consensus here in regards to this whole business on cutting animation. Did latter CPS2 games have animation cuts? If yes, then was the reason for this because (a) space/memory limitations on the CPS2 or (b) artistic decision to maintain the same level of animation between SF and Marvel characters?

Most likely (a) was an influence on (b). The CPS2 has a maximum storage of 322 megabits, which is just a little over 40 MB. That's not an incredible buttload of storage, but they still packed the Vs games with 20+ characters, so some move/animation cuts were inevitable.

As for why certain older CotA and MSH characters got cuts in MvC2, I don't know. Maybe that GB filled up fast. They did have to upscale the sprites for high-res even if they didn't redraw them, so that's 4x the space needed right there. And the higher-quality audio would have taken up more space (though I know most people could have done without it).

Ishmael

2995th Post

Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master

"Re(2):Pushing the CPS2 to the max..." , posted Thu 15 Nov 05:42

Wasn't Capcom banging up against the CPS2 limits for some time? If I remember right that was the reason for all those arcade variations on Vampire Savior.

Cain Highwind

774th Post

Red Carpet Regular Member+

"Re(3):Pushing the CPS2 to the max..." , posted Thu 15 Nov 07:01

I always assumed the difference in Animation Quality was a RAM issue. Like in MVC, having four fluidly animated characters would be too much for the system to handle and would cause slowdown, so they had to cut back on animated frames a bit. Even a little worse with MVC2 because of 6 characters.

That was my thought.

Iron D

2806th Post

Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master

"Re(3):X-men:CotA" , posted Sat 17 Nov 19:07

quote:
Come to think of it, does MSH suffer from the same animation loss when it was brought over to home systems? I also wouldn't mind revisiting those games but I wouldn't want the home experience to be too jarring.

Well I use the RAM cart with my copy of MSH, and with that the animation is great, but there is still A LOT of slowdown. Definitely way more than there was in the arcade version. I still love the game though, and am just glad to have it on a home system.

And although the questions regarding it have been answered, I'll repeat that MvC2 was DEFINITELY missing frames of animation on characters from older games. The most obvious example of this would be Sentinel. Just look at his neutral stance. He's also missing his air down+roundhouse and his air down+fierce from X-men: CotA, which I suspect is due to animation limits as well.

So....the verdict here would be that the Saturn version won't satisfy an animation frame junkie like myself? If I can tolerate the amount of animation missing from the PSX ports of SFA2, SFA3, Vampire Saviour/Darkstalkers 3 and Pocket FIghter, but NOT the amount of animation missing from the PSX ports of the VS. games, can I tolerate the Saturn version of X-men: CotA?

Er.....

JJWE

567th Post

New Red Carpet Member

"Re(4):X-men:CotA" , posted Sat 17 Nov 22:21

quote:
So....the verdict here would be that the Saturn version won't satisfy an animation frame junkie like myself? If I can tolerate the amount of animation missing from the PSX ports of SFA2, SFA3, Vampire Saviour/Darkstalkers 3 and Pocket FIghter, but NOT the amount of animation missing from the PSX ports of the VS. games, can I tolerate the Saturn version of X-men: CotA?

If you can tolerate the PSX cuts to Darkstalkers 3, then I definitely think you'll be able to stomach the Saturn port of CoTA.

As for the cuts in the latter VS games, they were definitely running out of storage space. Which was, as was already mentioned, the reason for the two different versions of Vampire Savior 2 and Vampire Hunter 2.

And when it comes to MVC2, I'd say that they kept the previous characters as is (ie. Spider-man retained his frame cuts from previous VS games) and the "new" characters got toned down where needed due to RAM limitations so they could fit all six of 'em in memory at once.

--- http://ngmc.retrogames.com

Iron D

2807th Post

Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master

"Re(5):X-men:CotA" , posted Sun 18 Nov 00:46

quote:

If you can tolerate the PSX cuts to Darkstalkers 3, then I definitely think you'll be able to stomach the Saturn port of CoTA.

Thank you, good Sir.

Er.....

Iron D

2809th Post

Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master

"Re(1):X-men:CotA" , posted Thu 29 Nov 21:37

Update for anyone interested:

I got my copy of X-men: CotA from Amazon, and I'm glad that I took the advice of those who gave it. The animation is SURPRISINGLY good, and I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I keep my combination 4 meg cart/memory cartridge in my Saturn at all times.

Makes me wonder why Marvel Super Heroes, with it's compatibility with the 4 meg cart, has so much slowdown in comparison. There's barely any slowdown in X-men: CotA.

Er.....

CharlesProphony
48th Post

Rare Customer

"Re(2):X-men:CotA" , posted Fri 30 Nov 00:23:

quote:

Makes me wonder why Marvel Super Heroes, with it's compatibility with the 4 meg cart, has so much slowdown in comparison. There's barely any slowdown in X-men: CotA.

One thing I think is : Lazy Job.
The CotA was possibly totally reprogrammed to the systems, so the ram problem is a lesser problem because some extra tricks went to graphics transfer between the cd and the main graphics system.
As for MSH, yes, it requires more memory to house those extra sprites and effects of the current fight, but doesn't explain the slowdowns, because with the extra memory of saturn, the game has all the sprites loaded already, and for a system which supports something like panzer dragoon rpg with all those textures floating around(saturn doesn't have a native power for 3d, so just think the 3d as lots and lots of 2d sprites being distorted and modified in real time(well, 3d is no more than this, but for the horse power of the saturn... it was a great barrier)... and there is the explaination of lots of game developers saying it was hard to make game to saturn.).
Maybe the 4megRam was a new thing to capcom, and they rushed for this extra build...

Ex-Prophony

[this message was edited by CharlesProphony on Fri 30 Nov 00:49]

JJWE

568th Post

New Red Carpet Member

"Re(6):X-men:CotA" , posted Fri 30 Nov 07:16

quote:
MSH used some sort of cartridge, if I'm not mistaken, but the RAM used in it was slightly slower than that used in the console itself, causing some slowdowns here and there. Otherwise I think everything was there(?).

I quote myself a little bit, as I recall hearing that this was the issue that caused MSH to run the way it did. As for CoTA, it doesn't take advantage of any of the cartridges out there on the market, as it wasn't programmed to.

--- http://ngmc.retrogames.com

Iron D

2810th Post

Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master

"Re(7):X-men:CotA" , posted Fri 30 Nov 13:35

Hmmm...I see. That would make sense, so I'll just take that to be the official explanation.

Er.....