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NEC TG-16/TE/TurboDuo => TG-16/TE/TurboDuo Discussion => Topic started by: peonpiate on May 23, 2008, 10:44:23 PM
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It had a insane port of SF2 CE, on par to what the SNES had, which was amazing considering how much older the TG is than the SNES. That got me wondering, could it do Mortal kombat 2 justice ? Or even Mortal kombat 1 ?
I know graghics wise it seems capable of doing MK 1 ok, as it has more colors than the Genesis, but speedwise...its cpu isnt 16 bit, and MK is more demanding than SF was due to the characters being larger, and more photo realistic looking. Thats not even looking at MK 2 which is far more demanding than MK 1 was.
From what i can see, TG could do better sounds than the Genesis on MK1/2, but graghics would fall back some due to slower processor. Kind of middle of the road. but im not the expert on TG!
Any thoughts on this ?
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Actually, in terms of Millions of Instructions Per Second (MIPS), the Turbografx 16 is faster than the Genesis.
So yes, it could have done MK 1 or 2 easily.
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The fact that the graphics in MK are more photo-realistic than SF doesn't make a difference, either. It's all just sprites being pushed around the screen.
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Had any company been interested in porting it I think the TG-16 could well have supported an excellent port. The question is, would the Super CD format have sported enough memory for matches or would it have required an Arcade CD? I doubt any company would have been willing to have produced a larger, SF2-style HuCard.
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It had a insane port of SF2 CE, on par to what the SNES had, which was amazing considering how much older the TG is than the SNES. That got me wondering, could it do Mortal kombat 2 justice ? Or even Mortal kombat 1 ?
I know graghics wise it seems capable of doing MK 1 ok, as it has more colors than the Genesis, but speedwise...its cpu isnt 16 bit, and MK is more demanding than SF was due to the characters being larger, and more photo realistic looking. Thats not even looking at MK 2 which is far more demanding than MK 1 was.
From what i can see, TG could do better sounds than the Genesis on MK1/2, but graghics would fall back some due to slower processor. Kind of middle of the road. but im not the expert on TG!
Any thoughts on this ?
I heard at one time that NEC/Hudson was actually approached before both Nintendo and SEGA for exclusive rights to the Mortal Kombat franchise. For whatever reason they declined the opportunity, and the rest is history.
I don't remember the source, so the validity of this information may be questionable, but I'm pretty sure it's legit.
But to answer your question-- yes, it definitely could've handled a port just fine, in any case.
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The best way most of us can predict how MK would have turned out, is to compare fighting games that came out on both the PCE and Super Famicom, Street Fighter 2, Godzilla and Flash Hiders/Battle Tycoon flash hiders.
So thats one hu card and two super cd games, no need to compare the arcade card fighting games, that would be over kill, and even though Godzilla and Flash Hiders were made by the same companies and came out later on the super famicom, they both ended up being better on the PCE in my opinion.
Those two cd fighting games are not even the best of the super cd fighting games, that in my opinion would go to Asuka, a much better game than MK 1.
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If what Nat says is true, then the Turbo could have been a whole lot more popular (smacks forehead). At the same time, I hate Mortal Kombat. It would have looked better than the Genesis versions color-wise.
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It had a insane port of SF2 CE, on par to what the SNES had, which was amazing considering how much older the TG is than the SNES. That got me wondering, could it do Mortal kombat 2 justice ? Or even Mortal kombat 1 ?
I know graghics wise it seems capable of doing MK 1 ok, as it has more colors than the Genesis, but speedwise...its cpu isnt 16 bit, and MK is more demanding than SF was due to the characters being larger, and more photo realistic looking. Thats not even looking at MK 2 which is far more demanding than MK 1 was.
From what i can see, TG could do better sounds than the Genesis on MK1/2, but graghics would fall back some due to slower processor. Kind of middle of the road. but im not the expert on TG!
The TG processor speed and sprite pushing cababilities are almost the same as the Genesis. Its actually the SNES, which has a fantastic MKII port, that has a slow cpu.
If you'd like to see how well the TG/PCE can handle street fighting games with large sprites and lots of animation, take a look at the PCE Neo Geo ports.
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Ive seen the Neo ports and they are great, but they use the Arcade card do they not ? I had a stock TG16 in mind, as in America atleast, addons sell pretty poorly historically [segacd/32x etc].
It seems like it could have been do'able, better than the Genesis one atleast. But im going to wager that a MK2 port on TG wouldnt come very close to the SNES version...as that port was just unreal at the time, nearly a carbon copy in every aspect. Sound wise in particular I dont think the TG can compete with a SNES without its CD drive [im kind of biased in that regard..snes sound/music has always stood out to me over the TG/genny back in the day].
So stock TG16 if it used a huge 20 meg hucard could come close i take it.
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Yeah, 20meg hucard or some variant there of. The hucard slot has audio input pins, so they could have added some small additional audio hardware. Sound fx and voices would have been easily doable. I did a mock up of MK1 char selection screen and Johnny Cage - all PCE compliant but that's as far as I went with it.
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Ive seen the Neo ports and they are great, but they use the Arcade card do they not ? I had a stock TG16 in mind, as in America atleast, addons sell pretty poorly historically [segacd/32x etc].
It seems like it could have been do'able, better than the Genesis one atleast. But im going to wager that a MK2 port on TG wouldnt come very close to the SNES version...as that port was just unreal at the time, nearly a carbon copy in every aspect. Sound wise in particular I dont think the TG can compete with a SNES without its CD drive [im kind of biased in that regard..snes sound/music has always stood out to me over the TG/genny back in the day].
So stock TG16 if it used a huge 20 meg hucard could come close i take it.
The visuals would've only been a matter of memory and competence by the developer. Chances are they wouldn't have added any background scrolling effects(not that I remember much in the game).
Its a similar deal with the sound. The TG-16 can run high quality(for the time) sampled sfx through any of its sound channels at once. If the publisher was willing to allow the game enough memory, the voices would've been clearer than the SNES port and the music would've sounded comparable to the other ports if they used samples for a couple channels.
Its all hypothetical, but when talking about "possibilities", if the SNES can do something 2D-wise(sprites on bgs), then the TG-16 & Genesis would have no problem doing the same. And in many cases even the NES and SMS could too.
Also, the SNES port is very well done for SNES, but is pretty far off from the arcade. Its only a near-carbon copy by EGM standards.
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There is rumored to exist an actual prototype of MK for the PCE, but I don't know anyone who's actually seen it. I had one guy email me a couple of years back claiming to have some screenshots but he disappeared...of course. In any event, one part of the rumor states that they were going to use MK to bring the Arcade Card stateside, which makes sense considering MK is a US game and we were in desperate need of the Arcade Card and its great games over here. But alas...it never happened, and the rest is history. Converting MK for the PCE would be a mind-numbingly easy task...it's one of the simplest fighters available, and the extra storage of the Arcade Card would make it virtually child's play. Shang Tsung's final battle would be a relatively easy feat to accomplish...I've already thought about how it could be done. Even MKII could be done with ease on the Arcade Card. MK3? Probably as well. The Genesis really showed how limited it was when it came time for MK3, but with the additional storage memory of the Arcade Card, I honestly believe that the PCE could pull it off where the Genesis fell a bit short.
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I too think the TG16 could've handeled MK1 and 2 no problem. If the Genesis and SNES can handle them, then so can the TG16 really. I also don't really see MK being any more hardware demanding than SFII', but I never really compared them graphically.
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Here are some screenshots in PCE resolution and palette with on-screen colors reduced well below what would be required for the background tiles-
(http://www.superpcenginegrafx.com/img/mkiipce1.bmp)(http://www.superpcenginegrafx.com/img/mkiipce2.bmp)
(http://www.superpcenginegrafx.com/img/mkiipce3.bmp)(http://www.superpcenginegrafx.com/img/mkiipce4.bmp)
(http://www.superpcenginegrafx.com/img/mkiipce5.bmp)(http://www.superpcenginegrafx.com/img/mkiipce6.bmp)
Even an average Turbo/PCE developer should be able to pull off this level of graphics quality. Without theorizing how the players could be cobbled together with various sized sprites, if Bonk III can toss around a couple giant Bonks this size-
(http://www.superpcenginegrafx.com/img/bonk3sprites.gif)
...along with enemies, power ups, etc... then (proportionately) arcade sized players should also be no sweat. Even if the developer was so lazy that they left the bgs totally flat and pushed the life bars and timer either to the top of the screen or striped them SFIICE-style.
I had a stock TG16 in mind, as in America atleast, addons sell pretty poorly historically [segacd/32x etc].
Historically, the TG-16 in general sold poorly and the CD-ROM wasn't an add-on for the TurboDuo. Worldwide, CDs were the more successful/popular format for the Turbo/PCE, so there's no reason that MKII shouldn't have been done on CD. In which case the music would be arcade-superior and the sampled sfx would be about as good as the SNES version, but with higher quantity.
Its hard to see how a decent MKII port on Turbo/PCE couldn't have been the best at the time.
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I am willing to bet that a HuCard Mortal Kombat would have run in the 256-wide resolution. This would have the effect of reducing flicker and requiring less pixels to make the same sized sprite (as it appears on the TV screen).
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To make huge sprites like that is pitifully easy. All you do is have several 32x64 sprite blocks arranged in a set pattern, like so:
1 2
3 4
etc. And for each sprite, assign its memory pattern to adjacent areas in video RAM. Then, simply block copy the sprite data to the first pattern location (normally somewhere between 0x4000 and 0x5000 for us indies, but official developers of the time didn't always follow the same rules) and you're done.
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houly thats such damn easy, just let's do it!
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I am willing to bet that a HuCard Mortal Kombat would have run in the 256-wide resolution. This would have the effect of reducing flicker and requiring less pixels to make the same sized sprite (as it appears on the TV screen).
Do you mean HuCard as opposed to CD or as in "Turbo/PCE port"?
The player models would only equal 128 pixels of width total, even with some blood flying around, I can't see enough sprites lining up to cause any flicker. The players are always both on-screen at the same time, so the lower resolution wouldn't help. Even if background effects were put in, like those floating monks, most of it could be done with animated tiles.
If anything, it seems like street fighting games should be easier to render visuals for than other genres like horizontal shooters.
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Fighting games in general are usually bloody easy (pun unintentional) to handle graphics-wise, it's just a matter of moving around huge chunks of data. What makes fighting games special is the underlying state machines and AI systems.
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The lower resolution would help. The blood splatters are all their own sprite... each drop.
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I really hope an indie developer takes advantage of the PCE's high-res mode someday. It might be a disaster for games with a lot of sprites, but I'm sure you could still think of a neat little game to make with it. I thought a 5 player puzzle game would be cool and effective.
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Maybe a game where you play a detective with a fat sidekick and maybe even some video scenes to show the Sega CD that it isn't the only game in town any more. That should use the high-res mode. It'd sell like hotcakes, I tell you!
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They should've made "Sherlock Holmes 1 and 2: High-Res Edition" and sold it for $100.
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Too bad they already did that. I hate it when I get awesome ideas 20 or 30 years too late.
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Yeah, Joe was being facetious, but nobody got it. Anyone wanna list the commercial games that at some point use high-res (512 pixels or more)? AFAIK, there's:
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective (part II too?)
Shadow of the Beast
TV Sports Basketball
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I got the joke, I just chose not to respond. :D
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Joe was being facetious?! :-s NEVER! :P
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Sherlock Holmes really had a 512 resolution? I always thought it was 320.
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Yup! 512 for the entire game, not just an intro screen or two like Shadow of the Beast. It's the "HD" of FMV games. This is probably what caused the many pauses and lags in the video. Had it run at half the resolution, it could have video the same size at a better framerate and no pauses.
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I would give a really technical answer, but its not needed. MK is utter shit, and I'm glad it never made it to this system.
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I would give a really technical answer, but its not needed. MK is utter shit, and I'm glad it never made it to this system.
I personally could care less about MK, but MK could've helped TG16 sales and thus brought out better titles out here.
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I think it would've been kinda cool - between MK and Splatterhouse, it would've gotten a reputation as the gore-fiend's system. :twisted:
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I think it would've been kinda cool - between MK and Splatterhouse, it would've gotten a reputation as the gore-fiend's system. :twisted:
Yeah, that would have been just f*cking great. The dirtballs with sleeveless shirts and wraparound shades already had a system for them; the Genesis (notice I didn't say Mega Drive). If you buy a used Genesis today there is still a chance you can smell their sweat and cigarette stank ground into the plastic.
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Splatterhouse wasn't gory. Didn't it have green blood?
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I have little fondness for Mortal Kombat. I think the graphics were nice, for the most part, but the fighting engine and controls were both quite poor. I wouldn't have bought it for the Turbo, but I would have been glad to have seen it. It could have been a real boon for sales. The Mortal Kombat games sold fairly well on home consoles, at least for the first 2 versions, and the sales bump for a good port for the Turbo might have meant more translations of some of the great Japanese titles we missed. And since that late in the game it would have been TTI in charge instead of NEC at least we know they would have tried to pursue some of the better titles.
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It could have been a real boon for sales.
Holy crap, the ultimate pun: Ed Boon? :mrgreen:
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I have little fondness for Mortal Kombat. I think the graphics were nice, for the most part, but the fighting engine and controls were both quite poor. I wouldn't have bought it for the Turbo, but I would have been glad to have seen it. It could have been a real boon for sales.
Aaron and Steve speculate on what could have happened here:
http://pcenginefx.com/main/tzd__the_interview.html