SF II resolution question?

[Tatsujin]

why the heck all Street Fighter II ports on any consoles used a lover vertical resolution? since they all where completely re-drawed from the original arcade, i can't see any reasons why they used a lower resolution and put in those ugly black bars on top and bottom of the screen?

even when different teams/developers ported the game on a very different platform (e.g. SFC -> Capcom, PCE -> NEC Ave...), the result was nearly the same:

SFCPCEMD

how come?

PS: NEC Ave. in a minimum was that smart, to use that useless black area for displaying the scores

[Black Tiger]

Its because the SFII WW was ported to SFC, which pretty much only runs in that resolution.

Then lazy Capcom made all subsequent 16-bit SFII ports based on the original SFC port as the common denominator.


ARCADE-




GENESIS-




SNES-




ARCADE-




PC ENGINE-







Here's what SFIICE could've looked like on PC Engine, the PCE image uses real actual PCE colors and resolution-


ARCADE-




PC ENGINE-

[nat]

I'm always amazed at how good a port Forgotten Worlds on the TurboGrafx is.

[ceti alpha]

I'm always amazed at how good a port Forgotten Worlds on the TurboGrafx is.

Seriously though, I've seen comparison pics before, but man I think it actually looks better than the arcade....well, at least in that pic comparison.

[Black Tiger]

I'm always amazed at how good a port Forgotten Worlds on the TurboGrafx is.

A while ago I ran that arcade screenshot of Forgotten Worlds (among other games) to see how well the Turbo port really turned out. The result is almost identical to the actual Turbo port's colors.

The developer swapped one of the bg shades for black to add contrast, even though that arcade faithful shade appears elsewhere in the same shot. I think it looks better that way.

The only other noticible difference in color is the floor/ceiling, which as you can see could've been shading arcade faithful. But once again I think that the change is an improvement.


ARCADE-




ARCADE image using PCE colors-




PC ENGINE-

[Tatsujin]

why those capcom arcade "emu captured" pix always looking so stretched? there was no screen which such dimensions at that time, and just watch the circles in the BG, they're very distorted!! the PCE screen actually looks very accurate in that res. mode!!

[Kitsunexus]

why those capcom arcade "emu captured" pix always looking so stretched? there was no screen which such dimensions at that time, and just watch the circles in the BG, they're very distorted!!

Doesn't MAME automatically capture a pic at certain dimensions? If said dimesnions didn't match the aspect ratio of the game, then it would be distorted.

[Bonknuts]

why those capcom arcade "emu captured" pix always looking so stretched? there was no screen which such dimensions at that time, and just watch the circles in the BG, they're very distorted!! the PCE screen actually looks very accurate in that res. mode!!

 That's called pixel aspect ratio. You'd have to scale it in different rations for X and Y to get them to look correct on a PC/MAC/whatever system. Those pics aren't adjusted for it. The Arcade didn't use square pixels 

 I'm sure the letter box on the SFC port (and Genesis too) was more to increase vblank time and vram updates. They can't update sprites during active display, so they have to wait for non-active display (vblank). The PCE version doesn't need this as it can update sprites frames at anytime, but it's still there by previous game design.

[Keranu]

Very interesting Forgotten Worlds comparison, Black_Tiger! I still can't decide whether I like the shade change or not (and I wonder if the designer thought it looked better that way too).

[SignOfZeta]

As for the weird aspect ratio of the arcade SFII, that comes from a very strange resolution that the Capcom's CPS boards use (384 x 224). You don't notice it on a CRT of course because it looks normal, but in MAME or whatever things look fuct because the pixels aren't supposed to be square like they are in this pic. There is no upscalled compatible mode for this resolution most of the time so things have to be interpolated. On a standard arcade RGB CRT this is done transparently, but while running under emulation its hard to get it right.

As for the letterboxing on consoles, I always assumed this was because sprite size was limited for various reasons, and if the BGs were full sized it would look even more noticeable. SFII was a very high-end game back then, even for the arcade, so the fact that something sucks about the console ports is no surprise. I'm amazed the console versions turned out so well, honestly. One of the reasons why Fatal Fury Special is so good on PCE is that it has no letterboxing, and that really stood out at the time.

[Joe Redifer]

I don't think SF2 was very high end on the arcade scene (hardware/graphics wise), seeing how it came after the likes of Space Harrier, Out Run, After Burner, Thunder Blade, Galaxy Force, etc.

[SignOfZeta]

It had the largest number of the biggest and most well animated sprites ever. The hardware wasn't high-end, the game was.

[ceti alpha]

I just noticed on the PCE version of SFII that the elephants' horns aren't shaded white, but are gray like their skin. Just a nitpick, but I was playing "what is different in these picks" with myself and that popped out at me. 

[TR0N]

I don't supose any body watch this epsiode of retroware reviewing,SFII for the pce.

The person does show screen shots to compare the versions.

Btw keep in mind the reviewer voice is rather whiney 

[nodtveidt]

I just noticed on the PCE version of SFII that the elephants' horns aren't shaded white, but are gray like their skin. Just a nitpick, but I was playing "what is different in these picks" with myself and that popped out at me. 

I noticed that too. Also, take a look at the MD version's floor...dither hell where there isn't in the other two ports. The lack of colors really hurts its presentation overall.