Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo - The Greatest Amiga Gaming Casualty?

[StarEye]

Not impossible, but the problem back then was loading everything from disks slowed things down quite a bit. If it was made by proffesionals today, I reckon it'd come on a CD and demanded to be harddrive installed and require at least 68030 and AGA. If done right, I'm sure it would be extremely close to the arcade version.

[dlfrsilver]

just check X68000 version -> loaded from disks (4 ) with 2mb of ram
this machine had custom chips like amiga. + 65535 color palette on screen.
But the game was then possible to convert on an amiga with less color but with a decent
speed.

[derSammler]

Well, the X68000 has a graphics sub-system which is much better than AGA. The bottleneck of every Amiga is and always was the chip ram. It's just to slow to move big sprites and background graphics at the same time with a decent speed.

[Amiga1992]

No comparison. The X68000 is a much powerful machine than the Amiga. hence why you DO have a pixel perfect port of Super Street Fighter and other games.

I don't know much about coding but I htink with the right compromises any port can be done. As I said, check out the neogeo conversions for the neogeo pocket color.

[dlfrsilver]

yay Akira the only thing the X68000 have is much more colors (i agree with you)
and a YM2151 for sound which have 8 channels instead of 4 on amiga but this said,
the amiga could perfectly make it even with less colors.....

Check a game like elfmania, you'll understand everything......plus the game on X68k
use files for graphics that uses very strong compression algorythmes to store the tiles.
but oh my god the japanese program their games far better than occidental do theirs.

I just imagine capcom engineers laughing at the poor USGOLD ports of their games....
we can even imagine that they'll launch prosecution on USGOLD if they ever see what they do with their games.....

[dlfrsilver]

postscriptum : the CPS 1 and 2 arcade PCB SDK was created on the X68000 for those who didn't know that. That's why the games are pixel perfect..... They just have to adapt the code a bit to remove the coin/dipswitches part and here we go.

The CPS1 / 2 were only "console stand-alone port of X680X0 machines"

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

yay Akira the only thing the X68000 have is much more colors (i agree with you)
and a YM2151 for sound which have 8 channels instead of 4 on amiga but this said,
the amiga could perfectly make it even with less colors.....

No man, you are underestimating the X68k and overestimating the Amiga, and comparing two absolutely different things altogether.

The graphics chipsetry is far different than that of the Amiga and more suitable to pixel perfect conversions like these (asides of number of colors)
The sound chip you mention is only used for synth music, whereas the Amiga has only 2 channels of DIGITAL (no synth, and they are not 4 or 8 channels, they are 4 or 8 voices) sound. The X68000 also has an ADPCM soundsystem like the Amiga but it adds the synth chip for music. Not fair to compare, different stuff altogether.

They just have to adapt the code a bit to remove the coin/dipswitches part and here we go.

Another great misconception. Just because two machines share the same MAIN CPU doesn't mean that ports can get across pixel perfect. The graphics circuitry inside a CPS machine is far superior to that of the Amiga (and more akin to that of a X68000, it seems).

Otherwise the C64 would have the same games that look the same as Nintendo Entertainment System games (as the main CPU is the same or compatible [6502 based] )

Some specs I lifted form the first google links that stumbled upon me:

X68000 Specs

CPU + Clock
*Motorola 68000*10MHz for the first model, - 68000@16MHz for the XVI model – X68030@25MHz for the later models (the only difference in later models is the CPU and aIO ports, the graphics and soudns remained the SAME all throughout the line)

ROM
*128KB BIOS
*768KB Character Generator (16x16, 8x16, 8x8 - JIS 1 + 2)

RAM
*1-4MB stock, expandable
*512KB Text VRAM
*512KB Graphic VRAM
*32KB Sprite VRAM
*16KB Static RAM

Screen Resolutions
*1024x1024 Max, 256 x 256 Min

Colours
*65,536 Palette. 256 Max onscreen

Sprites
*16x16 pixels, 16 colours / sprite
*128 sprites / screen, 16 sprites / line

Graphics Hardware
*Hardware scrolling, priority control, super-impose

Sound
*2ch FM Synth, 8 Octave, 8 Voice
*ADPCM


Amiga Specs
CPU System
* 68000@7Mhz

Memory
* 512K "FAST" RAM. FAST Ram can not contain any (usable) graphics or sound data. It is "Fast" because the custom chips do not have access to it, so the CPU has exclusive access.
* 512K "Chip" RAM. CHIP Ram is where all display data and sound data must be, in order for the custom chips to be able to manipulate it. It is "SLOW" because the CPU must time-share it with 3 other chips.

* 512K "Kickstart" ROM.

Video

* The Amiga has no character-mapped modes. Everything is done through bitmapped graphics. This can be slow, but that's what the cursom chips are supposed to help with.
* # of colors: Display modes allow for 2, 4, 8, 16, or 32 colors from a palette of 4096 colors.
* Resolutions: 320, or 640 pixels wide by 200 or 400 pixels high.
* Sprites
o 8 sprites available, 16 pixels wide by any number of scanlines high.
o 4 selectable colors per sprite.
o Hardware collision detection.
* Other Features
o Smooth scrolling (both horizontal and vertical)
o "Overscan" 740x512 with no visible border on the screen.
* Custom "COPPER" Coprocessor
o The COPPER chip is capable of modifying virtually every display attribute to an accuracy of a few pixels.
* Custom "BLITTER" Coprocessor
o Draw lines
o Perform an area-fill
o Copy rectangular blocks of display data
o Manipulate rectangular blocks of display data (up to 3 sources and one destination. Many operation modes, such as AND, NOT, and OR combine the sources)

# Sound
* 4 voices mixed, 2 on left channel and 2 on right channel.
* All audio is built of samples. There are no pre-defined waveforms.




Try as you might, bitmap graphics are not the fastest to display, something the X68000 is ahead of because I think, like arcades, it works by tiled based rendering or some such shit (i'm not a terrible tech, I'll let experts speak about this). Also, the X68k has *DEDICATED* VIDEO memory, which the Amiga doesn't. Also has SPRITE memory. All this really adds up to the speed and ammount of shite you can throw at the screen without making it slow. The Amiga only had 512K (or to top it, 1MB) of CHIP ram that had to be SHARED between instructions, graphics data, sound data, disk loading routines, the user needs to take a pish, everything.

It's not just a matter of how many colours you have onscreen, it's a matter of how is the machine wired. The X68000 is wired just like an arcade, therefore it permitted pixel perfect conversions of arcade games. the Amiga is not. This is also why console ports are easier sometimes, or end up bing better, because the consols are wired more akin to arcades. The Amiga is a strange machine IMO.

With all this I'm not saying a better port of SF2 could have not been made, but not a pixel perfect port. Elfmania is nothing to call home about, since it was technically quite superb but it lacked tremendously in lots of departments. I don't thikn an engine like that could withstand a complex GAME (it's not about how it looks, it's more about how it plays) like Street Fighter.

Do yourself a favor. Download a NeoGeo Pocket emulator, and a copy of, say, King of Fighters R2. Now compare it to KOF98 and tell me what's missing compared to the neogeo game. I'd say not much. It obviously LOOKS different but the game has been preserved perfectly, making it a superb port. Without making it look equal.


To get this more onto the Amiga side, the Amiga conversion of Street Fighter 2 looked almost like the arcade game but played like shite. it was not Street Fighter 2 at all. However Super Street Fighter 2 looked like pure tosh, but played quite close to the arcade, threfore, even if it looked like absolute shit, I thought this was the better conversion. SSF2Turbo probably suffers the same fate as the original SF2 conversion.

[dlfrsilver]

As i said all the cps1 and 2 games were programmed on X68k.

For the rest, yes i'm afraid thru what you said that you are right :-D

[Amiga1992]

I am not sure the gfx chipset of the 68k is the same as that of the CPS/2 boards. Having the SDK in a platform doesnt mean much, the Atari Lynx's dev platform was the Amiga, that doesn'mean the Lynx has pixel perfect ports of Amiga gams, or that they even share a hardware resemblance.

[dlfrsilver]

Yep but i'm not the only one to know that and most of all Hiroaki Hondo one of the CPS2 engineers was doing his stuff on X68k. The CPS 2 is a hardware that use encryption + an extended color palette that's all and greater sprite size.

The CPS board have just Qsound chips but try to play final fight or Street fighter 2, the sound is far greater on X680X0 versions !!

I can even upload the emulator + games in the zone if you want to give it a try hehe

"don't forget there are many X68k all around Japan" (copyright capcom 1987) so yes document yourself about CPS SDK you'll find it was running on X680X0

X68k were just more than conversion or ports, it's the machines capcom developpers used to create the games we love.....

[Amiga1992]

err,,, i know the x68k platform perfectly, and been in the hunt for one for 6 years already.

[dlfrsilver]

bad luck i found an announce in a french website, a french guy near Toulouse
is selling one 380 Euros !!!

Search harder mate !!!

[Amiga1992]

Hard to find when you live in south fucking america, dude.

[dlfrsilver]

yep but search well, there is an american online-shop on the net that sell X68000

so try to find it ! It's not that far from south america !

see ya !!

[dlfrsilver]

Look Akira it's Xmas day for South america people that want a nice X68000 !!!

I'm so keen that i give you the link !!!! here it is :

http://nfg.2y.net/sales/html/EEpVkuZEylHukZxIlF.html

there you go a nice X68000 XVI + screen!!! for 499 dollars not counting shipping costs

you have no excuses now hehe !!

[Amiga1992]

Yeah give me the money ;p

For that price I buy a MacMini that I use for WORK

[dlfrsilver]

hehe nice try but this is a wonderfull machine now a collector one.....

hehe

[Amiga1992]

At least my MiniMac will pay itself, this wont. Sory but I cannot affford such luxury and I can surely wait for the right moment, that's how I have 26 systems.

[redblade]

hmm do you have the SDK for the x680x0, or is it in nihongo/japanese.

To me the main thing about a perfect port is the gameplay, I mean fuck playing SF2 on the amiga if you can't do the combos flawlesly. That's why I love mame and SF2, invisibles, golden stance, freeze.

But that's SF2 not SSF2.

[dlfrsilver]

naaa !!! the SDK is capcom internal, so it will never come on the internet...
But yes the MSDOS of X68k is in nihongo -> should be nice to translate. BTW sharp
has released for free these files so.....

In fact the X68k chipsets was created by hudson soft, so guess capcom didn't invent the
cannon powder with his CPS1 PCBs.....