Can The Amiga CD32 Run Perfect Versions of Capcom CPS1 Games?

[Gilbert]

I have always wondered this. I know the resolution won't be exactly the same but could it run arcade perfect Strider and Ghouls n Ghosts for example?

[stevelord]

No.

[Havie]

Yes.

[Havie]

Originally Posted by Havie

Yes.

Sorry couldn't resist! No idea but definitely better than what we got!

[jotd]

if you have followed the recent efforts to port games arcade-perfect (Bubble Bobble, Rygar, Super Sprint, BombJack, Space Invaders ) you'd know that it's possible to do something very close to the arcade.

Ghosts'n'Goblins is very close to the original. Assassin could be considered as a Strider clone, adapted to the amiga, so yes.

But noone even tried to recreate a CPS-1 game 1:1 (it's been discussed many times here)

- Do we have the code ? almost. well it's 68000 code so could be adapted by binary patching
- Do we have the sound & gfx ? yes we have
- Can we mix them together at proper speed and with everything fitting in RAM? no, no way.

CD32 seriously lacks memory to display all frames. Something that approaches an arcade perfect Capcom game is Super Street Fighter CD32. But the animation (and gameplay) is horrible because ... not enough frames that can be loaded. 2MB of chip is really too small for all the sprites. Also there aren't parallax scrollings IIRC.

It's been discussed many times, the CPS-1 system is far more powerful than a standard AGA amiga (or CD32). It's designed for arcade games, and arcade games are designed for the system. So the amiga can't really compete for 1:1 ports. Even with 68040 and fastmem it would still be a challenge.

[PortuguesePilot]

Arcade-perfect CPS1 on CD32? 1:1 versions? Is this even a serious question?

[Retro-Nerd]

No even close If we are talking about colors, resolution and sprites etc. You can surely do a lot better ports on an AGA machine, but they would still technically limited/cut down versions. (fit for the machine capabilities).

[Havie]

Well - I need a new challenge after Space Invaders but a CPS-1 game is a bit of a step up! I would probably be better revisiting my port of Target Renegade for the PC but for the Amiga, as I have all the graphics in 16 colours already!

I'm guessing you could get something approaching or equaling the Megadrive versions on an A1200?

And remember the Blitz basic remake of Final Fight was looking pretty good and the arcade game was on the same hardware.

[jotd]

yeah Havie, take it slow Space Invaders is arcade perfect, but even Rygar (which doesn't seem too much of a game compared to CPS-1 games) was pretty hard to pull, so let's imagine a CPS-1 game!

I'd say: do what you can do as easily as possible. Personally I adapted my SDL Bagman C++ program to amiga: no logic to write, only the low level layers. And it was already a big challenge to make it run at proper speed (stil not running good on slow machines). We need more 1:1 arcade ports, not specially CPS-1. Any 1:1 arcade port is good news.

The amiga (and the CD32) is a more versatile machine. It means that it can do 3D quite easily (well, polygons).On the other hand, those 2D console beasts are specialized in 2D with a lot of sprites, performant sprite hardware (so no need to "cookie cut " the background, save/restore it, the amiga can do it but the sprite size & numbers is ridiculous, even in AGA), huge ROMs to contain graphical data. You can do 3D with it but you lose the edge.

So maybe Frontier would be hard to pull on Megadrive or CPS-1 too. But that's not the point. The point is: adapting games designed for a given (superior, don't mention the Atari ST) hardware is difficult.

[saimon69]

Arcade perfect no; a close replica - given time money media and assets - however yes; would be similar to Genesis /PC engine ports

[Retro-Nerd]

The quality of the SuperGrafx version should be possible i guess.



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[fxgogo]

This sounds remarkably similar to another thread that has ended up in a troll fest....

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by jotd

CD32 seriously lacks memory to display all frames...

It's been discussed many times, the CPS-1 system is far more powerful than a standard AGA amiga (or CD32).

Its 2021, and memory expansions are cheap. Why do we have to limit it to stock machines?

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

Arcade-perfect CPS1 on CD32? 1:1 versions? Is this even a serious question?

Of course not. I don't remember even seeing these games on the original machines, so I wouldn't know how close a port was to the original - nor would I care. I bet we could make them better on the Amiga - that is to say, more enjoyable to play (who cares whether they are '1:1' so long as they have good gameplay).

The main thing I remember about arcade machines was constantly having to feed money into them, and feeling like the whole system was designed just to fleece me. I built a kit computer with 64x48 pixel monochrome graphics, programmed my own 'arcade' games into it, and played them to death for free! The fact that they were nowhere near '1:1' was irrelevant. It was the end of feeding money into arcade machines.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by jotd

if you have followed the recent efforts to port games arcade-perfect (Bubble Bobble, Rygar, Super Sprint, BombJack, Space Invaders ) you'd know that it's possible to do something very close to the arcade.

Ghosts'n'Goblins is very close to the original. Assassin could be considered as a Strider clone, adapted to the amiga, so yes.

But noone even tried to recreate a CPS-1 game 1:1 (it's been discussed many times here)

- Do we have the code ? almost. well it's 68000 code so could be adapted by binary patching
- Do we have the sound & gfx ? yes we have
- Can we mix them together at proper speed and with everything fitting in RAM? no, no way.

CD32 seriously lacks memory to display all frames. Something that approaches an arcade perfect Capcom game is Super Street Fighter CD32. But the animation (and gameplay) is horrible because ... not enough frames that can be loaded. 2MB of chip is really too small for all the sprites. Also there aren't parallax scrollings IIRC.

It's been discussed many times, the CPS-1 system is far more powerful than a standard AGA amiga (or CD32). It's designed for arcade games, and arcade games are designed for the system. So the amiga can't really compete for 1:1 ports. Even with 68040 and fastmem it would still be a challenge.

OK guys I am not trolling but just challenging and developing some ideas . What do people think about these thoughts?

I would disagree trying to copy the code as a 1 to 1 match. I think it would need to be re-written from he ground up. So that's more what I'm talking about.

The CD32 has some very large sprites and maybe the Copper can help (e.g. multiplexing etc) and then it has the blitter too? It must be able to get very close when pushed to the limits. (yes as people have said a very close replica is possible)

I understand that the CPS1 system at its most powerful would be tough to emulate - but arcade developers don't write optimal code. Some of their code is pretty bad in fact (in terms of efficiency and the CPS1 is a powerful system at moving sprites and so their 68k code wouldn't need to be very efficient at all)) and games like Strider, Ghouls n Ghosts were the very first games made for the system. Also lets be honest the 16 bit Megadrive has great versions of both. G n G was made on a very low capacity cartridge for that system (768k!) so I'm sure it could have been a lot better. Supergrafx version = 1 Megabyte. The CD32 has 2Mb of RAM and a whole CD's worth of capacity - and it can stream graphics data in and out during gameplay

The graphics data is available on the net and there aren't a huge number of animation frames in Ghouls n Ghosts https://www.spriters-resource.com/arcade/ghoulsnghosts/

According to my (legal) ROM image in MAME, the whole arcade game of Ghouls n Ghosts is 4.06 Megabytes. So that means one level's data can fit in memory easily. Much of this will be music data too maybe? (Edit: Strider arcade is 5.31 MB)

Also lets say that the A500 at it's best can do a 50% accurate arcade conversion of Strider. People always say here that the the A1200,CD32 are 2 or 3 times as powerful (without additional ram).... So.....

Something else I wonder - is that some arcade games run at half frame rate (at least the display code, I think the logic code runs at the full frame rate) So Metal Slug and Outrun are both 30fps. And there isn't a huge difference between that and 60fps. Most casual gamers wouldn't notice if you didn't tell them. So if you could recreate a CPS1 game at 30fps - it would still seem a pretty perfect conversion. Is this possible?

Originally Posted by Havie

Well - I need a new challenge after Space Invaders but a CPS-1 game is a bit of a step up! I would probably be better revisiting my port of Target Renegade for the PC but for the Amiga, as I have all the graphics in 16 colours already!

I'm guessing you could get something approaching or equaling the Megadrive versions on an A1200?

And remember the Blitz basic remake of Final Fight was looking pretty good and the arcade game was on the same hardware.

Please try. I actually thought (once I learn hardware scrolling) I could easily better the Amiga version of G n G using AMOS or Blitz on my A500. Maybe I couldn't (in reality) but it doesn't seem like a hugely demanding game in terms of resources. It would be very time consuming to do admittedly.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

O but arcade developers don't write optimal code. Some of their code is pretty bad in fact (in terms of efficiency and the CPS1 is a powerful system at moving sprites and so their 68k code wouldn't need to be very efficient at all)) and games like Strider, Ghouls n Ghosts were the very first games made for the system.

You really are an idiot - you do know that don't you?
How's that for trolling?

[Retro-Nerd]

The CPS1 is highly custom made hardware. The Arcade game coder could ask for that kind of hardware, so that they were able to do the best version possible (within a price/cost effect range though). There was nothing "bad" or "inefficent" about the code.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

Arcade-perfect CPS1 on CD32? 1:1 versions? Is this even a serious question?

Depends on the game. Pang is CPS1, but it doesn't push the hardware at all.

Also, forget arcade perfect, and go for decent graphics and arcade perfect game play.

[jotd]

Pang uses Z80 as the main processor... yeah, unbelieveable.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by jotd

Pang uses Z80 as the main processor... yeah, unbelieveable.

It's indeed not CPS1, but rather Capcom Mitchell Hardware.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

The graphics data is available on the net and there aren't a huge number of animation frames in Ghouls n Ghosts https://www.spriters-resource.com/arcade/ghoulsnghosts/

According to my (legal) ROM image in MAME, the whole arcade game of Ghouls n Ghosts is 4.06 Megabytes. So that means one level's data can fit in memory easily. Much of this will be music data too maybe? (Edit: Strider arcade is 5.31 MB)

Also lets say that the A500 at it's best can do a 50% accurate arcade conversion of Strider. People always say here that the the A1200,CD32 are 2 or 3 times as powerful (without additional ram).... So.....

You do know about the Falcon port of Ghouls N Ghosts?

Ghouls'n'Ghosts CPS1 ported to STE and Falcon

There are other, more recent videos somewhere...

No way can this be done on an A500; and especially not in AMOS.