Okay so after playing it a bit heres my list of problems. I know this is kinda a budget title since they are putting out all 3 games for $10 (whereas if they went the 3rd strike route they'd be putting out each game for $15) and with 3rd strike just coming out it makes this collection look kinda bad.
- Screen Tearing like a mother
- When you unpause the game your inputs aren't read immediately
- No custom screen stretching
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Online is nearly unplayable 99% of the time
- Scan lines should be a separate option from Filters
- Move list text is too small and looks like it was made for 4:3 and then stretched to 16:9. Also, for colour blind people (like myself) its hard to distinguish between the A and Y button, the A's green should be darker.
- Music for UMK3 seems to be lower than other games? Should have separate sound sliders for each game IMO. Also main menu music should also have it's own slider.
- No option to randomly pick which game you are playing for Ranked match
- Gamertags don't appear while fighting online
- Scorpion/Smoke's "Get Over Here"/"Come Here" get cut off in UMK3
- Finish Him music keeps playing sometimes when you pause the game (sounds dumb because its clashing with the menu music)
- Kombat Kodes don't work in UMK3
- I could be wrong but I think the start button may not be functional during the games (which is required for MK2 Smoke fight and certain fatality easter eggs). Someone could correct me but I tried down+start when I was uppercut into the spikes and didn't fall down
- Apparently you can't turn into Human Smoke in the first round of a fight in UMK3
- TerryMasters discovered a bug in the online menu:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk8ABGN-yGM
- I also think the filters could be a little bit better. The filter is okay but seems to lack a bit of smoothing, its as if theres a little bit of aliasing built into it. When I use HQ2xS in Mame I don't see that aliasing at all. (yes this is a nitpicky thing and more of a want than a need)
- Wheres the lobby match option? UMK3 and MK9 both have versions of this. This should have had it
If they could fix that stuff, then this would be a really really great package. Honestly, there needs to be a little bit of quality control from NRS. This isn't the first time they dropped the ball on a project like this. At my work if we drop the ball on something, right away we start putting a new process in place which avoids it from happening again. NRS needs to do this for future "port" projects.
Also, I still think they could've done the HD Kollection treatment without refliming. This is kinda my wet dream for one in the future given they fix the above... and I'd happily pay $20-30 for it
- Keep the original sprites and have filter options, but also have "touched up" sprites as an option which is basically filtered sprites with some touch ups. They could have an artist touch up key frames (such as win pose, upper body while walking, last frame of uppercut animation, face during fighting stance) to look clean and also fix some of the glitches in the sprites. For example when you are Scorpion/Sub-Zero in MK1 and you do a crouching block, the gamma is way off for that sprite; that could be fixed. With some of the other characters in MK2 or MK3 which have dark black in their costume theres also some weird shifting between black and grey in the leg areas that could be fixed. And also smoothing out the outlines of the characters could be done (theres a way to do this in photoshop really easily so it wouldn't be too much work).
- Redraw the stages in HD faithfully, everything should have the same hues and look.
- Redraw the lifebars/UI in HD faithfully
- Redraw the special effects in HD (blood, projectiles, etc)
- Remake the select screens and tournament ladders in widescreen HD (similar to how 3rd strike online did it), backgrounds of select screen should have exactly the same patterns as the original game but obviously redrawn in HD; Human Smoke should be given his own box in UMK3 (get rid of the hacky way it is now)
- Select screen and character bio portraits should be redrawn in HD
- text throughout the game should be the same fonts as the original game, just in HD
- If you're playing the game in a non widescreen mode, the border around the game should just be the background picture from the select screen (not unlike how 3rd strike does it)
- For screen options, allow custom stretching (which also allows you to do a vertical crop if you wish similar to SSF2T HDR's vertical crop), and have an option to expand the viewable area of the screen slightly as well. This way you could get a proper widescreen mode with a slight vertical crop + a slight horizontal stretch + a slight expansion of the view area.
- Offer multiple revisions of the games. If its not possible to HD-ify the older revisions easily, just offer them emulated with filter options
- Make a new revision of UMK3 with Noob & Rain.
- Offer a Remix soundtrack of MK1 (those tracks don't hold up very well), make it closer to the Genesis soundtrack (or at least have an option for that), which is the one that most people remember
- Use GGPO! After 3rd Strike, there's no reason not to. They showed that its legit.
