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VF2 Model 2 (1994) vs. VF2 PS2 (2004). 56k'ers will be SPoDded

S

Sho Nuff

Banned
Does this comparison border on obsessive? You bet your ass it does. VF2 is my favorite fighting game and is in my personal Top 5 games of all time. So anyway, I grabbed my EOS 300D and shot a few frames from the VF2 machine in my living room and compared them against some PS2 DScaler frame grabs. The clean-looking shots are off the PS2 while the rougher ones with the scanlines are the arcade one. Enjoy!

nerrrrrrrrds.jpg

Astro City machine: Free with $60 shipping. VF2 board: $60. Harness: $20. Having this shit in your house: Priceless

vf1.jpg

Sarah is hot. Ground textures starting to look not so hot.

vf2.jpg

Facial detail cut down... why? Note lack of one-skin models. My friend at Sega calls this style of modeling "sausage people."

vf3.jpg

Lau's shirt looks mo ghetto in the PS2 one, dunnit?

vf4.jpg

Note downsampling in Jeff's neck textures.

vf5.jpg

Check out the textures on the temple in the background. HOLY SHIT! WHAT HAPPEN!?

vf6.jpg

I would think that Lion was hot if I were gay.

vf7.jpg

More hideous background textures. Note that the PlayStation 2 is theoretically eight billion times more powerful than the original hardware this game was running on.

vf8.jpg

You know your porting team sucks a freaking wang when they can't even get the goddam character select screen right.

Anyhoo, another funked up Sega Ages 2500 game. Don't even get me started on the slowdown, aaagh. The 2ch nerds are having a field day picking apart how bad it turned out, but ah well.
 
DCharlie

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
... and that seals the "arcade version over PS2 remake" purchase decission that i had to make.

christ on a bike.
 
Baron

Baron

Member
Hey, those are some great comparison shots there. It must have taken a while to set them up - unless you just pulled them fom the attract mode.

Thanks for posting this.
 
D

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
What the hell? I can't believe they fucked up this badly...

BOTH versions have shit textures, but the PS2 version just takes the cake (awful).

I don't understand why they had such a difficult time with this project...

Awesome comparisons, though. :D
 
DCharlie

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
Sega Haters series : 2-10-bother?

Sega - bringing the evil Sega enterprise down, one step at a time... from within!
 
R

RuGalz

Member
I was playing this yesterday and it is god awful. I can only guess that they went the lazy route on PS2 and try to cramp all the textures in the VRAM instead of streaming it. That sounds about right for any of these "budget" titles.
 
N

NotMSRP

Member
Thanks for the comparison pics. Comparison information is one of the primary information types I want and value the most out of all gaming news and information.
 
T

Trojan X

Banned
Great attract mode comparison.

Disgraceful conversation from a machine that was hyped beyond belief to be the best of the best back in the days... 80 million pps! Can see Lau's stage so I can see the mis-aligned background if possible?

Funny, but I bet you any money this would have appeared more perfect on the Dreamcast.
 
W

Wintermute

Member
I was going to pick this game up this month but definitely not at 2500yen. What a crap looking port. I'm just glad they got VF4 right.
 
T

Trojan X

Banned
To be fair though the direct-capture screen does appear to have a higher brightness. Perhaps you could adjust that to give a closer comparison, or is that exactly what the game looks like on your TV/monitor?
 
S

Sho Nuff

Banned
ArcadeStickMonk said:
Thank you good sir.

Now tell me about the sticks and buttons in your cabinet.
Click to expand...

The cab was second-hand, so I assume the sticks are standard. I had to hand-wire both sticks into the harness with lots of electrical tape, as the adapter that plugs into the stick didn't work, or was for another controller (most likely). Some of the buttons were sticky so I bought a half-dozen in each color from my local arcade distributor for 100 yen a pop. Buttons are also hand-wired (I need to get an official set of wires with the nice slide-on plastic bits) and I hacked in Capcom 6-button support after tearing apart a Super Gun adapter (wish I hadn't -- the Super Gun is now useless for CPS2 games).

Here's the wiring -- pray there's not an earthquake:
arc1.jpg


And here is one of my backup sticks ($9):
arc2.jpg
 
S

Sho Nuff

Banned
Trojan X said:
To be fair though the direct-capture screen does appear to have a higher brightness. Perhaps you could adjust that to give a closer comparison, or is that exactly what the game looks like on your TV/monitor?
Click to expand...

Oh god, dude, the brightness in this game is FUCKED. It's TOTALLY dark and I had to jack up the brightness to make it look normal (you have to do the same on a regular TV). Maybe RGB arcade monitors are brighter and they didn't bother boosting the levels. BAH!
 
K

Koshiro

Member
I suspect everythign had to be remodelled, given that model 2 uses quads and PS2 uses polys, but those textures are completely unexcusable.
 
D

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
RiZ III said:
So then its official, saturn > ps2.
Click to expand...

???

That's the arcade version being shown. The Saturn port was amazing for the hardware, but it really isn't even remotely close to matching the arcade game.
 
A

ArcadeStickMonk

Member
Sho Nuff said:
I had to hand-wire both sticks into the harness with lots of electrical tape, as the adapter that plugs into the stick didn't work, or was for another controller... I hacked in Capcom 6-button support after tearing apart a Super Gun adapter
Click to expand...
Thanks for the pics.
hand wired? Soldering wasn't an option or the tape secures the soldering? i guess you didn't want anything as semi-permenant as solder?
I'm always tying to learn more, so when you have time I'd love pics on the all wiring, especially the incompatible stick port and the hacked super gun. Why did you need Cap 6 anyway? I don't fully follow the supergun hacking part.

The stick and button look like Sanwa, and based up wehere you got them, there's no reason that they shouldn't be. Cool stuff.
 
J

jarrod

Banned
The PS2 video looks okay actually... are the texturing/lighting/modeling dowgrades really that noticable in game? And what's this about slowdown?
 
S

Sho Nuff

Banned
You get this batch because I care. I'm not making any more though, too much a pain. BTW, feel free to use this on your sites or whatever, just say SHO NUFF loves you!

stage1.jpg

Way to align your textures in Softimage!

stage2.jpg

The least embarrassing of the stages

stage3.jpg

Hey, the bridge made it in! Too bad about the glitching. Granted you'll probably never see it from this angle, but still.

stage4.jpg

Notice how the temple has been... er... diminished.

stage5.jpg

Look at that texture! At this point the game has thrown up its hands and said "That's it. I give up."
 
D

drohne

hyperbolically metafictive
jesus. i thought maybe you were overreacting. but actually it does look terrible. a shitty sega ages release is nothing new, but it's alarming that am2 fucked this up so badly.
 
W

Warm Machine

Member
Obviously its a somewhat rushed port but that being said the PS2 doesn't really excell at Areana fighters when it comes to texturing. All 4 meg of Vram pretty well has to loaded at once without a chance to stream. The devs probably just crunched everything the arcade machine had for each character and each stage into that size. They probably didn't even bother downconverting the textures to 4-bit to keep their original resolution and left them at 8-bit.

Porting from one machine to another is always going to bring problems. Simple stuff like the character select screen is going to be a pain if the PS2 version runs in 640x480 because the assets from the arcade machine are going to be displayed larger since Model 2 runs in some weird 480x360 res or something.
 
J

jarrod

Banned
segasonic said:
Sega in 1994 >>>>>>>>>>> Sega in 2004
Click to expand...
Sad but true... I'd say about 1994-1998 were Sega's golden years, nothing since has really been able to capture the same feel of their amazing Model 2 and Saturn games.
 
G

ge-man

Member
bjork said:
It's the PS2's fault imo
Click to expand...

The hardware played a role, but it's not like these things can't be worked around, especially for game this old. I think the reality is that AM2 couldn't be bothered with wrestling with the hardware on a budget release and decided that most people probably wouldn't see the difference anyway.
 
S

snapty00

Banned
Who has left AM2 besides Yu Suzuki? Any key programmers?

I ask because I really don't believe a port like this would've been released by AM2 even five or so years ago.

I mean, they did pretty good even with the Saturn version. And there is no doubt, even with all the stupid VRAM jokes, that PlayStation 2 is more powerful in every single way and can do everything the Saturn can do except better. I mean, the PlayStation 2 has more VRAM than the Saturn had of any type of RAM.

It just doesn't make any fucking sense.
 
X

XS+

Banned
Yeah well, since when was PS2 known for great texturing? And since when have we ever gotten a perfect port of VF? The geometry looks almost completely intact at least. Still a joke that a 10-year-old game can't get ported home properly.
 
V

Vark

Member
I suspect everythign had to be remodelled, given that model 2 uses quads and PS2 uses polys, but those textures are completely unexcusable.
Click to expand...

mmmm nope. A quad is just 2 triangles, no remodeling necessary, just re-exporting (it'll triangulate the geometry on export, most everything is modeled in quads anyway, its just easier. )
 
G

ge-man

Member
snapty00 said:
Who has left AM2 besides Yu Suzuki? Any key programmers?

I ask because I really don't believe a port like this would've been released by AM2 even five or so years ago.

I mean, they did pretty good even with the Saturn version. And there is no doubt, even with all the stupid VRAM jokes, that PlayStation 2 is more powerful in every single way and can do everything the Saturn can do except better. I mean, the PlayStation 2 has more VRAM than the Saturn had of any type of RAM.

It just doesn't make any fucking sense.
Click to expand...

The comparison is actually between the original Model 2 version. The Saturn version gets stomped by the PS2 version in everything except framerate (the backgrounds where only 2D for example). It's a different tale when we consider the arcade version, but even then the hardware is ancient compared to the PS2. I can understand the VRAM problem, but I'm sure there could've been a better solution to the problem.
 
S

snapty00

Banned
ge-man said:
The comparison is actually between the original Model 2 version. The Saturn version gets stomped by the PS2 version in everything except framerate (the backgrounds where only 2D for example). It's a different tale when we consider the arcade version, but even then the hardware is ancient compared to the PS2. I can understand the VRAM problem, but I'm sure there could've been a better solution to the problem.
Click to expand...
I know. My point in bringing up the Saturn version is that, even ten years ago, even on a system that inferior, the Saturn had a version that wasn't half-bad. The PlayStation 2 should've seemed like a blessing in comparison.

I totally don't understand the VRAM problem. If it were a modern game, it'd make sense, but this is certainly not a modern game. From what I can see, they shouldn't have even had to "work around" the lack of VRAM.
 
R

RuGalz

Member
Obviously its a somewhat rushed port but that being said the PS2 doesn't really excell at Areana fighters when it comes to texturing. All 4 meg of Vram pretty well has to loaded at once without a chance to stream.
Click to expand...

Amusing that a false statement like this still pops up after all these years. Not all textures in the arena has to fit in the vram. It just has to be presented when you are rendering the object using that one particular texture. When you are rendering Akira, his textures need to be in vram. When you render Sarah, her texture needs to be in vram. Both don't have to be in the vram at the same time or the background textures.

Heck they could easily use higher resolution textures than the original on the PS2 if AM2 gave a shit...
 
E

EAJAPAN

Member
Excellent work, Sho, much appreciated.

This is depressing.

I...uh...don't think I'll regret dropping fifty for it....

/damage control
 
K

KyotoMecca

Member
snapty00 said:
Who has left AM2 besides Yu Suzuki? Any key programmers? I ask because I really don't believe a port like this would've been released by AM2 even five or so years ago.
Click to expand...

Depite being famed for the quality of its games, AM2 has released plenty of shitty ports besides this Ages VF2 release, eg Daytona USA, Daytona CCE, Fighting Vipers, hell even Saturn VF1 was way inferior to the Model 1 original. Their ports have never really been the best, though certain ports (VF2 SS) obviously went down in history as "good" ports considering hardware limitations.

They should just let Sumo Digital handle everything from now on, it's their best converted game ever, and that's saying something! :D
 
D

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
bjork said:
It's the PS2's fault imo
Click to expand...

It's obvious that the PS2 could MORE than handle a perfect port of this game. There are many fighters already released that look vastly superior to Model 2 VF2 in every single way.

The fact that the PS2 is a difficult platform to work on may have played a role, even though the Saturn was also extremely difficult to utilize.

The fault lies in the hands of the development team. They were unable to utilize the hardware properly...
 
S

snapty00

Banned
KyotoMecca said:
Depite being famed for the quality of its games, AM2 has released plenty of shitty ports besides this Ages VF2 release, eg Daytona USA, Daytona CCE, Fighting Vipers, hell even Saturn VF1 was way inferior to the Model 1 original. Their ports have never really been the best, though certain ports (VF2 SS) obviously went down in history as "good" ports considering hardware limitations.
Click to expand...
Well, that's what made a lot of their ports so great, to me. Despite the hardware limitations, they still got it decently close.

So does this mean when they finally get the hardware to make a perfect port, they just can't do it? Makes no sense to me.
 
J

jarrod

Banned
KyotoMecca said:
Depite being famed for the quality of its games, AM2 has released plenty of shitty ports besides this Ages VF2 release, eg Daytona USA, Daytona CCE, Fighting Vipers, hell even Saturn VF1 was way inferior to the Model 1 original.
Click to expand...
Daytona CCE was done by the CTS team iirc (who also handled the Saturn port of Sega rally and VR32X). And Daytona/VF1 are sort of unfair comparisons as both were extremely rushed and done by different teams within AM2 (while VF2 was handled by the same team).
 
A

Argyle

Member
Warm Machine said:
Obviously its a somewhat rushed port but that being said the PS2 doesn't really excell at Areana fighters when it comes to texturing. All 4 meg of Vram pretty well has to loaded at once without a chance to stream. The devs probably just crunched everything the arcade machine had for each character and each stage into that size. They probably didn't even bother downconverting the textures to 4-bit to keep their original resolution and left them at 8-bit.
Click to expand...

Not entirely true about the texturing, the texture cache in the PS2 is fast enough to have textures streamed to it mid-frame.

I think you're right about them just cramming everything into the texture cache in one go. I think another thing that comes into play is that the Model 2 bilinear filtering doesn't work exactly the same way as the PS2 bilinear filter (hard to explain, but it's obvious when you look at the floor textures in the arcade version). I guess it's safe to say that AM2, no...Sega themselves...are just a shell of what they once were.

Anyway, I'm glad I have a VF2 arcade board (or two) :)
 
L

Lazy8s

The ghost of Dreamcast past
SEGA still turns out proficient titles on Xbox/Chihiro like Ghost Squad, OutRun 2, Virtua Cop 3, The House of the Dead 3, Jet Set Radio Future, and Panzer Dragoon Orta. Making most games for the PS2 just doesn't inspire SEGA to go all out like their own hardware, or at least hardware they appreciate, does.
 
S

snapty00

Banned
Lazy8s said:
SEGA still turns out proficient titles on Xbox/Chihiro like Ghost Squad, OutRun 2, Virtua Cop 3, The House of the Dead 3, Jet Set Radio Future, and Panzer Dragoon Orta. Making most games for the PS2 just doesn't inspire SEGA to go all out like their own hardware, or at least hardware they appreciate, does.
Click to expand...
So, in other words, they were lazy fucks.
 
A

Argyle

Member
Originally Posted by Lazy8s:
SEGA still turns out proficient titles on Xbox/Chihiro like Ghost Squad, OutRun 2, Virtua Cop 3, The House of the Dead 3, Jet Set Radio Future, and Panzer Dragoon Orta. Making most games for the PS2 just doesn't inspire SEGA to go all out like their own hardware, or at least hardware they appreciate, does.
Click to expand...

So, in other words, they were lazy fucks.
Click to expand...

Hahah, tell me about it. Lazy would almost have a point if about half of his list wasn't sequels that aren't as good as their predecessors, IMHO...Sega's been churning out a lot of crap this generation, and it makes me sad :(

Frankly, I don't care if they "like" the hardware, if they're going to bother to release a game, they should at least put some effort into it, or they, well...suck ass :)
 
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