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[Robin64]

There's definitely extra stutter on the XB1 version, beyond the NES slowdown emulation. Coupled with the popping in audio, it's pretty shoddy. When you consider how much they bigged up the emulation perfection of MMLC and then problems from that are still present here, it doesn't fill me with much hope for future releases.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Damn....

I bought Ducktales 2 for 5 bucks shortly before Woolworth closed its doors. I believe it was around Christmas of 1993 or 1994. I didn't even know the game existed. Iplayed the first one and loved it, and seeing a sequel, I just had to buy it.

Best purchase I've ever made. I still have the box and everything in excellent condition.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

There's definitely extra stutter on the XB1 version, beyond the NES slowdown emulation. Coupled with the popping in audio, it's pretty shoddy. When you consider how much they bigged up the emulation perfection of MMLC and then problems from that are still present here, it doesn't fill me with much hope for future releases.

No stuttering in the PS4 version, but it has the audio issues.

 

[Cow Mengde]

BTW, anyone complaining about the bosses in Darkwing Duck taking too long to kill, use the special gas guns you collect. 6 shots from Arrow Gas will kill any boss. Though Quackerjack is easier with Heavy Gas.

 

[KingBroly]

No stuttering in the PS4 version, but it has the audio issues.

Sounds like nothing's changed since MMLC then

 

[Sgt. Kabukiman]

Just started playing Ducktales with headphones and the audio is all fucked. Just extremely strident and unpleasant. I hope they fix that, it seems worse than it was in the MM collection.

 

[Shadowman16]

Off-topic but is the Mega Man collection in good standing now? I recall when it first launched there were a number of problems with the game.

Excited to grab this, I haven't played TaleSpin but everything else is quality material. It'll be fun to play through Chip n' Dale with my brother. If there is a Switch version it'll be a double dip.

Played through the MM collection just last month. I don't see any problems with it, but I believe the audio popping might still be in the PS4 version? I've not noticed it myself.
But in terms of controls etc. it seems perfect otherwise. Plus I love the challenge mode that is in the Legacy Collection.

 

[PrankT]

Is there an option to play with black borders and un-stretched? That frame art is so not necessary.

Yes, there is an option for black borders.

This collection is fantastic.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

Sounds like nothing's changed since MMLC then

Unfortunately not. I've made some posts about it earlier in this thread.

Played through the MM collection just last month. I don't see any problems with it, but I believe the audio popping might still be in the PS4 version? I've not noticed it myself.
But in terms of controls etc. it seems perfect otherwise. Plus I love the challenge mode that is in the Legacy Collection.

It is, mainly confined to some tracks from the first two games.

 

[Lee Chaolan]

Audio is all messed up? Gonna be a pass until they fix it (or never if they don't)

 

[OrbitalBeard]

Audio is all messed up? Gonna be a pass until they fix it (or never if they don't)

Only on a handful of tracks. For some, it won't even be an issue, but it's definitely going to be a dealbreaker for others. I went into this compilation with pretty realistic expectations, based on their last release, so I wasn't surprised.

 

[Pinky]

That's taking authenticity too far if you ask me. It's not like the devs intended the slowdown to be there.

It wasn't intended, but it was the result they got with the NES hardware. These are pretty much ROM dumps, so there was never a chance of Capcom going in and retooling/removing the slowdown from these games for this collection. You're getting exactly what we got in the late 80s/early 90s.

 

[Undead Bokun]

I'm having the same problem on XB1. It's like when you try to run a PC game that's too much for your computer. Stuttering I suppose you'd call it. Even happens in the front end menus.

Do you have it installed on an external drive? I had stuttering issues with Duke Nukem World Tour when installed to an external drive. After a bit of looking I found a topic on the gearbox site that came to the conclusion that the game didn't like being installed on an external drive. Sure enough, moving it to the internal drive fixed the issue.

 

[b3b0p]

It wasn't intended, but it was the result they got with the NES hardware. These are pretty much ROM dumps, so there was never a chance of Capcom going in and retooling/removing the slowdown from these games for this collection. You're getting exactly what we got in the late 80s/early 90s.

If this is done similar to Mega Man Legacy Collection this is far from ROM dumps if I'm not mistaken from reading and hearing the developer on podcasts. There was much more involved.

 

[Robin64]

If this is done similar to Mega Man Legacy Collection this is far from ROM dumps if I'm not mistaken from reading and hearing the developer on podcasts. There was much more involved.

I would take what they say with a pinch of salt. They talked about how these would be absolute perfection, the "Criterion Collection of retro gaming". and we know how that's turned out.

Additionally, you can open up the .exe file of the Steam version of MMLC and dump the NES ROMs from the file. For example, go to 0xE22818, copy 0x40000 bytes to a new file, boom, Mega Man 2 NES ROM.

 

[Pinky]

If this is done similar to Mega Man Legacy Collection this is far from ROM dumps if I'm not mistaken from reading and hearing the developer on podcasts. There was much more involved.

Yeah, I mean, I know they included the ability to rewind the game if you screw something up, so there is more going on. I guess removing slowdown wasn't on the list.

 

[AdmiralMikey]

Got this last night on my XBONE and while I haven't experienced the "stuttering", I have run into the slowdown that would've come from the original NES games and wish it wasn't there.

Oh well, I was just glad to finally beat Darkwing Duck for the first time last night, which was a game I had initially received as a present for Christmas 1992. 25 years later, I finally got Steelbeak! Looking forward to trying Tailspin, Ducktales 2 and Rescue Rangers 2 for the first time as well.

 

[Knurek]

Yeah, I mean, I know they included the ability to rewind the game if you screw something up, so there is more going on. I guess removing slowdown wasn't on the list.

Rewind is just a standard emulator feature.
It's just an extension of savestates.

 

[korly]

Do you have it installed on an external drive? I had stuttering issues with Duke Nukem World Tour when installed to an external drive. After a bit of looking I found a topic on the gearbox site that came to the conclusion that the game didn't like being installed on an external drive. Sure enough, moving it to the internal drive fixed the issue.

I've moved it from external to internal and back. Same problems each way.

 

[Pinky]

Rewind is just a standard emulator feature.
It's just an extension of savestates.

Ah, you learn something new everyday.

 

[Mega Man's Electric Sheep]

Would NOT RECOMMEND this, unfortunately. Besides the audio issues, it has crashed on me twice on PS4, and hard locked my console. The leaderboards are also completely broken, I got a high score that would have ranked 4th and it didn't register. Another quality control free release from this incompetent developer which they will probably never fix.

 

[CamHostage]

If this is done similar to Mega Man Legacy Collection this is far from ROM dumps if I'm not mistaken from reading and hearing the developer on podcasts. There was much more involved.

For the NES emulator and the wrapper and the surrounding application (and rights and all of that,) sure. Lots more work goes into a professional classic-game package than one might imagine.

But for the game data itself, I believe it's just the dumped NES ROM untouched, I would doubt they touched any of the tiles or modified anything in the code.

Also, slowdown or flicker would I assume be handled in the emulator rather than touched anywhere in the compiled game code?

 

[b3b0p]

For the NES emulator and the wrapper and the surrounding application (and rights and all of that,) sure. Lots more work goes into a professional classic-game package than one might imagine.

But for the game data itself, I believe it's just the dumped NES ROM untouched, I would doubt they touched any of the tiles or modified anything in the code.

Also, slowdown or flicker would I assume be handled in the emulator rather than touched anywhere in the compiled game code?

As a developer I think you (and many others) seriously underestimate the time, money, and all the other externalities involved.

 

[Knurek]

As a developer I think you (and many others) seriously underestimate the time, money, and all the other externalities involved.

So, are you a developer or are you just repeating PR you heard from the developers on podcasts?

 

[Cmagus]

Darkwing Duck isn't as good as I remember it forgot how clunky the game is.

 

[Lothars]

Another quality control free release from this incompetent developer which they will probably never fix.

It sucks your having issues but to say this really makes me smh.

 

[bengraven]

Always meant to play Ducktales.

But duck you, this package is worth it for Chip and Dale alone.

 

[ZeoVGM]

Mousecepade was actually made by Hudson and just published by Capcom in the west.

Ah, scratch that one then.

 

[Mega Man's Electric Sheep]

It sucks your having issues but to say this really makes me smh.

Because they released another compilation with garing issues (MMLC) after selling it on how faithful and perfect it was. This is the second time they've screwed me, and they won't get a third chance. They deserve to be called incompetent for releasing buggy trash.

 

[Lynd7]

Some of the issues may be small overall, but it makes the developer look bad and will definitely start to impact them on their next release with probably more people taking a wait and see approach.

It maybe wouldn't be so bad if they didn't go around claiming they are aiming for perfection in the emulation. Surely they knew about these problems, especially because the same issues were brought up by people from the MM collection.

 

[CamHostage]

As a developer I think you (and many others) seriously underestimate the time, money, and all the other externalities involved.

You seem to be confusing the issue.

The ROM is the game code. "Line-10: Draw Mega Man; Line-20: if A=1 then Jump, Line-30: if B=1 then Shoot, Line-40: goto 10." Stuff like that. Capcom wrote it and compiled it all those years ago to press a NES ROM, and like a published book, that's the game, to be read by the machine and translated electronically into "fun" on your TV.

Generally, when you put out a classic game, you do not touch the game code at all. You sometimes see the title screen changed for amending the rights of ownership (they change the text displayed to list the new year and company of copyright) and sometimes you see sprites or tiles or text or textures changed a bit because of some issue of copyright or standards, but not much past that. You don't want to monkey with game code once it's been finalized (unless you're modifying it on the fly with a patch or emulator MOD), as game code can be finnicky, and you probably wouldn't fix technical problems on an old NES game at the ROM level anyway since it was made to run that way because that's what the machine (and the machine you're emulating) can do.

So then, when you take that game and play it on a different type of machine, you need a reader, so to speak, to play it and make it work the way it would on an old machine using the new machine. That reader is the emulator software, and THAT is where the work goes in for a development team like Digital Eclipse. (They also put in a lot of work, like I said, adding bonus content and porting the emulator application and verifying rights and all that worky stuff... why you questioning me, BTW, I said exactly that about it taking time and money to put out old games professionally.) The emulator allows them to change how some things in the game code are read/displayed (to the potential detriment of the experience, so they're careful about how far they go on that end), determine what filters are used to render the graphics, add features like rewind and save-state, etc.

Still all the same exact game code as 30 years ago, just like a book on your Kindle is always the same number of words, but with an additional software layer, you can have bookmarks and bigger fonts and highighted text and stuff like that.

 

[OmegaDL50]

As a developer I think you (and many others) seriously underestimate the time, money, and all the other externalities involved.

Based on what Robin64 said in her post above, I think you are overestimate the actual effort put into this collection in presuming it's more work involved then just a bunch of roms in a special container with a custom emulator.

 

[Megatron]

The achievements for beating boss rush mode are so damn easy, lol.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

I'm a tad more forgiving of this compilation's issues over the MMLC for a few reasons:

- Digital Eclipse and Capcom didn't go on a press tour claiming this was equivalent to the Criterion Collection, like they did with their Mega Man collection

- This is the first time these games have been re-released, so I can deal with some of these flaws. It's nice to have official versions of these games on modern systems. Before the MMLC, there were many re-releases of the NES Mega Man titles, so my expectations were higher.

- I knew what I was getting into, based on the team's previous release and I bought this at launch knowing full well it was likely to have some problems.

I'm not trying to excuse any of its issues, though, as I really am baffled that the exact same audio problems from their last collection are in this. But I knew this was a possibility before buying, as even the MMLC's patch that released months after its launch didn't address it. Digital Eclipse and Capcom were smart to simply announce and release this, without trying to promote it like they did with the Legacy Collection.

 

[CamHostage]

Based on what Robin64 said in her post above, I think you are overestimate the actual effort put into this collection in presuming it's more work involved then just a bunch of roms in a special container with a custom emulator.

Well, no, that's not correct either. You can work your ass off and still make something that's broken, or that works great in theory but for some reason hits some wonky bit on this or that platform under certain circumstances.

Emulation programming takes both work and brilliance, but the brute work is doable anywhere if you put the right people with the right tools to it, whereas the kind of crazy mad genius it takes to make an emulator hum (as I understand it; I'm not a programmer), every one of us on this GAF thread could probably spend all year trying to make a good one and still not come up with what an elite emulation coder could do in a short bit of time and some deep thought.

I'm not trying to excuse any of its issues, though, as I really am baffled that the exact same audio problems from their last collection are in this.

Yeah, I don't get what Digital Eclipse is doing (besides taking jobs that'll keep the lights on.) They want the rep of being the go-to team for amazing classic game releases, and they thought they had the engine for it, but for reasons they're not talking about, it's not worked perfectly right twice in a row. M2 has some madmen (though didn't they lose somebody vital recently?), but they can't and won't do everything, and in theory Digital Eclipse's solution is what's needed, but in execution, it's going to get them killed.

 

[Cmagus]

Crazy to see people clearing Ducktales in 7:30 but it's also cool to see that the original glitches are still left in the game, it certainly makes the moon stage go by fast lol.

 

[Mega Man's Electric Sheep]

Crazy to see people clearing Ducktales in 7:30 but it's also cool to see that the original glitches are still left in the game, it certainly makes the moon stage go by fast lol.

I beat DuckTales today and was shocked at how short it was. It seemed so much bigger when I was 12! It's literally a half hour long or less if you know the layouts.

The big surprise for me is Rescue Rangers 2. Never owned that one, and I like it better than the original! The bosses in particular are far superior. Hard to believe it came out in 1994, years after I had amassed a huge SNES collection.

One of the times it crashed on me was going into DuckTales boss rush, so I'm curious if it's related to leaderboards.

 

[The Scrivener]

When I was a kid, some 30 odd years ago, I remember my dad buying me and my brother Chip 'n' Dale's game for our birthday or something and I remember beating it in just 1 morning. I remember saying for a long time back then that it was the worst game ever for that reason. Bet it hasn't aged well either!

Edit: They should've made it bigger and included SNES games like Aladdin, now there's a classic. I don't think these old NES games were as good as the cartoons.

 

[dlauv]

I would take what they say with a pinch of salt. They talked about how these would be absolute perfection, the "Criterion Collection of retro gaming". and we know how that's turned out.

Additionally, you can open up the .exe file of the Steam version of MMLC and dump the NES ROMs from the file. For example, go to 0xE22818, copy 0x40000 bytes to a new file, boom, Mega Man 2 NES ROM.

From what I know, it's not that they're emulating an NES directly: they're porting the games over to their engine using the ROM data. That's how modes in MMLC like that remixed stage mode and rewind in TDAC can work like they do. Said engine mimics NES quirks/limitations(?), but it's a different process than Nesticle or something, which intends to virtually become NES hardware, communicating with a ROM like an NES would.

 

[Azure Dream]

From what I know, it's not that they're emulating an NES directly: they're porting the games over to their engine using the ROM data. Said engine mimics NES quirks, but it's a different process than Nesticle or something, which intends to virtually become NES hardware, communicating with a ROM like an NES would.

To expand on it: They've decompiled the original ROMs, and are running the base instructions through an interpretter, I believe. So technically it's native code. The ROMs are still in the game data because they pull the art assets directly from them, but it's not emulating the NES operation as a whole in a traditional manner. I believe Frank said they do it this way due to how skittish publishers are about emulators.

 

[@MUWANdo]

Capcom (and in particular Capcom USA) has a long history of low-balling and mismanaging projects like these and I think the failure to fix or address any issues with this product and others falls primarily, if not entirely, on them.

 

[Mega Man's Electric Sheep]

When I was a kid, some 30 odd years ago, I remember my dad buying me and my brother Chip 'n' Dale's game for our birthday or something and I remember beating it in just 1 morning. I remember saying for a long time back then that it was the worst game ever for that reason. Bet it hasn't aged well either!

Edit: They should've made it bigger and included SNES games like Aladdin, now there's a classic. I don't think these old NES games were as good as the cartoons.

The SNES Aladdin is extremely short and easy and I beat it the day I got it. It is barely longer than these NES games and is beatable in 45 mins or less. Kinda bizarre to bash an NES game for being short and praise that game.

Also Rescue Rangers has held up great, especially in coop. All the games have, except for TaleSpin which was never very good to begin with.

 

[Link1110]

After a morning playing duck tales 2, there first one is hard to go back to. Having to press down to Pogo jump is kinda annoying. Gotta persevere though. This may be the first game I platinum

 

[OrbitalBeard]

After a morning playing duck tales 2, there first one is hard to go back to. Having to press down to Pogo jump is kinda annoying. Gotta persevere though. This may be the first game I platinum

No Platinum trophy, unfortunately. Just a bunch of bronzes. The trophy list is pathetic for this title.

 

[Link1110]

No Platinum trophy, unfortunately. Just a bunch of bronzes. The trophy list is pathetic for this title.

Oh, was excited cause all I have to do is best the Games twice (boss attack and normal) do all boss rush and beast one game without rewinding

 

[Robin64]

From what I know, it's not that they're emulating an NES directly: they're porting the games over to their engine using the ROM data. That's how modes in MMLC like that remixed stage mode and rewind in TDAC can work like they do. Said engine mimics NES quirks/limitations(?), but it's a different process than Nesticle or something, which intends to virtually become NES hardware, communicating with a ROM like an NES would.

Some stuff is being emulated, while other stuff is being reinterpreted. The latter distinction is where it being "in a new engine" comes about. So the PPU of the NES is being emulated, and the memory maps are identical to a NES (you can see if you compare health positions in memory for example), but the 6502 instructions have been statically recompiled and stored elsewhere. It's like how Dolphin recompiles code from one architecture to another, except DE have done it in advance rather than it being dynamic.

Worth noting that both remixed stage modes and rewind can be done in emulation. Rare Replay is pure emulation and does both, and there are emulators on PC that also support rewind.

 

[Shadowman16]

Quick question from anyone whose played Top Spin back in the day - is the controls supposed to be this bad? Or is it a problem with the port?

Basically I've experienced issues with a couple of stages where my plane seemingly getting stuck on nothing (especially bloody annoying on the haunted house stage and boss). Plus at times my plane will not turn around, which always happens when I'm trying to navigate an area with small paths and walls...

But I can believe its just an awful game. Level design sucks, the plane sucks to begin with (until you level it up) and its just not fun at all... Definitely the worst game in the collection no doubt.

 

[Data West]

Quick question from anyone whose played Top Spin back in the day - is the controls supposed to be this bad? Or is it a problem with the port?

Basically I've experienced issues with a couple of stages where my plane seemingly getting stuck on nothing (especially bloody annoying on the haunted house stage and boss). Plus at times my plane will not turn around, which always happens when I'm trying to navigate an area with small paths and walls...

But I can believe its just an awful game. Level design sucks, the plane sucks to begin with (until you level it up) and its just not fun at all... Definitely the worst game in the collection no doubt.

The Turbografx version was much, much better

hard as hell though

 

[MUnited83]

have they said anything about a patch for the audio issues? I'm waiting for that before I buy it.

 

[Cmagus]

All done finally, overall it was a pretty good package but I kind of wish there were a few more games for the price. Ran pretty good on PC and didn't encounter any major problems or audio hiccups luckily. Most of the games are how I remember them, except Darkwing Duck, I didn't care for that much when I was younger and didn't really change my mind now but the rest were pretty good. I would say none of the games with sequels were better than their originals though.