Great video, once again. I had saved up all my money and bought a Saturn to play virtua fighter when alpha came out...I remember vividly and regret nothing lol, I guess I would have been 12. Those nostalgia feels are the real deal.
OMG this "pause" question plagued me for more than 20 years, I always thought it was a graphic compression issue... can't believe its actually an audio problem!!! Today one of my childhood question got answered!!! Sad and Happy at the same time.. very strange feeling Thx Dude!!!
I knew the snes pausing was due to the audio on how it was implemented. Its actually very evident in seiken densetsu 3. Dare I say any game that paused was because its loading new data to the spc and the pause is usually instrument data. This was also cleverly hidden on final fantasy 6.
It’s really cool to know that the producer wants to make this game avaliable for people who can’t affort 32 bits consoles at the time. A gift to the fans!
if by "gift" you mean $70 cartridge. It's slightly ironic that the SNES game would cost about 2 or 3 times as much as the CD version. but it's not like the loading times were substantially better on 32bit console.
i suspect nintendo pushed this released on the snes because n64 didnt have a good 2d engine. they probably didnt want nintendo fans feel left out not having street fighter alpha 2. they even published this themselve instead of capcom.
I remember laughing my ass off seeing "Now Loading" on the bottom of the screen in "International superstar soccer on the N64. I told my older brother and he said it was normal for cartridges to load.. I was like: What? no way! lol but it was true all along :)
I have to say, this version of Street Fighter Alpha 2 really gave my SNES new life. I wanted one of the newer systems at the time, but my dad was never very enthusiastic about spending much money on video games. Having access to a respectable version of Street Fighter Alpha 2 on my SNES not so long after I was reading about the PlayStation and Saturn versions in magazines and seeing guides for them really made this version of the game seem like something special.
Back in the 90's i wasn't aware that this was coming to the SNES. I was a hardcore SF2 fan back then and even owned an arcade cab. When i saw this on the shelf in WH Smiths i couldn't believe it and immediately bought it there and then. I think it was the only copy they had and i never saw it for sale elsewhere again. Wish i still had it now as the Pal version seems to be rare nowadays.
I actually bought a cooy recently from a German Friend of mine if you want i could ship you it :D i dumped the cardridge anyways and i own a SNES Flashcard so you can have it if you want:3
I don't know if it's just nostalgia, but it makes me sad there won't be any more hand animated 2D Street Fighter games. The flat but colorful look is very stylish.
@@aegisreflector1239 None of those use sprites. Sprite hardware was gone starting from the 32-bit generation and with the exception of KOF 13 they all have this weird flat anime look.
I play this every now and then just to experience how impressive this port is again and again. This is a underrated technical and gameplay achievement.
Absolutely. Not to mention that everything is there. From characters to stages, special moves and the like. Even the intro "Ryu vs. Sagat" stage was included, no less! This port is by no means a small feat.
What?! I always thought it was the graphics causing the delay. This is a technological marvel for the SNES. I remember seeing this game for rent at a grocery store chain my mom shopped at when it first came out. My jaw dropped. I did not have a PSX yet, and I just couldn't believe I could get this game at the time. I still own my original copy purchased. Thanks for the video!
Capcom did some impressive things with the SNES. Rockman & Forte (Rockman 8.5) still impresses me because it actually uses sprites from Rockman 8 which I thought to be insane at first because there were so many frames.
But the biggest sprites still had to be remade from the ground up. I compared the sheets for both Rockman 8 and this, and Green Devil on SNES was much smaller and had less frames of animation. Some small enemies have missing frames of animation too (like that threaded guy you see in R8 opening stage). But the game still does its best to look like 32-bit, with its colors, animations and minor details you normally see on Playstation 2D rather than SNES 2D.
Since R&F uses assets from Rockman 8 I always wondered if someone would ever attempt to make a "demake" of the game for SNES. Maybe someday *dream music plays*
Capcom never was that good at programming on SNES, so much games with windowed screen and slowdown due to bad coding. But that Rockman & Forte game... damn. It must have been another team of developers. Fullscreen, smooth animated characters, loads of large sprites and no slowdown.
@@ArtemyMalchuk Glad someone else noticed; they did have to compromise the MM8 assets when re-using for MM&B, but the quality of the artwork still shines through on a console that, much like with SFA2, no one expected this game to land in.
I remember being all excited about playing this port just to be super annoyed by the "load times". Of course, back then I was a stupid teenager with no idea how much work this port meant. Looking back though, and with more understanding of the SNES' capabilities, it's so interesting to analyze the last batch of games released. SFA2, Doom, Final Fight 3, DKC3, Far East Of Eden Zero and Star Ocean, to name a few. Truly an amazing machine and one that refused to surrender easily to the 32-Bit era. Great video.
That Japanese packaging looks so good. I wish we'd had the vertical boxes in the UK. It always felt like the further West you went, the worse the SNES external presentation was! At least we had the Super Famicom style console over here and not that weird purple and grey brick that you guys got in the US.
The SNES looks better than the Super Famicon & it's lame, 4-color, masonic design that's on EVERY CHINESE KNOCKOFF, EVER.... you actually never noticed that? I also LOVE the look of the NEC SuperGrafx 👍.
@@lfla0179 The Japanese like small and cute things. They consider large appliances bulky and wasteful, and cuteness communicates the idea of fun. In America, small, rounded and colorful "toys" are considered childish and therefore pathetic.
These “impossible ports” videos are awesome to watch. I still have my original Street Fighter Alpha 2 for the SNES, it’s an absolutely amazing port considering the hardware.
Excellent. I've always been fascinated by games that pushed hardware late in a console's development cycle, and this is one has always been a head-turner.
Alpha 3 GBA had a lot more cartridge memory to work with, more system capability, and a developer who was willing to go that extra mile to make it all happen. Hell they added characters that weren’t even in any of the other ports at the time!
@Marc Carran1, street fighter alpha 2 and street fighter 3 are not 1 to one the same game and alpha 2 was very much pushing the limits on the snes, 2 the Super Nintendo wasn’t doing it alone as there was the powerful s-dd1 chip for on the fly graphics decompression, 3 the gba wasn’t doing a straight port of street fighter alpha 3 but rather street fighter alpha 3 upper which had added content like characters (which the gba added even more!) and isms.
Crawfish Interactive did an amazing job with that port! The things they did blew my mind at the time… Great animation,intros,the whole Upper roster(!!) The devs had a GFaqs account and share a lot of their process and expressed intention of working on another Capcom property(DS,IIRC).Also when the game released,a new high capacity cartridge was released as well….They lamented that if they had that cart,the game would run even better.(Characters wouldn’t share voice clips,for example) Amazing times.🥲
Fun Fact: The game was originally going to be developed for the Super Famicom in 1996, and it was going to be called Street Fighter Classic, which is a 16-bit port of Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams. Scheduling however for this was dropped and the project went under an overhaul after the announcement of their new ambition which is Street Fighter Alpha 2 for the SFC.
Huh, I’d always figured the audio was as least partly responsible for the pause. Absolutely love this conversion, especially how the music was interpreted, and it made me so happy when I saw they even implemented the SNES OST into Alpha Anthology on PS2.
El juego pesa tan sólo 4 MB y las versiones de PlayStation 1 y Sega Saturn pesan más de 300 MB, es increíble que este port exista y lo magníficamente bien que está hecho.
I remember going to arcade as a kid to watch these fanatics battle each other on Streetfighter 2. To this day I was blown away by there hand speed when controlling the joy sticks. It was amazing.
Never stop making videos. Even though I'm not a dev myself, I love these dev explainers you do that really show off just how impressive many of these games really are for the hardware they're on.
awesome video mate! :) I had no idea of the history of Street Fighter: Alpha 2 on the SNES. I learnt a lot today! Making home ports of CPS1 and CPS2 games is extremely hard due to the odd resolution of those machines. It's definitely not a simple copy and paste job and often ends up being a complete remake of the games. I've started to remake SFII for Amiga 1200 and CD32 together with a friend of mine. It's super exciting but also a colossal task as well. :)
Yup. I picked this puppy up and I still own my original cart and my SNES. I completely accepted the technical limitations and was always mind-blown they fit this immense game into a tiny little SNES with as much detail as they could.
I was just recently wondering about the background of this port, and here you have provided it along with some good analysis. Very good timing in that case. I suspected the loading pauses had more to do with sound samples than anything else, since the graphics are already loaded and knowing the basics about how SNES sound worked and the limitations the system had. I did not know the loading could be eliminated that way which was interesting to see.
Amazing the work people put into these ports, like fixing the audio pauses, when the arcade perfect version... the arcade versions... are readily available in pay collections and... other "free" options. I am not denigrating the work on any level; I am truly impressed people spend time on these passion projects.
Great video. I always was under the impressions that it was the decompression of the graphics that caused the "loading." This is some really good insight on what was actually the cause.
I can confirm that I was one of the people that wanted this port. I remember when Alpha came out and was only on PS1 and Saturn and I was so salty! I said "What the heck! The sprites have less colors and it's only 2D! The SNES could totally handle this!" (I was a kid, it was the 90s, if it's not 3D then why isn't it on SNES) and then they proved me "right" with Alpha 2 on SNES...and yes I enjoyed the crap out of it. In retrospect it's an incredible port and I LOVE how clean those redrawn sprites look. They did a REALLY good job on those! The loading pause also never bothered me as a kid for some reason. I was just happy to have Alpha 2 in my home.
Wow! Thanks for pointing me in the direction of that rom hack! As my machine barely handles psx emulation, being able to play the best possible version of this port is really nice.
It's true that Capcom's philosophy at the time, was to release as many games as possible even in the twilight of the SNES because there were still many people who couldn't afford them. In fact, this is why Japan got Rockman & Forte still on Super Famicom, and it used sprite intended for Rockman 8, which was a 32-bit exclusive MegaMan. That's consistency. Kudos to them, and to you for this video
All things considered, Rockman and Forte’s sprites were still only 16 color which put them right in line with anything the SNES could do. After that it was just a matter of memory management and using the largest cartridge available.
This was awesome man. I've always wanted some background technical info on this game. Like you said, it's a really impressive port considering the limitations of the snes.
3:35 We were these people that couldnt afford a 32-bit console at the time so when SFA2 came out on the SNES we were beyond impressed and excited they didnt forget about us. To us this port was beyond our expectations, the loading times were a minor inconvenience vs. the hours of fun.
I didn’t know the pause screen before the fight was because of sound sampling, I just thought it was a memory limitation of the SNES hardware. Very interesting
It is a memory limitation that's causing the pausing; not the SNES hardware itself, but the SCP700. SPC700 is actually an external device that connects to the SNES like a Roland MT-32 and it only has 64KB of RAM, which is a miniscule amount of memory even back in 1991. The sound driver, audio samples and music composition that must be accessible for playback during a particular game section must be loaded in advance from the SNES and fit into the SPC700's 64KB of RAM. Every time something needs to be loaded into that audio RAM, the SNES has to stop what it's doing to perform the I/O between itself and the SPC700, which creates the pausing or, "load time", that we normally attribute to loading data from disc to system RAM.
I remember hearing about this port, and was able to get this as a loose cart a couple years back, its quite an experience. (Load times in a Super NES game? Crazy!!) I enjoy your videos immensely, keep up the awesomeness! 😊🎮 Marcus
Thanks for this video! I grew up with Super Street Fighter 2 on the SNES and only played Alpha 2 on the SNES a few times. Now I’m in my 30s and have gotten into the Alpha series. I picked up a Japanese cartridge of Zero 2 and play it weekly. I don’t mind the “loading”. Such a beautiful animation style that is full of nostalgia for me along with an extraordinary fun factor.
Seriously, always a pleasure to see one of your videos pop up! The knowledge you have and how you put it together is brilliant! That and what you have done for the community. Thank you! 😊
The SDD1 was the bane of some rom hackers and emu devs since both Star Ocean and SFA2 were popular games. They didn't want to directly distribute the graphics packs since they contained copyrighted data and a lot of noobs had trouble running the program to generate them and patch the rom. It got so bad one time I remember one of the DeJap members (the team that did the fan translation of Star Ocean) actually posting the graphics packs for download on the main site stating he'd rather deal with a possible copyright claim than deal with the noobs any longer LOL. I believe is was around 2003 when Andreas Naive reverse engineered the SDD1 algorithm and it was finally implemented natively in emulators starting with Snes9x and Zsnes.
Great video, I wasn't aware this patch was available. I've spent the morning applying the patch, downloading the arcade PCM files, and playing it on my SNES with the flashcart. A fantastic port made even better now without that delay.
I love how your content is consistently just so full of information in the most entertaining way and I'm always feeling so easily educated by your videos even with all the technical language. Thank you for your amazing work!
They honestly could have found a better way to mask the loading times before matches started, like perhaps a loading bar or something, instead of just a frozen screen. Surely a better solution could have been found to mask it a bit better.
It's cool that Capcom did this specifically because they knew a lot of people back then couldn't get their hands on 5th generation consoles. They did the same thing with Megaman and Bass, which was the last Megaman game to be released on the Super Famicom, that used a bunch of assets from Mega Man 8. Though that game was its own thing rather than just a port of Megaman 8.
At first I was like "Snes Port of Alpha 1 hell yeah!" then I saw 2 next to the title and I was like "This existed? Wow, this was an impossible port." Amazing video.
About 20 years ago, I found a cardboard box filled with SFC imports at a pawn shop near a military base. All of them were in their original VHS-style boxes with instruction manuals and inserts. Most of them looked like they had never been played. There were games like Pop N’ Twinbee, Seiken Densetsu 2, Tactics Ogre “Let Us Cling Together”, Ogre Battle “March of the Black Queen”, Front Mission 2, Front Mission: Gun Hazard and about thirty others that I’d never heard of, including several interesting looking RPGs. The guy who owned the pawn shop said that he had tried selling them for $3 apiece but nobody was interested because none of the games would play on a Super NES (US version). So, he wanted to get rid of the entire box. I offered him $65 cash and he gladly accepted.
Back in those days I was a Nintendo fanboy... but It took me a while to get my Nintendo 64 so I stayed with SuperNintendo... when I saw Street Fighter Alpha 2 was available for my console I got it as soon as possible... It made me so happy, I couldn't believe one of my favorite arcades was ported to Super Nintendo... when I plug it and saw the full intro animated in my TV I was speechless I played for hours to finish it with all the characters... Good old days thanks to CAPCOM
So I was true to the SNES to the end and owned Street Fighter Alpha and all 3 Donkey Kong parts on the system and I sometimes really got what was still possible on the system in 1996 in the final phase, only the RPGs on the system been a dream for me. Of course I couldn't avoid the PS 1 either, games like Resedent Evil, FF 7 were a reason for me to buy the quality, but in the end I was convinced to change the bearing. But the SNES and also the Megadrive still have their plats in my heart to this day.
In the late 90's, I had both the Genesis and SNES. When the volume slider on my Genesis stopped working (I had it plugged into the AUX IN of my stereo), I brought it into my local Funcoland and traded it (along with the 5 or 6 games I owned) for a used loose copy of SFA2 for the SNES. I played the HELL out of that cart! That 3-second pause sparks major nostalgia! Good times!
As soon as he said, it's not the decompression chip, it's the audio loading, I thought - oh shit somebody fixed the game didn't they? Somebody get me a repo cart, stat!
Unfortunately they "fixed" it by using the MSU-1 to stream audio. By doing that it freed memory in the SPC's RAM to avoid pausing after it says "FIGHT". So unless you can find a repro cart that supports MSU-1 then you're out of luck. It would have been more interesting to see a fix that doesn't require MSU-1 as it would have shown that Capcom with more time could have made it better. I think it's probably correct that a lack of time, experience, or skill is the reason why it was released with the pauses. Maybe someday a hacker will succeed in an improvement or fix that doesn't require MSU-1 to take over music duties.
@@JonThysell I actually thought the same thing by how it was presented in the video. But when I took a look at the patch it clearly requires MSU-1. Without it there is no music.
@@JonThysell Gizaha's hack already functions as a "no-music" patch that gets rid of the pauses when you run it on a cart or emulator with no MSU-1 support.
I played this on the Saturn which was pretty much arcade perfect...porting this to the SNES was a pretty impressive achievement. The version I play today is on the Switch, which is the arcade version running on an emulator, so it's completely arcade perfect.
The same thing kinda happened with Rockman & Forte. Inafune wanted players who couldn't afford a 32-bit console to have a similar game to Mega Man 8 to play on a 16-bit system.
A 13 minute video about a 2 second pause that most people didn't even notice. Fascinating and educational nonetheless, but I sometimes have to ask myself how I got here.
I'd love to see a video on Primal Rage, from what I remember it's copy protection has made it impossible to emulate perfectly (I'm not sure if that holds true to this day) so the only way to play the original title perfectly is an original cabinet. Also, every console port of the game is lacking in one way or another and none of them do the arcade version justice.
Rented and played this port countless times in 1997. Was caught by surprise back then when i saw it at the video rental store. SNES was at the end of its life and rarely a new title popped up. It looked+sounded so good and Gouki was a playable character at last!
To this day I play this from time to time, it was unbelievable at the time just like DOOM was, I really wish the 16 bit consoles were pushed up to 1999 or even 2000, with full third party support! Oh, dreams!
Competitively this is still ignored but the tech behind it for those that needed some practice at home when away from the arcade was great, even tho, some hit/hurt boxes are off and when you would go to the arcade/tournaments some setups would throw you off.
Hey MVG, a long time ago I heard that Mechwarrior 2 used bounding spheres instead of bounding boxes for their hit detection. I was wondering if there was a way to check and see if there was any legitimacy to this? I know 3D modeling, but I don't know how to reverse engineer things like that. I know logically it doesn't make much sense, but it would possibly explain some of the hit location anomalies like a arm being hit despite the shot clearly supposed to hit the torso or the difficulty (or in some cases like the Urbanmech in MW2 Mercenaries; ease) of hitting the head.
I still can remember when I bought this game, I was so hyped and played it every day for month! The Pause after "Fight" was always a mystery to me. Thanks!
![HIWWHEE | OHM [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/OJJLtTLqLag/mqdefault.jpg)
Correction: Capcom Lead producers name is - Noritaka Funamizu . Apologies for messing that up.
You make mistakes in every single video you make. It's getting embarrassing
Great video, once again. I had saved up all my money and bought a Saturn to play virtua fighter when alpha came out...I remember vividly and regret nothing lol, I guess I would have been 12. Those nostalgia feels are the real deal.
Mistakes were made
I forgive you :D
@DarkestLost lmao
At least you said it right every time, only the on-screen text was wrong.
OMG this "pause" question plagued me for more than 20 years, I always thought it was a graphic compression issue... can't believe its actually an audio problem!!! Today one of my childhood question got answered!!! Sad and Happy at the same time.. very strange feeling
Thx Dude!!!
Same here... Great to have that cleared up after all that time
I knew the snes pausing was due to the audio on how it was implemented. Its actually very evident in seiken densetsu 3. Dare I say any game that paused was because its loading new data to the spc and the pause is usually instrument data. This was also cleverly hidden on final fantasy 6.
Rather interesting. Is there an in-game no sound option and if so, does that eliminate the pause on the stock release of the game?
@@ratix98 could the snes not stream audio & video data at the same time either?
Only if Capcom talked to Rare.. Research how Rare got the music to Donkey Kong Country to run on The SNES.. It's truly amazing..
To this day this is still one the most impressive SNES ports. I inadvertently became the owner of the game when my local Blockbuster burned down lol
You burned a whole blockbuster just for one game
@@MaximumCarne No it was the Netflix mafia
@@MaximumCarne 😭😭😭😭
Umm ever heard of doom?
@@Cosmin694 Doom deez nuts
If only young Derek knew about playable Shin Akuma back in the day
Hey it's Derek, YOU DEREK!!! Fancy seeing you here!!!👍👍
If only young Derek knew he would some day be called uncle Derek by weirdos on the internet
HI UNCLE DEREK!
Uncle Derek!
Love your channel!!!!
#myman!!!!
@SSj Crono how dare you?
I'd love to see you follow this up with the masterclass that is Alpha 3 on Game Boy Advance
The best fighter on GBA hands down, used to own it and wow i loved it and it was amazing
Crawfish interactive worked miracles. Even having 3 different characters on screen for dramatic battles! Something the PS One port didn't include.
Oh it's on the list
Yeah, its a great port. Their Alpha for the GBC is very playable too.
@@ModernVintageGamer and ssf2t revival/remix
It’s really cool to know that the producer wants to make this game avaliable for people who can’t affort 32 bits consoles at the time. A gift to the fans!
if by "gift" you mean $70 cartridge.
It's slightly ironic that the SNES game would cost about 2 or 3 times as much as the CD version. but it's not like the loading times were substantially better on 32bit console.
i suspect nintendo pushed this released on the snes because n64 didnt have a good 2d engine. they probably didnt want nintendo fans feel left out not having street fighter alpha 2. they even published this themselve instead of capcom.
Proves that cartridge games do in fact load. Usually it's very fast, but it still happens (moving data from cart ROM to video/audio RAM)
@@NB-1 There is one more downside: Neo Geo carts were/are very, very expensive.
Fatal Fury had to load too.
@Ben Heck Hacks
The Nintendo Switch also Loads from the Cartridge that why it only needs 4 GB of DDR4 RAM
Loading only exists in certain dimensions.
I remember laughing my ass off seeing "Now Loading" on the bottom of the screen in "International superstar soccer on the N64.
I told my older brother and he said it was normal for cartridges to load..
I was like: What? no way! lol but it was true all along :)
This conversion, along with Doom are a true feat for the Super Nintendo. Love it.
Κiller Instict also
Looking back, Star Ocean is also incredible. It doesn't look that different than the 32 bit sequel.
I think Donkey kong on SNES showed what could be achieved with clever design and made devs think out of the box.
@@kamranki And most of all,without any extra chips inside,clean stock snes power
It became pretty clear in 1995 that the SNES was superior to the Genesis/Mega Drive in every way on what developers can do with the hardware.
I have to say, this version of Street Fighter Alpha 2 really gave my SNES new life. I wanted one of the newer systems at the time, but my dad was never very enthusiastic about spending much money on video games. Having access to a respectable version of Street Fighter Alpha 2 on my SNES not so long after I was reading about the PlayStation and Saturn versions in magazines and seeing guides for them really made this version of the game seem like something special.
And to be fair, all of the SNES Street Fighter ports maximized the system resources of that console. None of them “sucked” as it were.
Alongside Megaman & Bass this port was made for people who cant buy Playstation yet that time
Back in the 90's i wasn't aware that this was coming to the SNES. I was a hardcore SF2 fan back then and even owned an arcade cab. When i saw this on the shelf in WH Smiths i couldn't believe it and immediately bought it there and then. I think it was the only copy they had and i never saw it for sale elsewhere again. Wish i still had it now as the Pal version seems to be rare nowadays.
I actually bought a cooy recently from a German Friend of mine if you want i could ship you it :D i dumped the cardridge anyways and i own a SNES Flashcard so you can have it if you want:3
@@RetroDarioGaming nah it’s fine I also have an FX-Pak Pro for my Snes 😁
@@ogxboxmike :0 Nice do you like it? i own a Super Famicom and the FX PAK PRO from Stone Age Gamer
@Paul Bell Harrow!
@Paul Bell North London
I like this "impossible ports" series, the N64 RE2 was great and this one too. Gope you find more of this examples.
Half Life 2 on the Original Xbox comes to mind.
MGS V TPP for Xbox 360
Linux on Dreamcast and PS2
Starcraft on N64
@Ali Hendrickson Capcom have a great reputation when making impossible RE ports, RE2 on N64, RE on DS & REvelation on 3DS
What an impressive port to the SNES!
@9:45
The MSU-1 hack “eliminates” the long pause. It was definitely the sound that caused the “loading”. I love it!
I don't know if it's just nostalgia, but it makes me sad there won't be any more hand animated 2D Street Fighter games. The flat but colorful look is very stylish.
Check out games like Blazblue, King of fighters 13, Persona 4 arena, Under Night in Birth and Dengeki Bunko Fighting.
Skullgirls baybeee
Sprites/Pixels man... they were just awesome.
@@aegisreflector1239 None of those use sprites. Sprite hardware was gone starting from the 32-bit generation and with the exception of KOF 13 they all have this weird flat anime look.
U don't know the future.
I play this every now and then just to experience how impressive this port is again and again. This is a underrated technical and gameplay achievement.
Absolutely. Not to mention that everything is there. From characters to stages, special moves and the like. Even the intro "Ryu vs. Sagat" stage was included, no less! This port is by no means a small feat.
What?! I always thought it was the graphics causing the delay. This is a technological marvel for the SNES. I remember seeing this game for rent at a grocery store chain my mom shopped at when it first came out. My jaw dropped. I did not have a PSX yet, and I just couldn't believe I could get this game at the time. I still own my original copy purchased. Thanks for the video!
Capcom did some impressive things with the SNES.
Rockman & Forte (Rockman 8.5) still impresses me because it actually uses sprites from Rockman 8 which I thought to be insane at first because there were so many frames.
But the biggest sprites still had to be remade from the ground up. I compared the sheets for both Rockman 8 and this, and Green Devil on SNES was much smaller and had less frames of animation. Some small enemies have missing frames of animation too (like that threaded guy you see in R8 opening stage). But the game still does its best to look like 32-bit, with its colors, animations and minor details you normally see on Playstation 2D rather than SNES 2D.
Since R&F uses assets from Rockman 8 I always wondered if someone would ever attempt to make a "demake" of the game for SNES. Maybe someday *dream music plays*
Capcom never was that good at programming on SNES, so much games with windowed screen and slowdown due to bad coding. But that Rockman & Forte game... damn. It must have been another team of developers.
Fullscreen, smooth animated characters, loads of large sprites and no slowdown.
@@ArtemyMalchuk Glad someone else noticed; they did have to compromise the MM8 assets when re-using for MM&B, but the quality of the artwork still shines through on a console that, much like with SFA2, no one expected this game to land in.
We played the crap out of this on SNES back in the day, we definitely noted the loading time but didn't dwell on it too much.
One of my favorite games of all time! It's hard to overstate how impressive this was at the time.
I remember being all excited about playing this port just to be super annoyed by the "load times". Of course, back then I was a stupid teenager with no idea how much work this port meant. Looking back though, and with more understanding of the SNES' capabilities, it's so interesting to analyze the last batch of games released. SFA2, Doom, Final Fight 3, DKC3, Far East Of Eden Zero and Star Ocean, to name a few. Truly an amazing machine and one that refused to surrender easily to the 32-Bit era. Great video.
That Japanese packaging looks so good. I wish we'd had the vertical boxes in the UK. It always felt like the further West you went, the worse the SNES external presentation was! At least we had the Super Famicom style console over here and not that weird purple and grey brick that you guys got in the US.
I never understood why the Super Famicom is so small compared to the SNES, along with the dull purple controls.
The SNES looks better than the Super Famicon & it's lame, 4-color, masonic design that's on EVERY CHINESE KNOCKOFF, EVER.... you actually never noticed that? I also LOVE the look of the NEC SuperGrafx 👍.
@@lfla0179 The Japanese like small and cute things. They consider large appliances bulky and wasteful, and cuteness communicates the idea of fun. In America, small, rounded and colorful "toys" are considered childish and therefore pathetic.
The Famicom/NES had it WORSE. But at least we Yanks got non-RF video right away while Japan only got it with the "wedge" model.
Love this so much. The custom chips in SNES games have such a fascinating history from a technical perspective and in the emulation scene!
These “impossible ports” videos are awesome to watch. I still have my original Street Fighter Alpha 2 for the SNES, it’s an absolutely amazing port considering the hardware.
Excellent. I've always been fascinated by games that pushed hardware late in a console's development cycle, and this is one has always been a head-turner.
Loved alpha 2 on snes. A similar "impossible" port was street fighter alpha 3 for the gba. Would love to hear that story!
Alpha 3 is my favorite so far. Played that for hundreds of hours on my GBA and PSP back in the day!
Given the hardware I'd argue Steet Fighter Alpha: Warriors Dreams on the Game Boy color was equally a marvel.
Alpha 3 GBA had a lot more cartridge memory to work with, more system capability, and a developer who was willing to go that extra mile to make it all happen. Hell they added characters that weren’t even in any of the other ports at the time!
@Marc Carran1, street fighter alpha 2 and street fighter 3 are not 1 to one the same game and alpha 2 was very much pushing the limits on the snes, 2 the Super Nintendo wasn’t doing it alone as there was the powerful s-dd1 chip for on the fly graphics decompression, 3 the gba wasn’t doing a straight port of street fighter alpha 3 but rather street fighter alpha 3 upper which had added content like characters (which the gba added even more!) and isms.
Crawfish Interactive did an amazing job with that port! The things they did blew my mind at the time…
Great animation,intros,the whole Upper roster(!!) The devs had a GFaqs account and share a lot of their process and expressed intention of working on another Capcom property(DS,IIRC).Also when the game released,a new high capacity cartridge was released as well….They lamented that if they had that cart,the game would run even better.(Characters wouldn’t share voice clips,for example)
Amazing times.🥲
Fun Fact:
The game was originally going to be developed for the Super Famicom in 1996, and it was going to be called Street Fighter Classic, which is a 16-bit port of Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams. Scheduling however for this was dropped and the project went under an overhaul after the announcement of their new ambition which is Street Fighter Alpha 2 for the SFC.
I love this port since it released, not only because the game was good but because it was so impressive playing a PS1/Saturn game on a 16Bit console
Didn't ask
Huh, I’d always figured the audio was as least partly responsible for the pause.
Absolutely love this conversion, especially how the music was interpreted, and it made me so happy when I saw they even implemented the SNES OST into Alpha Anthology on PS2.
El juego pesa tan sólo 4 MB y las versiones de PlayStation 1 y Sega Saturn pesan más de 300 MB, es increíble que este port exista y lo magníficamente bien que está hecho.
esta contenido en un chip rom de 4mb pero el juego al descomprimirse pesa 8 megas(64mb)
I think for the disc based versions much of the file size comes from the CD audio tracks
@@liamconverse8950 si, es verdad, el audio no tiene compresión en cd, de hecho el juego en cps 2 debe pesar unos 20 megabytes
You need an “Impossible Ports” playlist! I’d listen all day.
I remember going to arcade as a kid to watch these fanatics battle each other on Streetfighter 2. To this day I was blown away by there hand speed when controlling the joy sticks. It was amazing.
Never stop making videos. Even though I'm not a dev myself, I love these dev explainers you do that really show off just how impressive many of these games really are for the hardware they're on.
awesome video mate! :) I had no idea of the history of Street Fighter: Alpha 2 on the SNES. I learnt a lot today! Making home ports of CPS1 and CPS2 games is extremely hard due to the odd resolution of those machines. It's definitely not a simple copy and paste job and often ends up being a complete remake of the games. I've started to remake SFII for Amiga 1200 and CD32 together with a friend of mine. It's super exciting but also a colossal task as well. :)
Yup. I picked this puppy up and I still own my original cart and my SNES. I completely accepted the technical limitations and was always mind-blown they fit this immense game into a tiny little SNES with as much detail as they could.
I was just recently wondering about the background of this port, and here you have provided it along with some good analysis. Very good timing in that case. I suspected the loading pauses had more to do with sound samples than anything else, since the graphics are already loaded and knowing the basics about how SNES sound worked and the limitations the system had. I did not know the loading could be eliminated that way which was interesting to see.
Amazing the work people put into these ports, like fixing the audio pauses, when the arcade perfect version... the arcade versions... are readily available in pay collections and... other "free" options.
I am not denigrating the work on any level; I am truly impressed people spend time on these passion projects.
Great video. I always was under the impressions that it was the decompression of the graphics that caused the "loading." This is some really good insight on what was actually the cause.
I can confirm that I was one of the people that wanted this port. I remember when Alpha came out and was only on PS1 and Saturn and I was so salty! I said "What the heck! The sprites have less colors and it's only 2D! The SNES could totally handle this!" (I was a kid, it was the 90s, if it's not 3D then why isn't it on SNES) and then they proved me "right" with Alpha 2 on SNES...and yes I enjoyed the crap out of it. In retrospect it's an incredible port and I LOVE how clean those redrawn sprites look. They did a REALLY good job on those! The loading pause also never bothered me as a kid for some reason. I was just happy to have Alpha 2 in my home.
Love chillin out with some coffee & watching these vids
Wow! Thanks for pointing me in the direction of that rom hack! As my machine barely handles psx emulation, being able to play the best possible version of this port is really nice.
It's true that Capcom's philosophy at the time, was to release as many games as possible even in the twilight of the SNES because there were still many people who couldn't afford them. In fact, this is why Japan got Rockman & Forte still on Super Famicom, and it used sprite intended for Rockman 8, which was a 32-bit exclusive MegaMan. That's consistency. Kudos to them, and to you for this video
All things considered, Rockman and Forte’s sprites were still only 16 color which put them right in line with anything the SNES could do. After that it was just a matter of memory management and using the largest cartridge available.
This was awesome man. I've always wanted some background technical info on this game. Like you said, it's a really impressive port considering the limitations of the snes.
I was 16 when Street Fighter II launched in the arcades. Dang.... I feel old. Lol
3:35 We were these people that couldnt afford a 32-bit console at the time so when SFA2 came out on the SNES we were beyond impressed and excited they didnt forget about us. To us this port was beyond our expectations, the loading times were a minor inconvenience vs. the hours of fun.
Crazy improvements, looks perfectly playable now. Had it been released like this at the time, it wouldn have been considered a technical marvel.
Loved how you mentioned the Shin Akuma discovery! Impressive little cartridge!
I didn’t know the pause screen before the fight was because of sound sampling, I just thought it was a memory limitation of the SNES hardware. Very interesting
It is a memory limitation that's causing the pausing; not the SNES hardware itself, but the SCP700. SPC700 is actually an external device that connects to the SNES like a Roland MT-32 and it only has 64KB of RAM, which is a miniscule amount of memory even back in 1991. The sound driver, audio samples and music composition that must be accessible for playback during a particular game section must be loaded in advance from the SNES and fit into the SPC700's 64KB of RAM. Every time something needs to be loaded into that audio RAM, the SNES has to stop what it's doing to perform the I/O between itself and the SPC700, which creates the pausing or, "load time", that we normally attribute to loading data from disc to system RAM.
I remember hearing about this port, and was able to get this as a loose cart a couple years back, its quite an experience. (Load times in a Super NES game? Crazy!!) I enjoy your videos immensely, keep up the awesomeness! 😊🎮 Marcus
Thanks for this video! I grew up with Super Street Fighter 2 on the SNES and only played Alpha 2 on the SNES a few times. Now I’m in my 30s and have gotten into the Alpha series. I picked up a Japanese cartridge of Zero 2 and play it weekly. I don’t mind the “loading”. Such a beautiful animation style that is full of nostalgia for me along with an extraordinary fun factor.
This kind of optimizations is what make programming so exciting.
Seriously, always a pleasure to see one of your videos pop up! The knowledge you have and how you put it together is brilliant! That and what you have done for the community.
Thank you! 😊
The SDD1 was the bane of some rom hackers and emu devs since both Star Ocean and SFA2 were popular games. They didn't want to directly distribute the graphics packs since they contained copyrighted data and a lot of noobs had trouble running the program to generate them and patch the rom. It got so bad one time I remember one of the DeJap members (the team that did the fan translation of Star Ocean) actually posting the graphics packs for download on the main site stating he'd rather deal with a possible copyright claim than deal with the noobs any longer LOL. I believe is was around 2003 when Andreas Naive reverse engineered the SDD1 algorithm and it was finally implemented natively in emulators starting with Snes9x and Zsnes.
I gave a friend four N64 cartridges to have this game. When I saw it I couldn't even believe it is real!. Amazing video by the way.
I got this game the Christmas 1996. It was sooo dope. One of my favorite snes games.
Great video, I wasn't aware this patch was available. I've spent the morning applying the patch, downloading the arcade PCM files, and playing it on my SNES with the flashcart. A fantastic port made even better now without that delay.
CAPCOM in 96 game design masters, "CAPCOM" 2021, here's something that looks like a flash game that we call Ghosts and Goblins.
I love how your content is consistently just so full of information in the most entertaining way and I'm always feeling so easily educated by your videos even with all the technical language. Thank you for your amazing work!
They honestly could have found a better way to mask the loading times before matches started, like perhaps a loading bar or something, instead of just a frozen screen. Surely a better solution could have been found to mask it a bit better.
It's cool that Capcom did this specifically because they knew a lot of people back then couldn't get their hands on 5th generation consoles. They did the same thing with Megaman and Bass, which was the last Megaman game to be released on the Super Famicom, that used a bunch of assets from Mega Man 8. Though that game was its own thing rather than just a port of Megaman 8.
There is a Master System version of SFII, ported to brazilian market in 1997. I think you could talk about this port.
Thank you so much for this vid! as a fighting game fan this content has so much value to me! seriously THANK YOU!
Street Fighter 2 is a phenomenal masterpiece.
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo = Perfection
At first I was like "Snes Port of Alpha 1 hell yeah!" then I saw 2 next to the title and I was like "This existed? Wow, this was an impossible port." Amazing video.
I was always impressed by the SF2: Championship Edition port on the PC Engine. Real good for a Hu Card.
Still got that
Very good episode. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. So fascinating.
I just envy people now with these complete games in cardboard boxes.
About 20 years ago, I found a cardboard box filled with SFC imports at a pawn shop near a military base. All of them were in their original VHS-style boxes with instruction manuals and inserts. Most of them looked like they had never been played. There were games like Pop N’ Twinbee, Seiken Densetsu 2, Tactics Ogre “Let Us Cling Together”, Ogre Battle “March of the Black Queen”, Front Mission 2, Front Mission: Gun Hazard and about thirty others that I’d never heard of, including several interesting looking RPGs. The guy who owned the pawn shop said that he had tried selling them for $3 apiece but nobody was interested because none of the games would play on a Super NES (US version). So, he wanted to get rid of the entire box. I offered him $65 cash and he gladly accepted.
@@sardonicus76 That’s awesome! I love these kinds of stories. I wish I could find something like that…
@@sardonicus76 amazing, jokes on them for not thinking of converters
Back in those days I was a Nintendo fanboy... but It took me a while to get my Nintendo 64 so I stayed with SuperNintendo... when I saw Street Fighter Alpha 2 was available for my console I got it as soon as possible... It made me so happy, I couldn't believe one of my favorite arcades was ported to Super Nintendo... when I plug it and saw the full intro animated in my TV I was speechless I played for hours to finish it with all the characters... Good old days thanks to CAPCOM
Love this game and I played the hell out of it.
We were poor and I didn't even get a 64 until 99 lol and it was found at a swap meet
I still remember when I got this game, that cover art alone made me want this game but it was sooo different from sf2, and I absolutely loved it
How do you find time to make such high-quality, well-researched videos, while also working as a dev for NightDive?
All about time management and good discipline
@@ModernVintageGamer This needs to be highlighted. Self discipline is lost in today's age
Nightdive studios? or a game called Nightdive?
@@haz2901 a night club called Nightdive
And a very satisfied wife 😉
by far one of your greatest videos yet, thanks a lot for this, best wishes from Buenos Aires!
Was literally my favorite SF game on the system... simply due to the fact that it existed.
So I was true to the SNES to the end and owned Street Fighter Alpha and all 3 Donkey Kong parts on the system and I sometimes really got what was still possible on the system in 1996 in the final phase, only the RPGs on the system been a dream for me. Of course I couldn't avoid the PS 1 either, games like Resedent Evil, FF 7 were a reason for me to buy the quality, but in the end I was convinced to change the bearing. But the SNES and also the Megadrive still have their plats in my heart to this day.
woaaaa, this brings me back some memories from 1996
In the late 90's, I had both the Genesis and SNES. When the volume slider on my Genesis stopped working (I had it plugged into the AUX IN of my stereo), I brought it into my local Funcoland and traded it (along with the 5 or 6 games I owned) for a used loose copy of SFA2 for the SNES. I played the HELL out of that cart! That 3-second pause sparks major nostalgia! Good times!
It's even more impressive knowing the game could have been released without the pauses!
The alpha series are such a wonder. The GBC port of Alpha 1, SNES port of Alpha, and the GBA port of Alpha 3 are all so awesome despite limitations
Guile's Theme is the greatest piece of music ever composed
CAPCOM has come such a long way!
From street fighter to resident evil village
As soon as he said, it's not the decompression chip, it's the audio loading, I thought - oh shit somebody fixed the game didn't they? Somebody get me a repo cart, stat!
Unfortunately they "fixed" it by using the MSU-1 to stream audio. By doing that it freed memory in the SPC's RAM to avoid pausing after it says "FIGHT". So unless you can find a repro cart that supports MSU-1 then you're out of luck. It would have been more interesting to see a fix that doesn't require MSU-1 as it would have shown that Capcom with more time could have made it better. I think it's probably correct that a lack of time, experience, or skill is the reason why it was released with the pauses. Maybe someday a hacker will succeed in an improvement or fix that doesn't require MSU-1 to take over music duties.
@@mottzilla4858 I missed that I thought he said they fixed it, then, they also made a MSU-1 version that uses the arcade soundtrack.
@@JonThysell I actually thought the same thing by how it was presented in the video. But when I took a look at the patch it clearly requires MSU-1. Without it there is no music.
@@mottzilla4858 I mean, I would even accept a "no-music" patch to get rid of the pausing.
@@JonThysell Gizaha's hack already functions as a "no-music" patch that gets rid of the pauses when you run it on a cart or emulator with no MSU-1 support.
I love Street Fighter, and this was super interesting! This vid was enjoyable and well made. Thanks for covering this topic!
I remember paying almost 80 on the snes version but it was well worth it at the age of 11.
I love the games that came out late, especially star ocean ~ that game pushed the SNES to the limit
thank you for this video, i loved it. i had always found this port to be so interesting.
I played this on the Saturn which was pretty much arcade perfect...porting this to the SNES was a pretty impressive achievement. The version I play today is on the Switch, which is the arcade version running on an emulator, so it's completely arcade perfect.
Great game and great vídeo. This is the type of content that show how amazing is this TH-cam Channel. Congratulations.
One of the best Street Fighter games ever made, up there with Super Turbo and 3rd Strike.
Videos like this or what I look forward to. MVG your videos are so awesome. And the music is always awesome too! (For your intros and outros.)
"Why did capcon release the game while it could be easly fixed"
*Money*
Something way too common
Usually the answer to everything why
@@Fattydeposit when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail
Could have been one of the greatest game of all time on that system..
@@Fattydeposit no its money. Who invented the ISMs
MVG, you do such a good job of breaking it down for almost anyone to understand. Once again, solid video
The same thing kinda happened with Rockman & Forte. Inafune wanted players who couldn't afford a 32-bit console to have a similar game to Mega Man 8 to play on a 16-bit system.
A 13 minute video about a 2 second pause that most people didn't even notice. Fascinating and educational nonetheless, but I sometimes have to ask myself how I got here.
I'd love to see a video on Primal Rage, from what I remember it's copy protection has made it impossible to emulate perfectly (I'm not sure if that holds true to this day) so the only way to play the original title perfectly is an original cabinet. Also, every console port of the game is lacking in one way or another and none of them do the arcade version justice.
Rented and played this port countless times in 1997. Was caught by surprise back then when i saw it at the video rental store. SNES was at the end of its life and rarely a new title popped up.
It looked+sounded so good and Gouki was a playable character at last!
To this day I play this from time to time, it was unbelievable at the time just like DOOM was, I really wish the 16 bit consoles were pushed up to 1999 or even 2000, with full third party support! Oh, dreams!
Love your videos. Always very informative. Pleasure to watch. Thanks.
Competitively this is still ignored but the tech behind it for those that needed some practice at home when away from the arcade was great, even tho, some hit/hurt boxes are off and when you would go to the arcade/tournaments some setups would throw you off.
Finally we are talking about the rarely adopted S-DD1 chip I didn't know Zero 2 utilized it. I had a feeling something other than Star Ocean used it.
Hey MVG, a long time ago I heard that Mechwarrior 2 used bounding spheres instead of bounding boxes for their hit detection. I was wondering if there was a way to check and see if there was any legitimacy to this? I know 3D modeling, but I don't know how to reverse engineer things like that.
I know logically it doesn't make much sense, but it would possibly explain some of the hit location anomalies like a arm being hit despite the shot clearly supposed to hit the torso or the difficulty (or in some cases like the Urbanmech in MW2 Mercenaries; ease) of hitting the head.
I still can remember when I bought this game, I was so hyped and played it every day for month! The Pause after "Fight" was always a mystery to me. Thanks!