Battle of the Ports - Wolf Fang (ウルフファング 空牙2001) Show 445 - 60fps

[@stevesmusic1862]

As a Kiwi, whenever I see NZ in a game and its not New Zealand Story it makes me smile!

[@tommylakindasorta3068]

I picked this up for the Saturn about 20 years ago and was surprised by how good it is. It's definitely underrated in the West.

[@RM2011ish]

Thanks for covering this one! This is actually one of my favorite arcade games ever. When I was younger, my local General Cinema had the arcade game ROHGA, and I spent a lot of quarters playing it. The game still holds up to this day.

[@AllOuttaBubblegum123]

Ahhh. I miss the golden years of Arcades. I can still manage to finish double dragon on one play. Track and field was another one I had to master. Lol

[@RetroCore]

Wow, that's great you were able to play the actual western arcade version back in the day. The game wasn't very popular for some reason. I love Wolf Fang, I think it's one of the great early 90's shooters.

[@Kumimono]

I like how some of the powerups are just, additional dudes hanging on to the mech. And how you can still go on fighting after your mech gets destroyed. Nice concept and design there.

[@RetroCore]

Yeah, that's a pretty cool feature.

[@JimmyJoeMcGurl]

I had never heard of this and randomly picked up the Saturn version a few years back. Really love it

[@RetroCore]

You chose wisely 😀

[@jonraymondchua2388]

Never heard of this gem.. will definitely pick it up and play as I am a fab of these types of shooters.. thanks for the vid again, Mark!

[@RetroCore]

Hope you enjoy it! I sure do.

[@RalphBarbagallo]

Wow-how did I miss this game?? It looks great!

[@AllOuttaBubblegum123]

Me too. I was a regular arcade player back in the day. But I'm still surprised to find games I'd never played or heard of before. Especially this one being Data East. I'm guessing my local seaside arcades missed it. Lol 😆

[@RalphBarbagallo]

@@AllOuttaBubblegum123 It's weird because I was big on imports too and never saw the Saturn version. Looks hot!!

[@RetroCore]

You've been missing a quality title here. Best to check it out on Mame or the Saturn version for that extra level.

[@RetroCore]

Ah, this wasn't so common in the west. I myself never saw the arcade game in the UK and I was a frequent visitor to arcades.

[@edwardboyz1000]

Confirm Will Be Available Wolf Fang / Skull Fang Saturn Tribute Boosted Version This October 31 2024 for the PS4, PS5, XBOX One, XBOX Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and PC (Steam)

[@GlenLehane]

A game where the first level is set in Australia, but no one in Australia has ever heard of this. Our loss, it looks cool

[@RetroCore]

A very sad state of affairs :(

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

@@RetroCore Now they'll know how we Americans have felt for years!

[@JustPeasant]

A satisfying PS1 port considering it's limitations 👌

[@ats2099]

I missed out! As a kid I loved the Vapor Trail arcade game. I loved mechs, I loved action arcade games... and just didn't get to play it at the time. Thanks for showing it off here!

[@RetroCore]

You're welcome. A lot of people seemed to have missed this one outside of Japan.

[@BeanoTubes]

Awesome arcade game this! Cheers! Played so many arcade side scrolling shooters but I never seen this one. And love when your robot mech jumped into the sea to battle underwater! Cool . Cheers for showing!

[@RetroCore]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@captaincommando2602]

One of the forgotten gems by DATA EAST. I met this gem thanks to you Mr. Mark. And I'm glad that this game got ported to home consoles. Thumbs up and have a nice weekend Mr. Mark.

[@RetroCore]

Couldn't agree more! This definitely a definition of a hidden gem.

[@Charlie-Cat.]

Oh how I miss Data East Mark. They really made some fantastic titles. I also miss their pinball division just as much. 8^) Anthony...

[@RetroCore]

Data East were a great company. Always one for experimentation as well. Sometime they made odd and not very good games but more often than not they provided some great experiences.

[@darththew]

I absolutely adore this game when I was younger!

[@carlosbragatto]

Great video, thanks Mark

[@RetroCore]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@kenwheeler3637]

Not always having a full range of movement makes this an interesting take on the typical horizontal shooter. I'm looking forward to trying this one out. From the side by side comparisons you can really see how this era of home consoles spelled doom for the arcades, with the ports looking practically identical to their arcade originals.

[@RetroCore]

Indeed. this was the time when the phase "Arcade perfect" was actually a possibility.

[@OriginalMasters]

An incredible game that has one of the best soundtracks of all time.

[@StandingUpForBetter]

Awesome! I did not even know this game existed. Thank you.

[@RetroCore]

Hope you enjoy it!

[@ballandpaddle]

Thanks for letting the level 1 music play out at the end, great stuff

[@RetroCore]

No problem 👍　　It's a great track

[@Horos_de_Vega]

I didnt know this game. Lovely discovery. Thanks!

[@RetroCore]

No problem!

[@Midekai]

Seems like a fun, underrated game! As most data east games tend t be~

[@RetroCore]

Indeed they do.

[@hababacon]

Besides the loading, I think you would be happy with every verison.

[@GameGameHeaven]

Bought the PS1-Version from the Japanese PSN store on PS3. Although it's the weakest port, it's still an awesome game.

[@RetroCore]

A weak port is better than no port. To be honest, it isn't that bad.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

I was litterally playing this about 6 hours ago on mame, its an awesome little Game.

[@RetroCore]

Nice coincidence 👍

[@OllyDee123]

I didn't even know there was a Saturn release of Wolf Fang. You can't go wrong with giant mech shooters though so I'll have to give this one a go. Cheers mate.

[@RetroCore]

I was the opposite. I was surprised to find there was a PlayStation version and even more so that it was released before the Saturn version.

[@flink1231]

what an interesting game! thanks for the video!

[@RetroCore]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@AllOuttaBubblegum123]

I'd never heard of this one before. Thanks 😊

[@RetroCore]

Hope you like it!

[@mightyfilm]

The mechs seem to have a weird feeling of if the Transformers were designed by Sunrise. I love how they approach design like they were almost planning an anime series around it in games like this. I'm wondering if this game had any merchandise. I can see model kits of these mechs just flying off store shelves.

[@NotaPizzaGRL]

I used to think that this game was meant to be a Transformers game but Data East couldn't afford the license so they made it a sequel to Vapor Trail

[@mightyfilm]

@@NotaPizzaGRL Conversely,I'd imagine someone at Data East could have made a deal with Hasbro and reskinned everything to be a Transformers game. It would be a hell of a lot better than those two pieces of crap Takara self published for the Famicom.

[@javaykirk2688]

Another battle of the ports. Nice.

[@RetroCore]

Thanks!

[@cestusfr]

i loved the intro music!

[@TheMrMaynard]

One of the few expensive Saturn imports I have in my collection! Great now I'm going to have to break the Saturn out and put it on my OSSC for the weekend!

[@RetroCore]

Right on!

[@treyslay753]

I have never heard of this game. I guess no surprise, since I'm in the U.S. Looks really neat though. I'll definitely be checking into it soon.

[@samuraispiritsx]

never heard of this game, looks awesome

[@RetroCore]

It is ;)

[@DontCallMeScooterrr]

Having never seen this before, it just screams "late 80s/early 90s Data East arcade", doesn't it? It's funny how a lot of games of the era have a vibe (Sega/Capcom/Konami/DE). Maybe it's just the shared or iterative hardware. For this one I can hear it more than anything. Great BOTP as always!

[@RetroCore]

This is definitely from the Golden Age of Japanese gaming.

[@theoldpcgamer77]

Some great music on this one. I miss those days, music on video games now is like movies, it's just background noise and nothing I pay attention to.

[@RetroCore]

Absolutely. So much music in games these days is forgettable droning dross.

[@jamesburchill7522]

I missed this one somehow. Great video though, Mark.

[@RetroCore]

Surpringly a lot of people missed this one. A shame because it's a very good game.

[@jamesburchill7522]

@@RetroCore I've never even seen the Saturn port. Weird.

[@inklingex4433]

One of those arcade games I was looking forward of playing it, even if I got a Saturn or PS1 port. That and Skull Fang (which only ported to Saturn). Also when you think about it, the Sega systems seems to be a good place for the Fang Trilogy.

[@RetroCore]

Yep, since the Mega drive has a great port of vapor Trail with awesome audio.

[@jbmaru]

This looks like my kind of game. I need to try this one out on my Saturn... Ouch, the price.

[@spongeknock7387]

The music at the end was ace

[@RetroCore]

Yep. This game has some great tunes.

[@danmakuman]

Such a great game. Got the Saturn port some years ago but played it on MAME before. Great music and the gameplay is fast and super fun yet very challenging in later stages. Weird it wasn't ported to any 16-bit consoles back then. I watched a video on Twitter some time ago where someone was porting some assets to the Megadrive but who knows if they planned to make a full port of it.

[@RetroCore]

I don't think the SFC could have handled this game with all the sprites but the Mega Drive should have been able to produce a somewhat reasonable port.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Im pretty sure you can "dash" in the arcade one aswell, I was doing it earlier. No double jump though.

[@shotgunl]

Oh, this one. I never did buy nor played this. You covered on Retro Core ages ago, though I think just in the massive Saturn shooting special and not in a standard episode. I thought it looked cool, but I always forget about it haha. I thought the ability to change the enemy weapons and attributes was a neat feature. I should check this one out (though I don't think I want to pay the going price over here for the Saturn version). Also, though it's not full screen (and the actual art design is ugly), that's a pretty smooth FMV compared to many other stock Saturn games.

[@RetroCore]

Sadly this game is very expensive now but it is worth playing. Maybe boot it up in MAME some day.

[@Colin_Ames]

Another great B.O.T.P.

[@beansoup1088]

Looks great! 💪 Cheers

[@RetroCore]

Thanks 👍

[@Myako]

Would you be interested in introducing hacks/homebrews in your "Battle of the Ports" episodes? There are numerous ports being made lately, or hacks to existing games (like the ones for the SMS versions of Golden Axe and Street Fighter II) that I'd be very interested in seeing how they stack up.

[@RetroCore]

I don't really follow stuff like that. It also opens up too many issues with people complaining that I've missed their favourite hack.

[@shaggymcdaniel3216]

Out of the two, I picked Skull Fang for the Saturn. The 3D sprites look very weird. I like it though. It stands out.

[@RetroCore]

Yeah, I never liked the 3D prerendered look. It was always messy no matter how powerful the hardware was.

[@WrightOffsGaming]

Many thanks for this short but sweet battle Mark, I wonder how I've managed to miss this game then, just when you think you've played it all you get a awesome little shooter by the excellent Data East. I'm hearing a sound effect from Midnight Wanderers or did Capcom pinch it.

[@RetroCore]

I'm surprised you didn't know about Wolf Fang. It seems like a game that would be your cup of tea. I think this is one of those sound effects that you could license. On Japanese TV they use loads of sound effects that Konami and Capcom used in games, especially the parodius games in Konami's case.

[@WrightOffsGaming]

I'm very surprised as well lol. It looks and sounds awesome. I think I've possibly spent the last 20+ years confusing it with Skullfang? Checking the price on ebay for a Saturn copy is a bit disheartening tbh as it's expensive as you'd expect, the Psx version is a bit cheaper and I guess the shimmering wouldn't look too bad on my old crt.

[@RetroCore]

You probably wouldn't notice it on a CRT. 👍

[@MaidenHell1977]

Hot damn, another killer looking potential game to add to my Saturn collection...checks eBay... DENIED, hahaha...she's a pricey one!

[@RetroCore]

Sadly all the good ones cost a fortune. So glad I bought my Saturn games before the year 2000 when they were cheap.

[@RedRanger2001]

The USA version of the arcade version did have intermissions between scenes complete with English text... EDIT: No it doesn't... This game should've been ported to the Super Nintendo by Data East themselves back in 1992 or 1993...

[@thrillington2008]

Coin op has memorable everything. PS1 is a mixed bag. Saturn is a drastic improvement over coin op.

[@johns6265]

This is looks pretty impressive for 1991, maybe the prominence of belt scrollers and fighters like Street Fighter II made it difficult for a shooter to get much attention overseas, shooters looked to have gone out of a fashion a bit during that period. Which is a pity I'd have taken Wolf Fang over dreck like Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja any day.

[@RetroCore]

Well said. Yeah, especially in the west were most arcades were either street fighter 2 or some Neo Geo fighter.

[@NotaPizzaGRL]

Bad Dudes was an eighties game though. The bigger arcades tended to have more variety but the smaller ones tended to have what was more likely to make money. It was nice playing Aero Fighters II and In the Hunt as a kid though since Super SF2 was so popular that the lines were too long. Didn't make sense to wait all that time only to lose in less than a minute.

[@philmason9653]

Naturally, Saturn wins again. This is one of those games that 100% feels like it belongs on PC Engine Super CD but for some reason never made it there.

[@RetroCore]

I have a feeling the PC Engine version would be quite cut back. Maybe a Mega CD port would have worked better?

[@Bloodreign1]

Saturn version with no loading when continuing, it should've had a word with Kyukyoku Tiger II Plus on that as KT II has some awful loading when using a continue.

[@RetroCore]

Loading on a continue is always down to lazy programming on a game like this.

[@newtypepunk9967]

You're right about this game getting no love in the west, its over shadowed by games like cybernator, ranger x and hyper duel which are all great, but this game was just as much fun. You could tell straight away the Saturn port was the superior port, now I feel like playing it lol, guess I know what I will be doing later.

[@RetroCore]

hehe, glad I could make your Saturday plan for you.

[@newtypepunk9967]

@@RetroCore LOL

[@plastikloser]

Just got released on steam under wolf fang

[@Sakf504]

Just from seeing "Wolf Fang" in the title i knew i had to click to this video ASAP. I fricking love this game so much, I've put really so much time into both the Arcade and PS1 versions. Talking of which, i know there's not that much point in defending the PS1 version since the Saturn port is already better for his options, but are you really sure the shimmering really is a problem with the port and not with emulation scaling or something like that? Because i really never noticed something like that even as picky as i am with that kind of stuff.

[@dreamcastfan]

I couldn’t see it at first, I was only able to see it in the side-by-side at the end where it looks like the PS1 got the “Symphony of the Night” treatment and some pixels are doubled to fit the resolution. It doesn’t really shimmer so much as cause a slight wobble during scrolling (it’s best to look at the window frames on the background skyscrapers). It’s probably the sort of thing you wouldn’t really be able to see on a CRT back in the day unless it was a really good one and you were using RGB (neither of which was true for me back then! 😅)

[@RetroCore]

I don't think it is an emulation problem as other game don't have this issue. Sadly I can't run copies or ISOs on my PlayStation or PS2 otherwise I'd try it on real hardware. I did try a few different emulators and settings but all delivered the same result. The Saturn version was running on real hardware though.

[@Idelacio]

Tragic this one got butchered for the west, hopefully the Saturn version gets translated someday.

[@sugarhieroglyph]

I'll translate the Saturn version into english as soon as I'm done learning Japanese shouldn't take more than a year and a half.

[@RetroCore]

Good luck!

[@fnjesusfreak]

This looks like something the Genesis could handle reasonably well.

[@solarflare9078]

It should've got a MD port so we could hear how Hitoshi Sakamoto would handle the music, especially since he did a great job with Captain America and the Avengers

[@RetroCore]

I agree. Of course there would be cutbacks and many larger ships would be smaller but I'm sure a reasonable port could have been made.

[@Angellmbrr]

I would play it but I'm too lazy to set a MAME emula... see I can't even fi

[@LeeONardo]

Saturn was such a better console than playstation, if Sega just didn't keep fighting itself (US and Japan sides going at it while EU/UK just kinda made do with scraps in the meantime) it could have much better. Than surprise launch though ... ooof. Back to this though, never heard of it. Data East are always such an interesting company to go through their catalog with, they have a bunch of decent releases and some great soundtracks.

[@beingsupersonic7499]

Yes, love me some PS1 vs Saturn BotP🤘🏻I have the PS1 version which I paid less than a tenner for. Would like the Saturn version but it’s ten times that price! Anyhow, I’ve heard people say the Saturn port suffers from slowdown but are they getting mixed up with Skull Fang?

[@RetroCore]

No slowdown in the Saturn version but Skull Fang does slowdown so I guess they are mistaking the games.

[@beingsupersonic7499]

@@RetroCore I thought that might be the case. Cool, cheers for clarifying✌🏻

[@alritedave]

Looks decent. May pick it up on either PS1 or Saturn if it isn’t insanely expensive… :p

[@RetroCore]

Sadly it is insanely expensive.

[@alritedave]

@@RetroCore Figures lol.

[@zanegandini5350]

This game seems like it would be right at home on the Sharp X68k, so it's weird that it never got ported there. Oh well, at least it did get ported to the Playstation and Saturn, the latter being the obviously superior version. Data East was kind of hit-or-miss around this era, but this definitely looks to be one of their better titles. I'll have to look for the Saturn version.

[@RetroCore]

Yeah, data East were a mixed bag towards the late 80's and 90's but then again, even their early stuff could be really odd at times.

[@MagisterHamid]

Please make an episode on Dragob the Bruce Lee story

[@RetroCore]

Some day I'll cover that. It is on the list of to do videos.

[@hansgonk7122]

Damn this game looks sick! I wonder why they gotta cut content in the overseas release. I doubt there was like like blood and guts spilling out and hardcore pornography running amuck (maybe more of a reason to play the OG version to find out 🤔). BUT this seems like a game that could of been a modest hit in the US. I guess mecha weren't too big with kids at the time and moved on from transformers briefly and all the adult mecha fans were busy playing BattleTech.

[@RetroCore]

I guess they just wanted to make a cheaper board so the cut content to use less chips.

[@JolliAllGenGamer]

Man this game shows the 2D powerhouse of the Saturn vs PlayStation. Sucks that this game never was released to the west.

[@apollosungod2819]

Did this game get a North American or U.K. Europe PAL release or elsewhere outside of Asia? I cannot recal but we did have the Assault Suits Valken games with some questionable as usual Western name change on Mega Drive or Genesis and Super Nintendo as well as the rarity of Metal Warriors and other games in the late 80s, early 90s on NES and TG16 that featured near giant to giant type realistic Robots used in a military setting. Thus although these games were much more common in Japan, they did get localized even if some subsidiary branch decided to change the name because of some stupid reasons (note that even the Sega Saturn Gun Griffon was said to get its name changed but someone woke up and said stop dont do it which saved that particular game name) so I highly question why this particular Data East arcade port was not available on PS in the West but definetly not surprised it never even got supported by Sega of America 90s staff who had an anti-Japanese videogame or most videogames from Japan that do not seem "Western" enough or even 3d graphics enough which ended up never getting localized nor supported during that weird last couple of years of the 1990s decade. Thankfully we managed to get more Japanese Military anime robot based or inspired videogames which each have their particular gameplay mechanics system and tend to be a bit more for the hardcore gamer who does not hate reading an intructions manual and practicing how to play the game. So it is a shame this game did not get localized back then but that was why we had some really STUPID subsidiary branch staff in the 90s making some flip floppy decisions on what games to back. Also thank the Goddess that this game avoided being converted into that lame af CGi graphics which made it to the title screen and the intro video... sometimes that CGi pre-rendered graphics was ok but not with the Japanese style Real Robot genre... just the thought that some developers ended up believing that because some companies were successful with pre-rendered CGi graphics that they had to use it to unknowingly butcher games that could have been way more pretty... unfortunately even on the Japanese Sega Saturn side where Macross, Gundam and others got that pre-rendered CGi treatment which really hurt the Macross game.

[@RetroCore]

Only the arcade got a western release. the Saturn and PlayStation versions remained Japanese exclusives.

[@michaellindqvist5288]

Saturn wins hands down

[@e.l.4409]

I hope Skyrim is episode 500.

[@RetroCore]

Oh man. I've only ever played the Xbox version on that.

[@solarflare9078]

Ngl, a modern game would be a great episode for 500, but mainly modern games with lots of notable differences, like Plants vs Zombies, Cave Story (if you can call it modern in this day and age), the aforementioned Skyrim, or even The Simpsons The Video Game

[@BIGGIEDEVIL]

easy saturn win too bad sega didn't support its hardware properly like sony and nintendo the saturn had so much potential too bad sega didnt have been dev kits to give developers to make better games for the system i don't think one game on the saturn used both chips effectively on any game at all

[@RetroCore]

In Japan Sega supported the Saturn very well with over a thousand releases for the console. It was even out selling the PlayStation at one point in it's life but in the end, Sega just didn't have the money that Sony had to get the exclusives. Sega of America is a whole different story though. Even Sega Europe did a better job than Sega of America.

[@SuperKillerdreams]

I have an RCA CRT TV now my settings are as fallowed Color: 50 Brightness: 60 Contrast : 100 Sharpness: 25 I know CRTs for the home weren’t identical to the ones used in the arcades But are my picture settings close to what you would see in the arcades ? Or do I need to raise or lower some settings on my CRT TV to get it as close to what an arcade CRT monitor would be like

[@RetroCore]

Hard to say as all TVs are different. Having the contrast on 100% was something I used to do which gave a great vibrant image while keeping black levels solid.

[@SuperKillerdreams]

@@RetroCore right lol, it goes make my sega Naomi ports on my dreamcast actually look more clearer