Samurai Shodown Neo Geo vs Sega CD | Mega CD | Utterly Pointless Comparisons ep 60

[@mrnicktoyou]

I know you don't get many views but I really appreciate your such in depth comparisons like this. Keep it up, if you can.

[@menhirmike]

I can still picture the Way of the Exploding Fist scream, just as I can remember the "Stay a while, stay forever" Mission Impossible intro. That low-fi, extremely crunchy sound effect together with the natural floor noise of the SID is really memorable!

[@InglebardGaming]

Yup, some memorable classics! I even had a disk with a short digitized sample of a Van Halen song on the c64, it was Why Can't This Be Love.

[@Shinmsl]

The Sega CD just makes the Genesis version look more spectacular conversion. The sound cuts are unforgivable, the whole gimmick of the add-on was the superior sound quality. Graphically I really miss the flashing effects on the sword clashes and special powers, that simple effects gave the whole fight a much more dramatic feel to them, I really don't think it wasn't something the console couldn't easily perform. Earthquake may be a gimmick but it worked on 10 year old me: I remember when playing the arcade fighting that literal giant scared the shit out of me. Probably they created him more of a enemy rather than a playable character

[@amerigocosta7452]

I wonder how many were caught off guard by the sudden loud digitised scream booting up The Way of the Exploding Fist for the first time. I sure was and remember it to this day.

[@InglebardGaming]

Ha, yeah definitely, I'll never forget that one.

[@maniacsatwork]

Great video, Interesting to see a comparison with the 3DO version.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

Finally, someone talking sense about this port. Sega CD is my favorite version. No scaling distortion, less ranged attack spamming, and better controls, plus no goofy judge of a private death match, no fart attacks, no 4th wall breaks that lie about imaginary button mashing mechanics. (The player doesn't decide who wins those segments.) I'll sacrifice Earthquake, voices, and backgrounds for all that. The cut down Genesis port, which gets more credit, also features sprites that hit that uncanny spot where they're so close to the original that the crude cutbacks are a constant distraction. The Sega CD was as close to owning the arcade game as you could get without paying arcade prices.

[@ThorStoneGaming]

You have problems.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

@@ThorStoneGaming Who doesn't? I'd rather be me enjoying a flawed game than be you sniffing your own fart attack.

[@InglebardGaming]

Despite all the cuts, I think the Sega CD version is still well done overall and the best playing of the contemporary ports, thanks in large part to the 6 button gamepad. And yeah, like I said in the video, Earthquake WAS visually impressive, but definitely just a gimmick to draw people in, IMO. A better, useful, huge character would be Hugo in SvC Chaos - he doesn't mess with the gameplay. In the end, I just wish they'd included a few things they left out and cleaned up a few of the backgrounds. Still overall, they definitely did a good job.

[@bredmaster]

fun com were really talented - love their port of hang time on the md.

[@TheRealJPhillips]

Yea. They should've did the NBA JAM games 😊

[@loganford3921]

I remember getting a demo of Sam Sho with a gaming magazine up in Glasgow airport in 1995 and I wasn't really impressed by it but by that time as I had Samurai Showdown 2 for the Neo Geo CD which knock me off my feet when I first played it on Xmas Day 1994.

[@JunkerDC]

I wish they could have gave the sega cd a ram cart so it could load more of the games at the start like the saturn did with the 4meg

[@Larry]

Pushing the sprites up the screen probably also gives them the optical illusion that they're bigger than hey actually are.

[@InglebardGaming]

The one thing I couldn't squeeze in, it was there before editing, was that they might have just been compensating for overscan. While the Neo Geo version would have the same overscan concerns, I think SNK cared less because probably because more of their business came from the arcade than their home versions for AES.

[@Larry]

@@InglebardGamingI suppose Neo Geo games were used more on arcade monitors, rather than TV screens too, so screens could easily be resized in arcades.

[@UFighterX]

Pretty solid port back in the day. I think the load times were the worst part.

[@robmadrigal714]

I can only imagine what Sega Lord X would say about this conversion lol

[@Ghost-Chatting]

I played the MD version heaps I never knew the Sega cd version was different mostly because of the Earthquake omission so now I need to play it today I probably had the snes version on my disk doctor snes lol and I had it on 3D0 one of my àl time favorite Neo Geo games

[@darktetsuya]

definitely some bizarre cuts in this one! but overall it seems mostly intact, and hey shout-out to having six-button pad support! never really seen the SEGA CD version so this was all new to me.

[@InglebardGaming]

Yeah, some odd decisions, but the controls definitely made this one worth playing on real hardware back in the day.

[@heilong79]

I felt this and Fatal Fury 2 were very frustrating on Mega CD, they are actually great in so many ways but it feels like they were just unfinished and cuts we know should not have been made were.

[@SoulforSale]

Utterly groundbreaking content

[@InglebardGaming]

Thanks!

[@Lovesadako1978]

Color is not bad in Sega CD if you consider that only can put 61 on screen

[@InglebardGaming]

No, they did a great job overall.

[@HellTantrumbull]

Finally recovered from food poisoning and damn that was painful to deal with especially on the stomach. 😶‍🌫 Having played the Sega versions years ago it really felt like the programmers were all over the place with the cart and CD versions since Takara and Funcom handled them. too bad SNK did try to pot the game themselves and instead relied on everyone else to port their games to snes and genesis. I hate Earthquake too but I do think he could have been in the game if they handled his sprite differently in how it's displayed like shrinking his size down some or maybe tried making him a multi jointed sprite. wouldn't have been perfect but at least trying some tricks to keep him in would have helped make the game feel more complete for each version.

[@WWammyy]

Streaming samples would mean more loading so I am guessing thats why they didn't stream them and opted for having the sound chip output them instead.

[@InglebardGaming]

Small PCM samples could be loaded into RAM. I'm sure that's how they did the voices in stuff like Final Fight CD, Mortal Kombat CD and the new clearer voices in Streets of Rage on the Sega Classics pack.

[@WWammyy]

@@InglebardGaming I'm not sure if there was a around it but the Sega CD had much less ram than the Neogeo and Neogeo CD. From what I know they usually stream music in Redbook and when games attempted both music + speech samples at the same time it caused a loading stutter Streets of Rage didn't have Redbook audio either. Also when it comes to sound samples the Mega drive games were much smaller than Neo Geo games. The NEO was a monster with storage because the carts were huge and ROM meaning fast transfer speeds. Maybe they could have got around it I'm not sure but in this game they did it that way.

[@InglebardGaming]

A few things on your reply... Lots of games used CD music and PCM samples. Redbook audio playback had nothing to do with any of the sounds produced by the soundchips or game speed. If you look at Final Fight CD for example it has redbook audio playing with PCM sound effects just fine. Other games like Lunar II and Silpheed used the PCM chip for all their music and layered FM sound on top for most sound effects or occasional extra PCM samples. Golden Axe on Sega CD, even though it was a pretty barebones port of the Genesis version (minus the two player mode, oddly enough) also used redbook audio and PCM samples. It specifically used a redbook audio recording of the arcade game's music with new PCM voices and the original plain FM sound effects. Using PCM samples and CD music on the system was common. All of that is why its especially strange that the sound samples are so rough in Samurai Shodown on the system.

[@dava00007]

Sega CD vs 3DO now!

[@Blas4ublasphemy]

Road Rash CD vs Road Rash 3DO

[@amirprog]

I guess they took off some animation to not angry some parents...

[@Genesis814]

JVC's ports for the Sega CD are complete embarrassments.

[@acem7749]

Always enjoy theses, wish there was an arcade card port for the PCE CD. Had this on 3do 1st then a buddy sold me his neogeo shortly after with Samurai shodown. Got the Sega CD version on clearance at retail later for the fun of it.

[@InglebardGaming]

The Sega CD version was the only one I owned when it was new back in the day. I got it for wither $15 or $20 on clearance shortly after it came out. I'd played the game here and there on Neo Geo MVS units back then, too, but never played it near as much as Street Fighter II.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Had the mega cd demo of this... its almost like the megadrive version was better!! Why couldn't they do the scaling i wonder? Even referee was removed. Still loved playing it though so when I saw the neogeo version I was in love!

[@MarginalSC]

Megadrive version definitely wasn't better. Every single character is missing half their normals. (Close attacks were all cut.)

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

@@MarginalSC I meant more to do with less cuts such as referee, not the way it plays....

[@InglebardGaming]

Well, cutting moves in the Genesis version was a lot more serious than cutting the ref or delivery guy on Sega CD. Personally, even with the cuts, the Sega CD version is way better overall, IMO. But it IS weird that they phoned it on some of those backgrounds and other stuff. There shouldn't have been anything that was better in the Genesis version, but yet, here we are.

[@MarginalSC]

@@InglebardGaming I wonder if it was just VRAM limitations. Retain the close attacks, lose the memory for the ref etc.

[@ostiariusalpha]

​@@MarginalSCAlmost 100% certain it was due to a schedule crunch. Development schedules back then were (Gurney Halleck voice) _brutal_ in how tight they were.

[@Camtrack]

Sega cd is a really good port

[@InglebardGaming]

Yup!

[@Zebra66]

I was so angry about my Sega CD that I vowed never to buy another Sega console. It was the correct decision. Sega abandoned their customers after ripping them off for every machine they released after that too.

[@InglebardGaming]

Hard disagree on this one. There were lots of great games for the system that get overlooked because so many people tried to say it was just an FMV machine. Just some examples of great games for the system: Lunar, Lunar II, Popful Mail, Dark Wizard, Final Fight CD, Terminator CD, Soul Star, Silpheed, Sonic CD, Snatcher, Thunderhawk, Shining Force CD, Keio Flying Squadron, Monkey Island, Heart of the Alien and more. I never felt ripped off with the Sega CD. Other systems yes, but not that one.

[@Zebra66]

@InglebardGaming Final Fight was the game that made me angry. Seeing how awful the colors looked made me realize I was still playing on a Genesis (with a CD player on the side). Not a new system. I wasted years worth of birthday money and the games still looked worse than the Snes. I sold it for half what I paid after a few months.

[@TheyCallMeSledge]

I would agree if the Dreamcast never came to existence. That piece of hardware was a masterpiece and an indicator of SEGA trying it's hardest to redeem themselves for their past sins. Granted it was too little too late due to the constant hardware add ons for the Genesis and mishandling of the Sega Saturn marketing but you can't say that SEGA didn't try with the Dreamcast. Did they screw up? Of course they did but abandoned their customers? I don't agree with that.

[@Zebra66]

@TheyCallMeSledge they game up on the Dreamcast and all future hardware in the middle of it's lifecycle... yet again... 4th time in a row...

[@InglebardGaming]

@TheyCallMeSledge the problem is they literally gave up on their Dreamcast customers. They abandoned the hardware business and stopped making games for it. They didn't even bother bringing Shenmue II to the US. Also, @Zebra66, every company stops making games for their systems eventually. I don't know what you expected out of the Sega CD, it was an add on CD-Rom drive for an existing platform. Like I said earlier, it has plenty of great games that get overlooked. For the Saturn... there were literally over 1,000 commercial releases for it (all territories). It was around for about 4 years which wasn't that much less time that a typical hardware generation in those days. Longer would have been better, sure, but the Dreamcast was a huge technological leap over it so it was justified, IMO. Now 32X, no argument there. It had few games, it never really had the support of the company, and it was a pain to even hook up (genesis, sega cd and 32x... you needed THREE AC adapters, yeesh). That one also had a shorter practical shelf life. Even the Genesis was only around for about 6 years before the Saturn came out and Sega "gave up on it" pretty soon after because that'd what companies did. It was similar for the SNES and N64. After some generational overlap, the older systems are almost always 'given up' on by their manufacturers. We didn't start to see significantly longer generations until the PS2 came along.

[@TheRealJPhillips]

The older I get, the more I think there were certain agreements put in place so 16bit and 32bit game conversions could NEVER be arcade quality. No matter how powerful they were. And it kinda makes sense. The NeoGeo was a 24bit'ish system and the PS1 couldn't make perfect conversions?? Stop it

[@menhirmike]

The problem with the PS1 was that it had only 2 Megabytes of RAM, and loading new data from CD was really slow. There simply wasn't enough RAM to load all the animation frames, which made e.g., Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat Trilogy such a pain. The Neo Geo also hadn't much RAM, but data access on the cartridges was _instant_, so there was no issue having many more animation frames. The Sega Saturn had a similar problem than the PS1 (not enough RAM and a slow CD Drive), but there was a RAM Expansion that made some of the Street Fighter/X-Men games have more animation frames. So it's not as simple as 16 vs "24" vs 32-Bit, but "How much data is readily available at any given time?".

[@PAKA62]

@@menhirmikeEven with the RAM cartridge Saturn ports of Neo Geo games have reduced animation and worse sound

[@glenndoiron9317]

As said here, its all about the available RAM on the consoles. The devs for the Neo could allocate as much video ROM space as they wanted for animations, and just change the sprite data pointers to show a new image. The home consoles had NO video ROM, and a limited amount of video RAM to hold animations. Uploading new data to video RAM from system RAM would consume your CPU for the duration... pulling it from CDROM was hilariously slow. This is why cuts were made... the Neo version of Samura Shodown had 14 MEGABYTES for just the graphics data, while the Genesis has 64KB of video RAM, 64KB of processor ram, the SegaCD had 768KB of RAM. "Thats 900K of RAM though!"... remember that everything for a frame had to fit in that 64K of video RAM... and you had to also store your game program and sample sound effects in that non-video RAM as well...quite frankly its a technical marvel that they included as much of the original game as they did here.

[@Rk3tSk8s-ut4yo]

Was not 24 bit. Was 16 bit.

[@jct903]

Imagine if the PS1 had a RAM cart slot like the Saturn had.....

[@gaminginstilllife9429]

SPOILER ...NEO GEO is better

[@InglebardGaming]

Well, yeah. The point of these comparisons is just to see how close (or not) the devs could get on the less powerful hardware it was ported/converted onto. Still, I did like playing this more on Sega CD than the MVS back then just because of the 6 button controller, even though the MVS version was superior to it in every way.

[@dukeljk2191]

Yeah and it was 300 dollars.

[@InglebardGaming]

The Sega CD was $300... when it launched in 1992. By 1995 it was $100 brand new and about $40 or $50 used. I bought the original front loader new for $300 when it came out and got a model 2 top loader used for $40 in early 95. Edited for spelling only.