Capcom Arcade Stadium 2 Announced (GunSmoke, ECO Fighters)

[BIL]

I appreciate they want a hook for casual audiences, I really do. But unless they want that audience to come at the expense of everyone else, they have to include a killswitch option that cuts all that shit out. I don't give a fuck about anything not present on the PCB, and I expect the option to dismiss it summarily. Otherwise I might as well stick to MAME and the odd PCB.

[Rastan78]

Actually from the perspective of being able to turn stuff off, this collection isn't bad. Although I find the constant reminder of which buttons insert a coin and start a game annoying and intrusive.

I'm wondering if the choppy update is really only tied to the arcade cab settings or if it's just something dodgy about the emulation. Like what I'm seeing on 1943 is that there is an intermittent stutter at a fairly regular interval. You can clearly see it if you focus on the clouds scrolling by. It's like a frame pacing issue that is just there at all times regardless of what's happening on screen.

Also, and this could totally be my eyes playing tricks on me, but it almost looks to me like individual sprites, ie bullets or zako, can update in a choppy way independent of the rest of the screen. Like the background could be scrolling smoothly while certain sprites are randomly choppy or vice versa. I'm not sure, but once the game is out on stronger hardware it will bring to light if just having more power will override the performance issues or if it's something with the emulation itself.

[SPM]

I haven't bought the packs yet, and hope they patch it and improve it, but so far many people, including dedicated channels like Studio Mudprints and Shmups on Switch, seem to be fine with it (while admitting its shortcomings). I guess for most of us but the most picky/sensitive/pros it will be fine? I can't wait to have more free time to give pack #3 a go (and maybe #2). I expect to put many hours into this collection. But yes, a patch to polish it please!

[Rastan78]

Yeah I think most of the issues fall under the category of annoying, but not gamebreaking. When you factor in the low price tag and high quality of the games, it's not the end of the world. If I were going to try to 2 ALL progear or something like that, this probably wouldn't be my first choice though.

One little detail is that they took the rising sun symbol out of E Honda's stage in SF2. It's just a plain sun. I'd assume because this may be an offensive symbol to some in the same way as a swastiska? They also haven't been using the Air Force logo on Guile's stage in any ports for a while. Kind of interesting to see how old games get tweaked here and there. Like in M2 Shinobi for Switch Marilyn Monroe is replaced by the wolf man from Altered Beast and Spider Man is green. Because I'm weird I enjoy spotting these little differences.

[BIL]

I do hope they don't mangle Strider's iconic st1 mosques, like the Virtual Console release of the Genesis version did.

Spoiler

Yeah, thanks for that. -_-

I'd assume because this may be an offensive symbol to some in the same way as a swastiska?

That happens, yeah. Reminds me of Maken-X on Dreamcast, where (IIRC... god it's been decades), a Swastika was swapped for a rising sun in the Western version, one reviewer noting the irony with Imperial Japan being regarded about as fondly in much of Asia as Nazi Germany is in the West.

Like in M2 Shinobi for Switch Marilyn Monroe is replaced by the wolf man from Altered Beast and Spider Man is green. Because I'm weird I enjoy spotting these little differences.

The Virtual Console Revenge of Shinobi (an infamous minefield of copyright infringement) also swapped out the classic Sonny Chiba-modeled title screen for... some random guy, which I wouldn't mind much, except he's the goofiest looking motherfucker they could've picked.

Spoiler

L: you're shitting yourself. R: he's shat himself.

It's good to have this stuff on cartridge. For research purposes.

[Rastan78]

Sega just all over everyone's copyrights and getting away with it back in the day. Newer ports of Outrun have the car changed to look less like a Ferrari.

IIRC Sega did actually have the rights to use Spider Man from another game and therefore (super randomly) used him as an enemy in Shinobi, but they didn't want to show Spider Man dying hence why he disappears in a puff of smoke when you wreck him with a shuriken to the dome.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Shame about the performance issues. They shoulda handed the porting over to a group like Hamster...

[Jonpachi]

Like what I'm seeing on 1943 is that there is an intermittent stutter at a fairly regular interval. You can clearly see it if you focus on the clouds scrolling by. It's like a frame pacing issue that is just there at all times regardless of what's happening on screen.

Also, and this could totally be my eyes playing tricks on me, but it almost looks to me like individual sprites, ie bullets or zako, can update in a choppy way independent of the rest of the screen. Like the background could be scrolling smoothly while certain sprites are randomly choppy or vice versa. I'm not sure, but once the game is out on stronger hardware it will bring to light if just having more power will override the performance issues or if it's something with the emulation itself.

Glad I'm not crazy, because this is exactly what I'm seeing too. The actual ship movement feels fine and responsive, but here and there bullets and other sprites jitter for a moment. It's quite noticeable in Progear against the blue-sky backgrounds, but less noticeable in GigaWing with all the stuff going on. It kinda feels like something is being loaded in the background.

[HIGHscores]

I think the stuttering might be because every game is running at the same time. Even when playing without view of the other cabinets, in fullscreen I wonder if the other games actually get switched off.

[CRP]

A suggestion is to write down and document with film or photos all the issues yall find or improvemts needed in a google spreadsheet or something and then contact support , and possibly let someone help and mirror it in japanse.

check out how they did with the panzer dragon with feedback spreadsheep: PD_Remake_Feedback_After_Release
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =833022658

the google doc for panzerdragon is really good , would be great if it was possible to do them same with this release.

capcom support:
https://capcomusasupport.atlassian.net/ ... er/portals

[velo]

So uh where should I direct my strongly-worded letter? [EDIT: oh, read the post above, duh]

Like in M2 Shinobi for Switch Marilyn Monroe is replaced by the wolf man from Altered Beast and Spider Man is green.

ngl I'd rather have the Altered Beast guy, and it's certainly cooler than replacing her with a public domain blonde model, which is what almost any other developer would have done.

the classic Sonny Chiba-modeled title screen

It's got to be Sho Kosugi... I think?

IIRC Sega did actually have the rights to use Spider Man from another game and therefore (super randomly) used him as an enemy in Shinobi, but they didn't want to show Spider Man dying hence why he disappears in a puff of smoke when you wreck him with a shuriken to the dome.

The Spider-Man boss in Revenge of Shinobi just walks off the screen after losing iirc. He makes sense in that one, I can easily picture a Godfrey Ho ninja flick with Godzilla, Rambo, Spider-Man, etc.

[BrianC]

I always thought of Spider-Man in that version of Revenge of Shinobi as being caught up in a misunderstanding fight, which actually happens quite often in the comics. Spider-Man pre-license wore a red/black suit I like how that version was part of the villains' disguise/transformation and was similar to some of the silliness in sentai shows.

[Rastan78]

I love that. Spider Man brainwashed!? Friend or foe?

That's why Joe Musashi had to bust out the smoke bomb tranquilizer on him.

Would love to see a mock up of that cover in retro Marvel style. SM with a squad of khaki suited Zeed henchmen in tow.

[BIL]

A suggestion is to write down and document with film or photos all the issues yall find or improvemts needed in a google spreadsheet or something and then contact support , and possibly let someone help and mirror it in japanse.

check out how they did with the panzer dragon with feedback spreadsheep: PD_Remake_Feedback_After_Release
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =833022658

the google doc for panzerdragon is really good , would be great if it was possible to do them same with this release.

capcom support:
https://capcomusasupport.atlassian.net/ ... er/portals

Excellent suggestion, I'd be on it if I had this version. I'll get on it when PS4 ver hits. ^__^ ...assuming this thing isn't an even worse proposition at that one's launch.

the classic Sonny Chiba-modeled title screen

It's got to be Sho Kosugi... I think?

Could well be - I usually see Chiba's Shogun's Ninja performance named, but I'm not sure how accurate that claim is.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Tengen's dodgy NES Shinobi (my childhood favourite ) definitely blagged Kosugi-san for its boxart.

Spoiler

(from https://vintageninja.net/the-illustrated-sho-kosugi/)

Actually I need to revisit that one... was not impressed at all with the Mark III cart - choppy as hell, with some very unfortunate alterations to powerups - and while Asmik's PCE HuCard looks good, it deleted the close combat. I'm sorry, Asmik-kun, but you have been sentenced to execution by close-ranged ninja attack.

warning: gore

Spoiler

wait. dammit! sorry, wrong GIF

Spoiler

Much better! Bikers by day, ninjas by night! Friends through eternity, loyalty, honesty!

[BIL]

Shame about the performance issues. They shoulda handed the porting over to a group like Hamster...

It's a fond dream of mine that M2, Hamster and Gotch form up like Voltron to create some kinda Arcade Preservation Special Forces. All three have long track records of excellent service, I trust them implicitly. Was gonna pick up that Turrican collection when I heard (seemingly inaccurately) that M2 had handled it, and I don't know my Turrican from my Universal Soldier Feat. Massive Dolph Lundgren Head.

[Firehawke]

Actually from the perspective of being able to turn stuff off, this collection isn't bad. Although I find the constant reminder of which buttons insert a coin and start a game annoying and intrusive.

I'm wondering if the choppy update is really only tied to the arcade cab settings or if it's just something dodgy about the emulation. Like what I'm seeing on 1943 is that there is an intermittent stutter at a fairly regular interval. You can clearly see it if you focus on the clouds scrolling by. It's like a frame pacing issue that is just there at all times regardless of what's happening on screen.

Also, and this could totally be my eyes playing tricks on me, but it almost looks to me like individual sprites, ie bullets or zako, can update in a choppy way independent of the rest of the screen. Like the background could be scrolling smoothly while certain sprites are randomly choppy or vice versa. I'm not sure, but once the game is out on stronger hardware it will bring to light if just having more power will override the performance issues or if it's something with the emulation itself.

It's definitely not the emulation itself. Chances are you've already used the original drivers they're using in this collection at some point in the past. It's almost certainly something with the rendering pipeline; the Switch has enough CPU to run those just fine and should be able to tackle up to CPS-2 perfectly in fact.

Shame about the performance issues. They shoulda handed the porting over to a group like Hamster...

It's a fond dream of mine that M2, Hamster and Gotch form up like Voltron to create some kinda Arcade Preservation Special Forces. All three have long track records of excellent service, I trust them implicitly. Was gonna pick up that Turrican collection when I heard (seemingly inaccurately) that M2 had handled it, and I don't know my Turrican from my Universal Soldier Feat. Massive Dolph Lundgren Head.

Gotch is already doing most or all of the Hamster work already.

[BIL]

Gotch is already doing most or all of the Hamster work already.

Has that been confirmed anywhere? I'd a distinct suspicion they're still onboard in some capacity, though it's been years since their name appeared on an ACA release. The line's quality most definitely hasn't suffered since, at any rate.

Despite ACA Gradius III not having Gotch's name, it has their traditional Konami Code easter egg from ACA Gradius & Gradius II, among other Konami titles. Actually, it's time for a bump.

[Rastan78]

From what I read Gotch did the early non Neo Geo titles up through Ninja Warriors. They've been bringing over all those earlier ports to Switch gradually though. Thunder Cross just released. On these newer Switch ports Gotch is credited at the title screen, and they're marked by nicer scaling options. You can do a full screen scale with sharp filter that probably uses some form of interpolation to take away the uneven pixel scale and scrolling shimmer associated with noninteger scaling. Yet there is only a minor impact to the sharpness. No major Vaseline blur filter here. Even M2 ain't down with that as on their ports you're stuck with pixel perfect (sharp, but not full screen and not 4:3 depending on the original games pixel ratio), full screen with uneven pixels and shimmer, or blur filter that takes away artifacting, but heavily impacts the image quality.

[To Far Away Times]

I bought pack 3. I think its a great value. I'd easily drop more money than this just to play Progear, so this is kind of a no brainer. I like the scanlines and screen curvature. Multiple save states and rewind are going to make practice amazing. Just make sure not to use that horrendous 3D cabinet filter. My only real complaint is the super tiny deadzone on the controller, which sometimes leads to bad inputs even when not using the joystick. I'll have to use my better controller. Giga Wing, 19XX and 1944 are all a sweet bonus.

I may even check out the beat 'em ups, since Battle Circuit is supposed to be one of the best ones.

[defected78]

This is shoddy.

SF2 world warrior frame skipping when a character jumps and the sound delay lag on fireballs its on the other side of the screen when the noise occurs.

Every game is skipping frames whilst if you look at the hamster and earlier collections nothing of the sort is happening and any lag is more reasonable.

Anyone has to be in denial to think otherwise.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I only played Progear--and take this with as many grains of salt as you like because I haven't played since about 2003 (usually at 4:30 AM in the chinatown arcade with more than a couple drinks in me)--but it's pretty much how I remember it... At least, I haven't noticed any lag, dropped frames, etc.

I guess Forgotten Worlds would be the game where I'd mostly notice if anything was amiss. But, while I've logged a ridiculous amount of hours on the Genesis version, I'm unsure if I've ever played the arcade, and don't know what differences there are between the two.

[BrianC]

Out of curiosity how do the SF games here compare to the ones in the SF 30th Anniversary Collection? It would be interesting if the DE collection was actually better emulated than Capcom's own. So far, DE's Blizzard collection seems to be well done and has some amazing features (Rock 'n Roll racing with true widescreen support and full audio tracks). I honestly didn't know it was DE until I saw the credits, but RnR Racing with QoL features and original full vocal tracks had me sold.

[Kiken]

Like what I'm seeing on 1943 is that there is an intermittent stutter at a fairly regular interval. You can clearly see it if you focus on the clouds scrolling by. It's like a frame pacing issue that is just there at all times regardless of what's happening on screen.

Also, and this could totally be my eyes playing tricks on me, but it almost looks to me like individual sprites, ie bullets or zako, can update in a choppy way independent of the rest of the screen. Like the background could be scrolling smoothly while certain sprites are randomly choppy or vice versa. I'm not sure, but once the game is out on stronger hardware it will bring to light if just having more power will override the performance issues or if it's something with the emulation itself.

Glad I'm not crazy, because this is exactly what I'm seeing too. The actual ship movement feels fine and responsive, but here and there bullets and other sprites jitter for a moment. It's quite noticeable in Progear against the blue-sky backgrounds, but less noticeable in GigaWing with all the stuff going on. It kinda feels like something is being loaded in the background.

There's a crazy frame glitch I keep getting in GigaWing before fighting the aquatic plane boss. As you pass out over the water from the large base the entire background layer blanks out for a frame or two. It's pretty consistent. There's also quite a bit of judder before the battleship fight (as it smashes through the wall of the dock).

[EmperorIng]

It's a little disappointing to hear about these numerous issues but I am remaining hopeful for a patch. I seem to recall reading somewhere that the devs were at least aware of some of the emulation issues surrounding the CPS2 games (can't confirm that with a link atm).

I might wait till its release on PC unless it has its problems patched up.

EDIT: https://twitter.com/hokeihello/status/1 ... 1260410881
According to this chap who was pointing out errors in Progear's autofire settings, he received a response from capcom saying they are working on an update. Fingers crossed!

[Marc]

Played more GW over the weekend, perfectly fine for a filthy casual like myself. I've got a soft-modded Neo Arcade Stick with the full CPS2 library on there - might compare the two directly later.
Never played much Varth before, really enjoyed the hour or so I spent with that.

I still suck at Ghouls n Ghosts.

[Super Joe]

Played more GW over the weekend, perfectly fine for a filthy casual like myself. I've got a soft-modded Neo Arcade Stick with the full CPS2 library on there - might compare the two directly later.
Never played much Varth before, really enjoyed the hour or so I spent with that.

I still suck at Ghouls n Ghosts.

Varth is great. Loving all the hidden items abound throughout the levels.

[SPM]

EDIT: https://twitter.com/hokeihello/status/1 ... 1260410881
According to this chap who was pointing out errors in Progear's autofire settings, he received a response from capcom saying they are working on an update. Fingers crossed!

Oh nice! It looks promising. I'd like to play some of these games in a "non-casual" way so hope they polish them enough, at least to allow 1CCs and decent scores without frustrating emulation.

I don't need the level of emulation required for second loops or crazy scores though, and I wouldn't expect them to reach that level at this price tbh...

[BIL]

EDIT: https://twitter.com/hokeihello/status/1 ... 1260410881
According to this chap who was pointing out errors in Progear's autofire settings, he received a response from capcom saying they are working on an update. Fingers crossed!

Really good to hear. I'm willing to wait them out on this, certainly at least until the PS4 version arrives. Even M2 needed a while to get their Taito F3 emulation patched up, back when Cozmic Collection was Switch-exclusive, and now its Darius Gaiden is all but flawless.

[Sumez]

Wow this is really disheartening. Even if some of the issues do end up getting patched, it is really regrettable that so little care has been put into a release like this.

[Austin]

This is going to be a hard pass for me until it gets patched. I'd like to support it but not until things are 100%. I don't use my Switch on the go and so I can MAME all of this.

Shame they had to do this Switch timed exclusive thing. I may have jumped on one of the versions on more powerful consoles without thinking about it where I bet these performance hiccups wouldn't have been much of a thing. Eh, it's not a big deal, I can wait.