Capcom Arcade Stadium 2 Announced (GunSmoke, ECO Fighters)

[velo]

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.

The autofire in Captain Commando basically... doesn't work. Not sure how to describe it exactly but something's really wrong there, like the rate of autofire is not agreeing with the emulator and it comes out at an irregular, mostly slow, rate.

Forgotten Worlds lets you map "aim" to the right stick, so at least that aspect's nicer than MAME.

[Sumez]

Doesn't Progear do autofire in software? As in, holding the button is different from mashing at 30hz as with most Cave games.
I guess the emulator emulates mechanical autofire instead??

[ShmupJunkie]

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...

Aside from other emulation glitches, the response on Progear and many of the games has been good and around what I expect on the Switch. As I'm lag testing many of the game working on my review, Progear averages 4.5 frames using the Joycon. Add your display and you're realistically between 5 and 6, pretty much most Switch shmups (EspRaDae is 5) aside from smokin' fast games like Ikaruga (3 frames). Some on the collection have been faster at under 4 frames, and a few so far like Giga Wing close to the 8 frame range. However Giga Wing is an unusual one due to the charge mechanic, so testing the shot may not be accurate, as it may have a built-in delay to it. I remember the Dreamcast port was the same and I'll be testing it again to compare. But in general, the majority of the games are in that 4-5 frame range so far. I've never had an issue clearing any games or enjoying them on Switch when they are in that ballpark, although I'm not elite for multiple loops etc. There are other emulation glitches and such, but in terms of delay it's very much a cut above something like the Psikyo games all running at 7 frames plus. I've had no issue playing through the games I already know well and started out with to test. I was only annoyed that the opening alert sound on Strider is messed up, which is an old emulation bug fixed long ago in other emulators, as it's so obvious right at the opening. Most likely they were crunched for time and will get back to it. I'm loving Varth though that one is new to me.

[SPM]

That's great to hear Junkie. I'm sure I'll be fine with it (I've enjoyed my Psikyo games on Switch so far, even with its shortcomings) but will wait until late march anyway (busy atm) and hope all major problems are fixed by then.

Looking forward to your review

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Doesn't Progear do autofire in software? As in, holding the button is different from mashing at 30hz as with most Cave games.

Yes, this is correct. It has a C Button autofire that you can enable in the test menu as with other early CAVE games (Donpachi, Dodonpachi, Dangun Feveron). You generally want to play with C Button autofire enabled as it functions better than setting up a button to mash the A button.

Espgaluda and Daioujou were the first releases AFAIK to have autofire always on by default (not sure if you can turn them off).

Note that Esp.Ra.De is also an early CAVE game that offers an autofire option that is off by default but it's a red herring and makes the game much worse if turned on. Your main shot always requires tapping and holding to adjust your movement speed. The autofire option affects the subshot you fire; with autofire on, it fires the subshot in short spurts without letting the meter refill beforehand. This makes the shots fire out at a slow velocity and ends up dealing far less damage than leaving autofire off, where you actually do have autofire built into the subshot button by default. With autofire off, holding down the subshot button automatically fires the subshot each time the meter fully recharges, giving it the best damage output.

[Kiken]

Giga Wing definitely feels slippery, but that's about on par with the Dreamcast port (which had very noticeable directional input delay). Weird thing is, the button inputs seem very twitchy. C+A cancelling from auto-fire into Reflect Force is really quick, much faster than on DC. Also, the slowdown is back in stage 6... no more crazy overclocked blue bullet patterns from the DC version.

[velo]

The autofire in Captain Commando basically... doesn't work. Not sure how to describe it exactly but something's really wrong there, like the rate of autofire is not agreeing with the emulator and it comes out at an irregular, mostly slow, rate.

Oh, on further inspection, the autofire on all the beat em ups is screwed up, CC just has it the worst. Seems to be set to a relatively low speed that's out-of-sync with the games' jab speed, so they come out at a staggered rate. Depending on the game/character, the effect ranges from "suboptimal" to "autofire is unusable".

[TransatlanticFoe]

Even aside from any emulation issues, I'd be more interested in this if I didn't already have 25% of these games AND THEN SOME in the Street Fighter and Capcom Belt Action collections respectively. It's pretty cheeky to pad these collections out with duplicates from recent releases when they could've put something else on instead - don't let Alien vs. Predator be locked behind that ridiculous arcade stick!

[Buffi]

Note that Esp.Ra.De is also an early CAVE game that offers an autofire option that is off by default but it's a red herring and makes the game much worse if turned on. Your main shot always requires tapping and holding to adjust your movement speed. The autofire option affects the subshot you fire; with autofire on, it fires the subshot in short spurts without letting the meter refill beforehand. This makes the shots fire out at a slow velocity and ends up dealing far less damage than leaving autofire off, where you actually do have autofire built into the subshot button by default. With autofire off, holding down the subshot button automatically fires the subshot each time the meter fully recharges, giving it the best damage output.

I think this is false for damage. Autofire on feels like it does a lot more damage.
This is due to the last bits of the meter taking longer to recharge, so waiting for full subshot meter ends up giving more delay per extra shot compared to shorter bursts of fewer shots.

For scoring, you probably still want it off though, since it makes it easier to trigger 16x, but for survival it felt easier for me to clear the game with auto on.

[Lethe]

The autofire option affects the subshot you fire; with autofire on, it fires the subshot in short spurts without letting the meter refill beforehand.

I think this is false for damage. Autofire on feels like it does a lot more damage.

Both of you are wrong: The meter fills inverse to the number of powershot bullets currently active. All of the bullets take the same amount of time to disappear, but the small (first) ones do virtually no damage, and the big (last) ones do a lot, which is why milking works. The autofire misbehaves when the meter refills unevenly i.e. some of the bullets hit and lingered and some missed and flew off the screen. As long as you cleanly hit with all of them it'll function the same as if autofire is off.

Autofire on is beneficial to scoring because it allows you to tick point milk to some degree on patterns where it's impractical to do the sweep maneuver due to lack of room. The only way it benefits survival is by making the slowdown more consistent. If you start getting spurts where you don't want them, release the button for a second so the meter refills and you return to big wad status.

[Rastan78]

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.

Actually M2 just patched 6 of the Sega Ages titles for Switch to clean up minor issues. Some of the patched games like Thunder Force IV and Phantasy Star were released over 2 years ago back in 2018. I highly doubt they're still making any big money of off these titles, so it's even more impressive to see them revisit them and give that last bit of polish.

Some of these I consider to be the definitive version of the game even over original hardware. Like TFIV where you can turn off slowdown and the easy unlimited tape down the fire button and walk away type milking potential has been fixed, making the game actually playable for score for the first time.

I totally see the point of view of hey the Capcom collection is fine for casual play it's still fun/cheap etc. But I still don't they deserve a free pass on this. Something like the autofire setting being broken on the beat em up games is inexcusable. Especially in light of the fact it worked fine on the Beat em up collection. So you're asking me to double down on these games to buy a bundle, but then providing an inferior version to the one that was already released?

And as far as SF, I'm a hardcore SF3 addict and believe it or not I have over 13k wins on the Switch version alone. I can confirm the Digital Eclipse emu is fairly solid and better than this in house Capcom production.

[defected78]

Agree with above poster.

Sf and Beat em up collection emulation is absolutely fine with 60fps and totally acceptable lag. As good as the Capcom home arcade and the neo geo arcade stick.

To be honest my samsung s9 emulates these games better than this swith collection.

If they did use Mame for this collection it might need a large scale update with a more upto date version of mame. Quite a substantial one.

[el_rika]

My decade old Samsung Galaxy S2 emulates these games flawlessly. And if this release is, again, profiting from freely distributed software (see CapArcade Stick), they should be boycoted by everyone.

[Marc]

Actually M2 just patched 6 of the Sega Ages titles for Switch to clean up minor issues. Some of the patched games like Thunder Force IV and Phantasy Star were released over 2 years ago back in 2018. I highly doubt they're still making any big money of off these titles, so it's even more impressive to see them revisit them and give that last bit of polish.

Depends on your definition of minor I guess - OutRun is a brilliant port, but for it to randomly wipe the high-score table every now and again was incredibly frustrating. Still, gives me a reason to go back and play it some more I suppose.

I was playing Final Fight with autofire last night - seems to work just fine there?

[Sumez]

If they did use Mame for this collection it might need a large scale update with a more upto date version of mame. Quite a substantial one.

They can't use mame for releases like this, since it's an open source project with a whole ton of individual contributors.

[Rastan78]

your definition of minor I guess - OutRun is a brilliant port, but for it to randomly wipe the high-score table every now and again was incredibly frustrating. Still, gives me a reason to go back and play it some more I suppose.

Guess I should say relatively minor. Actually the addition of a gamma slider to Virtua Racing could almost be considered major. The brighter gamma curve on this amazing port really stood out as looking different from the arcade. Trees took on sort of a neon pastel lime green hue. It didn't look terrible, just way different. That one small change really influences the overall look of the game.

[tomwhite2004]

They can't use mame for releases like this, since it's an open source project with a whole ton of individual contributors.

https://datahorde.org/?p=2052

https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comm ... nt/goar36r

[Sumez]

Okay, genuinely confused how that is possible. I guess it works out if they leave all of MAME unaltered in there?

[BIL]

[velo]

I was playing Final Fight with autofire last night - seems to work just fine there?

For Final Fight, it's pretty fast, just not as fast as the characters are capable of punching (except Haggar). Same with Battle Circuit. Most people wouldn't notice anything wrong without playing it back-to-back against a version with max autofire. So some people might say "what's the big deal, it's perfectly playable" but it's a downgrade from MAME or the Beat em Up Collection.

Warriors of Fate seemed ok, jabs aren't too fast in that one.

In Captain Commando (I tried Mummy and Ninja) it just sucks for some reason, you're better off mashing.

And as far as SF, I'm a hardcore SF3 addict and believe it or not I have over 13k wins on the Switch version alone. I can confirm the Digital Eclipse emu is fairly solid and better than this in house Capcom production.

I'd think that Capcom or SNK might see some potential in making a commercial equivalent to fightcade. This collection seems like it would have been a good (missed) opportunity for that.

[pja]

Okay, genuinely confused how that is possible. I guess it works out if they leave all of MAME unaltered in there?

I'm guessing they only took the parts of MAME that are licensed under MIT/BSD. (I think the whole point of them relicensing large swaths of code and tracking down individual contributors is to make it possible to use MAME in situations just like this).

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/issues/562

edit: and well, that reddit thread linked above explains it better than I do

[Flashman]

I picked this up yesterday, I agree it's not perfect but I'm having fun (I confess I'm not playing these games to any high level and so these things rarely irritate me too much).

So far I've had a little bash around on GnG, all the 19XX games, Final Fight and I've credit fed my way though Carrier Airwing (my main reason for wanting to pick this pack up as I'm a huge fan of U.N. Squadron - if only that could be released in future DLC) £29.99 is a bit steep, but I'm enjoying myself and I will try and sink some time into it in docked mode over the weekend when I have more time.

I really am surprised about no A vs P though - clearly the licencing disputes are over as it was released on that Joystick monstrosity a couple of years ago. I can only assume they are saving that one to get another 20 bucks out of us down the road, but seriously did we need every single SF game padding it out again?

[velo]

Just to show what I'm talking about with the autofire (the difference is more obvious with the sound on)

Mummy in Capcom Arcade Stadium: https://twitter.com/suprodupro/status/1 ... 8286873603
Mummy in Capcom Beat em Up Bundle: https://twitter.com/suprodupro/status/1 ... 9158436865

Cody in Capcom Arcade Stadium: https://twitter.com/suprodupro/status/1 ... 1118226433
Cody in Capcom Beat em Up Bundle : https://twitter.com/suprodupro/status/1 ... 8647882752

So Cody is "not that bad" I guess, Mummy is slower than casual mashing and doesn't always punch at a constant rate. Yes I was mad enough about this to sign up for Twitter lol

[Rastan78]

Interesting. The licensing stuff is all over my head, but it sounds like this collection is just MAME dropped into the RE Engine (for some reason) with Capcom's own sound drivers. Sounds like the engine is not playing so nice with MAME. So there's pretty much no advantage to buying this over playing in MAME other than the obvious owning the ROMS legally and the convenience. But just about anything else will run MAME better than this including a laptop or smart phone.

I'd think that Capcom or SNK might see some potential in making a commercial equivalent to fightcade. This collection seems like it would have been a good (missed) opportunity for that.

Yeah, while the DE collection is decent as far as emulation, screen filters etc. it's lacking in the online department. The old Iron Galaxy 3S was really solid. Lobbies, spectating, replay saving (you could even instantly export them to youtube), leaderboards were not broken and were broken down per character. It was always easy to seek out good competition and maintain a friends list that meant you could always play someone high level. Having a fighting game collection with all these features would be a great way to help build the communities for old FGs outside of fightcade.

I think what they should do now is patch Capcom Arcade stadium until it's good and stay with it. Keep releasing new games, patches/features over the years like they do with games like SFV. You saw something like this also with the Pinball FX series. They could keep improving and build this into a single massive collection of games that run well instead of just starting from scratch every generation with random collections of varying quality here and there.

And stop with the double dipping action. We shouldn't be asked to pay for the same exact ROMs twice on the same console. Especially when that shit is just running on a janky version of MAME.

[tomwhite2004]

I'd think that Capcom or SNK might see some potential in making a commercial equivalent to fightcade.

SNK are already doing just that from the looks of things.

https://twitter.com/SNKPofficial/status ... 4456527874

[Firehawke]

If they did use Mame for this collection it might need a large scale update with a more upto date version of mame. Quite a substantial one.

They can't use mame for releases like this, since it's an open source project with a whole ton of individual contributors.

Large chunks of MAME are BSD licensed and have been since 2016. The sound cores (as of when Capcom made this) were GPL2; apparently the end of March's release of MAME will have new BSD-licensed sound cores, which (assuming Capcom updates..) will give better sound than the current release they have.

[Firehawke]

Interesting. The licensing stuff is all over my head, but it sounds like this collection is just MAME dropped into the RE Engine (for some reason) with Capcom's own sound drivers. Sounds like the engine is not playing so nice with MAME. So there's pretty much no advantage to buying this over playing in MAME other than the obvious owning the ROMS legally and the convenience. But just about anything else will run MAME better than this including a laptop or smart phone.[

The problem is definitely RE Engine. You can see the same stutter issues in the menus as you do in the games. Homebrew ports of the latest MAME run better than this on Android hardware that is somewhat weaker.

[hamfighterx]

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.

Ohhhhh is THAT why a handful of the Arcade Archives games have the better non-blurred scanline filters. That makes a lot of sense. LOVE those better scaling options, but I never understood why they were only on a small handful of games. I initially thought it may have been a hardware-emulation specific thing, since the better settings had shown up consistently on games from the same companies (some of the earlier Switch AA releases of UPL, Nichibutsu, and Technos games, for instance, but not any of the ACA Neo Geo games, Nintendo, IREM, etc.) - but over time there seems to have been not a whole lot of rhyme or reason.


Switching gears a bit... about the Capcom Arcade Stadium ports... M2's logo is in the credits. Anybody have any idea what sort of contribution they made??? (note: not M-Two, who is also credited and has been working with Capcom as a support studio mostly on Resident Evil series).

[Sumez]

I really am surprised about no A vs P though - clearly the licencing disputes are over as it was released on that Joystick monstrosity a couple of years ago. I can only assume they are saving that one to get another 20 bucks out of us down the road, but seriously did we need every single SF game padding it out again?

Since I was just obviously wrong about a licensing issue, I probably shouldn't make any more assumptions, but for a lucrative license like Alien vs. Predator I think it's safe to assume that these licenses are on a case-by-case basis, it's not like Capcom just owns the rights to release AvP games all willy nilly now, that would definitely have cost them a lot more.
And I'm guessing the license sold for the case of the Capcom Home Arcade stick was probably sold to Koch Media, and not Capcom. Just like they bought the rights from Capcom to make that thing in the first place.

Honestly, to me the bigger travesty is Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and Punisher. Two legendary Capcom brawlers that have been doomed into obscurity ever since the awful MegaDrive port of the latter one.
I can understand Marvel licenses being hot bucks right now (even if Capcom did get it back for MvC:I), but what's holding Cadillacs & Dinosaurs back? I'm sure few people even know that was apparently a TV show that ever existed, so is it the Cadillac brand itself?

EDIT: Reportedly the C&D rights is being held by a private person who wrote the original comics, which is definitely gonna make dealing with it harder, since it relies entirely on whether he even cares to respond. It's just speculation but this GameFAQs thread touches on it:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/20 ... 647?page=3

[GFoyle]

Since I was just obviously wrong about a licensing issue, I probably shouldn't make any more assumptions, but for a lucrative license like Alien vs. Predator I think it's safe to assume that these licenses are on a case-by-case basis, it's not like Capcom just owns the rights to release AvP games all willy nilly now, that would definitely have cost them a lot more.
And I'm guessing the license sold for the case of the Capcom Home Arcade stick was probably sold to Koch Media, and not Capcom. Just like they bought the rights from Capcom to make that thing in the first place.

Honestly, to me the bigger travesty is Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and Punisher. Two legendary Capcom brawlers that have been doomed into obscurity ever since the awful MegaDrive port of the latter one.
I can understand Marvel licenses being hot bucks right now (even if Capcom did get it back for MvC:I), but what's holding Cadillacs & Dinosaurs back? I'm sure few people even know that was apparently a TV show that ever existed, so is it the Cadillac brand itself?

EDIT: Reportedly the C&D rights is being held by a private person who wrote the original comics, which is definitely gonna make dealing with it harder, since it relies entirely on whether he even cares to respond. It's just speculation but this GameFAQs thread touches on it:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/20 ... 647?page=3

If I remember correctly, Koch media / producer of the Capcom Home Arcade (The double arcade stick thing) tried to get license for Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, but they could get in hold with the licence owner or something like that. So at least they tried in that context. Not sure about AvP, but it was probably Koch media who negotiated that license deal and not Capcom (and the stick was licensed only for European marked, they couldn't even use Japan ROM's because of that).