Do Japanese Shmup-Players Complain about Filtering, too?

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 10:05 am

I was wondering if there was criticism from Japanese players concerning the filtering/blur of Ibara, Mushihimesama and other ports (like the Taito-, Konami-, Capcom and Oretachi-collections etc.). Were there any negative comments in Japanese gaming publications?

Anyone got any info regarding this?

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 10:16 am

I remember ARC posted he disliked the "blurry" graphics of the Ibara port, among other problems he pointed out in the port (too numerous to mention here). ARC is one of the top Ibara players in the world with a 30mil Arcade score.

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 11:31 am

Probaly same as the west. To the average gamer, no. To the diehards, yes. There is obviously enough of a voice for some companies to start making sure their retro titles have the games original resolution. All Sega Ages & Oretachi no Gesen games (after a certain point) have 15khz options.

Balzac · Post by **Balzac** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 8:17 pm

Not as much as we do, I'd imagine. If it bothers them that much, they can just go to their local arcade. Not an option many of us have anymore, unfortunately.

freddiebamboo · Post by **freddiebamboo** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 8:32 pm

Balzac wrote:Not as much as we do, I'd imagine. If it bothers them that much, they can just go to their local arcade. Not an option many of us have anymore, unfortunately.

Yeah, ports are probably seen as just a convenience for practicing at home and then they play for real at the arcades with their friends.

Most of us don't have easy access to the pcbs so we want as close a port as possible and complain like hell when the graphics aren't perfect.

tassian · Post by **tassian** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 10:57 pm

Is there some sort of example screenshot for the blur that you mean? I'm interested in how bad it actually is e.g. in the Mushihimesama port. I've been playing Saturn shmups for some time and have sort of an idea about the quality of Saturn ports. I have recently purchased an NTSC-J PS2 so I'm very interested in how true ports on this system are to the arcade versions.

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 10:59 pm

If memory serves, one of our members posted side-by side title screenshots of the original Ibara arcade game and the PS2 port on a thread from a little ways back...see if you can find that. The difference is noticeable if you know what to look for, though personally I'm not particularly bothered by it, as it doesn't affect playability.

cigsthecat · Post by **cigsthecat** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 11:36 pm

If you have an RGB monitor it will melt your face off, otherwise you probably won't notice. If you want to know what it looks like simply smear a thin layer of vaseline all over your monitor and play a game.

sven666 · Post by **sven666** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 11:40 pm

i remember a japanese player posting pics of himself breaking the disc and tearing up the manual of the assault suits valken remake so.. yeah.. they do

why shouldnt they?, they even have the opportunity to play the games in arcades so the flaws will appear even more!

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 12:54 am

cigsthecat wrote:If you have an RGB monitor it will melt your face off, otherwise you probably won't notice.

It still looks all shitty in S-video... it's just even blurier to begin with.

When I get a tripod I plan on taking some photos of interlaced vs. progressive for an article. That might be some time though.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 5:02 am

In filtering the same thing as interpolation?

Rob · Post by **Rob** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 5:09 am

sven666 wrote:i remember a japanese player posting pics of himself breaking the disc and tearing up the manual of the assault suits valken remake so.. yeah.. they do

Link please?

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 5:32 am

tassian wrote:Is there some sort of example screenshot for the blur that you mean? I'm interested in how bad it actually is e.g. in the Mushihimesama port. I've been playing Saturn shmups for some time and have sort of an idea about the quality of Saturn ports. I have recently purchased an NTSC-J PS2 so I'm very interested in how true ports on this system are to the arcade versions.

Dunno how you feel about emulation but I'd put an SNES emu in 640x480 with and without filtering. It will still be shitty in regular 640 thanks to scaling, but it will look better than the filtered version.

Or buy Street Fighter Anniversary and turn filtering on/off

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 10:24 am

[quote="Neon"]Dunno how you feel about emulation but I'd put an SNES emu in 640x480 with and without filtering. It will still be shitty in regular 640 thanks to scaling, but it will look better than the filtered version.[quote]

You can also play w/ the scanline settings.

Nei First · Post by **Nei First** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 12:55 pm

In the Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection for PS2, when the filtering is turned off, how does it look compared to the Saturn port? Is there a major difference? It's been years since I saw the saturn version and can't remember.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 1:21 pm

I was wondering the same thing about the Taito Legends 2 Darius Gaiden and the Saturn version.

zinger · Post by **zinger** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 7:31 pm

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 7:38 pm

Nei First wrote:In the Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection for PS2, when the filtering is turned off, how does it look compared to the Saturn port? Is there a major difference? It's been years since I saw the saturn version and can't remember.

Since it's stretched out into high res, it definitely looks quite different from the SS version. The difference is esp. noticeable on a component connection, where the graphics look incredibly blurry (an eyesore really). The same thing can be said of Street Fighter Alpha Anthology and the DC Vampire Chronicle.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 7:53 pm

I asked the above question because our griping about it here on this board won't do a thing. However, if Japanese players complain about it and if publications like Famitsu mention it in their reviews, Japanese publishers may actually take note of it and stop using blur-filters, or at least make them optional.

zinger wrote:[Pic of raped Valken PS2]

Haha!

Fighter17 · Post by **Fighter17** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 1:40 am

zinger wrote:

That bad of a game eh?

Why Psikyo fell for the dark side.

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:21 am

JoshF wrote:In filtering the same thing as interpolation?

Yes. The only reason I care is because the original artists' time and effort had been made worthless through interpolation. Back then people were all about crisp images now they just throw garbage into photoshop and smooth(blurr) the hell out of it. Ships don't look as reflective and the small details get lost.

I DO care I prefer traditional sprites to approximations to their original counterparts. Any interpolation compleatly ruins the art of the spriter.

Frogacuda · Post by **Frogacuda** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 7:31 am

JoshF wrote:In filtering the same thing as interpolation?

It's a kind of interpolation. Interpolation can also include other methods like 2xSai and Eagle algorithms

Anyway, I'm not bothered by filtering. I greatly prefer it to shit like DC mars matrix with uneven warping. True low-res is nice when it can be done, but depending on the hardware it isn't always possible, and filtering looks better than a lot of the alternatives.

A nice compromise is combining pixel doubling with filtering. Scale the image up to double size and then filter it. It greatly reduces the level of blur, but maintains the nice, smooth, even look of the pixels.

Randorama · Post by **Randorama** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 12:43 pm

Ceph wrote:I asked the above question because our griping about it here on this board won't do a thing. However, if Japanese players complain about it and if publications like Famitsu mention it in their reviews, Japanese publishers may actually take note of it and stop using blur-filters, or at least make them optional.

I frankly doubt it. It would be much better to write posts about the globalization shit, endless rants about graphics and trolling beyond any norm of decency on japanese spelling: the companies would magically realize how evil and sinful they were, thus travelling back in time to make perfect ports ftw!

On a serious note: since there are mentally sane japanese speakers here, why not trying to look around and try to join forces with the only people taken in consideration by japanese companies i.e. japanese buyers? Ceph's point seems pretty meaningful to me. Even if I don't pretend true low-res (as others explain here, it is not always possible), having a way to talk to companies about what one would like might be a good thing.