SA1 Comes to XBLA & PSN.

That was a Japan-only release, wasn't it? At any rate, I haven't managed to track down a copy that wouldn't require a modded console or some such to play...

Incidentally, is "them" in this case the fans, or SEGA?

 

Sega, I would assume. Sega's go-to XBLA port studio has always been Backbone Entertainment, and Backbone's known for being sloppy and/or lazy. Outside of one or two rare examples, they love to cut corners and put the bare-minimum of effort in. I mean, they actually removed over half of Super Puzzle Fighter HD.

Anyway, porting the PS2 version of NiGHTS would probably be ideal. My understanding is that it's already mostly in english. It's not exactly a dialog or text-heavy game. I read somewhere that the only thing that would need translating would be the instruction manual.

 

Hey, backbone gave us one good thing: Sonic 2 2-player over Xbox Live.

anyway, standard def TV is standard, so I'm not really hurt that Sonic Adventure is 4:3 only.

Maybe we could get some ... Twinkle Park vs. over the 'net?

 

A laggy hellish experience that's unreliable and you're better off just doing netplay on emulators.

 

Oi, tell me about it. My brother has no issues with online play in other games, and neither does my stepdad, but whoever's not hosting a Sonic 2 game that I play inevitably deals with epic lag. Not exactly a fair playing field, that.

 

Agreed, and yes, the Youtube footage I've seen of it lead me to believe that translating it would've barely taken any effort at all.

 

I have a copy of the PS2 port of NiGHTS and I can confirm this. It's a rather import friendly title if you have a PS2 that can run imports (if you can run homebrew on it, there are programs that'll let you run imports on an otherwise unmodded console, AFAIK), and can find a copy at a semi-reasonable price (the initial print run of the game was... limited, to say the least).

 

I'll admit, I downloaded NiGHTS PS2, and it made me with it was released. shame they cut out Sonic into Dreams from teh Christmas NiGHTS part.

 

As someone who doesn't own a Saturn, and finds the addition of another console to the ludicrous stack of seven currently placed under my television to be a frightening prospect, I've wanted to see Saturn games on XBLA/ Virtual Console for awhile now. They deserve the exposure, and they're good enough that if properly marketed they could revive some interest in old series. Particularly Panzer Dragoon. I own Orta, so I've played that and the original, but it would be a joy to play Zwei and Saga as well.

Not to mention Saga runs upwards of $200.

As for SA1, I think a rerelease could have a similar effect on that game as well. I'm hearing a lot of hatred directed toward it for being "the game that ruined Sonic," but for the most part, that simply isn't the case. Everything, from the graphical style, to the story, to the music is a practical and great evolution of classic Sonic, and while I have some gripes (a couple of the characters, the god-awful voice acting) for the most part people really shouldn't be so dismissive of it.

I hope an XBLA release clears its name.

 

Agreed, but apparently Panzer Dragoon Saga's source code (along with Magic Knight Rayearth) was on some hard drive that was erased.

If Backbone/Sega can create a fully-functioning Saturn emulator, then there may be hope for the company yet.

 

Not going to happen. I'm afraid the press reviewer end of the biz is more full of parrots than you realize.

Also, I watched a recording of SADX from E3 and some poor lady clipped through a floor before the second loop in Emerald Coast. Now imagine this happening to most reviewers and how much more patience they'll have to keep playing after that...

Still waiting

 

I've clipped through that loop on the Gamecube version of DX, but only once in about 5 years of owning the game... I must have beat the story at least 10 times during these years, and have played each stage countless times... mostly through getting all the emblems and whatnot. It's pretty hard to obtain that specific clipping error/glitch, from my experience.

But I can still see reviewers crying foul over one or two glitches that effected them personally, then criticising the game as a whole because of it. It happened with the original, it happened with DX on the Gamecube and PC; and it'll happen again for the XBLA version.

 

This is a port of the PC version of the game, and that glitch seems to happen 99% of the time to any first time player on the PC version. For no reason the collision drags you through the wall there.

 

And the winding path just at the end of the stage has the exact same same problem.

 

Ah, I didn't know that. I -have- the PC version, I've just never installed it, so I can't really comment on that one.

 

It's disappointing that this will be another Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection.

http://dsf.hcs64.com/f/

 

I hear SADX (Gamecube version) get bashed a helluvalot, but I haven't run into any more horrendous glitches myself, in all my years of playing it, than I encountered in the Dreamcast version. Maybe I wasn't attentive enough.

If they're porting the PC version and it's really that bad, I wonder why they didn't just go back to the Dreamcast to port that. Couldn't they at least touch it up before letting people try it out at E3? You'd think such obvious glitches would call for some repair...

 

First of, the Gamecube version is thousand of miles better than the PC version. That because the NGC version was an overhaul of the original DC version, and it had many bug fixes and/or code additions. It was also made with the processing power of the Gamecube in mind, that's why the NGC version features EMBM shaders in the waters, glow effect and cubic-environment-mapped specular highlights in the 3D models, and is able to be rendered at 480p (progressive scan enabled) at full 60fps (except in the cutscenes).

The PC version is actually a port of the NGC version, all of it's featues are borrowed from it. It is inferior due to the conversion of the instruction set from ARM to x86. Due to this *half assed* conversion, you can notice glitches that doesn't happens in the NGC version.

That been said, the SADX:PC version is my least favorite version. I preffer SA1 better, though it's so unfortunate that it doesn't run at 60fps, not even in NullDC

This, is all I need.

 

This explains a lot of the technical stuff I had no idea about. I knew that DXPC was a port of DXGC, but I didn't know they half-assed it to that extent. Then again, that explains why its UK release seemed to only be under budget labels like Sold Out and so on.

Thanks a lot for clearing that up for me. I assume the Billy Hatcher PC port is just another instruction set conversion, too (another GC to PC port I own but never installed).

 

"Many bugfixes?" Well, I'd hate to see what a choppy mess Sky Deck must be in the Dreamcast versions, then. :v: