Sonic Classic Collection

Anti-piracy measures?

 

Nope, I'm with AKAIO 1.6. It should be working as the real cart.

 

Yes, Angel Island is indeed a laggy piece of shit on real hardware as well. Every other stage in the game (in S3&K, anyways) performs better than that.

 

The first game I tried on SCC was Sonic 1, and I was a little disappointed at the rather lower framerate, and the squished screen. I then tried S3&K, and was kinda disappointed at the lag right away. There's a Genesis emulator for DS called jEnesis, and from my experience, it can play these games almost perfectly, which is pretty much why I was rather disappointed in this. Then I found out that Sonic Classic Collection actually uses jEnesis, and so that confuses me even more. If Sonic Classic Collection uses jEnesis to run the games, then what's up with the crappy framerate? Using jEnesis on a DS flashcart doesn't have any of that framerate crap, so I wonder what they did to screw with the emulator.

 

I've been playing SCC on my DSi all evening, and AIZ isn't that bad (worse that all other S3 levels I've played though). I'll compare it on a DSL shortly.

 

Playing through Sonic (1) on my DSi, there are some occasional flickers, and it only really lagged during Green Hill Zone when there were waterfalls in the scene. Far from unplayable, and I think it was worth the purchase.

 

Okay, I just played through AIZ on my Lite. It was awful- slow, had a terrible framerate and was near unplayable. That confirms that the game is so much better on the DSi. While AIZ chugged on there, it happened only rarely and felt very much like the original. However, I tried two special stages and the ground didn't spazz out at all.

 

I thought I've explained this before but maybe it was on another forum. Yes, it's still jEnsisDS, but not all of it. The DS has two CPU's: an ARM7 and an ARM9 processor. The ARM7 is a faster version of the same CPU that was in the Gameboy Advance, which is also used for GBA mode because it's capable of running at the same speed as it did in the GBA. The ARM9 is the main processor used by DS games.

jEnesisDS makes use of both of these processors. The Z80 and the rest of the sound emulation is handled by the slower ARM7 processor. The 68000 is emulated on the faster ARM9 processor.
Unfortunately, games developed using Nintendo's official SDK only have access to the ARM9 processor. Nintendo's SDK includes it's own library that runs on the ARM7, and is it responsible for most of the logic that games use to interact with the hardware such as monitoring input on the controller or touchscreen and providing access to Wifi. Nintendo does not allow developer's own code to run on the ARM7, no matter what. Homebrew doesn't have this same restriction and can use both processors because Nintendo's SDK library isn't there.

In other words, Stephen/Lordus lost an entire CPU by porting his emulator over to Nintendo's SDK. He has to do everything he did on the second CPU all on the first one and the CPU isn't fast enough for all of that. So instead of emulating the sound, it's much less work for him to play back pre-recorded audio and fake the presence of the missing hardware (if its necessary for any of the games to run). Still, that's taking time away from something he was already using most of the ARM9 to do. It's fairly remarkable that it even runs full speed some of the time.

 

Wasn't it confirmed that the DSi runs the game without much of this slowdown, though?

Although limiting access to a processor like that is kind of stupid.

 

That is because the DSi has more RAM.

 

Is there a video of the lag areas on a DS/DSL? I'd like to see it before I experience it.

 

And?

The fact is, it's much more powerful, as the processor is almost twice as fast.

 

Specifically: 133 MHz vs. ~66 MHz

 

Well I just bought it today, I have a DS Lite, noticed the slowdown, but it was nothing game breaking.

 

I bought the game today for $20 and I have to say, I've been playing it on a DS Original and I haven't experienced the 'game breaking' or 'unbearable' slowdown you guys are talking about. I completed Sonic 3 & Knuckles with all Chaos and Super Emeralds and I was very pleased. Worth every cent.

 

I wonder if anyone noticed this...

There are two buttons on the top right part of the touch screen (The control pad button and the sonic head button). Try to press and hold on one of them. The button's "ding" sound will rapidly replay until you let go. The game on the top screen will even slow down as the button dings nonstop.

Seems like the people who made the SCC menu were less experienced at making barebone menus than I originally thought. :E

 

Made another video, this time of Marble Garden Zone.



The framerate is MUCH better than in Angel Island Zone. This may affect the decisions of anybody who was detracted by my previous videos.

 

People, there are action replay codes to use start as pause now :3

But the music doesn't stop.

D:

 

Cause it's not emulated. Any reason as to why yet?

 

I thought they did that so ring noises and other high-pitched sound bytes wouldn't interrupt the music. Hydro City and Star Light Zone are 2 examples.