Battle of the Ports HD #49 (MechWarrior 2)

[SwankeyMonkey]

OK, just tried GunGriffon with the Mission Stick. Sorry to report that the game doesn't recognize the peripheral. GG is only one of two games out of about forty ideal prospects that I've tried with that stick. The other one was sadly Thunderstrike. But wow, the Mission Stick has made so many games better. And as for GunGriffon and Thunderstrike, they play perfectly well with the SS arcade stick. Definitely still check out GunGriffon on the SS. It was so much better than the sequel on the PS2.

[SwankeyMonkey]

RealBlue, have you tried the Saturn game GunGriffon? I really liked that Mech game, and have been thinking about trying it out with the Mission stick now that I've finally picked one up. I hope it plays the GG as well and hopefully better, just as you have found with MW2 and the stick.

[fireheartis1]

Dude if developers took the time to learn how to produce Voxels on the Saturn it would have kicked the PlayStation's butt. The fact is many developers that knew more about producing games in this way were pissed of a Sega for it's surprise launch of the Saturn, and that was Sega's biggest mistake. If it keep the launch date many of the best developers would have stayed with Sega and it would have dominated. To bad they made that fatal mistake Sega would still have been a hardware developer.

[halranger]

The ps1 beat the sega saturn =)

[Monacomaverick]

Does this game use the Mission Stick?

[Suplexmachine]

Saturn version looks super nice! I really like its skies better than the PSX version. And Saturn did a great job reducing pixelization. Good stuff!

[ThePrimal1994]

i finally beat the sega saturn version of this game. it was really good but i did also beat the pc verison which was superior to both of these and i beat the ghost bear and mercenary games of the series. i still have all the pc games but i cant play them :( i would be in forever debt if i could play them again

[therealbluedragon]

@ThePrimal1994 I'm pretty sure MW4 & MW4 Merc both work fine on Vista & 7.

[ThePrimal1994]

@therealbluedragon i'm talking about MW 2

[MatSpeedle]

@ThePrimal1994 Dosbox will run MW2 mate, was playing it last night on it :)

[DANW547]

I never "got" Mechwarrior back in the day but for some reason this video has made me really want to give it another shot, great vid as always.

[Monacomaverick]

I really get a kick out of your comparison videos! Thank you Realblue!

[FastTquick]

Can you list all the Saturn games that are compatible with the 3D Control Pad? It's something for Mark from Classic Game Room.

[ABlackFalcon]

The Playstation version does have analog too, but only with the Playstation Analog Joystick (rare giant twinstick joystick) or the Playstation Analog Gamepad (the early no-rumble one) in joystick-compatibility mode. The Dual Shock doesn't have joystick compatibility, so few can make use of analog on PSX MW2.

And in that the Saturn is clearly vastly superior, for the 3D Controller is easy to find and the Mission Stick more common than the PSX joystick. In MW2 controls matter a lot!

[FastTquick]

I never knew the Mechwarrior games had console ports. I always thought they were PC exclusives myself.

[CervantesXV]

One thing I don't understand: the Saturn has more RAM than the Playstation. So, theoretically, it should display better textures (since it has more RAM space to deal with higher resolution textures). I think it has something to do with the fact that the two cpus couldn't access memory at the same time (I don't remember were I read this...).

Well, at least the framerate and the resolution seem to be roughly the same, and the support for analog really improves the gameplay, IMO.

[therealbluedragon]

@CervantesXV the Saturn had more ram yes but a lot of it was exclusive to certain chips. The PS1 had 2MB of ram that could be accessed by any part that needed it. The Saturn had a combined total of 5MB but most of it was dedicated to other things like sound & video playback. The main CPU's still only had about 2MB between them & like you said they couldn't both use it at the same time, though skilled programmers could devise ways to "juggle" the CPU's allowing for better performance.

[saturndual32]

therealbluedragon what about the frame rates?, seem to be pretty similar to me. Also the way the sky is displayed seems diferent, on which do you think it looks better?

[therealbluedragon]

@saturndual32 Sky & ground textures are handled differently in the Saturn version. The PS1 draws 2 giant polygons and covers them in a single repeating texture. The Saturn game uses a completely different method similar to the Super Nintendo's Mode-7 though far more advanced. What your seeing is actually a very complicated 2D effect that uses only a fraction of the system's resources, this method is used in lots of games.

You could say the Saturn cheated it's way to a better frame rate (yay!).

[kubevubin]

It's a shame that not all Saturn games that support the 3D controller don't have documentation stating that fact. So many games play so much better with analog control on Saturn.

[therealbluedragon]

Oh god where do I start with this one, there's so much to talk about. I love the MechWarrior games, they're a forgotten treasure. I am of course referring mainly to the PC games because the console offerings have always been a bit lacking.

It says it right there in the name "Arcade Combat Edition". Translated that means "Uhh we couldn't quite fit everything from the PC original into this one because well dude... consoles".

As a MW game it's a bit simple, but as a game overall it's still good.

[therealbluedragon]

Both ports do a good job of replicating at least the feel of driving a Battle Mech also the excellent soundtrack & sound FX add to the experience.

Visually both versions look ok though the PS1 clearly has the edge in terms of texture & model detail. Though the Saturn port does put up a fight with it's use of both lighting effects & transparencies. Impressive since very few developers were able to achieve these basic effects on the Saturn without crippling the performance.

[therealbluedragon]

The PS1 game only supports the regular pad but the Saturn port supports analogue control with the 3D Pad or the Mission Stick.

The games Manual doesn't mention this & even with an Analogue controller plugged in the game seems to see it as just a regular pad, but trust me it works! You have far more precise control over your aiming even going as far as making use of the 3D pad's progressive triggers for precise speed control.

It's by far the best way to play this game so why make it a secret?