Mayhem in Monsterland: C64 vs Wii VC

[htid269]

this game RULED <3 takes me back!

[uriituw]

So there are differences.

It actually has nothing to do with Nintendo. Who's the developer or publisher?

[cheetahman91]

Nintendo should really find someone other than Commodore Gaming to handle C64 emulation on the VC.

[Asphodellife]

Really? argh! I`m busy at the moment working on the 'ressurection Xtras' for Vice64X on Xbox1.. (now there`s an emulator monster) . Seeing how Mayhem runs on the 'Wii' here is just unforgivable..

What? You`ll even have to pay for it??

[IRSPONGEBOB]

Damn, am i back in the 90s? Some of the comments on here are fucking idiotic. "Nintendon't"? ... Really?

[r8qt7]

Nintendo just sucks

[NeoHoshi]

This is terrible! In this day and age if were being charged for games that are this old they should have atleast been tested and corrected to make sure they run correctly and true to the original. EPIC NINTENDON'T FAIL.

Nintendon't know why you bother anymore. Mario has followed Sonic down a path of fail games and lost its charm. It seems Sega and Nintendon't are dying of old age.

[maiki60fps]

Actually I don't get a point why anybody buys something like a Wii... Total rubbish product noone really needs. Nintendon't should have been out of business since N64 days IMO. Why not to use PC hardware to build your own system if you don't want to use real C64? But that's probably all due to fact people don't play the games they just like to mess around to kill time.

[waddlerobloxxxx]

@soheifox what about ports of call and giana sisters???

[Kurachi84]

what a waste, the game is funny, but the sounds are bad cuz of the bugs/glitches

i hope nintendo/commodore gaming really does something about it soon

i did buy it even though its bad sounded, so all i hope for is a fix for this

[97channel]

The title music always reminds me of the theme tune to Tiny Toon Adventures.

[Mazurada]

heh, I already thought it always sounded familiar! :P

[schoolfilmer]

Yeah, it sounded like that!

[johnwx777]

Great C64 game,excellent visuals and fast,smooth gameplay.If only more C64 games were like it....

[christo930]

I don't know if wi lets you change the setup, but if you change up to the 2nd button, the game plays GREAT with a d-pad, I do it with my gp2x.

[HardWarUK]

If this is the level of graphics they got to on the C64 in 1993, I say bring the damn machine back for $99, re-release the games that came out for it 1987 onwards for $10 each and watch how millions are sold and EA and Bioware and Valve are soon writing games for it!!!!!

[pidgin]

I understand Mayhem exploited quite a few weird bugs and features of the C64, which is why it's so difficult to emulate (most emulators I've tried outside of Windows have big problems).

Not really an excuse, though.

[snake2006]

Last Ninja 2 on VC has the game speed up. Which ruins the music in my opinion

[ryonagana]

all commodore games use assembly that u can program at you own video game?

[CitroenC407]

Bloody hell, they didn't half make a balls of this, did they? Mayhem is one of the greatest games of all time for the C64 (and one of my all time faves), yet this version is sluggish, awkward, and the sound is horrible.

Anyone who never played Mayhem before would be wondering what we are all raving about if they relied on this version alone. I did hear that Nintendo pulled the same "ruined" trick with Last Ninja 2 aswell - is that true?

[Imgema]

Man, this is almost as bad as the decision Nintendo made to release inferior, slower PAL versions in Europe for SNES, MD, N64 games..... Watch Sonic the Hedgehog PAL/NTSC comparisons.

I will stick with PC - XBOX emulators, thanks Nintendo.

[harleykman]

The "new" SID breaks the voice capabilities of most games. You need the old SID to hear voices, and that's why many prefer the old SID.

As for speeds -

NTSC does sound faster. That's just the way it is, due to our faster 60 hertz power supply. PAL is only 50 hertz.

[cupididi]

thanks for uploading, the emu version is almost unplayable - at least for my ears :(

[snake2006]

I did play the games on the actual hardware when I was a kid, and the music wasn't speed up like it is in the North America VC releases from what I remember.

[soheifox]

Frankly, Commodore games are a crap shoot. Why do you think there's so many fiddly options in emulators? So you can make the experience as close as possible to the hardware you had when you were a child.

SCART and S-Video processes colours differently in a PAL environs. Hook the Commy up to a regular television with regular antenna and you'll see exactly what's on the VC.

Incidentally, your Commdore is in need of repair. Replace Capacitor C-41 on the mainboard.

[HojoNorem]

1. There are many different ways of hooking up the C64, hence the options. Emulators have lots of options, but no "add rose tint" option...

2. Sorry, the only difference is that SCART can carry a RGB signal. Composite and S-video have exactly the same colour information, just there's less bandwidth with composite. Besides, whats wrong with using the best available output from my real C64?

3. Care to tell me what revision mainboard was in the C64 I used to make the recording.

[harleykman]

@soheifox I don't know how you can say the Wii Virtual Console is the same - the music is clearly messed-up

.

[soheifox]

Oh and to the original poster of this video:

This is the difference between the MOS 6561 and 8580 SID chips. There's nothing at all wrong with the emulation, your Commodore simply isn't the model they chose to emulate. Fiddle with your emulator settings and you'll find that the two chips sound THAT different.

Furthermore, the VC uses measured volume instead of cycle dependent. This _also_ changed based on what hardware you had.

[HojoNorem]

Read my earlier comments, go find Commodore Format Issue 44 and read up on Mayhem's music. It was composed to sound practically the same on the 8580 and the broken 6561.

and just in case you didn't have annotations switched on, I recorded the first segment on a REAL PAL Commodore 64 running a NTSC UNFIXED copy of Mayhem. And I know how a real 6561 and 8580 sound 'cause I own machines with them in.

[MadCommodore]

@soheifox

So the dumb asses at Nintendo got nothing wrong? Please! VICE emulates the C64 PERFECTLY including this game for Linux/Windows. And the 8580 is rare in a C64 indeed, most have the 6581 Rev1 to Rev4 actually. The colors are WRONG because a real C64 has strange chroma/luma method of color generation giving 'muddy' colors even in SCART. Basically the Wii is using FRODO based emu due to the CPU (PPC) and this is why VC is a rip-off. 1 more reason to avoid WII along with PS2-oclock gfx

[elvirtnt]

@soheifox

Man,have you played Mayhem on real c64 ,general?

[fcycles]

Thanks for showing the difference between the two versions. From what I understand, it's commodoregaming which is making the game available. Maybe it will worth it to contact them and maybe getting better versions for the upcoming releases.

[trib3003]

Thanks for this Video.

I was about to buy some of those games, but won't now.

[snake2006]

So far with the C64 games they released in NA the emulation is just as bad.

Last Ninja has got the entire game sped up so the music is super fast and I find it unplayable since that was a big part of that game.

IK is missing the sound effects and the game is sped up.

So I doubt they will fix this.

Pretty sad that amateur coded Winice works better than professional emulators.

[soheifox]

That's exactly how the NA release of the game ran on NA hardware.

SOMEBODY has been playing Emulators at PAL speed rather then using actual hardware, eh?

[HojoNorem]

The original intended hardware for The Last Ninja is PAL. Its just that the original NTSC release was never NTSC fixed. Mayhem OTOH hasn't gotten a official NTSC fix (yet).

[snake2006]

Wow, my ears are bleeding.

But again you guys are still lucky you can get Commodore 64 games on your VC, here in NA all we get is a big fuck you each week from Nintendo.

[tejupilco87]

Its in N.A now

[HojoNorem]

C64 VC or Mayhem on the C64 VC? If its the latter I'd love to hear if they fixed the emu or not.

[MadCommodore]

Ahhh well that's the trouble when Nintendo are raking it in, they don't give a shit about you until they're bottom of the sales charts like in the N64/Gamecube years ;o)

[RoderickStrong]

The virtual console sucks, why not just mod your wii so you can play games free?

[HojoNorem]

That comment doesn't even deserve an answer... (/me goes and loads up my Psytronik 15th Anniversary edition of Mayhem)

[slangman89]

So has this game been fixed yet?

[linkin800]

man imagine how great this game would look if the bg had a paralex scrolling to it, sucks that the wii emulator completely almost ruins the game.

[r8qt7]

Nintendo is like Apple only about the money. They want your bucks ... no love for games.

[Waltuo]

Interesting video. Thanks for sharing, and here's hoping they fix the bugs! (Haven't played the original but they seem rather severe)

[inphanta]

The video differences are negligible, but the audio is unforgivable. Shame on Nintendo.

[SkyCharger001]

question, do both use the same SID? (speaking of the 'hardware')

If one is using the 6581 and the other the 8580 (commonly avoided by 'purists') then the differences in the sound are unavoidable (unless special chipset identification routines are used)

[HojoNorem]

AFAIK, Mayhem was mainly developed on 8580 based C64s and the music was certainly composed with the differences in mind (as hinted in issue 44 of Commodore Format). Anyway, my first C64 had a 8580 in it. To me that is the true SID and the 6581 is the buggy prototype version. Lastly, the sound glitched in the Wii version are not down to SID model differences. More sounds like incomplete ADSR and filter emulation amongst other things.

[inphanta]

"Buggy prototype?" Nonsense. The 6581 had a more interesting sound and could play digi tunes, which the 8580 could not do. To me, the 8580 is more sterile and "castrated" due to the removal of the digi feature.

[HojoNorem]

Eaisly fixed with a resistor between GND and the SID audio in pin. That rectreats the 6581's volume change bug near perfectly. I have this mod on my main C64 but with a switch to turn it on and off so I can turn it on only for the tunes that require the 6581's faulty behaviour. But there's no real point arguing over it as all the 6581 vs 8580 arguments boil down to personal preference.

[SkyCharger001]

I just noticed, the difference in colours could be nothing more but a difference in saturation.

Maybe if you test the VC version with composite, you'd get more 'correct' colours?

(using the lower quality of composite compared to RGB)

[HojoNorem]

I had thought of that and tested it but the result is very similar, just less sharp. Also anybody using the component cable should get similar results as the RGB cable (and to be honest, the first thing you should do is throw away that manky composite cable and replace it with a RGB scart or component cable)

[SkyCharger001]

I agree that the differences are clear, but it's not clear to me whether this is caused by flawed emulation or by Nintendo's tendency to alter the VC versions of games (making the VC version of this game a bad hack).

Second, maybe the emulator's is limited to the standard used by the Wii in question (NTSC version of emulator for NTSC based Wii's, Pal version for Pal based Wii's), in which case the problems could correspond to those experienced with a real NTSC based C64.

[HojoNorem]

Why would Nintendo deliberatly sabotage the C64 emulator if it wasn't already flawed? Also, Im running a PAL Wii and Mayhem switches my Wii from 60Hz to 50Hz when it starts. Due to the way the C64 is designed, running a NTSC 64 at 50Hz does not make a PAL 64 in any way cause the timing is completely different. I can't see any plausable reason that the Wii C64 emulator is running a slowed down NTSC 64.

BTW, anybody here actually played a NTSC fixed copy of Mayhem on a real NTSC C64?

[SkyCharger001]

I just remember reading that japan itself uses a form of NTSC... The guys at Nintendo may not have understood the practical effects of the differences between the standards and thought the use of only NTSC emulation as a 'good' way to minimize the amount of storage memory (can easily fill up) required for the emulator.

[HojoNorem]

From what I can gather, the Wii C64 emulator is based on Frodo emulator. Now, as a rule of thumb C64 emulators have been PAL first (ever seen a C64 emulator default to NTSC on fist startup?) and it wasn't that long ago that NTSC C64 emulation was considered buggy at best. Only in the last couple of years has it improved. Anyway, who cares about the NTSC C64? All the good stuff was on PAL!

[Retroid1975]

Oh dear, that's just poor emulation :'(

Looks like I'll have to stick with my original and playing it on mu softmodded Xbox through the Rather Good ViceX.

[Shadow772craig]

Why is this game out instead of Secret of Mana?

[Shadow772craig]

I meen I was rather pissed before about this and SMS Space Harrier geting released instead of Mana and Mario Golf but the emulation at this level just makes this a Earthbound level f'off on NOE's part.