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When Lack Of Pixelation Leads To Consternation
Thanks to GameSpy for its 'Pixel' column discussing the problems inherent in translating classic remakes to modern consoles. The author argues plaintively: "For reasons both technical and probably cultural, most video game companies not giving their reissued classics the polished, flawless presentations that they deserve." He explains of Mega Man 2 from the forthcoming Mega Man Anniversary Collection for PlayStation 2: "The low-res, 256x224 graphics of the original NES game have been line-doubled for display on the PS2, are run in an interlaced (flickery) screen mode." He also laments: "Believe it or not, things were a good deal better back on the original PlayStation and Saturn... Looking back, the 32-bit era was a golden age of classic game reissues, with great products like Irem's R-Types, the Namco Museum line and the Capcom Generations series offering 99% accurate renditions of dozens upon dozens of classic video games", although it's suggested "the 32-bit renaissance was more likely due to technical limitations than actual care on the part of the developers."
According to the IGN review, "slowdown and flicker from the original cart versions have been almost entirely eliminated (it's still in there, but it's only noticeable a few times per game)". IGN didn't do separate reviews for the GC and PS2 versions, and the person that reviewed it is one of their PS2 people.
With the exception of Megaman 7, all these titles were released on the PS1 in Japan. In fact, on each of the Rockman remakes for the PS1, Capcom included little Pocketstation games.
If, as another poster mused, this collection is emulated, that means an interesting step in emulation for the PS2: SNES emulation has been slow and glitchy in most cases, and it would be nice to see it done accurately. It would be even nicer to see, one week later, someone rip the emulation code out and make a standalone emulator.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Why isn't there a moderation option for "blatantly false?"
No, The PS1 re-releases in Final Fantasy Origins and Chronicles were not emulations of the SNES originals. Yes, Chrono Trigger (and possibly some of the FF series) included the SNES original on the disc. However, this was used only for retrieving sprite graphics. This was demonstrated by the fact that, back before Square announced that they were going to release the re-issues in English speaking parts of the world, many rom-hackers tried inserting English-translated snes roms into the disc image. This resulted in nothing noticably different occuring. All text was still in Japanese.
Simply put, at 2 megabytes, the PS1 didn't have enough RAM to successfully emulate the SNES. True, the SNES didn't have all that much RAM itself, but the contents of the cartridges themselves were locations in memory. Final Fantasy III and Chrono Trigger both exceed this limitation.
And no, you couldn't stream the data. Not without putting your framerate in the toilet.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
"Slightly harder to pirate on ps1 vs ps2?"
From my own experience they're both pretty damned easy to pirate on. I'm against having to open a console case for any reason on philosophical terms but I've managed to boot burned code on both of these consoles.
You can pirate software on the PS2 exactly the same way you do it on a PS1: You change disks without letting the machine know you changed disks. You can do this either electronically (install a mod chip that lies to the rest of the hardware) or you can do it physically (defeating physical switches that let the machine know the drive is open).
With the PS1, the lid pushes in a button that indicates to the hardware that the lid is open. A spring works well in the original PSX while the PSOne requires a little more creativity with a small, plastic tab. Once you've got that, all you need to do is insert a disk you know will eventually stop spinning so you can make the swap. The ol' Action Replay disk works well for this (but not Game Shark). And now you can play your favorite NES games through an emulator to your heart's content without ever cracking open the case.
The PS2, with its front-loading mechanism, is a bit trickier. The easiest way to do it (without opening the case) is to carefully remove the front of the disc tray so you can then slim jim the tray open. If you look on the bottom side of the tray you can see a groove in which a locking arm moves through. The trick is to move that locking arm back out of the way. Once you do that, the trick again is to get a disk that you know will stop spinning. If you're trying to play PS1 softawre, you can use the PS1 flavor of Action Replay (as before). If you're trying to run PS2 software (say, an SNES emulator) things are trickier and unfortunately the PS2 flavor of Action Replay won't help you (it never stops spinning as far as I can tell). You can find proper boot disks in the Hong Kong gray market, but note you'll need a boot CD and a boot DVD, using the proper one for the media you're aiming to run. Once you've done that, all you need is a Super Wild Card to dump your SNES carts and you can then put all your SNES periphernalia safely into storage.
The PS2 will read music CD-RWs but not PS1 code on said CD-RWs. I haven't had the opportunity to try PS2 code on a CD-RW, though. The PS1 doesn't seem to want to read CD-RWs at all, no matter what's on it.