Yes, I still play the Street Fighter 2 series on a regular basis and I have been playing it since it was released. I own several of the original arcade circuit boards, which I hook up to my TV with an arcade style joystick. When I am not in the mood for pulling that rig out, I either play the Super SF2 Turbo port to the 3DO or I play the SF2 Turbo port to the SNES.
However, if push comes to shove, I would only consider the arcade versions to be the "official" versions. The various consoles ports and emulation (Genesis, Saturn, PSX,PS2, Mame) differ in many tiny, but significant, aspects that are hard to explain... most of them are slight timing differences. Of course the SNES and Genesis ports also differ in very noticable ways due to their processing power limitations. The arcade circuit boards were very affordable when I bought them, as they cost $10 on Ebay. They output RGB video and composite audio, but you will still need to make or buy an audio, video, and power adapter so you can hook it up to your TV. Comparing the real thing to emulation (i have only compared to Mame) leaves me feeling that, again, emulation sometimes sucks. Sure the casual SF2 player wouldn't notice, but somebody that has been playing the real thing for a decade will definitely notice the slight timing differences in the real arcade and emulation of it.
The "real thing" is like a A/V master, while emulation is often like a VHS recording of that master. The average person won't notice the difference, but the A/V buff will see it as night and day.
My point with the Capcom controllers is that the SNES-style controllers (this includes the playstation controllers) have a button layout that just doesn't work well for SF2... the 6 buttons on the face layout is far better. They most likely decided to not go with an arcade style joystick because they are too expensive to do correctly, and even if done incorrectly with cheap materials, they would be too expensive for Capcom's intended purpose.
Furthermore, the D-pad they use on their controller makes it even easier to hit the diagonals than the SNES and definitely the playstation pads. That kind of a thing is always a trade-off, as seen with the Xbox pad, where it is too easy to accidentally hit the diagonals... a real problem in many digital-only games found on the NES and SNES. It is a pain playing Super Mario Bro on FCE UltraX on the Xbox and messing up a slide because you accidentally hit diagonal down as opposed to straight down.
Diagonals are far easier to hit on a SNES D-pad than a PSX D-pad. In fact, if you look at the PSX controller you will realize that it is largely patterned after the SNES controller. If you don't believe me, find another controller that predates the SNES controller, yet has the same layout, with L/R buttons on the top, D-pad on the left, 4 buttons on the right in a plus configuration... the PSX pad's D-pad differs from the SNES controller because at the time Sony came out with their controller, Nintendo still had a patent on the D-pad design.
The Street Fighter games (WW, Turbo, Super, and Alpha) were very popular on the SNES and the controller does just fine. It is far easier to do the semi-circular moves on the SNES's D-pad as it is easier to hit the diagonal directions than on a PSX pad with its separated D-pad buttons.
By the way, any real Street Fighter II player prefers an arcade style joystick with the original button layout... not a gamepad. So I will throw your argument right back at you: I don't know any serious SF2 player that is nostalgic for a PSX or SNES controller. It makes about as much sense as a tennis player being nostalgic for a baseball bat to play tennis.
By the way, wasn't Capcom giving away a special digital only controller just for the recent Street Fighter II release? Why yes: http://ps2.gamezone.com/gamesell/p24032.htm...now if the playstation controller is so perfect for SF2, then why would they design a different layout for it? Maybe because the button layout matches the arcade's layout... something which the PSX controller does not have because it was inspired by the SNES controller.
Re:I've never understood the obsession with Halo
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Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Exactly. Halo is in 2004 what the original Quake was for PC gamers back in 1996: internet/LAN based multiplayer first person shooter. The PC gaming crowd has been professing the importance and fun of first person shooters, especially multiplayer ones, for a long long time now.
Halo is nothing special except it delivers this great genre to more people than Quake did, simply because consoles are more affordable and easier to setup than a PC gaming system.
Of course, a PC capable of playing Quake these days can be had for a couple hundred bucks.
Why would you want analog sticks and buttons for SNES games? They just get in the way. The SNES controller has a much better D-pad, unlike the dualshock, which has its D-pad split into 4 separate buttons.
The Paul? The guy you developed Marble Craze and is working on the upcoming Homestar Runner RPG? Most of the people around here seem to promote killing culture and replacing it with emulated culture.
It will never happen that fast. The FCC can say whatever it wants. Hell, computer standards organizations have been trying to tell people to move onto IPv6, leaving IPv4 behind... but the majority of the internet is still using the older protocol? Why? Just because some standards organization says something doesn't mean it will happen.
Millions of TVs all over the world won't be thrown away, just as the equipment that goes with them. Some people can't afford or don't want to replace their equipment.
Sure it will eventually happen, but I think it would be more like 20 years from now, as opposed to 4 years.
Older consoles consume under 10 watts of power. Open up any old console and you will notice that they don't even need heatsinks, which even the Eden versions of the mini-itx systems need. Btw, none of the mini-itx systems are powerful enough to emulate the SNES, Genesis, and many other systems at full speed. A much better option is to use a software hacked Xbox, which costs $150 new and $99 used. (Of course you don't buy them hacked, so you do that yourself, but its free.) It has emulators for many console systems, and they all play at full speed, cuz the Xbox has the power to pull it off. I am not sure how power efficient an XBox is, though. It is funny... I barely have any Xbox games, yet it is one of my most used consoles because of the emulators that run on it.
My posts detailing the cons of emulation don't mean that I don't extensively use emulators. I emulate Arcade, Sega Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, NES, Gameboy, and a few others. But I don't emulate the SNES and 3DO because those emulators aren't accurate enough... yet. So I have a SNES + copier (so I don't need to juggle hundreds of carts), an hacked Xbox, and a 3DO all hooked up to my TV.
Emulation is great, it has its uses, but a serious gamer needs to realize that sometimes emulation sucks compared to the real thing. I can't believe I am the only person that has compared various emulators to the real thing. Anyway, I have the real thing supplemented with emulation... and as the emulators improve I gradually put more consoles back into storage to save space.
I mean, it is not like people are stupid enough to throw away their old game systems and games, right? Those used game shops will rip you off, giving you pennies for good older games and systems.
The flash cart is more expensive than $60. I was referring to buying a used SNES and a used Game Doctor SF7 (lets you load SNES ROMs from floppies to a real SNES). See my post here for links to sites that sell the devices. You have a range of options, and you can even upgrade the RAM in the Game Doctor SF7, so that it can hold more games at a time before you have to load others via the floppy or parallel port of the device. These devices are what people used back during the SNES's heyday to pirate games.
The flash cart, however, is something just released this year. It is a little more expensive, but has the benefit that it looks and feels just like a real cart. You can even load multiple games at a time.
You can use a copier or flash cart to play downloaded ROMs. So you have all of the space savings that you mention with a real SNES. Considering that a copier + SNES costs $60, and the mini-itx solution will cost at least $200... oh and none of the mini-itx boards are fast enough to emulate the SNES without massive frame rate loss. I own a mini-itx, SNES, and copier. If the mini-itx solution was better, I would have it hooked up to my TV as opposed to my SNES + copier.
The SNES has copier's that can do cheat searches, real time save, fast-forward, etc. Also, all of the emulators emulate the SNES slowdown, flicker, etc, which you describe. So they have the "problem" you mention because not emulating that would make some games no longer run correctly. Have you even compared an emulated SNES to the real thing? I think most people who emulate have not compared them side-by-side. It is not rose colored glasses. I play allot of SNES games on a regular basis, and I have powerful computers that emulate the SNES, as well as a couple SNES systems, about a hundred SNES carts, a flash cart for playing downloaded ROMs, and two copier devices, also for playing downloaded ROMs.
A SNES along with a copier (so you can play downloaded ROMs on your SNES) can be had for $60. A emulator setup requires controller adapters, motherboard, cpu, memory, harddrive, video card, sound card, chasis, and power supply. The end result is far more expensive, larger, noisier, less power efficient, hotter, and harder to setup than a SNES + copier... not to mention the fact that the PC takes a long time to boot compared to the SNES + copier.
Point out one aspect of my argument that is not true. I have pointed out many of yours. Btw, I like the stars around the "I" in your comment, and the tough talk you use. Pretty cool, big guy.
For digital controls, the SNES game pad is far better than the dualshock2. God I hate the crappy PSX D-pad. However, for analog controls, the dualshock2 is great... but the SNES has none of these, as well as many other older gaming systems.
So why would somebody want to use analog sticks or at least have them cluttering up their controller and analog buttons, when they are playing old Atari, NES, SNES, or Gameboy games? Most people would prefer a nice simple digital controller for these kind of games. That is why Hori's controller is so popular for the Gamecube, which has some NES games emulated, as well as a Gameboy Advance adapter for playing Gameboy games. Notice how the Hori digital controller is patterned after the SNES controller? The SNES, imo, is the best digital controller, period.
Wow, you wrote a friggin essay on two words I used, "pixel perfect."
It is funny to watch a smart ass get upset when somebody throw's his smart ass wrong facts back in his face. So lets all watch your pathetic backpeddling weak rant. Yes your mom is lying when she tells you that you are never wrong.
You also mentioned that "almost" all of the adapters for the SNES suck, well, that insinuates that SOME don't. Hey, I never said buy a shitty convertor.
I have only personally used two SNES adapters. The Super Joy and the parallel port adapter, for which instructions can be found on the net. I didn't claim they all sucked because I don't want to make false claims like you do. I can say that every SNES adpater lacks support for SNES peripherials such as the Super Scope, which is the SNES light gun... something your leet warez self probably doesn't know about, since you are so ignorant you can't tell the difference between emulation and the real thing.
Funny how you try to use the fact that you don't play or know enough about SNES gaming to understand what you are talking about... as if that somehow makes your argument stronger, chief.
Have your friend compare his mini-itx SNES with a real SNES, side-by-side. Compare the difference in video, audio, controls, boot time, and power consumption. You will be surprised.
The Flash Cart that I linked to was just released this year. It doesn't have these co-processors built in, but you can buy an add on "T-connector" that lets you plug the flash cart and a real SNES cart containing the DSP co-processor used in many SNES games. There are other special co-processor types that some games use and can't be used with the aformentioned flash cart or copiers. However, these games are in such small numbers... less than 1% of all SNES games, that you can just buy the ones that you want to play, but can't get to work with your Flash cart or copier.
The most commonly used co-processor for SNES games is called the "DSP chip", and it is used in games such as Super Mario Kart, Pilot Wings, F-Zero, etc. The DSP chip is built in to many copiers, and many that don't have a built in DSP chip provide some kind of "piggy-back" solution.
The SNES is a great system for RPGs, fighting games, etc. I personally love fan improvements/translations to some of the SNES RPGs, such as the english translation of the and also the improved translation of the original Secret of Mana... as well as the english translation of Final Fantasy 5, the improved translation of Final Fantasy 2, which includes removed scenes from the original.......ahh, gotta love my SNES. Right now I have both a SNES flash cart and the Game Doctor SF7 copier plugged into my SNES. Tons of great gaming.
Unless you're talking about the same few from the question above, you will find that most emulators play games perfectly down to the last pixel, and in some cases, they look a lot better (as is the case with the playstation games.)
PIXEL PERFECT??!?! Hahahahaha! There are lots of holes in your arguments, man. Here is a tip, Star Ocean does not look like that pixelated buggy mess on a real SNES.
Well, the SNES emulators such as ZSNES and SNES9x don't emulate things correct down to the last pixel. Here is a good article describing many of the inaccuracies of SNES emulators. Hell, the co-processor used in many SNES games, such as Pilot Wings and Super Mario Kart still doesn't have all of its opcodes emulated!
Also, can you tell me what happens when you have a game that displays at native digital resolution X with refresh rate Y, but your computer is not capable of displaying resolution X and your CRT can't do refresh rate Y? You have to scale up the game's resolution, but that causes aspect ratio problems as computer CRT's have a slightly different aspect ratio than NTSC TVs. So you get both aspect ratio distortion and aliasing, unless the resolution your computer displays is a perfect multiple of your console's resolution, which is highly unlikely. To correct for aliasing due to scaling, emulators typically blur the image to get rid of the jaggies. Compare an emulated SNES game side by side with a real SNES. Big difference! Oh, and back to the refresh rate differences. Games sync to the refresh rate of a TV, a rate that your CRT cannot do as it is a really low refresh rate. So if you spend allot of time you can get your OS to use a really high refresh rate that most CRTs do not support, but is a perfect multiple of the native SNES refresh rate...
Should we even get into the fact that the OS your emulator is running on is not a real-time OS, and most likely has latency spikes, causing the occassional stutter, hicup, etc? Early consoles such as the SNES have no underlying OS, so the timing of each instruction is always the same, always precise... and some games actually depend on the percise timing because they are all written in machine language... unlike later game systems such as the Playstation, for which games were programmed in higher-level languages such as C and displayed graphics and played sounds using high-level APIs. Hence for these later systems, precise pixel perfect timing issues are not as important.
My point is that this is all very very far from pixel perfect. But I guess you have never really compared both side-by-side.
On the topic of console controller adapters. Most of the console adapters suck. They don't support other peripherials like light guns, spinners, and paddles. There are some exceptions. The Atari 2600 has a great controller adapter that supports every 2600 peripherial and the N64 Adaptoid is another good adapter. However, many of the PSX adapters have serious lag issues... some worse than others.
The SNES is a really big offender. Almost all of its USB adapters just plain suck. The "Super Joy" USB adapter won't let you press the X and B buttons at the same time, and the same goes for the Y and A buttons. That is a serious problem for some games. Not to mention that the SNES adapters also have latency issues.
On your last point, yes emulators are the long term future of classic games, but if we all throw away the real thing too early, we will end up with subpar emulation that isn't as good as the real thing. Some gaming systems, such as the NES have highly accurate emulators such as FCE Ultra and Nestopia... but other systems such as the SNES have a long way to go before I put my SNES in storage.
Older gaming systems had very little power, so programmers would code the games in low-level machine language, and they would use many different hacks, tricks, and some games even time things based on counting CPU cycles and precise timing delays between different hardware subsystems. So it shouldn't be a surprise that games developed for these consoles play best on the original console.
The SNES is probably the best example of this because it was probably the most complicated and powerful game console, which was still programmed using low-level machine language. The aforementioned link describes inaccuracies in the best SNES emulator, ZSNES. Further comlicating matters is that some SNES games have separate co-processors built into the cartridge, and so the emulators must also emulate these separate processors, which have their own instruction set, protocol, timing delays, and communication bus. Since SNES games were written in assembler, developed soley for one fixed hardware platform, and then only tested on that system... it shouldn't be a surprise that the games play best on a real SNES.
Yet most gamers have never actually compared a real SNES to emulation. Some games are emulated better than others, but some are just downright bad. Of course, emulation is always improving, and in the distant future, when the real SNES's are all dust, emulation will be the only option. Hopefully it is perfected by then.
Of course, you can cheat and use a Flash Cart or Game Copier (2), (3), with a real SNES, so that you get the best of both worlds: tons of SNES games on a real SNES with real SNES controllers all hooked up to a TV in front of a comy sofa!
How could somebody prove where the number came from? It is just one 32-bit number. It could have been generated using a psuedo random number generator.
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Yes, I still play the Street Fighter 2 series on a regular basis and I have been playing it since it was released. I own several of the original arcade circuit boards, which I hook up to my TV with an arcade style joystick. When I am not in the mood for pulling that rig out, I either play the Super SF2 Turbo port to the 3DO or I play the SF2 Turbo port to the SNES.
,PS2, Mame) differ in many tiny, but significant, aspects that are hard to explain... most of them are slight timing differences. Of course the SNES and Genesis ports also differ in very noticable ways due to their processing power limitations. The arcade circuit boards were very affordable when I bought them, as they cost $10 on Ebay. They output RGB video and composite audio, but you will still need to make or buy an audio, video, and power adapter so you can hook it up to your TV. Comparing the real thing to emulation (i have only compared to Mame) leaves me feeling that, again, emulation sometimes sucks. Sure the casual SF2 player wouldn't notice, but somebody that has been playing the real thing for a decade will definitely notice the slight timing differences in the real arcade and emulation of it.
However, if push comes to shove, I would only consider the arcade versions to be the "official" versions. The various consoles ports and emulation (Genesis, Saturn, PSX
The "real thing" is like a A/V master, while emulation is often like a VHS recording of that master. The average person won't notice the difference, but the A/V buff will see it as night and day.
My point with the Capcom controllers is that the SNES-style controllers (this includes the playstation controllers) have a button layout that just doesn't work well for SF2... the 6 buttons on the face layout is far better. They most likely decided to not go with an arcade style joystick because they are too expensive to do correctly, and even if done incorrectly with cheap materials, they would be too expensive for Capcom's intended purpose.
Furthermore, the D-pad they use on their controller makes it even easier to hit the diagonals than the SNES and definitely the playstation pads. That kind of a thing is always a trade-off, as seen with the Xbox pad, where it is too easy to accidentally hit the diagonals... a real problem in many digital-only games found on the NES and SNES. It is a pain playing Super Mario Bro on FCE UltraX on the Xbox and messing up a slide because you accidentally hit diagonal down as opposed to straight down.
Diagonals are far easier to hit on a SNES D-pad than a PSX D-pad. In fact, if you look at the PSX controller you will realize that it is largely patterned after the SNES controller. If you don't believe me, find another controller that predates the SNES controller, yet has the same layout, with L/R buttons on the top, D-pad on the left, 4 buttons on the right in a plus configuration... the PSX pad's D-pad differs from the SNES controller because at the time Sony came out with their controller, Nintendo still had a patent on the D-pad design.
...now if the playstation controller is so perfect for SF2, then why would they design a different layout for it? Maybe because the button layout matches the arcade's layout... something which the PSX controller does not have because it was inspired by the SNES controller.
The Street Fighter games (WW, Turbo, Super, and Alpha) were very popular on the SNES and the controller does just fine. It is far easier to do the semi-circular moves on the SNES's D-pad as it is easier to hit the diagonal directions than on a PSX pad with its separated D-pad buttons.
By the way, any real Street Fighter II player prefers an arcade style joystick with the original button layout... not a gamepad. So I will throw your argument right back at you: I don't know any serious SF2 player that is nostalgic for a PSX or SNES controller. It makes about as much sense as a tennis player being nostalgic for a baseball bat to play tennis.
By the way, wasn't Capcom giving away a special digital only controller just for the recent Street Fighter II release? Why yes:
http://ps2.gamezone.com/gamesell/p24032.htm
Exactly. Halo is in 2004 what the original Quake was for PC gamers back in 1996: internet/LAN based multiplayer first person shooter. The PC gaming crowd has been professing the importance and fun of first person shooters, especially multiplayer ones, for a long long time now.
Halo is nothing special except it delivers this great genre to more people than Quake did, simply because consoles are more affordable and easier to setup than a PC gaming system.
Of course, a PC capable of playing Quake these days can be had for a couple hundred bucks.
Why would you want analog sticks and buttons for SNES games? They just get in the way. The SNES controller has a much better D-pad, unlike the dualshock, which has its D-pad split into 4 separate buttons.
The Paul? The guy you developed Marble Craze and is working on the upcoming Homestar Runner RPG? Most of the people around here seem to promote killing culture and replacing it with emulated culture.
Good one :) The Super Scope had only around 10 different games that made use of it. The mouse also had about the same level of support.
It will never happen that fast. The FCC can say whatever it wants. Hell, computer standards organizations have been trying to tell people to move onto IPv6, leaving IPv4 behind... but the majority of the internet is still using the older protocol? Why? Just because some standards organization says something doesn't mean it will happen.
Millions of TVs all over the world won't be thrown away, just as the equipment that goes with them. Some people can't afford or don't want to replace their equipment.
Sure it will eventually happen, but I think it would be more like 20 years from now, as opposed to 4 years.
Older consoles consume under 10 watts of power. Open up any old console and you will notice that they don't even need heatsinks, which even the Eden versions of the mini-itx systems need. Btw, none of the mini-itx systems are powerful enough to emulate the SNES, Genesis, and many other systems at full speed. A much better option is to use a software hacked Xbox, which costs $150 new and $99 used. (Of course you don't buy them hacked, so you do that yourself, but its free.) It has emulators for many console systems, and they all play at full speed, cuz the Xbox has the power to pull it off. I am not sure how power efficient an XBox is, though. It is funny... I barely have any Xbox games, yet it is one of my most used consoles because of the emulators that run on it.
My posts detailing the cons of emulation don't mean that I don't extensively use emulators. I emulate Arcade, Sega Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, NES, Gameboy, and a few others. But I don't emulate the SNES and 3DO because those emulators aren't accurate enough... yet. So I have a SNES + copier (so I don't need to juggle hundreds of carts), an hacked Xbox, and a 3DO all hooked up to my TV.
Emulation is great, it has its uses, but a serious gamer needs to realize that sometimes emulation sucks compared to the real thing. I can't believe I am the only person that has compared various emulators to the real thing. Anyway, I have the real thing supplemented with emulation... and as the emulators improve I gradually put more consoles back into storage to save space.
I mean, it is not like people are stupid enough to throw away their old game systems and games, right? Those used game shops will rip you off, giving you pennies for good older games and systems.
The flash cart is more expensive than $60. I was referring to buying a used SNES and a used Game Doctor SF7 (lets you load SNES ROMs from floppies to a real SNES). See my post here for links to sites that sell the devices. You have a range of options, and you can even upgrade the RAM in the Game Doctor SF7, so that it can hold more games at a time before you have to load others via the floppy or parallel port of the device. These devices are what people used back during the SNES's heyday to pirate games.
The flash cart, however, is something just released this year. It is a little more expensive, but has the benefit that it looks and feels just like a real cart. You can even load multiple games at a time.
See my post here.
The Gamepad Pro is a playstation 1 clone that is USB. Or you could use a SNES controller that is hacked to use USB like this one.
You can use a copier or flash cart to play downloaded ROMs. So you have all of the space savings that you mention with a real SNES. Considering that a copier + SNES costs $60, and the mini-itx solution will cost at least $200... oh and none of the mini-itx boards are fast enough to emulate the SNES without massive frame rate loss. I own a mini-itx, SNES, and copier. If the mini-itx solution was better, I would have it hooked up to my TV as opposed to my SNES + copier.
The SNES has copier's that can do cheat searches, real time save, fast-forward, etc. Also, all of the emulators emulate the SNES slowdown, flicker, etc, which you describe. So they have the "problem" you mention because not emulating that would make some games no longer run correctly. Have you even compared an emulated SNES to the real thing? I think most people who emulate have not compared them side-by-side. It is not rose colored glasses. I play allot of SNES games on a regular basis, and I have powerful computers that emulate the SNES, as well as a couple SNES systems, about a hundred SNES carts, a flash cart for playing downloaded ROMs, and two copier devices, also for playing downloaded ROMs.
A SNES along with a copier (so you can play downloaded ROMs on your SNES) can be had for $60. A emulator setup requires controller adapters, motherboard, cpu, memory, harddrive, video card, sound card, chasis, and power supply. The end result is far more expensive, larger, noisier, less power efficient, hotter, and harder to setup than a SNES + copier... not to mention the fact that the PC takes a long time to boot compared to the SNES + copier.
Point out one aspect of my argument that is not true. I have pointed out many of yours. Btw, I like the stars around the "I" in your comment, and the tough talk you use. Pretty cool, big guy.
For digital controls, the SNES game pad is far better than the dualshock2. God I hate the crappy PSX D-pad. However, for analog controls, the dualshock2 is great... but the SNES has none of these, as well as many other older gaming systems.
So why would somebody want to use analog sticks or at least have them cluttering up their controller and analog buttons, when they are playing old Atari, NES, SNES, or Gameboy games? Most people would prefer a nice simple digital controller for these kind of games. That is why Hori's controller is so popular for the Gamecube, which has some NES games emulated, as well as a Gameboy Advance adapter for playing Gameboy games. Notice how the Hori digital controller is patterned after the SNES controller? The SNES, imo, is the best digital controller, period.
It is funny to watch a smart ass get upset when somebody throw's his smart ass wrong facts back in his face. So lets all watch your pathetic backpeddling weak rant. Yes your mom is lying when she tells you that you are never wrong.
I have only personally used two SNES adapters. The Super Joy and the parallel port adapter, for which instructions can be found on the net. I didn't claim they all sucked because I don't want to make false claims like you do. I can say that every SNES adpater lacks support for SNES peripherials such as the Super Scope, which is the SNES light gun... something your leet warez self probably doesn't know about, since you are so ignorant you can't tell the difference between emulation and the real thing.
Funny how you try to use the fact that you don't play or know enough about SNES gaming to understand what you are talking about... as if that somehow makes your argument stronger, chief.
Have your friend compare his mini-itx SNES with a real SNES, side-by-side. Compare the difference in video, audio, controls, boot time, and power consumption. You will be surprised.
The Flash Cart that I linked to was just released this year. It doesn't have these co-processors built in, but you can buy an add on "T-connector" that lets you plug the flash cart and a real SNES cart containing the DSP co-processor used in many SNES games. There are other special co-processor types that some games use and can't be used with the aformentioned flash cart or copiers. However, these games are in such small numbers... less than 1% of all SNES games, that you can just buy the ones that you want to play, but can't get to work with your Flash cart or copier.
...ahh, gotta love my SNES. Right now I have both a SNES flash cart and the Game Doctor SF7 copier plugged into my SNES. Tons of great gaming.
The most commonly used co-processor for SNES games is called the "DSP chip", and it is used in games such as Super Mario Kart, Pilot Wings, F-Zero, etc. The DSP chip is built in to many copiers, and many that don't have a built in DSP chip provide some kind of "piggy-back" solution.
The SNES is a great system for RPGs, fighting games, etc. I personally love fan improvements/translations to some of the SNES RPGs, such as the english translation of the and also the improved translation of the original Secret of Mana... as well as the english translation of Final Fantasy 5, the improved translation of Final Fantasy 2, which includes removed scenes from the original....
PIXEL PERFECT??!?! Hahahahaha! There are lots of holes in your arguments, man. Here is a tip, Star Ocean does not look like that pixelated buggy mess on a real SNES.
Well, the SNES emulators such as ZSNES and SNES9x don't emulate things correct down to the last pixel. Here is a good article describing many of the inaccuracies of SNES emulators. Hell, the co-processor used in many SNES games, such as Pilot Wings and Super Mario Kart still doesn't have all of its opcodes emulated!
Also, can you tell me what happens when you have a game that displays at native digital resolution X with refresh rate Y, but your computer is not capable of displaying resolution X and your CRT can't do refresh rate Y? You have to scale up the game's resolution, but that causes aspect ratio problems as computer CRT's have a slightly different aspect ratio than NTSC TVs. So you get both aspect ratio distortion and aliasing, unless the resolution your computer displays is a perfect multiple of your console's resolution, which is highly unlikely. To correct for aliasing due to scaling, emulators typically blur the image to get rid of the jaggies. Compare an emulated SNES game side by side with a real SNES. Big difference! Oh, and back to the refresh rate differences. Games sync to the refresh rate of a TV, a rate that your CRT cannot do as it is a really low refresh rate. So if you spend allot of time you can get your OS to use a really high refresh rate that most CRTs do not support, but is a perfect multiple of the native SNES refresh rate...
Should we even get into the fact that the OS your emulator is running on is not a real-time OS, and most likely has latency spikes, causing the occassional stutter, hicup, etc? Early consoles such as the SNES have no underlying OS, so the timing of each instruction is always the same, always precise... and some games actually depend on the percise timing because they are all written in machine language... unlike later game systems such as the Playstation, for which games were programmed in higher-level languages such as C and displayed graphics and played sounds using high-level APIs. Hence for these later systems, precise pixel perfect timing issues are not as important.
My point is that this is all very very far from pixel perfect. But I guess you have never really compared both side-by-side.
On the topic of console controller adapters. Most of the console adapters suck. They don't support other peripherials like light guns, spinners, and paddles. There are some exceptions. The Atari 2600 has a great controller adapter that supports every 2600 peripherial and the N64 Adaptoid is another good adapter. However, many of the PSX adapters have serious lag issues... some worse than others.
The SNES is a really big offender. Almost all of its USB adapters just plain suck. The "Super Joy" USB adapter won't let you press the X and B buttons at the same time, and the same goes for the Y and A buttons. That is a serious problem for some games. Not to mention that the SNES adapters also have latency issues.
On your last point, yes emulators are the long term future of classic games, but if we all throw away the real thing too early, we will end up with subpar emulation that isn't as good as the real thing. Some gaming systems, such as the NES have highly accurate emulators such as FCE Ultra and Nestopia... but other systems such as the SNES have a long way to go before I put my SNES in storage.
Older gaming systems had very little power, so programmers would code the games in low-level machine language, and they would use many different hacks, tricks, and some games even time things based on counting CPU cycles and precise timing delays between different hardware subsystems. So it shouldn't be a surprise that games developed for these consoles play best on the original console.
The SNES is probably the best example of this because it was probably the most complicated and powerful game console, which was still programmed using low-level machine language. The aforementioned link describes inaccuracies in the best SNES emulator, ZSNES. Further comlicating matters is that some SNES games have separate co-processors built into the cartridge, and so the emulators must also emulate these separate processors, which have their own instruction set, protocol, timing delays, and communication bus. Since SNES games were written in assembler, developed soley for one fixed hardware platform, and then only tested on that system... it shouldn't be a surprise that the games play best on a real SNES.
Yet most gamers have never actually compared a real SNES to emulation. Some games are emulated better than others, but some are just downright bad. Of course, emulation is always improving, and in the distant future, when the real SNES's are all dust, emulation will be the only option. Hopefully it is perfected by then.
Of course, you can cheat and use a Flash Cart or Game Copier
(2), (3), with a real SNES, so that you get the best of both worlds: tons of SNES games on a real SNES with real SNES controllers all hooked up to a TV in front of a comy sofa!
Lie, cheat, steal, and kill. Then use religion to control your populace.
Like I said, you only sent one 32-bit number, which does not a movie make.
You've gotta love those facile Internets.
How could somebody prove where the number came from? It is just one 32-bit number. It could have been generated using a psuedo random number generator.
Nah, we are a hybrid democratic-republic. Some things are directly voted on, others things are accomplished by indirect election etc.