Welcome to the Next Level, More or Less

There comes a time in every gamer's life when he must leave the past behind and look to the future. No no, I'm not quitting this hobby and doing something more productive with my life, that'd be crazy! I meant leaving the last generation of game consoles behind and stepping up to the fertile fields of more powerful hardware. I think I've found a sneaky back door into the next generation that even I can afford... but it comes with its own hidden and uncomfortable cost.

A classic case of wicked X-S.
(image from IGN)

You see, Microsoft has taken a different approach with the latest installment of its Xbox brand of consoles. Instead of releasing a more powerful version of its flagship console a couple of years after its launch as a bonus for cash-flush fans, they've split the Series into two separate systems... the budget-priced S, and a luxury model called the X. After all, you can't spell "sexy" without an X. Then again, you can't spell it without an S, either. Maybe Microsoft should have considered that fact before using those letters as quality designations.

Wait, what was my point again? Oh yeah... separating devices into pricing tiers is a business model in consumer electronics that dates back to the home computer market of the 1980s. Can't afford an Atari 800? Just buy an Atari 400, which is more or less the same thing. Can't spare the shekels for a Commodore Plus 4? Grab the economy model, the Commodore 16, instead.

Of course, you'd be far wiser to shun the whole
Plus-4 line and just stick with the C64. Too
bad nobody at Commodore could figure that out.
How many computers did Commodore have
competing against each other at one time? Yes.
(image from Retro Gamer)

It's not as simple as I'm making it sound, of course. When you pay less, you get less, resulting in a less than ideal user experience. That Atari 400 had half the RAM of its more costly cousin and a flat membrane keyboard that would give Mavis Beacon nightmares. Similarly, the Commodore 16 had significantly less memory than the Plus 4, no suite of home office software available at the touch of a button, and an ugly breadbox shell borrowed from the VIC-20 and early models of the Commodore 64. When you pinch pennies for the sake of your budget, unfortunately, the pennies pinch back.

And so it goes with the Xbox Series S. There's no optical drive, roughly half the RAM of its big brother, and hardwired restrictions on its resolution. The Series X can take its games all the way to 4K, while the Series S is stuck puttering at the foot of the high-definition hill, limited to 1080p or, if it tries really, really hard, 1440p. 

Not to get all "get off my lawn" up in the joint,
but I remember playing games in stunning 102p
on my Atari Lynx. There was no thrill like playing
Blue Lightning and watching the system's
hardware scaling turn big, chunky pixels into
even bigger, chunkier pixels! It was like your
little brother was throwing his Duplos at you!
(image from Retro Gamer)

Okay, so you're probably thinking, "If I can't afford a 4K television set either, what's the point of emptying my wallet for features I can't use?" Ah, but that's the other issue. Buying a low-octane console brings with it a nagging sense of uncertainty about its future viability. "Will this still be supported two, three, four years down the line?," you wonder to yourself. "Even if Microsoft keeps supporting the basement model of the system, will its limitations restrict the full potential of the Series X? Will my Xbox owning friends hit me because they can't play the absolute best possible version of Mega Super Hyper Street Fighter 6 Turbo... with Almonds?" 

Sure, the Series S seems like a good idea now, but as anybody who's followed technology for a while can attest, today's cost-conscious purchase could become tomorrow's regret, consigned to the dusty corner of the basement or garage. So I'm conflicted about a purchase, even with the massive discount I've managed to find on a used model.

Another motivating factor in my wanting an Xbox
Series S is King of Fighters XV. Does this look
like something beyond the scope of the last generation
Xbox One? Not to me. Then again, maybe SNK didn't
want to wait fifty years for the damn thing to load.
(image from Xbox Wire)

What will likely clinch the deal is not how well the Series S will handle the games of the future, but how much better it will run games from the past. I've been more or less happy with my Xbox One S, but even a woolly mammoth would concede at this point that the system has gotten long in the tooth. Sure, it plays games well enough, but actually getting to them with the system's agonizing load times and constipated interface has become a trial. 

Worse yet, video streaming apps move with all the steady grace of a rhinoceros with a drinking problem. If you listen to Don Mattrick (and I suggest you don't... it didn't help Microsoft much), the Xbox One was designed with video playback as a focal point, with an episode of The Price is Right playing on the system during its 2013 unveiling. Try doing that on the One S now. You'll grow older than Bob Barker and collapse into a pile of dried bones before the damn show even begins.

Prepare to enter the stage of history! After
you've waited through the entirety of history
for your match to start.
(image from Steam)

I've asked around, and have been given every assurance that the Xbox Series S makes short work of tasks that would buckle its predecessor. Streaming apps start up right away, and load times get hacked down to a reasonable amount. Imagine, Soul Calibur 6 matches that start at some point in the temporal continuum, instead of never! Welcome to our shiny new SSD-powered future!

It's all relative, man.
(image from Roni Kurniawan)

Is the Xbox Series S less powerful than its beefier big brother and both flavors of the competing Playstation 5? Sure. Is the lack of an optical drive, with no apparent peripheral planned to remedy that omission, a hassle? Of course. Will I get as frustrated with the Xbox Series S five years down the line as I currently am with the Xbox One S? That's certainly possible. But right now, in the waning months of 2022, the Series S might be just good enough. Heaven knows the One S is no longer cutting it.

The Dream We All Dream Of

I'm currently fascinated and slightly terrified by AI programs such as DALL-E and Midjourney. They take bits and pieces of existing online assets, and assemble them into new drawings, based on parameters entered by the user. You would think that a computer making its own artwork is the stuff of science fiction, but I've seen some of the stuff churned out by these programs, and it has genuine artistic merit. Someone instructed Midjourney to create images based on lyrics from the Electric Light Orchestra song Mr. Blue Sky, and what it produced were moody backgrounds and a nebulous face made of clouds. Wait, let me show you what I mean.

It's fascinating because it's stimulating artwork which demonstrates, or at least convincingly duplicates, creativity by the machine that created it. That could credibly pass for a being named Mr. Blue Sky, couldn't it? It's terrifying because I draw as a hobby, but know dozens of others who do it for a living, or at least for supplementary income. A computer program that can churn out furry artwork on a whim for ten dollars a month is going to put a big crimp in the incomes of living, breathing artists. After all, why buy the cow when you can get an extremely detailed, slightly eerie AI-generated cow for nearly free?

Anyway, enough of that. Speaking of seemingly impossible feats performed by modern technology, the Italian programmer Rinnegatamante (a name which is so much fun to say, you have no idea) has developed a Sega Dreamcast emulator for the Playstation Vita. This is one of the trickier emulators to install, requiring several plug-ins, and you're discouraged from taking the easy route with Autoplugin, but the end results are beyond what you would have expected from this abandoned and increasingly dated handheld. Capcom vs. SNK 2 is not perfect, but it's playable, and a portable version of that game is something I've wanted for a long, long time.

Under Defeat, shown at its actual frame rate!
No no, I kid. This is bound to improve after
a few updates.

Sadly, but perhaps expectedly, not every Dreamcast game runs well. In fact, Under Defeat, a vertical shooter released years after the Dreamcast's official demise, struggles mightily under Flycast, with the emulator trying its damnedest to keep up with the game's copious smoke effects. Drop a bomb and the software crawls, dropping to a single digit frame rate as it tries to juggle all the explosions and particle effects. Under Defeat is also a game I'd love to have on the go, but it just ain't happenin' on the Vita. At least, not yet.

What else? Oh yeah, the Astebros demo recently received an update, and it's shaping up to be one of the best games ever released for the venerable Sega Genesis. It's especially surprising, as previous builds didn't excite me much. However, this new build is like a whole new game, offering three playable characters with their own unique abilities, an overworld map, and some lip smackin', European-influenced graphics. It's at least as pretty as anything Psygnosis cranked out for the Genesis in its glory days, but the gameplay is tighter, more satisfying, and less punishing. Unlike Shadow of the Beast, this is no show pony that leaves a strong first impression but leaves a bad aftertaste.

A Mix of Mega and Meager

Another Sega Genesis Mini 2 update? Why, don't mind if I do! All the games for both the American and Japanese versions of this micro console have been announced, and the American line-up brings with it a rather large spoonful of bitter disappointment. Hope you weren't expecting the Lunar games already announced for the Mega Drive Mini 2... what we'll be getting instead are Night Trap and Sewer Shark, two full-motion video titles released early in the life of the Sega CD. There's no question these two games were a part of that system's history, for better or worse, but it's unlikely that anyone who owned a Sega CD back in the 1990s was looking forward to being re-introduced to them. Hell, they're not even the best FMV games on the system, getting trounced by Cobra Command, Time Gal, and the over the top vehicular lunacy of Road Avenger.

Imagine if you will, John Wick crossed with
an old episode of the cartoon M.A.S.K. That's
Road Avenger in a nutshell.
(image from YouTube/NintendoComplete) 

Other highlights in the Sega CD library that Americans won't be getting in the Sega Genesis Mini 2 include Lords of Thunder, Keio Flying Squadron, Eternal Champions CD, Dark Wizard, and Wonder Dog. Luckily, a few worthwhile titles managed to sneak their way into the selection, including Final Fight CD, Sonic CD, and Robo Aleste, the less memorable but still diverting sequel to MUSHA on the unexpanded Genesis. So it's not a totally hopeless collection of Sega CD titles, but personally speaking, there's a little too much Dana Plato and a lot too much Ecco the Dolphin for my tastes.

Fortunately, although the system's Sega CD library is underwhelming, Sega found a whole lot of cartridge games to cram in here. They include enhanced versions of previously existing games, deep cuts you might have missed in the Clinton years, and even some arcade conversions written from scratch. One example of the latter is Super Locomotive, a late 1982 release which has you criss-crossing tracks on the top half of the screen while firing missiles at the cabooses creeping up behind you on the bottom half. I just played the arcade game out of curiosity, and it's tough, pushing your multi-tasking skills to the limit. Your reward for chugging your way to the depot at the end of the stage without crashing is an uninterrupted cover of Yellow Magic Orchestra's Rydeen, which is strikingly good for an arcade game of this early vintage.

Here's the recently announced
Crusader of Centy, which had provided
Genesis owners a welcome dose of
methadone for their nagging Legend
of Zelda addictions. Hey, at least it
wasn't as shameless as Neutopia.
(image from Wikipedia)

I mentioned the overclocked version of Viewpoint in a previous post, but M2 is going that extra mile with a conversion of the original Fantasy Zone, a port of the 32-bit puzzle title Puyo Puyo Tsu, and astonishingly, a remaster of Space Harrier II which smooths out its infamously choppy 3D effects AND adds a port of the original Space Harrier for good measure. Convincing scaling, on the Sega Genesis? If anyone can pull off such a feat, it would be the mad geniuses at M2. There are also dozens of games you actually played on a Genesis in the 1990s, with The Revenge of Shinobi, Rolling Thunder 2, Ristar, Shadow Dancer, Hellfire, and Midnight Resistance being among the standouts. (You already added most of these to your old Sega Genesis Mini, didn't you? I know I did.)

I'm still hesitant to buy a Sega Genesis Mini 2, especially with the Lunar games off the table and especially for the uncomfortably high price of $130. Still, I couldn't blame others for taking the plunge. The quality of the Genesis games on tap is higher than I'd expected, and considering that this is an Amazon exclusive, its price is likely to only go up in the future, just like the Turbografx-16 Mini before it. Plus, you're getting brand new games for the long-dead Genesis, which holds its own peculiar attraction. A good Genesis version of Space Harrier after all these years? Now that I'd like to see.

Embracer, shown here claiming its prize.
The sea, she is a harsh mistress.
(that was just an old episode of Wild Kratts
that you badly Photoshopped!)
(hey, shut up!)

By the way, there's important news about one of the games on the Genesis Mini 2, Truxton. Tatsujin, a game company founded by former employees of Toaplan, were drawn into the insatiable tentacles of the Swedish conglomerate Embracer Group. You could say that all Toaplan's base 're belong to Embracer... although I suspect most people would have the good taste not to say something so stupid.

(Not me, though.)

Point of Contention

The Sega Genesis Mini 2 is shaping up to be a fascinating mess, like a car crash. You want no part of it, yet you can't stop gawking at it from a safe distance. Case in point: the recent announcement that the hopeful but ultimately hapless Genesis conversion of Viewpoint will be one of the games built into the system. For those who don't know, Viewpoint was originally released for the Neo-Geo, a shooter in the vein of Zaxxon and R-Type with retro-futuristic pre-rendered graphics and a ferocious difficulty level. Polygonal crabs and spinning idol heads will throw everything they've got at you, and you'll need to be ridiculously skilled to survive the onslaught.

The Neo-Geo version of Viewpoint.
It was impressive in 1994... look, you
kind of had to be there.
(image from AL82 Retrogaming Longplays)

Viewpoint was a game so intense even the Neo-Geo had trouble handling it, infrequently buckling under the weight of Aicom's big bosses and hailstorms of bullets. The budget-priced Genesis, alas, was even less equipped to handle the game's demands. Nexus Interact watered down their port of Viewpoint to keep the system from being overburdened, but even with less impressive special effects and fewer onscreen enemies, the action suffers from slowdown and flicker almost from the moment the game starts.

This is why Sega and M2 are taking the unusual step of running the Genesis version of Viewpoint in a special Tera Drive mode, which boosts the clock speed of the emulated Genesis and leaves it better prepared for Viewpoint's hardware-melting demands. Is that cheating? Yes. Could the same thing have been accomplished on a real Genesis with the use of a DSP? Possibly, although at a hefty cost to the consumer, judging from the $100 Virtua Racing. Is it worth the bother? Arguably not. Until the release of Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition in 1993, the Genesis was Shoot 'Em Up Central, offering tons of great shmups without the bleeding edge graphics of Viewpoint, but with smarter use of the machine's limited resources.

Viewpoint was delivered to the Genesis
with more than a few dents and scuffs.
To Nexus Interact's credit, putting this
on a Genesis was like taking a grand
piano up to the second floor of an
apartment building.
(image from Sega Retro)

So I'm a little perplexed that Viewpoint was given the green light for inclusion on the Genesis Mini 2... but it does give me an excuse to share a few pages from Squirrel Burger Cookout. Here now is my review of the Neo-Geo version of Viewpoint, along with its little brother on the Genesis. I couldn't stir up much interest in this book comparing home ports of Neo-Geo arcade hits, but I may as well get some use out of what I finished. I'll probably be posting more selections from the book in the near future... collect them all!

EDIT: Reader Aaron Schnuth alerted me to a problem with the Viewpoint review... namely, it wasn't accessible without asking for permission first. I goofed, but it should be available to everyone now. Boy, is my face red!

Leave Your Mark

This year's EVO, the long-running fighting game tournament, brought with it some exciting news. After over twenty years, we're finally getting another Mark of the Wolves!

image from Pinterest

That must have come as a relief after holding it in for twenty years.

Seriously, it's been twenty years, two decades, nearly a quarter of a century, since the previous installment of the Fatal Fury series. Do you have any idea just how much the world has changed in twenty years? People were still using VCRs, landline telephones, and slow-ass dial up internet. I had a friend download Mark of the Wolves for me, and he had to leave his computer on overnight to get all seventy megabytes of it. Do you know how long it takes to download a seventy megabyte file now? Depending on the speed of your internet connection, maybe as long as it takes to read this paragraph.

We don't know what SNK has planned for the next Mark of the Wolves, but it's probably safe to assume that after two decades of technological advancement, it's going to be a completely different game from the last one.

Before I go, here are a few other tantalizing tidbits from EVO. Tae kwon do master and slinky sadist Juri will be included in Street Fighter 6, alongside a new character named Kimberly, who looks a bit like King of Fighters XV's Isla and fights a bit like Maki from Capcom vs. SNK 2. Speaking of KOF XV, it's getting Samurai Shodown characters added to its own cast, which makes absolutely no sense... not that coherence is a high priority in fighting game storylines. Fan favorite Bridget will make their return in the latest Guilty Gear, and a whole lot of games are getting rollback, resulting in smoother, more reliable online fights. 

(Am I the only one who buys fighting games for the offline modes?)

Overall, if you're a fighting game fan, there's a whole lot to look forward to over the next year. After all this time, Mark of the Wolves 2. Wow.