HAOH-SO-KOOH-KEN!
Jan. 31st, 2008 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariThere's a PC game I have that I try running on EVERY computer I have. It's Eurocom's 1995 PC Port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo.
Despite beng known for Mortal Kombat stuff, my fave fighting game of all time is Super SF2 Turbo...and when the PC port was announced for release in 1995, I picked it up. The game specs said it's minimum requirements were a 486 running at 25MHz with 4MB of RAM. No problem, I thought. I had a 486 at 33MHZ!
Little did I would embark on a quest that is still not over, to this very day.
The game played very poorly. Load times took 10 minutes between matches as it swapped huge amounts of data to the hard drive. I got maybe 1 or 2 frames per second when playing. I hoped no one was playing this on a 25MHz machine or there'd be very very very dissapointed. I kept the CD mostly for the music, but would occasionally pop it in and cry as I was beaten to death by Cammy before the machine ever registered my first hit. Even after a 4MB $200 upgrade that game was stil tripe.
I was talking with the head programmer at Eurocom about this game for the longest time. And when I mentioned how dissapointed and sad, and somewhat angry I was about the port - well, he didn't talk to me ever again after that.
Eventually, I moved up to a 486 running at 100MHZ with 16MB of RAM. The game became choppily playable, but unfortunately only worked in pure DOS just as Windows 95 was making DOS obsolete. But on the 486/100, at least I COULD play it at about 5 or 6 FPS and make it farther up the roster.
When I got the Pentium 1 (and a high end 200MHZ MMX machine at that) with 32MB of RAM, the game smoothed way out, and I was happy, despite it now being mid 1997. However, the horrors that were PCI DOS Sound Card drivers made my victory short lived.
About 1998, my Sound Blaster Awe64 card blew out. Seeing the new pretty PCI cards we were sellin before Swan closed down, I picked up a nice Sound Blaster PCI - an was immediately punched in the face as SSF2T refused to play sound.
When I got my Pentium 4, I had kinda given up on ever playing SSF2T PC again...but for giggles, I popped it in - and now it was no longer even playing correctly because it was TOO fast. Pressing a button once, registered as repeatedly pressing buttons and the game became totally unplayable again. Till I discovered DOSBox. And it was still unaplayable. Now I was getting music, but the game played so slowly as DOSBox was emulating everything on a PC-Box.
I tried it last night, on the new laptop. Just for giggles. Proving that the new laptop really IS the Second Coming - it not only played, it played perfectly again. So, not counting the six months of "Hey, it plays REALLY well!" in 1997, a game I bought in 1995 finally plays correctly in 2007, 12 years later. :D
Yeah, I can play an emulated version of the SSF2T arcade (And have since about 2003), but there's something about this game for me, like the DOS ports of MK2, it's the nostalgia of the 320x200 8-bit graphics, and tinkly midi sound that makes fiddling with stuff like this a trip down nostalgia lane.
Now if I could just get Epic Pinball working again. :D
Despite beng known for Mortal Kombat stuff, my fave fighting game of all time is Super SF2 Turbo...and when the PC port was announced for release in 1995, I picked it up. The game specs said it's minimum requirements were a 486 running at 25MHz with 4MB of RAM. No problem, I thought. I had a 486 at 33MHZ!
Little did I would embark on a quest that is still not over, to this very day.
The game played very poorly. Load times took 10 minutes between matches as it swapped huge amounts of data to the hard drive. I got maybe 1 or 2 frames per second when playing. I hoped no one was playing this on a 25MHz machine or there'd be very very very dissapointed. I kept the CD mostly for the music, but would occasionally pop it in and cry as I was beaten to death by Cammy before the machine ever registered my first hit. Even after a 4MB $200 upgrade that game was stil tripe.
I was talking with the head programmer at Eurocom about this game for the longest time. And when I mentioned how dissapointed and sad, and somewhat angry I was about the port - well, he didn't talk to me ever again after that.
Eventually, I moved up to a 486 running at 100MHZ with 16MB of RAM. The game became choppily playable, but unfortunately only worked in pure DOS just as Windows 95 was making DOS obsolete. But on the 486/100, at least I COULD play it at about 5 or 6 FPS and make it farther up the roster.
When I got the Pentium 1 (and a high end 200MHZ MMX machine at that) with 32MB of RAM, the game smoothed way out, and I was happy, despite it now being mid 1997. However, the horrors that were PCI DOS Sound Card drivers made my victory short lived.
About 1998, my Sound Blaster Awe64 card blew out. Seeing the new pretty PCI cards we were sellin before Swan closed down, I picked up a nice Sound Blaster PCI - an was immediately punched in the face as SSF2T refused to play sound.
When I got my Pentium 4, I had kinda given up on ever playing SSF2T PC again...but for giggles, I popped it in - and now it was no longer even playing correctly because it was TOO fast. Pressing a button once, registered as repeatedly pressing buttons and the game became totally unplayable again. Till I discovered DOSBox. And it was still unaplayable. Now I was getting music, but the game played so slowly as DOSBox was emulating everything on a PC-Box.
I tried it last night, on the new laptop. Just for giggles. Proving that the new laptop really IS the Second Coming - it not only played, it played perfectly again. So, not counting the six months of "Hey, it plays REALLY well!" in 1997, a game I bought in 1995 finally plays correctly in 2007, 12 years later. :D
Yeah, I can play an emulated version of the SSF2T arcade (And have since about 2003), but there's something about this game for me, like the DOS ports of MK2, it's the nostalgia of the 320x200 8-bit graphics, and tinkly midi sound that makes fiddling with stuff like this a trip down nostalgia lane.
Now if I could just get Epic Pinball working again. :D
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-31 10:49 pm (UTC)BTW it's not Epic pinball, but there's a cool program called "Visual Pinball" which is like MAME for pinball machines, and plays great!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-31 11:03 pm (UTC)Still, what I'm waiting for now is *takes deep breath* Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. It's coming out for Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. I'm not sure if there's a PC version in the works, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is...
no subject
Date: 2008-02-01 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-05 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-06 07:40 pm (UTC)Now if Midway would only release Mortal Kombat II for Xbox Live Arcade...