21st August 2024, 11:23 AM
I'm not really trying to debate, just explain my reasoning. I already made up my mind that for me personally, I won't ever attempt a full playthrough of the SNES version of the game, and I listed my reasons. It's not a position I intend to argue, simply explain.
I'm not going to defend the 32X version for the same reason. I personally place it above the SNES version, but you bring up reasons why SNES might edge it out. Still, we're arguing which piece of garbage we'd rather eat at that point. Don't even try playing the Saturn version. It's the PS1 version, but for some reason Romero directly ordered them NOT to recode the game to take advantage of the Saturn's hardware acceleration features and just run the game in pure software, out of some purist platonic ideal of what good code should be or something. The result is the game is impossibly choppy, bordering on SNES but not quite reaching the depths of 3DO. PS1 however runs surprisingly smooth for a console port of the era. These are not "arguments" so much as a list of details of how these ports run.
I think it's interesting you brought up the lack of backwards facing sprite and how, to make things less confusing as a result, instead of allowing you to sneak up but having no visual indicator that you did, they simply made it so that sneaking up wasn't possible in those two versions. On a related note, circle-strafing isn't about being able to strictly run in a huge circle around groups of enemies. Simply being able to change direction WHILE strafing is all I ask for, and lacking that made navigating around obstacles frustrating. As I said, if this is your nostalgic experience with the game, that's fine! It's an impressive technical feat after all, and the frame rate did seem to make sure "key frames" like firing and enemy hits were prioritized to partially alleviate how choppy the game ran, but it's still unplayable. I guess I should have added "to me" to that? I had hoped it was implied.
Oh the autosave at level start thing is built into just about every modern port now, but it was unique to this back at the time the SNES version came out. Anyway, I wanted your thoughts on adding SNES mouse, XBand Modem and XBand Keyboard support to this version.
I'm not going to defend the 32X version for the same reason. I personally place it above the SNES version, but you bring up reasons why SNES might edge it out. Still, we're arguing which piece of garbage we'd rather eat at that point. Don't even try playing the Saturn version. It's the PS1 version, but for some reason Romero directly ordered them NOT to recode the game to take advantage of the Saturn's hardware acceleration features and just run the game in pure software, out of some purist platonic ideal of what good code should be or something. The result is the game is impossibly choppy, bordering on SNES but not quite reaching the depths of 3DO. PS1 however runs surprisingly smooth for a console port of the era. These are not "arguments" so much as a list of details of how these ports run.
I think it's interesting you brought up the lack of backwards facing sprite and how, to make things less confusing as a result, instead of allowing you to sneak up but having no visual indicator that you did, they simply made it so that sneaking up wasn't possible in those two versions. On a related note, circle-strafing isn't about being able to strictly run in a huge circle around groups of enemies. Simply being able to change direction WHILE strafing is all I ask for, and lacking that made navigating around obstacles frustrating. As I said, if this is your nostalgic experience with the game, that's fine! It's an impressive technical feat after all, and the frame rate did seem to make sure "key frames" like firing and enemy hits were prioritized to partially alleviate how choppy the game ran, but it's still unplayable. I guess I should have added "to me" to that? I had hoped it was implied.
Oh the autosave at level start thing is built into just about every modern port now, but it was unique to this back at the time the SNES version came out. Anyway, I wanted your thoughts on adding SNES mouse, XBand Modem and XBand Keyboard support to this version.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)