Wii Virtual Console vs. Emulators

[Deathlike2]

It is actually close. Only the sound chip is inferior to the one on the SNES.

I actually think it's a bit inferior. While playing FFVI I notice slowdowns that weren't there on the SNES version... or could it be due to port issues?

Probably port issues. The GBA is so much faster than a SNES that it does not need a SuperFX chip or otherwise to do 3D-type graphics.

That doesn't quite explain the slowness of the Airship. Anything Mode 7 related, it seems to choke on it somewhat. It's usable, but "not quite the same".

F-Zero games did not choke on GBA with Mode 7.

I didn't say other games suffered from it.. just the FF Advance games that were ported from the SNES.

[creaothceann]

Probably port issues. The GBA is so much faster than a SNES that it does not need a SuperFX chip or otherwise to do 3D-type graphics.

That doesn't quite explain the slowness of the Airship. Anything Mode 7 related, it seems to choke on it somewhat.

As he said, port issues. Mode7 is natively supported by the GBA's hardware.

[blackmyst]

The GBA does Doom with floor and ceiling textures, much more clean looking surface rendering, full colors for all textures and sprites (unlike the SNES version which reduced the colors, as far as I can tell), bigger screensize (more detail), full enemy animation, full weapon effects AND it still runs at two-three times the framerate the SNES version did. And this -without- any add on chips. There really is no question about the GBA's ultimate superiority in everything but sound and those few missing lines of vertical resolution.

In fact, even considering the port issues, I still wonder how they managed to screw the FF ports up so much to get slowdown on a simple flat surface.

[Joe Camacho]

Who ported Final Fantasy? Was it Squarenix themselves?

[Firon]

TOSE ported FF4/5/6 to the GBA. They also did the shitty port of Chrono Trigger to the PS1.

[kieran_]

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3156447

More on TOSE.

[Deathlike2]

TOSE ported FF4/5/6 to the GBA. They also did the shitty port of Chrono Trigger to the PS1.

That would explain why most of the ports were not done "quite right".

Gripe meter now at maximum.

By comparison, FF5A has had the least port bugs, with FF4A having possibly the most. FF6A has the most not-so-thoughtful tweaks unfortunately.

[PHoNyMiKe]

yes the gba has far superior abilities to the snes, however all sound must be done by the main processor, unlike the snes's sound coprocessor. gba 16mhz, snes 3mhz, but a good sound engine could take over 30% of the processing power. still the graphics hardware are twice as powerful as the snes, and the cpu can do way more in one instruction then the snes can do.

so I blame it on lazy programmers bloating up with code. snes programmers had no room for bloat with the snes's limited ram and assembly programming.

[Firon]

Even with sound taking up CPU due to software mixing (the GBA has only 2 hardware sound channels), that's no excuse. Just look at Payback. Now THAT is a game that shows the power of the GBA.

[Ichinisan]

Yoshi's Island on GBA was unforgivable.

[casualsax3]

Yoshi's Island on GBA was unforgivable.

Explain.

[Palin]

Yoshi's Island on SNES was buggy as well.

My copy would occasionally get corrupted so that half of the worlds were unlocked at the start of the game (in random order.)

[whicker]

Yoshi's Island on SNES was buggy as well.

My copy would occasionally get corrupted so that half of the worlds were unlocked at the start of the game (in random order.)

eh? Maybe it was a hardware problem. I never once EVER experienced a glitch in that game. Well, I could cause sprite flicker, but that was a hardware limitation.

[Palin]

eh? Maybe it was a hardware problem. I never once EVER experienced a glitch in that game. Well, I could cause sprite flicker, but that was a hardware limitation.

Yeah, it probably was a problem with the catridge itself, was a bit annoying when you'd be half way through the game and it would get corrupted though. Sometimes it would go months without a hitch, sometimes it would happen twice in one week.

[Ichinisan]

Yoshi's Island on GBA was unforgivable.

Explain.

The awesome "tripping" effect when Yoshi touches Fuzzy is GONE. The ground moves when Yoshi gets high, but the player has no idea what's happening. The ending looks terrible. The clouds are like a slide show and the stork looks like a negative image, as if the graphics were corrupted. The two-player minigames are gone, which would have been awesome as a single-cart multiplayer feature. We just got the original Mario Bros Arcade again...just like in all of the other Super Mario Advance titles. To top it all off, Nintendo got rid of the traditional Yoshi sounds and replaced them with the voices from Baby Yoshi.

Nintendo has a trend of doing that. When they show Mario in short sleeves and Peach in a ponytail in Mario Sunshine (because they were on a tropical vacation), they show up in other games as if it's a permanent new look for the character. Why should ALL yoshi's sound like Baby Yoshi after Yoshi's Story was made? Why should Mario and Princess Peach appear in vacation clothing in Super Mario 64 DS and Mario Party?

Yoshi's Island on SNES was buggy as well.

My copy would occasionally get corrupted so that half of the worlds were unlocked at the start of the game (in random order.)

eh? Maybe it was a hardware problem. I never once EVER experienced a glitch in that game. Well, I could cause sprite flicker, but that was a hardware limitation.

I found an interesting but difficult reproducable glitch on the original cart. I used to be able to reproduce it in ZSNES, but not anymore. I tried both 1.0 and 1.1 versions.

[blackmyst]

The clouds are like a slide show and the stork looks like a negative image, as if the graphics were corrupted.

Were you playing this on an emulator? I've seen the ending and it looked no different from the SNES version.

Maybe when you see the stork as a "negative image" you're forgetting that you're looking at a sprite that's drawn with backlighting. At least that's what I'm fairly sure it looked like on the SNES.

[snkcube]

http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/gba/a/sma3.htm

Here are some pictures of the GBA version's ending. The clouds do look kind of bad though.

[Ichinisan]

The clouds are like a slide show and the stork looks like a negative image, as if the graphics were corrupted.

Were you playing this on an emulator? I've seen the ending and it looked no different from the SNES version.

Maybe when you see the stork as a "negative image" you're forgetting that you're looking at a sprite that's drawn with backlighting. At least that's what I'm fairly sure it looked like on the SNES.

Actual GBA, actual cart.

http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/gba/a/sma3.htm

Here are some pictures of the GBA version's ending. The clouds do look kind of bad though.

The "badness" that I noticed relates to the animation of the clouds as they move, which can't be shown in a still screenshot. The animation was far choppier than on the SNES.

Also, the stork on those screenshots looks pretty bad to me. I remember it looking much better on SNES. Even in motion it still looks like a mess on the GBA.

[grinvader]

Confirming it looks like crap.