Squirrel Burger Cookout (Neo-Geo home ports)

[arugulaz]

kiblitzing.blogspot.com/2019/04/pining-for-fjords-and-announcement.html

I've noticed from Amazon and the last few years of Storyteller Bundles that there are a lot of people publishing video game eBooks. After some contemplation, I think I'd like to join their ranks. The current plan is to write about the very specific subject of Neo-Geo games ported to consoles from the 16-bit era... the Super NES, the Genesis, and the Turbografx-16, along with the CD expansions for the latter two systems.



The name "Squirrel Burger Cookout" comes from SNK's infamous metaphor that its own console was prime rib next to what its competition was offering, which was more like squirrel burgers. Nevertheless, this didn't stop the company from licensing its most popular Neo-Geo games to Takara, Sunsoft, and Sega, which produced home ports of varying quality.



Some of these ports were very good, and some were very, uh, not (eg World Heroes for Genesis, which makes Baby Jesus, L'il Buddha, and Vishnu Jr. cry) but I think they all deserve a closer examination. Conversions of arcade games tend to get forgotten years later when the originals become readily available on modern hardware. That's a shame, because taking a work of art and squeezing it into a smaller canvas is something of an art in and of itself.



I'm mentioning this here to gauge interest in the project. Would this be the sort of book you'd like to leaf through on your eReader or tablet? Is the subject matter too esoteric or specific? What would you suggest be included in addition to the fifteen games I'll be covering? I'm asking you guys because I think you'd be honest (but gentle!) in your assessment. I'm taking this to several forums to gauge reaction, and to hopefully improve the finished product.

[arugulaz]

I've finished three entries so far, with twelve to go. Here's what I've written for Sengoku, an early Neo-Geo underachiever which was nevertheless brought to two home systems. (I got a crash course in the Sengoku era from browsing its Wikipedia entry. Hopefully this write-up is accurate.)

If you have any suggestions or advice, please let me know. Again, be honest but gentle!

SENGOKU

The Sengoku era was a century-long period of chaos for Japan, with numerous shoguns battling for control over the tiny island country. So intense were these constant fights that they tore apart Japan's sociopolitical structure; damage that was only repaired when Nobunaga Oda (the warrior), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (the negotiator), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (the unifier) came together to bring the country out of war. This new era of peace continued until the Bakumatsu period, when Japan was pressured to open its borders to visitors from the West. Fascinating.

Less fascinating is the game Sengoku, an early Neo-Geo release where a street punk and a cowboy fight the undead army of a revived Nobunaga. Four hundred years of sleep have not sweetened the disposition of this bloodthirsty warlord, and he vows to conquer the modern world from his ghostly castle stronghold, frequently shown spinning in the distance. When the two heroes send Nobunaga's forces back to their graves, they're given spirit energy, which either (slowly, sloooowly) refills their life bar or grants them swords. Freeing the souls of warriors captured by Nobunaga lets you transform into them temporarily, giving you the speed of a ninja, the skill of a samurai, and the ferocity of a wolf.

It sounds like a winning formula for a beat 'em up, but various issues make Sengoku feel like a relic of the stone age rather than a throwback to the feudal age. First, it's slow... the heroes take their sweet time walking from one end of the screen to the other, with that sluggishness exacerbated in the home ports. Second, most of the player's abilities are dependent on power ups. If you don't have a sword or an alternate form, you won't be doing much beyond punching, kicking, and jumping. Finally, what little momentum the game manages to build is instantly cut short by constant stage transitions. You'll be caught in a beam of purple light and dragged up into samurai heaven, then sent back to earth, then dragged back up into the clouds. Maybe the designers thought the constant change of scenery would give Sengoku more variety, but it only leaves the player disoriented and eventually, very annoyed.

It's not a good game, is the take home here. Side scrolling beat 'em ups bred like rabbits on the Neo-Geo in its early days, and there was very little to distinguish them from the king of the genre, Capcom's Final Fight. Sengoku may have been more original than Burning Fight and Mutation Nation, but that didn't make it any more entertaining.

Despite the game's extreme boredom and frustration, Sengoku was ported to more home consoles in the early 1990s than any of SNK's other belt scrollers. These ports were exclusive to Japan, suggesting that the country found something appealing about the notion of Nobunaga invading the 20th century. Heaven knows the game has nothing else of value to offer.

SEGA CD

Published by Sammy, which would later release Viewpoint for the Sega Genesis, Sengoku Densyo is the most complete port of Sengoku available for a home game system. (Unless you were seriously thinking of buying a Neo-Geo AES or CD just for this game, and that would be ill-advised.) The finer points of the swordplay are still here, with an armed player being able to lock blades with enemies, and unarmed players getting a rare opportunity to catch swords in mid-swing, snapping them in half and forcing the opponent to fight on even terms. It’s not as vibrant as the Neo-Geo version, but it makes good use of the Sega CD’s limited color output, and the characters are pretty large by 16-bit standards. Compare them to the sprites in Golden Axe or the original Streets of Rage and you’ll definitely notice a difference.

The only major omission is that your foes no longer fold into themselves and vanish like they did on the Neo-Geo… instead, they flash white, make an unpleasant static noise, and disappear. It doesn’t affect the gameplay (such as it is), but it’s puzzling when you consider that the Sega CD has hardware scaling and rotation built into the system. It wouldn’t have required any more frames of animation, and barely used any more processing power. It’s a detail that would have cost the design team nothing, yet they left it on the table. Talk about a missed opportunity.

There are a couple of other issues. It’s no longer a two player game (which your friends might consider a relief rather than a shortcoming), and the frequent transitions between stages now come with about four seconds of load time, making them even more annoying. Past that and the pavement cracks which no longer shoot streams of fire in the first stage, it’s the same game that it was on the Neo-Geo, right down to the cut scenes after every stage and a Japanese soundtrack, played off the disc to ensure that it sounds just as impressive as it did in arcades. The game’s still not good, but most of those faults can be traced back to the source material.

SUPER NES

Sengoku Densho for the Super NES was designed by Data East, and it’s kind of a conversion of the original arcade game, in the same way that Strider or Bionic Commander on the NES were kind of like their arcade counterparts. It’s got the same characters (now named Dan and Bill), and it’s got the same plot about an invading warlord and his undead army, but you’ll notice some big differences once you get to the specifics.

The Super NES version of Sengoku is now a more traditional beat ‘em up, borrowing most heavily from Final Fight. Players can no longer switch between characters at will- the ninja, samurai, and wolf are instead offered as temporary power-ups- and all nuance has been stripped away from using the swords. On the other hand, the bare-fisted brawling that was so dull in the original game has been improved. You can now grab Nobunaga’s soldiers, then fling them across the screen or perform a damaging (if awkward) piledriver. The added depth comes at a cost to the other fighters, who haven’t been improved at all and are no longer as much fun to play. Then again, at least you won’t need them to stay awake through the game.

The graphics and sound have changed as well, evocative of the arcade game but not as impressive. There’s a whole lot of tiling in the backgrounds to save cartridge space, and the music has gotten peppier, less Japanese, and repetitive enough to test both your patience and sanity. Finally and most gallingly, your enemies die with a grunt and a handful of tiny explosions. Again, the Super NES had the hardware to handle the squashing, stretching sprites of the arcade game, and again, the designers let that chance slip by them. Poor form, Data East.

Put bluntly, Sengoku Densho is an aggressively generic beat ‘em up on a system with dozens of them. Data East considered releasing the game in the United States, complete with ridiculous Claymation box art, but then remembered the Final Fight trilogy, Rival Turf, Sonic Blast Man, and countless comic book licensed action games, and wisely decided not to add to that pile.

[kingmike]

Apr 28, 2019 18:36:35 GMT -5 arugulaz said:

The name "Squirrel Burger Cookout" comes from SNK's infamous metaphor that its own console was prime rib next to what its competition was offering, which was more like squirrel burgers. Nevertheless, this didn't stop the company from licensing its most popular Neo-Geo games to Takara, Sunsoft, and Sega, which produced home ports of varying quality.

That felt like a reasonable business decision. When you charged more than triple the competition's prices, you cannot consider yourself a directly competing product. I believe the NeoGeo was aimed squarely at those with the bucks to afford an arcade in their living room. Makes sense to wiggle some bucks out of those who couldn't afford or won't pay for the original.

(I mean, people were complaining about paying $60 prices for most console games, and yet NeoGeo games were usually released at $200 or more.)

[arugulaz]

It was typical for arcade games to have home ports, so yeah, I can understand why SNK would want to have its cake and eat it too. (Or more accurately, make a huge wedding cake for six hundred dollars, then sell a license to Takara to make wedding cake Twinkies.)