Sengoku Densyo

[Melf]

So many great Mega CD titles were left behind in Japan, a sign of the times when gamers waited and prayed for prospective games to be released in the U.S. Sometimes, we were deprived of an absolute gem that was unjustly kept from our eager hands (Monster World IV (http://www.sega-16.com/forum/../Review-%20Monster%20World%20IV.php) comes to mind). Other times, we're saved from a dud that would have otherwise deprived us of our hard-earned cash. Sengoku Densyo is one such title. Read our full review (http://www.sega-16.com/review_page.php?id=1187&title=Sengoku%20Densyo) and see why sometimes importing isn't such a good idea.

[Rodger]

I love reading these reviews of import games. Always cool to see games I haven't heard of.

It's a shame, it sounds like if this one had spent a little more time in development, it might have been a better game.

[0x15e]

It's a shame, but really not too much of a loss these days anyway. If someone was really serious about playing Sengoku on the cheap, they'd probably be doing it with a Neo Geo CD or something, which has essentially perfect ports of the originals and isn't remotely as expensive as doing it with a cart would be.

[Benjamin]

The real shame is how SNK seemingly and purposely would cripple ports of its games to other consoles just to make the Neo Geo version superior. While I wouldn't expect perfect ports exactly on the 16-bit systems (though Takara's stuff comes pretty close I think), the 32-bit stuff looks neutered for no special reason.

[Pure Gamerbilly]

I didn't even know this existed...

The real deal is nothing to write home about (Unless you're going to write about how utterly average and boring it is), so I don't imagine you're missing anything if you haven't played the MCD version.

[kevinski]

Samurai Shodown for Sega Genesis is pretty sweet. Too bad this one didn't turn out too well.

[Lan-Di]

Takara shudda handled this port! :?

[wayne919]

the neo geo aes version is very meh, i can only imagine the levels of mediocrity to awfulness the mega cd version suffers from.

[redrum666]

this game allso came out in japan for the super famicom is was going to come out here for the super nes by data east but it was canned the month it was coming out

here the box art for the US
http://snescentral.edgeemu.com/0/1/3/0139/box.jpg

[ThunderForce]

this game allso came out in japan for the super famicom is was going to come out here for the super nes by data east but it was canned the month it was coming out

here the box art for the US
http://snescentral.edgeemu.com/0/1/3/0139/box.jpg

That SNES port was terrible as well.

Shitty box art thou.

[0x15e]

The real shame is how SNK seemingly and purposely would cripple ports of its games to other consoles just to make the Neo Geo version superior. While I wouldn't expect perfect ports exactly on the 16-bit systems (though Takara's stuff comes pretty close I think), the 32-bit stuff looks neutered for no special reason.The problem with SNK games on the 32-bit consoles wasn't that they were intentionally crippling them ... it was that the 32-bit systems were actually less capable of playing them than the 16-bit (cart-based) ones because they had essentially less ram to work with. At the time, ram was expensive and, in theory, they didn't need as much because they were just working with textures and models instead of frames of animation, which are relatively larger.

In cart-based games, they could just read graphics, etc. out of rom but with CD-based systems, all that had to be loaded into ram before you could play and because the systems were essentially designed for 3D, they had to do things like drop animation frames and compress the crap out of sounds to make enough fit to be playable. This is even seen, to some extent, on the Neo Geo CD where, in the later games, lots of background and intro animation, etc. were dropped making the CD version inferior.

In the case of the PS1, we were just screwed because there was no way to add ram.

In the case of the Saturn, this could partially be worked around using extra rom (KOF95) and ram carts (KOF97, etc.) but those extra parts never made it to the states (that I know of) so all we ever saw were the cut-down versions.

It wasn't until the Dreamcast and, later, the PS2 and Xbox that acceptable ports would be possible and even then, there are cuts in some places and some strange load times.

The fact is that the Neo Geo was really a pretty powerful system and because SNK didn't bother with restricting rom size to save money, they were able to do things that wouldn't really be possible on cheaper hardware for 10+ years.

[Benjamin]

The problem with SNK games on the 32-bit consoles wasn't that they were intentionally crippling them ... it was that the 32-bit systems were actually less capable of playing them than the 16-bit (cart-based) ones because they had essentially less ram to work with.

I disagree. As you've noticed, even the 128-bit SNK ports tend to be less than perfect, while Capcom apparently has little trouble getting its far, far advanced CP3 titles on those systems. The Saturn is a 2-D powerhouse, and even with SNK includes a RAM option as it did with KoF 95, it still isn't as good as it could/should have been. :(