Samurai Spirits / Shodown - Super GameBoy - Advent Countdown - Day 12
0I hope you are all healthy and safe wherever you are in the World right now and whatever challenges you are facing.
I thought I'd do a countdown to Christmas 2022 with a GameBoy Cartridge themed advent calendar. I'd hoped to make the videos a little more slick but this is a rough and ready proof of concept really to see if anyone wants to countdown to Xmas with 24 different GameBoy games - one each day!
The footage is genuine cartridges running on a SNES via the Super GameBoy. As a Xmas gift feel free to use the footage in your own videos (just give credit or link to my channel)
This is Samurai Spirits - known as Samurai Shodown in the West - one of SNK's flagship fighters. Arguably the first game in the series was the first game that really captured the gamers imagination & stood out from the other 1-on-1 fighters of the era due to the inclusion of weapons.
This GameBoy version is a surprisingly good conversion with decent presentation and all 12 original fighters from the arcade - plus 3 additional secret fighters some of which are exclusive to this port - see my other video.
They even include Kuroko the Referee although they put him between the Health Bars rather than having him as a sprite in the playfield that is probably a sensible decision as it not only eases the workload on the processor but also means the playfield isn't over-crowded making it easier to keep track of the action.
The Super GameBoy has always fascinated me and fans of my channel will know I love it when portable games can be played on the big screen! It still has the limitation of the GameBoy in that 4 shades can be used as the games need to be compatible and playable on the console - however some clever palette switching and game design means you can show more colours on screen by defining different palettes for different areas of the screen.
You really notice this when the characters - which have one set of 4 colours - "trespass" into the Health Bar area which has a different palette of 4 colours - for example during a Special Move - as the characters temporarily are shaded according to that palette. Think of Colour Clash on the ZX Spectrum!
Certainly a lot more effort for an add on system/peripheral than you might expect from a port of this type and this was true of most of their 1-on-1 fighting game ports.
I play it here through the Super GameBoy in order to show the game a little clearer. For some reason my capture card always seems to struggle with the SNES (and therefore the Super GameBoy) not sure why as everything else pretty much works fine through it.
I'm also thinking of doing a series of videos on specially enhanced Super GameBoy compatible games - including the very clever game and programming designed to maximise the use of colour while remaining compatible with the original monochrome handheld, multiplayer modes, enhanced sound and even a hidden game. Let me know if you'd like to see this sort of thing.
As always if you enjoy this video let me know. As always this is running on original hardware in this case a SNES & Super GameBoy peripheral (one day I'll get a GBA Consoliser!!!!) Also let me know if there are particular games or systems you'd like to see.
As always this is uploaded under the Fair Use Policy - no money is being made from this video.
Stay strong, stay safe and stay healthy - Grey Fox
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