"Street Fighter II" for the NES theoretically possible?

[mikejmoffitt]

In other words, instead of cloning Street Fighter II, clone Pocket Fighter, the fighting game based on the chibi characters introduced in Super Puzzle Fighter II.

Going off of that, taking the sprites from the Wonderswan version would give us more to work with than the ones from the arcade release.

[JimDaBim]

In this case, wouldn't it be possible to just hack the "Mighty Final Fight" ROM? I don't know much about NES programming, but this is how I imagine it:
Remove the ability to walk up and down and map the jump to the up direction of the d-pad.
Change the game so that each fighter has two attack buttons instead of one.
The game already has a hundred-hand-slap-like attack for Guy, so Honda's attack and Chun Li's Lightning Kick could be done with the engine.
Same for attacks where the fighter moves up, like Dragon Punch or Flash Kick.
Blocking is also implemented. (Rolento can do it.)
Throws are also there.
And since you can throw objects, projectiles are there as well.

So, would it be possible to do the "Street Fighter II" equivalent of "Mighty Final Fight" by hacking the "Mighty Final Fight" ROM?

[mikejmoffitt]

In this case, wouldn't it be possible to just hack the "Mighty Final Fight" ROM? I don't know much about NES programming, but this is how I imagine it:
Remove the ability to walk up and down and map the jump to the up direction of the d-pad.
Change the game so that each fighter has two attack buttons instead of one.
The game already has a hundred-hand-slap-like attack for Guy, so Honda's attack and Chun Li's Lightning Kick could be done with the engine.
Same for attacks where the fighter moves up, like Dragon Punch or Flash Kick.
Blocking is also implemented. (Rolento can do it.)
Throws are also there.
And since you can throw objects, projectiles are there as well.

So, would it be possible to do the "Street Fighter II" equivalent of "Mighty Final Fight" by hacking the "Mighty Final Fight" ROM?

Without looking at Mighty Final Fight right now, it looks like to get it to actually play like Street Fighter 2 at all we're going to have to do a LOT of editing to a fairly unfamiliar engine. My biggest concern would be whether or not MFF implements a three-set hitbox system, with three vulnerable boxes, one body box, and attack boxes that can correlate to each frame of animation.

I guess it would be down to how MFF is implemented and how adaptable it all is. Personally I think MFF's sprites and proportions would be terrible for this, as the hitbox data from SF2 wouldn't make sense on them, even scaled down. At least the sprites in Pocket Fighter or Capcom vs SNK for NGPC are a little more shapely.

Also, since animation would likely have less frames than the arcade game, it's still important that the hitboxes behind them match to the arcade one more or less. For example, a 3-frame hitting animation that gets cut down to 2 frames graphically should still go through 3 "frames" of hitboxes such that the action is not disturbed by this omission.

[JimDaBim]

Without looking at Mighty Final Fight right now, it looks like to get it to actually play like Street Fighter 2 at all we're going to have to do a LOT of editing to a fairly unfamiliar engine.

Of course, in this case the game would not play like its arcade counterpart anymore. But I tought if somebody is going to make a chibi version of the game anyway (i.e. not using scaled-down versions of the real sprites, but using cute cartoon-like sprites), arcade-correctness isn't that important anymore.

So, yeah, when using "Mighty Final Fight" as a basis, you wouldn't need to bother with "Street Fighter II"'s hitbox system anymore or the frames. This game would indeed not play like the arcade game, but it would play like "Mighty Final Fight" without the ability to move up and down, but with the ability to do two attacks (punch and kick) instead of a predetermined one and with the ability to do special moves at will instead of following a combo pattern.

Gameplay-wise, it wouldn't be a conversion of the arcade game. (So, unlike with the Super Nintendo version, you couldn't use it for training and then use the same techniques in the arcade.) But it would nevertheless be a neat little fast-paced game. And the game already provides the functions to include most of the "Street Fighter II" techniques. They would feel different, but they would be there: Punches and kicks are doable. Jump punches and jump kicks also. Blocks and throws are already implemented. You can throw knives, so fireballs shouldn't be a problem either. And the fighters already know moves that look like a Dragon Punch, a Flash Kick or a Hundred Hand Slap. So, I guess every special move from the game could be implemented. OK, Zangief's Spinning Piledriver might be a problem. And Vega's wall jump stuff.

But other than that, what do you say: Apart from drawing the sprites and the backgrounds and from programming the AI, would this be a mundane task for an experienced NES programmer or something really difficult?
Please remember: This one is not about making it arcade-like, but about making it play as a "Street Fighter II" equivalent of the already existing "Mighty Final Fight".

[MottZilla]

Writing and completing any game is not a "mundane" task. It takes some effort to fully complete a project such as what is suggested.

[mikejmoffitt]

Writing and completing any game is not a "mundane" task. It takes some effort to fully complete a project such as what is suggested.

This. I don't think it is fair to call such a project an analogue to Mighty Final Fight, as a very simple beat 'em up is much simpler than a complex and very technical fighting game. Mighty Final Fight is more of a sequel, anyway; it's a bit of a better game than that turd Final Fight (had to be said!)

[Macbee]

I used to create "8-bit Street Fighter" mockups.
After many tests over the years I believe the best source (for in game character graphics) is the Game Boy version.
It's beautiful, official pixel art by Capcom. Perfect for the NES IMHO.
And rips for all character sprites are available at http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy/sfii/

[MottZilla]

While the GameBoy might be a good source, it still remains to be seen how well the NES PPU would do displaying two fighters which use more than 3 colors. If you look at Mega Man, he uses more than 3 colors but it is done with his face being an overlay sprite. And i believe it's just 1 sprite large. Looking at Blanka as you colored him he would need quite a lot. Ken would need some but not as much.

If you lose some color definition or carefully try to color things you could reduce the number of sprites required. Flicker some of the time will be unavoidable. Although here would be a fun thing to try. Imagine doing like arcade games did, and rotate your TV 90 degrees. It would create vertical scanlines that have a limit of 8 per line, but horizontally you'd have no limit per line other than the max sprites. Sure the aspect would be different, but you could have these bigger more defined characters.

[Macbee]

While the GameBoy might be a good source, it still remains to be seen how well the NES PPU would do displaying two fighters which use more than 3 colors. If you look at Mega Man, he uses more than 3 colors but it is done with his face being an overlay sprite. And i believe it's just 1 sprite large. Looking at Blanka as you colored him he would need quite a lot. Ken would need some but not as much.

If you lose some color definition or carefully try to color things you could reduce the number of sprites required. Flicker some of the time will be unavoidable. Although here would be a fun thing to try. Imagine doing like arcade games did, and rotate your TV 90 degrees. It would create vertical scanlines that have a limit of 8 per line, but horizontally you'd have no limit per line other than the max sprites. Sure the aspect would be different, but you could have these bigger more defined characters.

My technical knowledge is very limited. I try to be accurate doing my mockups - but I'm never really sure if they are really faithful to NES' limitations.
I suggested fighters made of 2 sprite palettes each because Street Fighter 3 (pirate game from early 1990s) also did this.



And this SF3 runs fine (probably at 60 frames per second). SF3's characters are slightly bigger than SF2 sprites for Game Boy.

Sprite rips of Street Fighter 3 are also available at http://www.spriters-resource.com/nes/streetfighter3/ (it's always nice to study them).
The only problem of using 2 palettes would be coloring extra graphics like "hadoukens".

I also like the idea of turning the monitor. It was mentioned sometime ago as a joke ( viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9590 ) but I'm a big fan of these crazy concepts.

[tokumaru]

The only problem of using 2 palettes would be coloring extra graphics like "hadoukens".

You can usually solve this problem by keeping 2 constant palettes, and leaving one for each character to customize. Since most characters need skin tones, one of the fixed palettes could be composed of 2 skin tones and some other useful color, and the other fixed palette could be used for all effects and attacks (blue, red and white seems good, enough to represent energy blasts and fire).

[Dwedit]

Or just match fireballs with Ryu's palette, it's not really that big a deal.

[Macbee]

The only problem of using 2 palettes would be coloring extra graphics like "hadoukens".

You can usually solve this problem by keeping 2 constant palettes, and leaving one for each character to customize. Since most characters need skin tones, one of the fixed palettes could be composed of 2 skin tones and some other useful color, and the other fixed palette could be used for all effects and attacks (blue, red and white seems good, enough to represent energy blasts and fire).

It's a nice way to solve it for sure.
It's also interesting to see how some pirate companies solved this problem:

1) Street Fighter 3: Skin colored hadouken


2) Street Blaster Pro: One sprite palette for Ryu, other sprite palette for hadouken


3) Street Fighter Zero 2 97: Flickering (the forbidden word). 1 sprite palette for hadouken and 2 palettes for Ryu.


My personal choice: I would make hadoukens using Ryu's kimono palette. Like this:

[MottZilla]

That SFZ2 pirate looks like it might do what was suggested and have a shared "flesh tone" palette. The SF3 might do that too. The real question is does someone really want to spend the time to try to reproduce a decent SF2 feeling fighting engine on the NES.

[rainwarrior]

Why go that far? It's much easier just to talk about things that could be done.

[MottZilla]

That's probably as far as this will go anyway. =)