icycalm wrote:They are not called enhancements you know, in fact they are called nothing, and that is the problem.
Based on a lot of forum posts and reviews I've seen, you're probably right that most people don't know it's going on, but I would argue that many of them would cite it as an enhancement and typically do when they are aware of it. Mainstream gamers have been bitching about aliased, pixelated graphics for years and the chance to resolve that "problem" is a big draw for a lot of people. IGN's review of the PS2 port for KoF 2002/2003 mentions "higher resolution graphics than a straight-up arcade port, although the original visuals are available in all their pixelated glory."
There are dozens of reviews like this, where the mention is brief, but lacking just enough detail that it sounds like an enhancement. People see "higher resolution" in that line and that sounds good to them because it's what electronics stores, game companies, their friends, and everyone on the fucking planet has been hammering into them since DVDs took off back in 2000 or so. It's continuing with the 360 and PS3 too, with a lot of people taking advantage of their internal upscalers and running backwards compatible games at 480p and 720p. Some of them even bitch that they can't upscale everything as high as 1080p, but they still continue to do it. A/V fanatics and audiophiles eat this shit up too, pouring thousands of dollars into audio resamplers, AD/DA modules, and video upscalers. I don't know if this kind of thinking is the majority viewpoint per se, but quite a few people have been conditioned to believe that higher resolution + smoother image = good, every time, all the time. Look no further than HDTV owners who stretch 4:3 movies and games to 16:9 without a care in the world...and isn't that part of what Ebert was recently ranting about? :p
1. You have the high-res games which use upscaled sprites, and which suck just as much in their original versions (arcade/console/PC) as in their ports.
I actually bit the bullet earlier and pre-ordered KoF XI. I could swear I saw that the filtering can be turned off, but I guess I'm stuck with the upscaling. I'm a little confused with the Atomiswave thing, though. Did they draw everything in low-res, then upscale it? If so, what the hell for? Why not just draw it at 640x480 (or whatever the monitors are for the Atomiswave) if that's the only resolution it's being played at?
2. Then you have the arcade games which are low-res 240p, but which get upscaled and filtered in their port releases. The filtering here actually helps make the upscaling less noticeable, so it's not a bad thing.
This is largely what first brought my attention to the issue and honestly, I prefer the raw upscaling to the upscaled and filtered look. Maybe it's my astigmatism (I have my own bilinear filter!) or something, but I wind up squinting and trying to fight off a headache the whole time. Turned it off and while it's not perfect due, things look sharper and more defined, which I greatly prefer to blobby-looking sprites.
So yeah, a list of games falling in each of the above categories would be nice. When I have some time I'll look for Recap's posts in other forums and try to compile the info and post it here. Alternatively, we could just ask Recap to give us whatever text file it is where he keeps the appropriate lists. I am sure he has them.
That would be awesome. I started to compile a list of my own, but I stopped when I realized that it would probably work best on a website. Might be worth putting together an arcade ports database of sorts, where you can easily compare every available version, differences from the original arcade release, text options (useful for importers), etc. Might also be too ambitious to work on when school is going on, but we'll see. My main concern is just knowing what games are upscaled and if they're filtered, whether ir can be turned off or not.
Sorry this turned out so ridiculously long, but it's an issue that's been bugging me all week.