Thursday, January 18, 2018

Zero Gunner 2 & Strikers 1945 II on Switch

Zero Gunner 2 is maybe great or underrated when available in arcades and Dreamcast but the Switch version has made things a little bit worse.
  • The effects are enhanced although some effects are not that great. It's the same flaw as what the arcade and Dreamcast versions have but the Switch version improves them a little with Additive Blending for the explosion, splash and smoke effects.
  • Objects appear and disappear out of nowhere in some of the stages and especially for the ones that are parts of the stages.
  • Some of the environmental effects are missing and the enemy bullets on Stage 5 are darker than usual.
  • The object falling motion has both Smooth Start and Smooth Stop which ruins the purpose of a falling object. Normally, the object has a smooth beginning of the falling speed and the speed never drops until the object crash-lands on something which stops the speed abruptly.
  • The way the instruments are played isn't that great and this is the same flaw the original versions have.
This is not how you port a 2000s game to a modern console. The other Naomi games are ported better to modern platforms with better graphics, rearranged soundtracks and different sound effects. However, not all games are modernized like that. Certain games have enhanced graphics, some have different sound effects and some have rearranged soundtrack. This one has enhanced effects like other Naomi games ported to modern consoles but other things in it are ruined for some reason.
Some of the Dreamcast/Naomi games are ported to modern platforms without any enhancements whatsoever although some of them actually have true widescreen support. Other problems for other games take place in other articles.
Then, about Strikers 1945 II on Switch, there's probably not much to say although I might have played the mobile version of it. The mobile version has some backgrounds missing in some stages but the conversion is still accurate nonetheless.