Mortal Kombat Arcade Collection Arriving Summer 2011

Excellent news! So the compilation really exists. Too bad it won't be HD. I find its release premature though, we just got our hands on MK 9...
 
If they re-released those games in HD, it would just make the game sloppy, sluggish, and more than likely choppy. I say just give us an arcade perfect-port of each version, I'd rather it be on a disc, but who cares. It's 10 bucks, I'm sure you all have a coin jar in your room that you don't plan on using with at least 10 bucks in there.
 
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That's awesome news! I just hope the ratings crap in Australia doesn't crush this like it attempted to with MK 2011.
 
Those screenshots on facebook look fuzzy low rez. I dont understand the originals looked crisp and sharp in the arcade. So it looks like they are not even up scaling the software and letting the hardware do it? I dont care that its not a remake in hd but how about upscaling it so it looks like it did in the arcade at least. Native 1080p with widescreen support would be preferred
 
first of all...this is very good news! too bad they couldn't pull off the HD thing, I had a feeling they would run into some difficulties, but I hope someday they will make it or a new game (Cargo Death looks nice btw)will pull this concept off. As for now Im just glad we are getting this.

I do hope for some things;

- a disc release. This is a collectors item..things like this should be a physical product. Atleast I prefer it that way. Probaly not going to happen, because there is no mention of this.

- "new collection will feature online play, leaderboards ..... "
I can't speak for UMK3 on XBLA, but MK2 on PSN also had online play, etc. But we want a damn good netcode and a online system that isn't such a drag and as lousy as MK2 on the PSN. I hope they gave this feature all the deserved attention. I really like the online and options of SSF2T HD.

- The character select pics look nice, I hope it will look just as good on a wide screen.
 
Awesome news! I would rather have it in HD, but if there were problems in the HD transformation, then I understand them not doing it.

The price is so wonderful it's a shock. Great price for all 3 games with online playing and trophies.

I do have 2 major concerns:

1. I need a disc release! I don't like the idea of dlc-only releases, as it ruins making games 'future-proof'. Who knows if the next gen of systems' networks will be compatible with this gen, or if the DLC content will always be there to download (especially if your systems dies). I would gladly pay $20 for a disc release. Please have both options NRS!

2. Online lag. From what I hear, (can't play online atm on ps3) MK9 online kind of sucks. Maybe it will get better soon once they fix it up, but who knows. I think they are using Gamespy, right? WB and NRS better use something different for this game, or the online part of this game (a huge part) is worthless.

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Edit- LOL. My 2 concerns are the same as the post above me.
 
The packets for the old games should be a lot smaller so lag shouldn't be an issue. The lag on MAME isn't nearly as bad as MK9, so I'm sure NRS could easily make it work as well or better than MAME.
 
hydro5135 said:
Those screenshots on facebook look fuzzy low rez. I dont understand the originals looked crisp and sharp in the arcade. So it looks like they are not even up scaling the software and letting the hardware do it? I dont care that its not a remake in hd but how about upscaling it so it looks like it did in the arcade at least. Native 1080p with widescreen support would be preferred
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The arcade used RGB monitors that pretty much matched the low resolution of the original game.. those typically ran at 512x384 and the way the monitor worked combined with that gave the illusion of more detail when it was actually pretty blurry. The best thing they can do is give a simulated scanlines\overlay of different monitor patterns option when scaling it to full screen. MAME provides this but most official arcade collections don't seem to. Either way unless they redo all the graphics they can't do true HD or 1080p without scaling the game up.

Widescreen support seems like it should be doable but if they are just emulating rather than porting it the original arcade systems didn't support widescreen so if they emulated it they can't do that.
 
So I preordered the mk1 fightstick the day it leaked. Does that come with a download code for the game? And now I gotta wait for it to ship? I think I paid for overnight anyway. And is it still July 1st.
 
I'm just happy this is coming to XBLA. The HD Kollection apparently wasn't, and that made me a sad panda.
 
smoke.tetsu said:
The arcade used RGB monitors that pretty much matched the low resolution of the original game.. those typically ran at 512x384 and the way the monitor worked combined with that gave the illusion of more detail when it was actually pretty blurry. The best thing they can do is give a simulated scanlines\overlay of different monitor patterns option when scaling it to full screen. MAME provides this but most official arcade collections don't seem to. Either way unless they redo all the graphics they can't do true HD or 1080p without scaling the game up.

Widescreen support seems like it should be doable but if they are just emulating rather than porting it the original arcade systems didn't support widescreen so if they emulated it they can't do that.
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heres the thing you can take a rom on you pc and emulate pixle for pixle at 1080p and it looks as it did on your crt tv clarity/sharpness. Or you can take you snes and hook it up to you 1080p tv and it will look like blurry crap. I played mk1,mk2 when they first came out and the scanlines are not as exaggerated as they are in meme.

Here is a great example sonic adventures has been unscaled for the 360 and ps3 it looks exactly as it did on my dreamcast on a sony 27crt clarity/sharpness wise. From screenshots i have of mkac they have implemented a blur filter instead of properly up scaling the software.
 
Not sure if this has been said already, but could you imagine if they went the extra mile and added online 8-Man tournament? Hot damn... but I'm sure it's just wishful thinking.
 
hydro5135 said:
heres the thing you can take a rom on you pc and emulate pixle for pixle at 1080p and it looks as it did on your crt tv clarity/sharpness. Or you can take you snes and hook it up to you 1080p tv and it will look like blurry crap. I played mk1,mk2 when they first came out and the scanlines are not as exaggerated as they are in meme.
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I was just saying it's more of an approximation because on an arcade monitor the game did not stretch or upscale or anything it displayed it a the same resolution it was rendered at (512x384). SD content tends to look better on SD monitors as well.

On a higher resolution monitor you will either get pixelation if you use nearest neighbor sampling (basically no bilnear so pixelated.. or as you say.. pixel for pixel) or more blurry if you are using bilinear\trilinear. Either way it has to be scaled up it just depends on the filter used when scaling it that determines how it looks.

The way you say "pixel for pixel" sounds like you prefer nearest neighbor with all the pixelation it entails but at the arcade the RGB monitors didn't display things that way they had lots of blurring going on but the resolution they ran at combined with at least some level of blurring and a high contrast gave the illusion of detail. This is especially true once those monitors got broken in... many arcade monitors had notorious levels of color bleeding\blurring... although they always had brigher colors than home TVs. Yes, nearest neighbor is sharp but it's too sharp... it wasn't that sharp at the arcade. But if that's what you like fine.

The RGB monitors they used at the arcade made a huge difference that is hard to replicate at home.

The SNES versions are blurry crap no matter what because they lowered the resolution of all the artwork in general. There's just no comparison. If you played the SNES version in emulation and did nearest neighbor like how you seem to prefer with the arcade versions it would look even more chunky\pixelated... or again blurry if you are displaying it on a TV especially a CRT.

With LCD screens using scanlines\or some other overlay on MAME it approximates how it looked on an older monitor closer (but not perfect I admit.. you aren't going to get it looking exactly the same as the arcade unless you built a MAME cabinet with a real RGB monitor) sure some of those settings are more exaggerated but you just need to choose the right one with the right settings that looks right on the kind of screen you have and looks fine to you. sdlmame has some really good png based overlays like scanlines or trinitron or other variations. But again this depends on how your LCD displays things and whether or not it processes the image beyond what is done by the computer\game. CRTs especially non-HD ones tend to have at least some level of scanlines going on whether you paid much attention to them or not.

Also this mostly applies to LCD monitors... CRT monitors more closely approximate what was in the arcade for MK but still not exactly. It depends on your monitor and how much color bleeding it does. But TVs just don't do the same sort of display that the old arcade monitors did with their RGB connections and the way overscanning worked making the character look bigger than they really where, etc.

Here is a great example sonic adventures has been unscaled for the 360 and ps3 it looks exactly as it did on my dreamcast on a sony 27crt clarity/sharpness wise.
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That's not a good example because those games are 3D and work entirely different than the 2D mortal kombat games. It's much easier to upscale those because in 3D resolution is more independent of the game. That's an apples to oranges comparison. All 3D games need to "upscale" is to increase the frame buffer resolution.

From screenshots i have of mkac they have implemented a blur filter instead of properly up scaling the software.
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They are probably just adding bilinear filtering. But on the small pictures of the character select screens it doesn't look all that different to how it's supposed to look... type of monitor it's being displayed on aside.

I too have been playing MK since it first came out btw...
 
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I really hope this comes out in disc format as well and with some extras like behind the scenes footage from back when the games were being made and a MK biography or something would be awesome.
 
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