Support NeoGAF

[Gp1]

Dreamcast 0.9, which would translate to a 0.6 PS2.

Its way above the PS1 to even compare these two. Both on spec and features.

The Dreamcast ports on PSP were very good. Not picture perfect, but very competent.

 

[diffusionx]

So was Coded Arms. I know Syphon Filter got a lot of praise at the time, but I found it nigh-unplayable.

PSP has had kind of a weird arc for me. I thought it was super cool when it came out, then lost interest due to the horrible controls (that d-pad on the 1000 model was even worse than the nub) and the deluge of shitty, downgraded versions of PS2 games. But in like 2011, I rediscovered it thanks to all the random JRPGs and SRPGs the system eventually got over its life. These days, I think it's still a worthy system if you're into those sorts of niche genres, because it went hard with the RPGs, and most of them were never ported.

I need to get around to hooking it up to the Retrotink 4K so I can finally kick back and play the games on the TV, and have them actually look good.

I beat the SF games on PSP during the coof, it was fine. They are extremely good action games. People being so over dramatic.

 

[LRKD]

questioning if anyone who says below Dreamcast, has ever even seen a dreamcast, much less played one.

 

[Trilobit]

It was sexy

BUT HOLY SHIT that nub was truly the stuff of nightmares.

Never ONCE got used to it. Worst representation of an analog stick I have ever seen

I would easily have taken it over no nub on the DS. I would have bought and played SM64 to my heart's content if it had 360° control and variable speed. I still can't believe Nintendo cheaped out like that when they finally released a 3D handheld. The natural progression to 3DS should have been two nubs from the get-go.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Dreamcast 0.9, which would translate to a 0.6 PS2.

Its way above the PS1 to even compare these two. Both on spec and features.

The Dreamcast ports on PSP were very good. Not picture perfect, but very competent.

What were the good ones, out of curiosity? I think the only one I played was the Power Stone collection, which was abysmal. Halved framerate and it just didn't look nearly as good. That was the game that made me realize what the PSP really was (or wasn't, I guess) capable of.

 

[Hudo]

This thread was specifically where the hardware ranks power-wise. PSP was just behind PS2. Vita just behind PS3. Both were really impressive hardware for their times.

And Vita had some great games. Most just weren't coming from Sony.

And it was specifically about PSP. I just mentioned the Vita for good measure, and because I am still pissed at how Sony just threw it in the garbage with their inability to properly support it. We're seeing the same thing again with PSVR2.
Yeah, Vita had a handful of great games. Lots of potential. And Sony just dropped the ball in a major way.

 

[Redneckerz]

I suppose the 3DS was the first handheld that could best it? Unless some PC gaming handheld released back then I am unaware of

Its the Wibrain B1, a UMPC that looks a lot like a gaming handheld. Also had PC components, so it could run Quake 3 on the go.

 

[kremiso]

PS2 lite. It actually looked better than ps2. Games had proper wide screen and weren't fuzzy even if they had lower resolution (must of been the screen).

really, in a good bunch of titles comparison i'm experiencing this

 

[MrA]

far above the DC I would say

Then why do ports from the dreamcast have such cut back lighting framerate, geometry and textures? All while running at on 40% of the resolution?

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Then why do ports from the dreamcast have such cut back lighting framerate, geometry and textures? All while running at on 40% of the resolution?

for handheld reasons , for port reasons
Sega did it the easiest way without having to rewrite the entire engine,
the Dreamcast also has a PSP game (4x4 Jam) although it is in 480p the game suffered small cuts, with such cuts the PSP itself could render at 480p.
remember the psp needs to save battery that's why there are several profiles 111mhz, 222mhz, 333mhz maybe Sega used the 111mhz one.

Native PSP games, even at 272p, should serve as an indication to you that the PSP is more powerful, rather than using simpler games that, for some reason outside the console, don't run well.

 

[cireza]

far above the DC I would say

You might have forgotten that Dreamcast pushes 640x480 pixels. Dreamcast is much more powerful.

 

[Gp1]

What were the good ones, out of curiosity? I think the only one I played was the Power Stone collection, which was abysmal. Halved framerate and it just didn't look nearly as good. That was the game that made me realize what the PSP really was (or wasn't, I guess) capable of.

I Was thinking on Crazy Taxi. Every review said there were compromises, but I'm certain that I run the game from the memory stick at 333mhz so my mileage may varies.

Power stone collectio was more a case of bad port than anything else imho.

Anyway
Soul Calibur vs Broken Destiny?
DOA / VF3tb vs Tekken Dark resurrection?
Sega GT / 355 vs Gran Turismo/ Burnout / Ridge race?
Blue stinger vs Silent hill shattered memories

 

[PeteBull]

PSP is stronger from dreamcast, which by proxy tells us its quite close to ps2, back then gap between each console gen was bigger than the gap we will get from ps4 to ps6, that is how hardware improvements slowed down.
And yeh, that handheld had plenty of bad/ugly ports, doesnt mean best games on it werent far above dreamcast tho.

 

[Fafalada]

I Was thinking on Crazy Taxi.

The problem with ports is that they're all over the place.
CT collection on PSP was 30fps (with some extra content) - but outside of that it was an exact port.

On the flipside - PSP Outrun C2C actually DID run 60fps (90% of the time), and that was graphically a significantly more complex title than CT, and a port from XBox to boot.

And then we also had a plethora of XB360 ports that on PSP all mostly retained the full experience of HD counterparts (Lego games, DOAX etc), despite scaling from 512MB down to 20.
TLDR - just looking at 1-2 ports can be completely misleading about what the system actually did 'in practice' - let alone on paper - which is a whole other story - these handheld porting efforts were very short staffed and under funded as a rule since the sales potential didn't justify anything more.

Blue stinger vs Silent hill shattered memories

SH games on PSP were also a bit of a small miracle. Tech-wise SH:0 actually exceeded PS2 Konami's efforts in some ways (it did get a competent PS2 conversion afterwards though), amusingly being a 60fps game at points (on Vita, fully so with the faster CPU in BC).

Then why do ports from the dreamcast have such cut back lighting framerate, geometry and textures? All while running at on 40% of the resolution?

Resolution and content scaling was mostly a function of the display/dimensions. We were still in the era where consoles had no competent AA solutions available, so taking 10-20k poly models to that tiny screen just looked awful. And also memory limitations (for a long time - PSP only gave 20MB usable memory to games, which added reasons to cut down asset resolution).

Performance is a different story - ports are driven by limited budget first, everything else second. So if 30fps is all you can do in 3 months you get to ship the average one, 30 fps is all you do. But part of the problem was that despite 'on-paper' looking like any other console of similar specs, the memory performance was a massive drawback. So you could treat it like a mini PS2/DC but it would not perform like one without special care - meaning most ports also didn't.

To give another analogy - PSVita eventually received PS2 collection ports of Jak, God Of War Sly Cooper etc. Except for Sly - every single one of them ran between 2-3x slower than PS2 original version (3x is not a typo - Jak 1 actually runs between 15-20fps on Vita, and that remains true even if you overclock the system).
Now clearly - this wasn't a case of 'PSVita was so much weaker than the PS2' - but it had a lot in common with what I said about ports above.

 

[lakitu1982]

far above the DC I would say

you smokin' crack?