Capcom Arcade Stadium releasing February 2021

Played some more over lunch, unfortunately the framerate hitches don’t seem to be any less prevalent if you choose to only display the game’s zoomed in view without the surrounding arcade. Not ideal.

The screen filters could have done a lot more work really, so many of them have distracting pixel crawl when the screen scrolls, and the scanlines are more distracting than image-enhancing.

Input lag seems to be inconsistent across the games and playing modes.

So docked mode not only makes it a less stable 60fps with more hitching but there’s more latency too…not great.

It’s on RE Engine and the rendering pipeline seems to be pretty expensive with what looks like temporal antialiasing smoothing out the image in handheld mode, probably too ambitious for what it’s trying to be.

There really needs to be an option to play the games in isolation from the 3D arcade if they can’t get them running perfectly, but I hope they do because the surrounding presentation of the games is what makes this collection stand out.

Does anyone know if the scanlines and other filters look better when docked and at, presumably, higher resolution? Unfortunately my Switch dock isn’t out right now so I can’t test that myself. But if it does look significantly better in 1080p I might just go for the PC version when that lands and play it at 1440p.

So is this just a re-porting of the thing they put out on PS3 with some new games included and some front end cosmetic updates?

@Glowsquid Great, detailed write up!

I downloaded it late last night, of course it comes with 1943 which is free but I also downloaded GnG which is free until later this month. Really impressed with it so far despite some of the issues pointed out earlier (maybe someone can politely tweet at Capcom?). I mainly played 1943 as I’m not huge on GnG. I played both on TV with some of the cabinet effects and in TATE in tabletop mode on my Hori stand and really enjoyed it, looks and plays great for the most part. I don’t know if I’m going to get the fighter set but will definitely be getting all the other packs tonight when I have more time, can’t wait for 19XX and Progear (even though I have a CPS2 for the latter, will just be a nice, convenient way to access it any time) not to mention other classics like Varth, Strider, and Mega Twins.

Turns out you can rotate the camera with the right stick which is really cool. If you look down at the controls you can see them being operated in real time while playing the games.

But it’s also a good test for framerate if you constantly move the camera around while playing something. It’s the game’s rendering not holding 60fps rather than the emulation stuttering. Or maybe the emulation’s demands on the CPU are causing the arcade’s framerate overall to fall from 60fps since it seems to happen intermittently.

As expected these days there’s definitely some audio latency in the emulation, which has been a thing in all recent M2 stuff for some reason). M2’s logo appears at the end of the credits but I’m not sure what the extent of their involvement is.

2 Likes

Well, I try not to be too picky and really wanted to support this but after seeing more detailed impressions and performance tests being posted online of input lag and other issues in various titles things look problematic enough that I’ve changed my mind for now and am going to wait and see if any patches are released before moving on to any of the paid packs. There’s zero excuse for this when Hamster’s ACA titles run smoothly and intense shooters like M2’s ESPRade port on both Switch and PS4 has shown input lag doesn’t need to be a serious problem even in older bullet hell arcade games when handled properly (as pointed out in that tweet above testing lag on Giga Wing).

And of course that the games run smoothly and lag free on Switch in other emulators.

1 Like

Been playing an hour or so a day since release, and I can confirm that everything runs worse while docked, it just can’t hold 60fps as consistently and you get those little hiccups every so often on almost every single game. The front end where you move up and down the arcade is almost locked to 60fps in handheld mode, whereas it can’t reach 60 in docked.

In both play modes I can also confirm that turning off the arcade screen border entirely will improve performance considerably, in handheld mode games like Daimakaimura and Strider ran almost flawlessly instead of stuttering often, but in docked mode they will still stutter fairly often…

It’s still not really ideal given the variability between games and play styles, but if you were foolish enough like I was to buy the full set before trying the game there’s still some fun to be had.

The scanlines effect isn’t improved with higher resolution. It’s a very basic grey-ish line that interrupts either every few lines if you’re zoomed out, or each line if you’re zoomed in. It doesn’t help that it doesn’t map to the horizontal lines properly either.

Edit: Forgot to mention, the variable input latency between games is another issue, Cave’s two shmups feel under the thumb like the Zerodiv Psikyo ports, so probably at least 6 or 7 frames of latency. The controls start to let you down when you’re weaving in and out of heavy waves of bullets.

A player in Japan sent feedback regarding input lag in Progear and apparently they got a response from Capcom saying they’re looking into it:

Game just updated about a hour ago. Anybody noticed improvements?

Didn’t notice any difference in the way my usual rotation of games play, for what it’s worth.

I’m still playing this, kind of shocked by how addictive and dynamic something like Vulgus comes across despite it being Capcom’s first ever game. While it’s not as clever as Zanac it has a similar frantic battles as that game.

Had some fun with Section Z - but it gets stupidly difficult after the first main boss.

The review of Shmup Junkie convinced me to buy all the packs. It seems the input lag is actually decent for most games, with only a few exceptions.

I’ve been browsing and playing most games in very short bursts the last few days. I’m mostly here for the shmups in packs 2 and 3. I really enjoyed 1941, 19xx, Varth and of course Pro Gear.

Let’s hope there will be more packs in the future and some of the input lag and emulation issues will be fixed.

The other versions have been released as of yesterday and the Switch got patched alongside them and You Know What, it’s much better now. No more ugly frameskips, it feels like, acceptable. Some claim the input lag has been reduced in the worst offenders but while I was able to double my giga wing score, I can’t speak scientifically.

1 Like

The Switch version received a patch too and it’s significantly better where there were issues before. I played a round of Progear and followed the background with my eyes and didn’t see any stuttering, likewise with Gigawing.

The biggest addition for me is in the display options - you can now choose between a “3D” or “2D” preset with 2D seemingly locking away the 3D stuff properly now. Though on PC there’s an annoying bug where upon returning to the arcade after playing in 2D mode, the game locks itself to 30fps. Weird.

The scanlines filter (type G) has also been noticeably improved with colour blending and filtering when before it was just ugly line separation.

I bought the PC version yesterday before trying the new Switch patch, honestly I can’t feel any improvements to input lag in games where it is noticeable when going between both versions, and that’s with V-sync switched off on PC and resolution turned down to maximise performance. But the stuttering in 3D mode is of course entirely eliminated.

What I found most interesting is how the Switch version’s settings align with the “Medium” preset on the PC, which implies there was definitely room to improve 3D arcade performance on Switch.

2 Likes

I went back to play more of this in handheld mode and turned the 3D view back on for the first time since the patch landed (chose the ‘super’ preset, then Filter G with the scanlines).

Looks like all the hitching is completely gone in 3D mode as well. Played Ghosts and Goblins, then Progear, and didn’t notice any hitching whatsoever.

1 Like

All titles can now be purchased individually for $1.99 each. Glad I procrastinated on getting the bundles, now I can get all the games I want without any filler. As someone who owns a Progear CPS2, being able to get that game for the price of a bottle of soda or a value menu item is an incredible bargain.

5 Likes

Amazing. Now I can finally play Progear on a console

1 Like

Ah nice! Thanks for letting us know. I’ll check that out. Can’t beat two bucks.

1 Like