City Crisis on a PlayStation 3 Doesn't Play Correctly
City Crisis was going to be the next video where I showcased some mediocre games built on RenderWare. But there's a very peculiar problem with this game. Or, actually, it might be better to start with some things to note about this game.
City Crisis is a helicopter rescue game where you fly a helicopter, rescuing people and putting out fires. Developed by Japanese company Syscom Entertainment (and published by them in Japan), this was a relatively early RenderWare title on the PlayStation 2. Much like Surfing H3O, which came out in 2000 and was also built on RenderWare, this game pushes out a 640x224 image - although unlike Surfing H3O, the entirety of the game is rendered at 640x224, rather than the menus being rendered at an interlaced 640x448. This creates some problems with my capture infrastructure, which really doesn't like to deal with 240p outputs.
This game was published outside of Japan by Take-Two Interactive, presumably as a thank you for Syscom's publishing and localization of Smuggler's Run and Midnight Club: Street Racing in Japan.
Now what does this have to do with anything? Well, when you don't wanna force a 480p output on a 240p game on your PS2, you break out your rather convenient CECHA01 PS3, where I don't need to deal with that issue. This is where things get really weird.
Certain audio clips - predominately those in the main menu don't play properly. That's fine, I can live without the really bizarre announcer in the menu. That wasn't a problem for me.
What IS a problem is an issue concerning how this game handles the helicopter's motor sound. It seems like this game has a weird way of clearing that out of memory when it exits the actual game environment that the PS3 just ignores. Why would the PS3 do this? It should handle this in hardware!
Well... it doesn't. Yes, CECHA PlayStation 3s contain the combination EE+GS from the PlayStation 2 - but that's all it contains. It doesn't utilize its memory setup, which I'll get back to later, but more relevantly, it doesn't utilize its sound processing setup. In many games, you'd be hard-pressed to notice the difference. I sure couldn't when dealing with Gran Turismo 4 and the SpongeBob Movie game. For what it's worth, the sound processing here doesn't sound any different here than how it should on the PS2. But it does specific things that the PS3 doesn't execute properly, meaning that the helicopter noises persist - even in the menu and they stack on top of each other throughout multiple runs of gameplay.
I also note that the PS3 doesn't have the PS2's memory setup, meaning that it's just utilizing the PS3's GDDR3 here. It seems that, rather specifically in RenderWare games, that it leads to some memory bandwidth contention concerning alpha transparencies - and predominately lots of it that slows games down more than it would on the PS2. It's a bit weird.
Also, one last fun fact about this game: early copies of the North American version lack the game's title on the spine, so it's just completely black. What I actually suspect happened here is that the text is present, but it's just the same color as the background of the spine, rather than the text never being formatted there. Later copies would print the title of the game in orange text.
But otherwise, I digress. This game actually isn't bad - it's just really strange to play. It's not very expensive, it's not very long and it's honestly a decent game overall. Just be mindful of playing this on a PS3 - it won't go as planned.