Friday, February 26, 2016

A Quick Fix for Mega Man 5's MMLC Performance Issues (3DS)


If you've invested enough time in the 3DS version of Mega Man Legacy Collection, chances are you've noticed some technical hiccups. Mega Man 5 seems to be the worst offender of the lot with frequent frame skipping and slowdown. It can get pretty nasty.

Until a patch becomes available (if at all), there's an easy solution: play Rockman 5. Seriously; for one reason or another, Rockman 5 runs a lot smoother than Mega Man 5. To do this simply head to the Options menu and toggle the games from Mega Man to Rockman. Every game in MMLC is then swapped with its Japanese counterpart. This feature is entirely exclusive to the Nintendo 3DS version.

I can't explain why this is technically possible. Title screens and languages aside, the two games are practically the same... but it works!

20 comments:

  1. Always a bad apple in the bunch, with these emulated collections. Thanks for pointing out a solution!

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  2. But they are nes perfect and preserved 100% to keep that nes feel. :/

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    1. Buggy NES feel is more like it. If you ever wanted to play one, now's your chance.

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    2. I feel totally vindicated in arguing that you're better off getting Anniversary Collection if you have the means to play it. :D

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    3. that's just prove NES is a beast of a machine that silly 3DS can't handle the greatness of an 8 bit game that was made almost 25 years ago even though it works just fine if you bought it through the virtual console.

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    4. @whitetrashshayno Not sure if your comment is sarcasm are not, but what I experienced with Mega Man 5 is not how it performs on the NES. The games are ported very well and I assume these hindrances aren't a byproduct of the porting process itself. Still, the hiccups are apparent. I don't have the console version (yet), but I'm willing to bet it runs near-flawlessly.

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    5. @Sckarton
      To be fair, it's not running either the source code nor is it running just a ROM in an emulator. It's running the music and level layouts from the ROMs, but uses the Eclipse Engine for physics. That said, it's considerably more taxing on the hardware than just an emulator or direct software.

      Incidentally... I wonder how well the game runs on the "Old" 3DS. 'cause I'm assuming everyone having issues is running it on the New 3DS.

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    6. @Joseph Collins I played the legacy collection's mega man 5 on a old 3ds and did a comparison to rock man 5 and I can confirm that mega man 5 does have frame rate issues on the old 3ds. The stage that was most noticeable for me (well at least from the stages I have played) was napalm mans stage. There is major slowdown in that stage when playing mega man 5 but rock man 5 does not have the same slowdown issue.

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    7. Appreciated, Anonymous (February 28, 2016 at 11:07 AM)! Thank you very much!

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  3. why the hell doesn't the console/pc version have this feature?

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  4. Criterion Collection of games my rear end.

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  5. Did anyone else have an issue with the original Megaman 3 cartridge, where there was a glitch line on the stage select screen between the bottom and middle rows along the right side? I had the same issue with multiple cartridges, but not with emulators.

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    1. its in every version. It didn't show up back in the day because of CRT tvs.

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    2. I remember seeing it on any type of television I used.

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  6. Should've just ported the Complete Works games.

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    1. Seriously. At least it'd be the first time they'd be translated and ported properly. Could have made a PocketStation emulator of some sort....but remove the name I guess.

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    2. False, Anniversary did it in 04

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  7. I'm genuinely intrigued why the Legacy Collection includes the Rockman versions as well. I thought they said in interviews that wouldn't be happening?

    Anyway, this collection is absolute garbage. I cannot believe how pretentious Digital Eclipse were acting about this when their so-called "authentic" emulator only runs these games at worse performance than an actual NES. I'd be a lot less irked about this if they didn't have that attitude. They developed this to preserve NES games for any format? Build your emulator better then.

    I wanted to get this collection because I figured it would be more cost-effective than getting each title off the Virtual Console. Now I'm having second-thoughts.

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  8. Oh good Someone made a post about it. I havent seen many people talk about this neat little feature.

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  9. This workaround may be one of the most bizarre solutions to a problem I have ever heard. Then again, I think I've actually heard weirder. In fact, I've encountered weirder, but only when doing ROM hacking. (Like changing one arbitrary thing in Final Fantasy III/VI somehow corrupts the random encounter table or something.)

    Thanks for the tip though!

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