Unfortunately, the same can't be said of the game's background stages or special effects. Capcom vs. SNK for the Dreamcast had several different background stages, and while none of these stages were particularly interesting--most of them were set in nondescript city or outdoor areas--they were detailed, animated 3D backgrounds. The PlayStation game's backgrounds have far fewer frames of animation, and though the port has every last one of the original game's background stages, they all tend to look fuzzier and less detailed. Some stages also suffer from some animation slowdown in some of the busier levels, like the "exploded tanker truck" level. Most of the original Capcom vs. SNK's special effects made use of colored lighting, and some of them, like certain projectile attacks, look decent in the PlayStation version, but other effects, especially the flames from fire-based attacks, look ugly and pixelated. This is especially apparent in the game's intro sequence, which suffers from both animation cuts and unattractive special effects.
The game's sound is actually pretty good. The PlayStation port has all the different character voice samples from the original game, and even though they tend to sound a bit tinny, they don't suffer from the odd sound bug in the Dreamcast version that sometimes caused voice samples to be muffled. The PlayStation game also has all the music from the original game, most of which is rather generic techno that isn't all that interesting, especially if you've all ready heard it in previous versions of the game. Unfortunately, as you'd expect from a PlayStation game, the game pauses to load between every match, so you won't hear any continuous music tracks. Capcom vs. SNK Pro for the PlayStation has between-round load times of around five seconds, and it tends to load a bit longer between fights. Thankfully, the game has a handy option that lets you press start at the end of a fight to immediately begin the next fight with your team in the same order.
The game looks surprisingly decent, all things considered.
Capcom vs. SNK Pro for the PlayStation obviously doesn't have the record-a-playback option or network options of the original Dreamcast game, so it attempts to compensate in terms of replay value with a new "price mode." Price mode is basically the character-buy system from the very first Capcom vs. SNK game--beat the arcade mode, and you'll earn points to unlock alternate versions of characters, as well as the game's two not-so-secret characters, Morrigan and Nakoruru. Otherwise, the game has regular arcade mode, a practice mode, and pair attack mode, which lets you play through a set of computer rounds as any two characters, including two of the same character. Unfortunately, choosing the same character doesn't shorten the load times at all--a full-on survival mode or continuous same-character match mode with shorter load times would definitely have been an improvement.
Capcom vs. SNK Pro for the PlayStation is about as good a port as it could be, all things considered. However, there are a lot of things to consider: The game is on the aged PlayStation hardware, it has some pretty substantial load times, it doesn't play very well with the standard Dual Shock controller, and, thanks to its lower graphical resolution, it tends to have less-detailed backgrounds and ugly special effects. It's also a port of a game that came out two years ago and has since been totally eclipsed by its sequel, Capcom vs. SNK 2. But all this seems academic, because if you're at all serious about 2D fighting games, you probably left Capcom vs. SNK Pro behind some years ago and have some home version of the much-better sequel already.
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Capcom vs. SNK Pro (PlayStation):
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