Hi Jesus, and thank you for granting my request by looking at the Samurai Shodown Anthology.Yeah, I think so too, if only so all the info is in a first message, quick and easy to see. I think the information is more than worth of being pinned, all these things have been stuff people have wanted to do for years.
@Brand Newman Hey, i got a bit of time to look at Samurai Shodown Anthology, but I do not bring good news.
Unlike the Metal Slug Anthology, in which the filter was put by the "Wii" itself, on Samurai Shodown Anthology it seems to be part of the individual games. Or, should I say, it's like the emulators running each game has Bilinear Filter turned on.
When editing the Main.dol I get the menu to look cleaner and sharper, so the change itself works, but the games inside the collection do not. The games are also stored in a different way than other compilation games.
Each title is stored as a AFS file, with a BIN associated, that I suppose has information on how the emulator should run the game. Also, very, very curious too, there are two copies for each game...
For each one, let's say "wii_sam1.afs" there's also a "wii_u_sam1.afs". They are almost the same size, the second one a few kb larger. It has to be a coincidence, because the game released on 2009. Still, weirded me out.
I'm honestly quite lost on what we could do, because I don't think any of what we've learnt would work.
Edit: Looking again, only 1 to 5 seem emulated. But Samurai Shodown 6 does show a difference, and it looks overall better, but you were right, the main characters look blurry (as if they used low quality sprites, or used small sprites and just stretched them with the game engine). Everything looks quite sharp except the characters battling.
I will never understand this choice. I've seen it many times across systems and years but I will never understand why they let these things slip. 6 would look great overall if not for that...
I'm not surprised by the answer, especially concerning Samsho6, which I believe is just using low quality sprites (considering the rest is super sharp)... but that's the weakest game of all anyway, and contrary to 2009, can now be played on better conditions with emulation.
As for the others, the only "pro" this compilation really has nowadays is the use of arranged soundtrack : the Samsho Collection on PC and consoles is much more complete, and has two more games (special and perfect), the latter being exclusive and never released before.
I hope they'll add the soundtrack in the future, considering they already are (in their slightly modified version of "cd music to listen") in the game's files, meaning their absence "ingame" is not copyright related!
As for the Wii version, I extracted the AFS files with AFSPacker, and both "wii" and "wii_u" gave me the exact same files of the same size (not exactly of the same content and CRC though). Here's the Samsho1 list of files, for your information:
We already know the games can't be pure emulation, considering you can switch from original to arranged soundtrack and they replaced some things here and there ("press +", etc.), but the reason why they did duplicated folders is a mystery to me, if anyone has an idea?
Anyway, thanks again for trying, I can't wait to see the next progress, and am looking forward for the modded version of USB Loader to "retry" every one and all of my Wii games with cleaned picture!