The "Pro" version of CvS adds light-hearted characters Joe Higashi (SNK) and Dan Hibiki (Capcom), tweeks a lot of little details about the fighting system and balance, and has everything unlocked from the start.
Characters start with eight color sets, and I *think* you can add two more (at a time--but you can save multiples out to separate files if you want?) via the Color Edit Mode.
Which palette a character appears in depends on which of the four Dreamcast face buttons (not what you may have remapped them to in the game's Option Mode - Button Config. ; P) or combination thereof you press when selecting them from the character select screen:
- pressing a single face button gets you one of four colors - four more colors from simple adjacent button pairs: X+Y (default punches), A+B (default kicks), X+A (default lights), Y+B (default heavies) - two more(?) cross-button-pairs for any saved color edits ("Color1" and/or "Color2" will appear around character to indicate saved edit color presence?): X+B, A+Y
The PS1 version (see entry 1353) seems to be significantly easier than this Dreamcast version: in the PS1 version, I could get to the boss regularly on the highest difficulty setting (8 of 8); on the DC so far, on difficulty 4 of 8 (2 was the default), I get to the boss just once in a while.
You get the eight default colors by: one for each of the four Dreamcast face buttons (X,Y,A,B), then one for each combination of adjacent buttons (XY, YB, AB, XA).
The AI couldn't seem to block Morrigan's fireballs for some reason! Didn't block many of her standing kicks, either. I didn't even have to bring Raiden in until the second stage of the boss, sheesh!
Reminder to myself, on my HRAP V PS4 stick, connected to the DC with a Brook Super Converter, my buttons are (Oh I think I had AB and XY swapped in my understanding during the video, it didn't really matter though):
A viewer finally pointed out to me that the boss you face is based on your team's first character: SNK character faces Capcom boss (Boxer & Dictator), and vice versa (Geese).
I'm terrible with supers and I really like Shinkiro's (SNK artist at the time--went to Capcom later, after SNK went bankrupt; in CvS, in Capcom groove you get the Capcom artist's version of your team's character portraits, and Shinkiro's versions in SNK Groove), so I thought I'd just try going with SNK Groove. So far so good! : D Also, I hadn't realized it before, but a) in SNK Groove it seems you can do a super with maybe half a meter or so, and b) the SNK Groove meter does seem to charge itself *a little* as you take damage or something in a match--much slower than manual charging, though (but I've always refused to do SNK's manual charging, so nyah =p).
The AI simply cannot see Morrigan's fireballs; it stands there and lets them hit it, or even walks right into them. Doesn't seem to have a problem seeing other fireballs (and interesting that blocking is apparently a last resort--it prefers to snuff them out or dodge them).
Playing the team of EX Ryo, EX Yuri, and Blanka through Arcade Mode of Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro on Dreamcast, at 4 of 8 difficulty:
0:00 - start 0:50 - Option Mode 1:30 - Arcade Mode 2:43 - vs Mai, Chun-Li 4:41 - vs Cammy, Dhalsim, Vice, Benimaru 7:10 - vs King, Yamazaki 10:25 - vs Ken, Ryu 13:05 - vs Dan, Yuri, Ryo 16:32 - vs boss (attempt 1) 19:58 - vs boss (attempt 2) 22:51 - ending 24:27 - credits 24:50 - wrap-up & what's next!
Notes:
10'33 - Ryo & Ken wore the same dress to the dance :P 14'15 - Yuri vs Ryo "Big Brother" special intro
Blanka is too strong. : o (Also my supposedly random team generating script has been choosing him an awful lot lately. : P) He pretty much saved my buns nearly single-handed a couple times there. Nobody even so much as blocked his "Blanka Ball" charge attack--although Dictator jumped over it a few times---but other than that he just got smacked in the face by it over and over until he died.
Afterwards, I was thinking maybe the AI had a blind spot to that attack, like they do to Morrigan's fireball, and thought I should try testing it...but then, I remembered Blanka is just way too strong anyhow (and for real, someone at Capcom--looking at you, Yoshinori Ono :P--must have loved him, because he was obviously too strong--and while a supposed ratio 1 (lowest) character, at that!--even in this revised version of the game, and then too strong AGAIN in CvS2!!), so I'm not going to play the green beast anymore in these games.
EX Yuri's fireball definitely took Boxer down pretty easily, but that's his historical weakness so not surprising I suppose; if I'd been smart I'd have put her on point for that battle.
EX Vice rules, but I didn't figure that out until after the play-through. : P I like her way more than regular Vice! EX Vice can pop people in the air with her long-range qcb+P shoulder rush, then snatch them out of the air and smash them into the ground with her uppercut+K, whereas regular Vice has to do her grab and toss command grab (uh maybe the hcb,f+P one?), then an uppercut+K (I think) leaping grab, which I still have nightmares about trying to get the timing of in '98. : P So I'm just gonna stick to EX Vice! : D
I realized that in Pair Match mode you can take a character PLUS their EX version. But wait, can you just plain take two of the exact same character, like you can in MvC2 (where you can take three!)? How about in the 2-on-2 mode in CvS2? Man I gotta try this stuff now.
These characters don't have EX (hold Start button to toggle) versions: Ryu, Evil Ryu, Iori, Orochi Iori, Akuma, Joe, Dan, Morrigan, Nakoruru.
I've updated my CvS Pro team builder script ( https://smbhax.com/cgi-bin/teams/pro.pl ) to swap the first Capcom character, if any, to the head of the team, so I'll be able to fight the SNK boss, Geese, more often, instead of the annoying Capcom bosses, Boxer and Dictator. : P
Normally you face the boss of the opposite company of your lead-off character, but I noticed in this episode a ways back that my team with Capcom character EX Cammy as the first character faced the Capcom boss, Dictator:
I tried to reproduce that and couldn't: it kept giving me the SNK boss, Geese, as would otherwise have been expected. So maybe there's just a small chance you'll fight the other boss once in a while, to keep you on your toes. ; )
Playing through Arcade Mode with the team of Nakoruru and EX Ryo, Nakoruru seemed to be cutting through the 4/8 level AI awfully easily...
While playing through I noticed that Nakoruru's b,db,d+P attack ("Annu Mutsube"/"Blade of Victory," the internet tells me) where she slides low across the ground with her knife thrust forward was not being blocked by the AI--it just hit them every time, unless they moved out of the way or managed to hit me first.
This makes her a pretty broken character against the AI, even on the highest difficulty, because you can just hit them with that move repeatedly, especially on their wake-up.
I ran into a problem similar to this before with Morrigan's fireball, which the AI simply can't see, and will just walk right into. I didn't notice the AI just walking into Nakoruru's move, but that could just be because it moves so quickly.
Curiously, Morrigan and Nakoruru are the two ratio two characters with no alternate or EX versions. Coincidence? I thought perhaps it could have been because they were added late or something, so there wasn't enough time to give them EX versions or test them much, but it seems unlikely that would have gone unaddressed in Pro. Or maybe not, I dunno. The only other reason I can think of is that maybe Capcom just couldn't come up with an earlier or alternate version of them with a sufficiently compelling move set to make into an EX version.
- My PS4 face buttons do pretty much correspond to DC face buttons for color selection combinations - Ryo has cool colors - Regular and EX character versions share the same colors
The teams you face in the game are pre-determined, from at least five different, randomly selected routes of enemies in Arcade Mode; the teams are also pre-determined in Pair Match Mode--out of about eight starts there I faced the team of Claw & Vice in the first round about four times.
I realized it's the Capcom or SNK character ratio of your team that determines the (opposite) boss you face! AHA!
I'd been told which boss you face was determined by the company affiliation of the first character on the team: you would face the opposite team's boss. But that clearly hasn't been been the case, especially in my recent playthroughs. I tried modifying the theory by positing that maybe EX team leaders faced the SAME company's boss, but that wasn't panning out, either.
So I chucked that theory. In search of a new one, I looked through all but my earliest CvSP videos--I didn't write clear notes on team composition in the first ones--and found an infallible pattern to which boss appears!
Which boss I've faced has corresponded to the ratio composition of my teams: - All-Capcom teams have always faced the SNK boss (Geese) - All-SNK teams have always faced the Capcom bosses (Boxer & Dictator) - Mixed Capcom-SNK teams have faced either boss - Which boss a mixed team faces appears to be weighed toward the opposite of their company ratio: my 3:1 company ratio teams have in all but one case faced the boss who is the opposite company of the 3 ratio points in the team
That formula has fit all of my playthroughs that I checked!
~~~~~~~~
The single 3:1 company team who did NOT face the company opposite the 3 ratio points on the team was the team of EX Cammy, EX Yuri, and EX Terry: in episode 467, that 3 SNK ratio points and 1 Capcom ratio point team faced the Capcom bosses, which under this theory had only a 25% chance of occurring; when I tried them again, in episode 568, they faced Geese, the theoretical 75% chance.
Actually, if it was a 75% chance for ratio 3:1 teams, I would have had a few more facing the opposite ratio of the 1 company side... But I'd need to run these teams like hundreds of times each or something to have a decent statistical examination of these chances...so that'll be a while.
So for now that's my new theory, and I don't have to bother trying to shuffle the character order around as I was doing under the old, incorrect theory that the boss was based only on the affiliation of the first character on the team. So I won't overall be pushing a Capcom character to the front whenever possible anymore, it'll just be random order, and we'll get to see a better balance of SNK/Capcom character play.
Although it'll be weighed slightly toward SNK character play, and I AM still kind of stuck getting Dictator a little more often than Geese, apparently, due to who I'm playing, or, you could say, NOT playing: I've dropped Claw (3 Capcom ratios), Dictator (3C), Dhalsim (1C), Blanka (1C), Morrigan (2C), and Nakoruru (2S)--so my overall company points are down 8 more on the Capcom side, meaning the balance of the remaining characters probably--if the overall starting ratio of the game's characters isn't too far off (I know there's one more ratio 4 C character than ratio 4 S characters, at least, so that's 4 points back toward the Capcom side)--has more SNK points, which means my teams will tend slightly toward facing Boxer and Dictator. Oh well!
(I could weight my team building script's random character selection to favor picking Capcom characters slightly, to try to compensate, but I'd rather just stick with straight random rolls as far as character is concerned: my interest is more in wide variety in individuals I'm playing than in their affiliation or who they face in the end...I think. = o)
((Although if that's really the case, shouldn't I raise the difficulty, and start over rather than continuing, with episode-death vs the boss--like I do in KOF 2000? Ummm.... I'm not sure. I mean, probably...but I'm still scared to try it! Also, it's more convenient on the MVS, where I can turn off Continues rather than having to wait/skip through the countdowns. And I like beating Geese! And the end credits music is the best!! ... I'll probably have to raise the difficulty from 4 to like at least 6 eventually though.))
So, like Morrigan and Nakoruru's ranged attacks, Terry's Burn Knuckle--both light and heavy--does not get blocked by the CvSPro AI--except maybe Raiden? = o (35:31)
43:03 Terry to Geese: "Geeeeeese!"
Regarding the replacement old-style cable for my Behar Bros "Kuro" VGA box I was rocking on the Dreamcast here, I actually ordered that on Feb 13th, not the 14th--and it got here April 4th. ^_^ The return address is an Istanbul apartment.
GameFAQs did NOT have info about the Goro cameo (I'm submitting it), did find a wiki mention of it though: https://snk.fandom.com/wiki/Goro_Daimon#Games . It works in Practice and Versus modes when you have Benimaru vs Kyo (but NOT Kyo vs Benimaru).
(On a mostly unrelated note, in testing the cameo afterwards I also found that you can team a character with their own EX version in Pair Match mode. ; )
As is typical of this game, Benimaru's special move inputs are rearranged from what I'm used to in KOF 2000 (entry 1358): that ground-spin kick is on K instead of P, and he doesn't have the lighting flip kick uppercut that's so effective in 2000. His EX version does have an interesting lighting command grab, though, both as a special and a super.
Took me a try to remember it was Rugal doing roll, THEN HK to open up Dictator. His dash throw (qcb+P?), sweep if blocked was what finally worked well on Boxer.
Sagat was a problem--I had trouble with Rugal in general against speedy opponents--Yuri and Joe for instance--and Sagat's reaction speed is ridiculous!
