sdelfin

I remember reading about this back in the day. I've always liked the idea of demakes, even if they don't always work out well. This was a fascinating concept at the very least, and I'm surprised they were able to get this much out of the GBC in this style.

The start date in December 1995 appears to be wrong. And I thought that was late. I'm seeing that it started in 1994, which makes more sense. This is a very cool discovery. I heard about the extended version of Garfield, and I would definitely be interested in playing that as I like that game.

The action sections control well. They're just a bit simple in terms of the gameplay mechanics. They probably would need more if they were to carry an entire game. Even if it was a bit of an accident, the fact that the game combined action and sim sections helped it to stand out and probably helped to make the game enduring. I didn't play the game in its time, and I didn't enjoy it at first, but I ended up having a great time. The two gameplay styls were combined very well.

I knew there was a difference. Someone pointed it out somewhere, in a comment or message board post. I happened to see it, so I knew about it for quite a while.

Yeah, the trailer is impressive. The art direction, pixel art, and animation(both the gameplay and the opening sequence) are quite good. My least favorite thing in the trailer is that the character portraits move. It looks a little odd and the character art is so strong to not need the motion. But that is a very small thing. I also liked that there was minimal screen shake in the trailer. Just a tiny amount toward the end as an accent which doesn't seem like an issue. This is definitely something to add to the list.

I get why he had the idea. When FPS games were fairly new, I wondered what else could be done in first-person. Of course, it turns out it's very difficult to do non-shooting action in first person. I don't think it would have turned out very well. Not that it matters all that much since Streets of Rage would go dormant for so long anyway.

I never liked that method and decided I would never use it. Just a personal choice. There were some people warning against its use back in the day. Luckily, I haven't been in a position to need it. My Dreamcast and SNES both still look new. But I decided that if they did yellow, and if I wanted to remedy that, then I would paint them. The SNES would look pretty snazzy in black with it's purple switches.

Quite often, I'd come across a great soundtrack on the Genesis and come to learn it was by Hitoshi Sakimoto. He was always one of my favorite composers of that era, once I learned who he was and how often his compositions landed well with me.

Always good when news of more translations comes out. I'm not familiar with this one, but Dimps tended to do good work, so that's a good start, and reviews seems pretty good.

@KingMike I guess that makes the game a timed exclusive, of sorts. I guess, by the time the Super Famicom was a thing, Capcom determined that Ghouls 'n Ghosts had been done enough(Mega Drive, SuperGrafx, X68000) and maybe was past the window they thought was right for a port, so they decided to make a new game instead. Funny how that works out. Surprising to think they didn't do a version for GBA or DS.

In a funny coincidence, I was looking up some GBA stuff a few days ago and learned about the added stuff for GBA Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts for the first time this week, and tried it out last night, as I write this.

If this is the future of gaming, then I might get through my backlog after all.

@The_Nintendo_Pedant "in all fairness I can't keep these titles straight"

I misread it at first and thought the mistake was that it was listed as Ghouls 'n Ghosts, so I can relate that it's hard to keep it straight, or that it's easy to make such a mistake. Good thing for me I went back to double check what it said.

The mistake has been fixed now.

The article may have been updated, but there's still a blunder(for shame.....just kidding). This is the blunder: "it clearly has a Ghouls 'n Goblins sticker on it" and the sticker is not wrong.

There's a Ghouls 'n Ghosts
There's a Ghosts 'n Goblins
But there's no Ghouls 'n Goblins

(edit: and it has been fixed. And there was much rejoicing. Yay.)

@RupeeClock I think your theory may be correct. I dug out my original GBA to test. It looked fine. I didn't notice any issues with the background scrolling on that original screen. I think the characteristics of the screen made it so that 30fps didn't look unusual or wrong on those original models, at least to my eyes. At the time Super Circuit came out, that was the only model GBA. Such a thing would only have become an issue on later models, perhaps just the very late backlit models of the SP and the Micro line. I didn't get a chance to grab my DS to test the game on that, assuming it still works, to see how different it looks there, but it did look just fine on my GBA. As you said, it may have looked better on that screen. But since it was also an early game, perhaps they also wanted to save CPU cycles either to reduce battery draw or to give themselves more to work with for everything else, including audio. It could be a combination of all of those.

Yeah, these voxel mods specifically allow the game to keep its original look to the point where it doesn't look like the mod does much. But that's to the credit of such modders. What it does is make the 3D world more cohesive. As others have said, static items that only had one sprite that always faced the player will be the most obvious things. Everything is now in full 3D and will be visible from different perspectives. It's subtle, but it goes a long way to make it feel like a proper 3D environment.

The trailer doesn't give a good sense of what the mod does, but the youtube channel shows more gameplay, but also videos that show the previously-2D elements now in 3D which gives a better idea of what the mod does. It still retains the look of the original game, but in full 3D, even for insignificant things.

I was listening to the Game Sack review of this when I came here. I'm not sure who else got the system to review, though I just checked and see that My Life in Gaming has a review too, so you know that's going to be quite in depth. It sounds like the machine is overall pretty good with some issues of differing magnitude. From the GameSack review, I saw issues with the Everdrive, including an unexpected workaround, and issues with interlaced games. People who might be interested in this should probably check out a bunch of reviews to see what issues people are running into. With the first batch sold out, it's not like they don't have plenty of time for that before they might be able to buy the thing.

@Deuteros the previous reply by jygsaw sounds about right to me, but I thought it was worth adding a bit to it. In addition to just being less powerful, to be expected since it is a portable machine for which battery life would matter more than the PS1, it also doesn't have the dedicated 3D hardware of those home consoles. In some ways, the GBA is a good bit more powerful than the SNES on paper, but it also doesn't have dedicated audio processing, so the CPU has to handle that as well. Plus, the pixel resolution is lower. That also puts it behind the Neo Geo, but it's somewhere in between the two in terms of sprite capabilities. But the GBA has better graphical effects like scaling and rotation of sprites and backgrounds so it can seem more advanced at certain things. Neo Geo can shrink sprites which effectively means it has sprite scaling, but they have to start with big sprites which was not an issue for the Neo Geo since the carts were so big.

@Andee @Gerald Final Fight is not especially colorful to the point where it's not within the capability of the Genesis. Many games of that period, even arcade games, didn't put a crazy number of colors on screen. For example, Sega's System 16 ports and ports of Capcom's other early CPS1 games don't really have major color issues. The hard part is choosing good colors due to the palette limitations. But the important thing to remember, and this is my main point, is that since Final Fight CD already exists, that may have served as a starting point for experimentation and improvements. And other people already did color enhancements for it years ago as well, providing even better references. Final Fight CD looking somewhat drab simply came down to poor palette choices.

I guess some people can't resist cheats and other helpful things. I know some people dislike arcade games where they can just credit feed. But if a game is good, then I try to play it well and finish it with as few credits as possible, even mastering some games. Same with cheats. I've played some games I've enjoyed more because of cheats. It depends on the game. But I do appreciate this approach from this dev, that it should be up to the player. I had a great time back in the day with a bunch of early first-person shooter games while using cheats, but I always tried to play well, but also god mode didn't help when it came to finding stage exits, so the games were still not always easy.

Is this port "necessary"? No. Is it very cool? Absolutely. It's clear just from reading about this that the developer truly cared about this project and making it the very best it could be. The extra modes pushing the system to its limit, and the inclusion of Maki are excellent touches. It sounds like there's a good bit of optimization here too, as the Sega CD port has its issues with the sprite limits. That one also benefits from extra CPU speed, but also feels a bit slower in terms of combo speed, which I think was done to compensate for fewer enemies on screen. And this version looks to have better color selection than the CD version. It looks like really great work here, especially since the dev had to basically recreate the game based on observation. This is very impressive. Also, cool to see how far the Genesis could be pushed this way. The sequels on the SNES showed that system could also be pushed much father than that first game's early port. Though I assume the Genesis is using the high-resolution mode in this.

@delt75 They did make that controller, the Avenue Pad 6, but it was only in Japan because the PC Engine in Japan did get a version of Street Fighter 2. It would have been necessary for a US version too. The way you worded your comment, I wasn't sure you were aware of it. And I believe there were a couple of others, including one from Hori that people seem to like. Seems like a safe bet they would have had a six-button pad for North America if it was necessary.

I remember him saying the same about Mortal Kombat a few times. At first, I was very sketpical. I did look into it as much as I could. My speculation in the case of MK is that, due to the popularity of Street Fighter 2, they were actively looking for the next big thing in advance and, perhaps, predicted MK's success early in its run, or perhaps at some trade show before it was distributed. That is, of course, if there's some truth to what he is saying. With as popular as MK got, it just didn't make a lot of sense to lock it down to the TG16/PCE due to the user bases of the Genesis and SNES, unless such an agreement involved a ludicrous amount of money. The situation might be similar for Street Fighter 2. There are several possibilities already mentioned above, but once it got super popular in arcades, it just didn't make sense for Capcom to do that kind of a deal with NEC as opposed to Nintendo.

I'll have to try to read the full piece later, but it makes sense with the way power ups are provided by objects you have to jump and hit, and the way sub-weapons are used. From there, Ninja Gaiden did things differently with more frequent sub-weapon changes, perhaps more importance placed on them, and more mobility and speed for the character, though that is then compensated for by faster enemies and respawns. I was just playing the Ninja Gaiden games on the NES a couple of weeks back, so I'm eager to hear more about it from this interview. The second installment has always been my least favorite, and revisiting it recently only confirmed that for me once again.

The comparison is a bit apples and oranges due to the different time periods. Do I believe the PS2 is still likely ahead despite the weird numbers from Sony? Yes I do. Even is the Switch passed the PS2, the overall video game market was smaller back in the PS2 era, so the PS2's overall number would be a larger percentage which is impressive. But as others have pointed out, some people used the PS2 primarily as a DVD player. And the game attach rate for the Switch looks to be much higher, and that's more important from a business standpoint than the record of overall unit sales. It's also impressive in its own way. And also something brought up already is how the Switch not only never had a price drop, but has since been increased. While some of the increase comes due to market conditions, there's still plenty of room for them to drop the price since it's old tech that should be much less expensive to manufacture than it was in 2017. A price drop would likely boost sales momentum of the original Switch.

@DestructoDisk Excellent post on this topic. You don't hear a lot about the pixel limit per line. That realization was very eye opening for me. It's why the SNES overall and per-line sprite limits didn't come across as significantly better, as you alluded to. Those higher numbers do give it some additional flexibility, but that pixel limit holds it back and I think a lot of people overlook that. I was just on another article right before reading your post talking about the SNES's pixel line limit, so it was a bit funny, since I never hear people bring it up, seeing you talk about it, and explaining the issues so well. Sprites for a theoretical DKC port would not be an issue for such a port, as you said. Getting it to look and sound right would be the tricky things.

@Guru_Larry Not on-screen sprites or sprites per line. SNES does win on those which gives a bit more flexibility. But it gets more interesting when you look at sprite pixels per line. At 256 pixel-wide resolution, the SNES has virtually the same amount of sprite pixels per line as the Mega Drive. There's a small advantage to the SNES of maybe 16 pixels as I recall, which acts as a buffer against flicker, I suspect, but that's barely anything. At 320 wide, Mega Drive gets a sprite bump across the board. Sprite pixels per line goes up as well, though in both modes the pixels per line is the same as the horizontal resolution, so 256 and 320 respectively. I suspect there are a number of reasons we didn't see more enemies on screen back then. Some of it may simply be game design. Slowdown would have been a concern, especially on the SNES. Keep in mind that many games also used SlowROM as well.

And then there's optimization. Many games were not well optimized. But there's an interesting case of this on the SNES. There is a hack for Final Fight 3 that improves performance through new optimizations, so we know optimized code wasn't a priority as it probably is on these projects. Final Fight 2 also demonstrates some interesting things. It's possible through hacking to increase the number of enemies on screen and I spoke with another commenter, BulkSlash, about it. He experimented with it and found it would run flicker free until you have five enemies on screen with a single player. The game also ran without slowdown until it reached seven enemies on screen.

I remember playing around with ZSNES back in the day. I think I had just moved on from my 486 so I didn't struggle with that as the King did. The secret save states are a great idea. I wonder what the process of coming up with that was like. Controller lag reduction methods like RunAhead do basically the same thing to solve that problem. It's a fantastic solution.

The article went in a direction I did not expect and ended up being a very interesting read. It sounds like this system isn't well known yet even to companies who would find it useful in cases like this. It sounds like a good method of doing things. I've been aware of these kinds of licensing dead ends before with things like games, but also anime. All the A-Ko movies have been released on DVD and blu ray, yet the two-part OVA hasn't had a US release in decades, and perhaps not even on DVD. And the reason is the licensing situation is murky, and I recall it being similar to this game, where no one really knows who owns it rather than multiple parties may have a claim of ownership. A shame things got this messy.

I'm not a fan of pushing things so close to the limit that you get that much flicker, but this sounds like an optional mode so that's a smart way to include this particular thing. The standard two-player mode sounds like it has six enemies plus the two playable characters which means the flicker will be there. That might make more sense to push to that limit for the sake of gameplay. It is impressive to see how far it can go.

This also shows how little most arcade boards were actually pushed back in the day. Optimization was not a priority for arcades. The CPS1 could have gone a lot farther.

Yeah, leaving the direct issue of AI aside, this is also about poor judgement to leave such terrible images in the book. Makes me wonder if they even had an editor in charge to approve things. It's embarrassingly bad, assuming those behind this can feel something even vaguely resembling shame. It reminds me of the many bad retro releases over the years, especially the GTA remasters.

Very interesting read, especially with his background before design. I also learned what kerning is and I'm sure I'll be able to work it into conversation once within the next several decades. Also cool how he wasn't a gamer, but sort of became one a little bit with the Game Boy, and not just Tetris. I also like his story of how he turned that Christmas card into a chance to pitch improvements to Nintendo's early designs. I would say his judgement overall on the changes to the US box art in terms of the philosophy — consistency for the hardware packaging and shelf appeal for everything — was correct. I don't love the actual art changes in a lot of cases, but don't know how much of that was on him because that aspect wasn't really addressed directly. As stated in the first comment up above, his Game Boy design aesthetic was excellent and probably his best stuff from his work for Nintendo.

@KingMike I've seen that too, but Renovation is also shown on Japanese game boxes. My guess is that the Renovation name was used twice, for one of Telenet's development teams, and for the US publishing arm.

@GravyThief I'm glad to hear you found that helpful. I think such tools, as complex as they are, are easier to implement on game systems that have defined limitations. Such a tool for the Mega Drive would be more complex because the system can do more than the Game Boy. But those limitations probably make it relatively easier to make these tools so usable through a GUI.

Regarding the feel of a game, I wouldn't know myself, but imagine there is probably a lot of variability available as far as defining movement. But as far as that "feel" of a GB Studio game, perhaps it's a case where a lot of people don't make many adjustments from the defaults which leads to the games having that specific feel. Just a thought.

One last thing which relates. I looked at the modern game engine Godot a while back. That does require some programming, but their solution was to create their own scripting language designed to be easy to pick up, and then they also allow the use of several other traditional programming languages for those that know that stuff and which probably offer certain advantages. But that's how one far more complex game engine has tried to make things more accessible.

@GravyThief Perhaps I can help you understand better. I'll refer to GB Studio as my reference since the resources are readily availalble. The key phrase is "It uses a visual scripting system." As the description also states, those who know how to program with C can do more advanced things. What all that means is that all the basic processes of creating the game are included in the software and handled via the GUI. So for scrolling, you'd set up a background and then can set certain flags like scrolling direction and the software will handle the scrolling. Then there are additional visual tools for defining boundaries. Here's a video example if you wish to see how it works: https://youtu.be/-SvLqsYfaVc

For something more advanced like enemy behavior, the software has built-in functions(the visual scripting). There's still quite a bit to pick up, but it's learning what's available through the GUI rather than having to learn GB assembly or a higher-level language. If you think about other advanced software like image editors or video editors, you have to learn their processes like layers or timelines. It's similar for something like this. You have to learn what options and processes are available, and then you can create scripts that define enemy behavior through the GUI and the software turns that into game code. Here is a video showing the process for enemy behavior if you wish to see it: https://youtu.be/5e_n8Znid8w

I hope that provides a better understanding for you.

@KingMike @Deuteros everyone is different, of course, and clearly some people did very well in Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts with the slowdown. I played it a long time after it was current, so maybe I might have gotten used to it in 1992. But I couldn't get used to it when I played it. In fact, I hated it because I felt the slowdown just ruined my sense of timing in the game. And I was okay sticking with Ghouls n' Ghosts. Then a few years later I found out about the FastROM hack for the game. I didn't think it would make a big difference to me, but it did. I played it without the hack and then with the hack to compare. I still hated it without the hack, but with the hack, I genuinely had a great time. I can only speak for myself, but the reduction of slowdown makes it a much better game for me. I'm glad that eventually became an option and that it technically would run that way on the system if they used that faster ROM.

Congrats are in order for them finally selling an Amico. Perhaps they'll even double their install base soon.

@GravyThief Some MSU stuff can be very good. That, of course, comes down to the composition. In some ways, it's like a taste of what the SNES CD would be like. You could put the PCE CD music from Rondo of Blood in either of the SNES Castlevanias(and I think they both could use it). My favorite MSU hack is putting the arcade Turtles in Time music in the SNES game. Stuff like that is great. But the great thing about these ports is the MSU stuff is included, but optional.

As for the point of these. For starters, "just because" is a good reason from the coding side. While most of these games are simple, direct ports, the SNES allows for more sprites on screen which means they can get rid of flicker. They can reduce or eliminate slowdown. In some cases, like Duck Tales, the ports have some color tweaks to make characters more correct in their depictions. A bigger difference can be seen in the port of Metroid, which included a map function. But most of these are more direct ports, but they can theoretically serve as a foundation for ROM hacks and being on the Super Nintendo opens up a lot more possibilities.

@Sketcz Yeah, the difficulty of the dam stage is vastly overstated. I literally beat it on my first try at eight years old. I did have the benefit of watching a few other people, who were two years older than I was, fail at it many times, so I had an idea what to expect and where to go. I eventually revisited it as an adult and completed it again after a few tries, with the biggest challenge being the timer as I didn't remember where to go for an efficient path. Luckily, our experience of it being pretty easy seems to be rather common as more and more people comment with similar stories. I do recall Displaced Gamers did a video about how elements of the coding for the stage are broken, which makes the control inconsistent, but it's still quite manageable.

That last line of the excerpt of the readme is so good. Danielle is going to feel so owned.

Back in the day when I got into anime, it was so hard to get stuff. VHS was expensive and annoying. A friend and I combined for an order from a fan-subtitling outfit. We had no idea what most of it was and just had to guess based on the titles. One of the tapes my friend picked was the Variable Geo anime. It was quite the surprise seeing what it was. The NSFW stuff wasn't what I was looking for, but I could handle it. But the whole concept, waitresses fighting to determine who was the strongest, was really funny.

@BionicDodo The older I get, the more particular I get about game controllers. I know what you mean about the 8bitdo Neo Geo pad's thumb stick. It's not ideal for shmups. But I absolutely love it for fighting games and games that use those style inputs. I have come to accept this is the case with sticks. Even for arcade sticks, you have to make that trade off between shmup performance and fighting performance. I've even heard stories of people who bought really tight arcade levers thinking that would be perfect for fighting games and they ended up regretting it. A moderate dead zone is helpful in fighters, at least at a casual level. D-pads seem to be the best all-around solution, but there's a lot of variation there as I'm sure you know.

Supergrafx is a fascinating "what if" as far as if it was more successful and had a bigger library. The second BG layer and extra sprites would have gone a long way. It was such a poorly planned product though. It was only two years after the launch of the PC Engine so that probably wasn't received well. The unit was quite expensive. Not only does it have only a small handful of games, but they were released over a year and a half or something like that. That means anyone who bought it was waiting around to SuperGrafx-specific games, and those games were more expensive too. It's amazing to think there was a time when that kind of market approach was considered acceptable anywhere.

@KingMike Yeah. I understand the original reasoning behind the "select" button. Everyone was figuring things out back then as they went. But it never made sense for the "select" button to carry on past the NES era. There were plenty of PC Engine games that needed three action buttons, so they awkwardly used "Run" for that and made "select" pause. It just didn't need to exist when a third proper action button was much more useful for those early systems because the function of that button was redundant due to the D-pad and buttons being a better way to select things. Having a start/pause button makes a lot more sense to be on a specific, secondary button.

I remember thinking how cool it was that the Master System had a pause button on the console. I had played the NES a bit before then, but no one had ever paused a game that I saw, so my mind was blown when I found out that the "start" button typically acted as a pause button despite not being labeled that way.

I was just thinking about button layouts and labels earlier this week. The idea of primary and secondary face buttons makes sense, but also falls apart because the primary buttons ended up being the left and bottom buttons in gameplay. So that's Y and B. Thoguh B and A, or X and O became the primary buttons for selecting menu items.

The idea of A and B being reversed on Nintendo controllers coming from traditional Japanese is a common idea, and does make some sense, but Japanese can use use left to right, and the controller labels are not in Japanese so there's no reason to think the order of the buttons os anything but arbitrary. I suspect they determined the right-most button on the NES pad was primary, and gave it the A label as a result. The mystery to me is why the buttons at A & B, and X and Y, rather than Y & Z. The CAD thing is a possible explanation, but in the end it is also arbitrary. I don't know if it's a good explanation. It creates a mismatch as A & B are the start of the alphabet, but they skipped Z on the opposite end and that doesn't make much sense despite the explanation. And since we're talking about buttons, "select" as a button never made sense since selecting can be done, and is usually done by th D-pad and a proper button. That's one reason I liked Sega's approach. The Genesis pad has the same number of buttons as a NES pad, but select was eliminated to add another action button. Way better.

I started with a Master System, but played a lot of the NES, then got my own. Then I got a Genesis and played a lot of SNES. I was used to all different kinds of layouts. I have almost no issue switching layouts. I had the hardest time remembering the Sony layout. Even though I used it the least, I like the Xbox button layout the most when it comes to the modern layouts, though I prefer the Sony stick placement. Most games with prompts I've played are color coded. It probably helps I play PC mostly, so they base things on the Xbox pad. But

@Santar There are advantages to six face buttons just as there are to four buttons plus shoulder buttons. You are correct that certain button combos are a weakness of six face buttons. For the SNES layout, the main complaint I've heard, and it's also my complaint, that using the shoulder buttons for attacks is also cumbersome, particularly the L button since that's the same hand operating the D-pad. Some people get used to using the L button in fighting games, but some people really don't like it.

@Scollurio @Blast16 @Banjo- I didn't mention it in my previous comment on the topic of vibration, but I also agree that it makes much more sense for gun games, racing games, and flight games. Those were always the games that tended to have some kind of force feedback in arcades, whereas standard arcade games did not. But it also made sense for those games, all of which are attempts to simulate, to some degree, real-life activities involving some kind of machine. The feedback was part of making the experience a bit more realistic. Bringing feedback to all games never really made much sense to me. But so many games let you turn it off and this version of Super Mario World is an option, so it's cool for people who like it.

I know the sim-racer people insist feedback in a wheel is a must. If the feedback is good, it will provide some amount of feel to the car as Banjo- alluded to.

@Blast16 I do the same. I thought vibration was interesting for about five minutes, then I hated it. I can't turn it off fast enough. Some people say it increases immersion. For me, it takes my mind out of the game and reminds me I'm holding a vibrating controller.

I didn't watch the Game Chasers much, but this kind of news is always sad. It sounds like he was well liked by his peers and viewers. My favorite tribute here was Metal Jesus because it shows something a lot of people wouldn't know. In addition to this, we fairly recently lost PatmanQC and, in the computer/tech space, Novaspirit Tech. Hopefully news like this will be less common for a while.

For the handful of people who must play everything Undercover Cops related. I'm probably part of that group. I've always wondered about this one. It is, indeed, a bizarre spin-off game,

Micro Mages is a lovely NES game. Two games, actually, since they eventually added a second quest to the original package. I knew I had to get it after seeing the wonderful development video that gave a good glimpse into what it takes to fit a game into 40KB. Good to hear there will be more. I'm not too keen on making levels, but that could be interesting and it does come with some levels so that may be enough for me.

@Sketcz The side-scrolling snowspeeder level feels tacked on in the first place. It's short and adds little to the game other than displaying a huge snowspeeder sprite on screen. It's not especially well designed or consequential. Check out a longplay to see for yourself.