Could disappointing ports be improved upon now?

[RyuHayabusa]

Ok, we've all seen games that were ported from the arcade or other consoles and have been disappointed. For instance, Space Harrier for the PCE plays great but the lack of the checkboard ground and small player sprite are a bit disappointing. Or Strider, which plays nicely and has an awesome soundtrack but the colors aren't so hot. Seeing these examples and others, I can't help but think that they could be improved on. I've seen Chris Covell's Axelay demo for the SGX and was blown away. In a recent issue of Retro Gamer, someone ported Space Harrier to the Atari 2600 and it was quite amazing considering the hardware. Has anyone tried to take an existing game and improve them, or perhaps tried to port a game to the PCE that was never made before? For instance, alter the code in Space Harrier to give it the checkerboard look? Or perhaps take some sprites from Final Fight and see if the PCE could handle them moving on screen? I've seen where some homebrew developers have been able to learn new tricks to push the limits of various platforms beyond what was originally thought possible. The holy grail to me would be a homebrew port of Strider for the SGX to show what really could have been done.

[soop]

Well, I thought about that, and I don't think it's possible to get the checkerboard effect in Space Harrier.

And Yes, moar SGX.  Final Fight still wouldn't be possible, not arcade perfect, even on the SGX.  Because of the large minimum sprite size, the weapons like knives would take up a lot of sprite resource, and the characters are just too large.  You could make an interesting conversion though, seeing as crest of Wolf gets away with 4 sprites, that means without weapons the SGX could have 8 at once.  But I think 2 player makes Final Fight.

I've seen Chris Covell's Axelay demo for the SGX and was blown away.

LINK PLS O___O

[Black Tiger]

Most games would be too much work to hack and might as well be replaced by entirely new from-scratch versions. Some may or may not be in the works.

There is a thread about changing the colors in Strider. That is something that is actually possible and examples are shown. The game has some decent shading, it looks like the palettes might have been implemented incorrectly. But changing the colors won't fix such a broken port, which doesn't even scroll properly.

There is another thread in which Tomatheus shows mockups of how the PCE could do SoR sprites for a beat 'em up with quite a few enemies at once. You don't really need a tech demo to prove that the PCE could handle something like Final Fight though, there are enough PCE games that move around more than enough sprites to do it.

I don't think that there is enough interest in Space Harrier to re-do it. Most people seem to already prefer it to Space Harrier 2. Even the X68000 version uses the same style floor as the PCE version.

[soop]

Oh my god.  Chris is a genius!  That's jawdropping, make the whole game!  Make the whole game!

[RyuHayabusa]

Oh my god.  Chris is a genius!  That's jawdropping, make the whole game!  Make the whole game!

Yeah, I thought it was awesome too. I asked him if he had considered doing an SGX Strider demo but he said he was working on more interesting things. That was a long time ago.

[soop]

Oh my god.  Chris is a genius!  That's jawdropping, make the whole game!  Make the whole game!

Yeah, I thought it was awesome too. I asked him if he had considered doing an SGX Strider demo but he said he was working on more interesting things. That was a long time ago.

MORE INTERESTING?!  I'm practically salivating

[Arkhan]

We ported Berzerk

but like, it was made from scratch, so I guess it's a remake, not a port...

yeah!

[sunteam_paul]

Well, I thought about that, and I don't think it's possible to get the checkerboard effect in Space Harrier.

Why not? The Master System did it, it's only a case of colour cycling.

[SignOfZeta]

You could absolutely do this. Will anyone? Not very often!

I believe CC also fixed R Type or Darius or one of those shooters so that it didn't slow down as much.

[Arkhan]

i THOught he fixed the flicker in RType by diddling it to work on the SuperGrafx.

[Tatsujin]

lol, why in the name of the devil would the pce not be able to handle the checker board? something even far more inferior systems could handle.

[soop]

lol, why in the name of the devil would the pce not be able to handle the checker board? something even far more inferior systems could handle.

I just couldn't figure out how it would be done I guess.  Didn't think of colour cycling.

[RegalSin]

Porting is a good idea. In fact, I wish I could start my own game company, and we could port X games. However considering that, porting a game to outdo it's original is also a cool idea, but it is a task that is also unloved and unliked.

Would I want to improve something, that has been released before? Honestly I am not that much of a videogame person, to say yes to that. Yes I wonder if some of the many SNES games would look on a PCE, I bet half the entire library could probably fit on hu-cards, and still look good. Then another half could also be enhanced thanks to wonder amount of space the Hu-memory card provides.

It is a great idea, and I love it.

.........

Strider. Strider was already considered a fail for the PCE, I understand why people would want a direct port of that game, but otherwise I think Strider did pretty good , looking back at the game, Strider was never really all of that

Strider like many ultimate JRPG, type games was over the top, and took advantage ofbeing something that was never done before, or was not done so often. Strider is like saying, hey if we can get this game on the PCE, who knows what else we can get on it.

..........

I really do not understand why would anybody want to out do a game that has been ported to almost every single game console, on purpose Their is even one in Shenmue, and the 32X. After the 32X Space Harrier is beyond insane.

Splatterhouse II and III?

That would be a great game for everybody here to work on. We all get various jobs, and tasks, and rotate tasks???

[ccovell]

lol, why in the name of the devil would the pce not be able to handle the checker board? something even far more inferior systems could handle.

Look at it this way: PCE Space Harrier needs lots of its video RAM for multiple sizes of sprites, bullets, trees, etc.  There may not be enough space for a checkerboard floor.  With the way the game does it now, it just changes colours on different scanlines, which uses no VRAM at all.  With a checkerboard, you'd need a large (256x128 or so) triangular-floor-shaped background and all the tiles to go along with it.  It is not simply a matter of doing scanline effects (that makes for horizontal stripes only, as Space Harrier PCE already does.)

[Tatsujin]

Wow, thanx for the detailed explanation. So it really seems that such a simple looking checkerboard, would need quite more than one would first assume.