The NES vs. its contemporary competition

[tokumaru]

I think the point is that not a lot of other machines with the same instruction set were based on the paradigm of hardware sprites atop a scrollable grid of character cells with modifiable glyphs.

That's why I said that the more different the systems are, the more extensive the changes to the source code will be.

Neo Geo was based on vertical strips of 16x16 tiles.

Then you'd just implement a frame buffer in this specific format in RAM and have DrawRow and DrawColumn modify that. Sprite definitions would also have to be changed to comply with that format.

And many of the western computers had dumb frame buffer displays, many of which couldn't even scroll the screen in hardware. For example, in HGR mode on Apple II, scrolling the screen took four frames to copy about 8K of data, and horizontal scrolling in increments other than 14 pixels was even slower. Drawing sprites on one of those was a matter of software-compositing the sprites on top of the background tiles and then copying the whole thing to the screen, and Apple II's attribute clash was almost as bad as the Spectrum's (7x1 pixel units instead of 8x8), causing most games to use orange/blue throughout or green/magenta throughout, or just use black-and-white backgrounds. So you'd have to completely rethink a big scrolling game to make it fit the platform.

Sure, this kind of porting wouldn't be the easiest. If you need to keep a frame buffer in RAM anyway, you'd obviously have all drawing routines modify that. However, considering all the differences in the graphics hardware and how long it takes for a full frame update, the whole gameplay would probably have to be reconsidered in this case.

[rainwarrior]

This is one of my favourite things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3b4h-MUjGo
(Shadow of the Beast compared across many platforms.)

[tokumaru]

(Shadow of the Beast compared across many platforms.)

Interesting video. I never played this game, so I can't say if it's as boring as it appears to be, but if it is, why would they want to port it to so many platforms?!

And more importantly, why are the Genesis (US) and Mega Drive (JP) versions so different from each other?! Looks like 2 independent ports, not that one is an adaptation of the other.

[tepples]

why would they want to port it to so many platforms?!

Money, dear boy.

And more importantly, why are the Genesis (US) and Mega Drive (JP) versions so different from each other?! Looks like 2 independent ports, not that one is an adaptation of the other.

Airwolf had independent ports on Famicom and NES, as did Tetris.

[tokumaru]

Money, dear boy.

My point was: if the game is indeed as boring as it looks, why would developers think a large enough number of consumers would pay money for it?

Airwolf had independent ports on Famicom and NES, as did Tetris.

You can add Maniac Mansion to that list. I know this happens some times, I'm just wondering WHY. The only reason I can think of that would explain this phenomenon is developers of one region thinking that the port developed previously in another region isn't well done enough. With Maniac Mansion at least, the general consensus appears to be that the Japanese version is crap, with simplistic graphics and tiny rooms with no scrolling. I find this version kinda cute, and its art style somewhat more consistent than in the other version, but I think both are fine.

[Sik]

And more importantly, why are the Genesis (US) and Mega Drive (JP) versions so different from each other?! Looks like 2 independent ports, not that one is an adaptation of the other.

The US version was the original, and the publisher for Japan wasn't happy with its quality so they demanded it to be remade.

[rainwarrior]

I never played this game, so I can't say if it's as boring as it appears to be, but if it is, why would they want to port it to so many platforms?!

It's a very boring game, in my opinion.

In the original Amiga version, it was quite a visual spectacle. I think this is the primary reason for its popularity. It became a huge hit there, and was subsequently ported to whatever they could manage.

Shadow of the Beast II and III are actually not bad games, I think, but neither of them makes such a big deal about the graphics as the original. They are much more about puzzles.

[jayminer]

Shadow of the Beast was one of the first games that really showed of the capabilities of the Amiga hardware with lots of colors on the screen (thanks to the copper) and huge sprites (thanks to the blitter) and lots of parallax scrolling. The music was great aswell.

The game was hugely popular in the late eighties/early nineties because of that.

Unfortunately it's a really boring game to play and I could never understand why it got so many ports.

Here's some interesting information about the Amiga version of Shadow of the Beast for anyone interested.

[MottZilla]

And seeing how the PCE was an NES without the biggest limitations, I'm a bit saddened that it didn't do so well in the market.

The PC-Engine did VERY well in the market. It's the TurboGrafx 16 that didn't do so well in its market place. Partially due to Nintendo's business practices.

[OneCrudeDude]

Release dates are beside the point I was trying to make that practical level design on one platform turns into leaps of faith on another. Or are you trying to claim that this particular leap of faith was intentional?

Actually, I was bringing up something entirely differently. Who's to say the NES game wasn't the original while the Game Boy game was a quick port? Maybe they thought no one would buy it if it was just "Balloon Fight 2", so they released the Game Boy version as a test first in the US, and they finally managed to secure the rights to Hello Kitty to help boost sales?

Also, on the topic of ports, here's an interesting game that has been made for 6502 platforms; Ghostbusters. The original game came out for the C64 (and Atari 800), and it was ported to other consoles, the NES and Atari 2600 specifically. It was also ported to the Apple II, which also used the 6502. I believe most all of the aforementioned ports were handled by Activision themselves, except for the NES port.

Not like the original game was a classic by any stretch, but come on, what the hell happened with the NES port? Was the game just described to them? And how is this game so buggy? King's Knight isn't this buggy, neither is Castlequest, both of which are by the same developer, BITS Laboratory. I reckon that the people who programmed NES Ghostbusters went on to make the original Pokemon games, which are known for being hilariously bugged out.

[Sik]

The PC-Engine did VERY well in the market. It's the TurboGrafx 16 that didn't do so well in its market place. Partially due to Nintendo's business practices.

Nintendo's business practices didn't seem to hinder the Genesis though. From what I gather the problem was that NEC really wasn't much into gaming in the first place so they didn't care that much about their console. Then later the PC-FX flopped (due to lack of 3D hardware) and they quit without considering it much.

I reckon that the people who programmed NES Ghostbusters went on to make the original Pokemon games, which are known for being hilariously bugged out.

To be fair, to get the most serious glitches in Pokémon you need to be actively looking for them...

[OneCrudeDude]

If what I read is correct, the Genesis was only successful because it allowed Sega to challenge Nintendo's status in the market. If Nintendo didn't have those scary spooky policies, chances are the Genesis wouldn't have done so well; they wouldn't be able to prop themselves up by attacking Nintendo. As it turns out, Nintendo's policies only turned around to bite them, and no matter what they do, they won't get their NES era status back. That said, Nintendo is good enough with no third party support, though many consumers would rather have a single console that would play all their games, games that won't come to their consoles.

[tomaitheous]

That said, has anyone on here dabbled with, say, the PC Engine or Lynx? I know some guy is porting several NES games (specifically Mega Man) to the PC Engine, and I reckon that is largely due to both consoles being very similar and making the porting process comparatively simple.

It's not porting, it's basically emulation. The original game code runs on the PCE cpu as is (it's backwards compatible), except for the port writes and reads - those are patched (since they are 3bytes long, patched to JSRs to call emulation code). The PCE video isn't compatible *or* similar to the NES. The port for video read/writes is 16 bit and only takes WORD transfers to vram, the tilemaps are ~nothing~ alike (doesn't have four name tables like the nes and snes), different sprite system as well as layout, colors and subpalettes are completely different (there is no attribute ram or setup like the nes), sprite and tile cells are complete different planar format (from nes as well as each other), the sprite cells smallest size is 16x16 pixels (which means ~every~ sprite in the SAT has to be check and altered with X/Y offsets for H/V flipping), etc.

The audio is completely different too, but since it's tiny-pcm sample based, you can roughly emulate the nes sound. Volume doesn't directly transfer (linear VS log), the periods are all off, it doesn't have hardware volume envelopes or sweep units or note lengths, etc. The backend code emulates the PPU and APU on the fly and converts the data between the two systems as needed. It's only because the PCE is running 4x the speed, is that it's able to run the game logic in realtime and still be able to simulate the PPU and APU, and actually remove slowdown in the original game.

Interesting. What about the 7800, Lynx, or PC-Engine? Those all use some variant of the 6502 (some even say the PC-Engine was essentially an NES on steroids)

I wouldn't put the PCE in with NES and relative generation. It's too much of a leap. The tendency is to do so because of the 65x variant that the nes shares, but power of the machine is just out of the league of that generation (nes,sms,c64,7800,etc). It does share the inherent weakness of only one BG layer of the 8bit generation and stock hucards are limited to 8k ram (makes for weak compression schemes and no buffer/room for decompressed gfx/animation/etc to dynamically pool from). But despite having an 8bit cpu, its power is that of an early 16bit generation system - both graphically and processing power (faster than the snes, rivals the Genesis). This isn't nes generation: here, here, and here, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury Special, World Heroes 2, Street Fighter 2, Lords of Thunder, DraculaX Rondo of Blood, etc. Also, there are two PC-engine systems; Original PC-Engine and PC-Engine Super Grafx (an upgraded PC-Engine, adds more vram, sprites per line, and another BG layer)

[Sik]

If what I read is correct, the Genesis was only successful because it allowed Sega to challenge Nintendo's status in the market. If Nintendo didn't have those scary spooky policies, chances are the Genesis wouldn't have done so well; they wouldn't be able to prop themselves up by attacking Nintendo. As it turns out, Nintendo's policies only turned around to bite them, and no matter what they do, they won't get their NES era status back. That said, Nintendo is good enough with no third party support, though many consumers would rather have a single console that would play all their games, games that won't come to their consoles.

That's exactly the point though, Sega proved that it was possible to be successful despite Nintendo's policies, the argument was that the Turbogfx was hidered by them.

For the record, both systems launched at about the same time in the US, and retailers had assumed that NEC would completely crush Sega, to the point that Sega had a hard time convincing them to sell the system and when they did it was only until Christmas (well, until retailers saw how the systems actually performed). Look here:
http://www.sega-16.com/2008/03/interview-al-nilsen/

[tepples]

many consumers would rather have a single console that would play all their games, games that won't come to their consoles.

People have been able to do that for years. One benefit of Microsoft's monopoly is that a PC running Windows plays substantially all modern PC games. Since the late 1990s and through the end of the SDTV era, PC discrete video cards came with an S-Video output, which can be used with a TV as a monitor. And since 2007, TVs have supported the VGA and DVI signal formats that PCs had been producing for years. (HDMI is DVI-D in a different connector with audio in the blanking period.) So if you aren't specifically looking for Mario, Zelda, or Pokémon, why not just buy a PC for the living room and play all controller-friendly Steam games?