Intellivision Mega Man 2: now full title screen intro with parallax, boss portrait and intro, full Metal Man stage with animated background and post stage power up screen. :)
Also Super Mario Bros for Intellivision:
Intellivision Mega Man 2: now full title screen intro with parallax, boss portrait and intro, full Metal Man stage with animated background and post stage power up screen. :)
Also Super Mario Bros for Intellivision:
Pretty impressive, but pointing a camera at a TV kinda smooths over some of the flaws and makes it harder to scrutinize.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
Here is a direct capture of his Castlevania port that I recorded from real hardware:Quote:
Originally Posted by j_factor
Holy crap! Wow. Serious respect for these ports hahah. This made my day.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
That Intellivision port of Super Mario has less slowdown than the recent C64 port... very nice. Of course, with tradeoffs.
It also scrolls smoother and for the most part has better colors than the Super Cassette Vision homebrew port... and it kills it in the sound department.
This NES to Intellivision ports are very impressive!
Yeah, but the C64 port of Super Mario Bros is using multilayered sprites to create properly colored Koopas and such. I wonder how much better it would run with single colored sprites.
That Castlevania isn't too bad looking, though I've never thought of Castlevania as one of the better looking games on the NES. Still, I nice looking port.
Not any better. Multicolor sprites are a native feature of the C64 and they even take up the same amount of memory bandwidth (hence the doubled pixels, it shares a color between two consecutive bits).Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
My understanding is that you can place one sprite on top of another to make a multi-colored sprite. There has to be a hit on the CPU when this is happening.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
From what I've seen of that Intellivision demo, it's not putting more than 3 single colored enemies on the screen at any given time.
The Great Gianna Sisters hack of this game didn't have the slowdown that was witnessed in the recent Super Mario Bros port to the C64.
I mean, you can always layer sprites, but this isn't needed in the C64's case (it is on other systems). Sprites can be either 1bpp (with 1:1 pixels) or 2bpp (with 2:1 pixels). In the latter case, all 2bpp sprites share two of the colors (the third one is unique per sprite). Mario seems to be using layered sprites (probably to work around the color limitation) but everything else doesn't (all other sprites share white and orange, it seems).Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
If you're thinking about C64 in particular, I think you may have been looking at what Mayhem in Monsterland is doing instead: in the case of the player it layers a black 1bpp sprite (the silhouette) on top of a colored 2bpp one. That's done to get a high resolution sprite that's still multicolor.
Actually I may be a bit mistaken. The C64 could do 4 colors per cell, using it's low-res mode, which it appears Super Mario Bros is running in. In its hi-res mode it can only do 2 colors per cell. You can see that the Goombas are using 4 colors. Mario however, appears to be 2 stacked sprites to draw the character. The C64 has a limit of 8 sprites, so it may be getting pushed to its limits in some of these areas of the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
8-bit Guys covers this pretty well.
I believe the Super Mario C64 port wasn't made from the ground up, they ported the original source code and then optimised it.
As such its very accurate, but not particularly impressive in other aspects, home-brew games like Sam's Journey blow it away.
It appears that the Mario Sprite was changed though. You never see a smaller Mario.
The Super Mario port as far as I understand is also using VSP scrolling to scroll that fast, which is fine for demos but not for a game meant to actually run on people's machines. Depending on your power supply or other random crap, VSP can randomly cause memory corruption and crash the game hard.
There's even a tool to test if your C64 is susceptible: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=120810. Since it's random, it might happen only after 2 hours, or in the first minute of playing. I really don't think VSP should ever be used for games.
Sam's Journey uses native scrolling (which is at least 100 times slower than VSP), which just makes it all the more impressive. It's also the reason why it needs the memory expansion for NTSC, since it can't scroll fast enough otherwise. Some games with less colorful backgrounds can manage native scrolling in NTSC pretty well, like the Metal Warrior series and Hessian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV4_3Yr4y7M
Looking up VSP and it's not "some" C64 that are susceptible, all of them are, it's just that it depends entirely on unlucky timing (essentially the address lines are unstable, and if it happens in the middle of the RAS cycle of refresh the RAM turns into garbage — temperature and such only somewhat have an effect in that they skew when the unstableness happens, but it's always there). I wonder if anybody figured out how to avoid the unlucky timing, but I didn't do a very good cursory search about it lol (seems VSP discussion mostly died after that program was released).
Also reminds me: for fucks sake, don't use the original Commodore power supplies, they're all time bombs (not just because of age but because they're outright badly designed).
Some genius at Commodore thought that it would be a good idea to seal everything in a block of glue. Those things don’t have any ventilation and get hot. I got a power supply from some company called Sun, back around 1988; it’s been very reliable.
Yes, but it is too limiting to be worth it: http://www.linusakesson.net/scene/safevsp/index.phpQuote:
Originally Posted by Sik
And yeah technically all original C64s are susceptible, but on some it happens quite often while on others it happens much more rarely, to the point you might actually never encounter it during gameplay. A better power supply seems to make a big difference for whatever reason.
Yeah, I don't consider that a fix, was thinking more about if somebody had found a way to dodge the RAS cycle altogether.
That isn't helping either, but I was thinking on a more fundamental level — they skimped on protection so when the components start failing it will happily overvoltage the computer which will kill several of the chips (the custom ones tend to take it, but stuff like RAM is prone to die from it). Third-party PSUs tend to add some measures to prevent this scenario at least.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
It's a problem with Commodore in general, Amiga PSUs seem to be infamous for bursting in flames (I remember that at Evoke 2013 one of the Amigas caught fire out of nowhere, right before the compo isn't exactly the best moment for that to happen :P).
That’s probably why they put a fuse in there.
I replaced the old PSU after one of my C64s started flaming out and another day one just black screens. Haven’t had any issues with the 3rd party PSU.
I’ve never had any issues with my A500 PSU. Are you sure the one that caught on fire didn’t have an accelerator board and a bunch of other add-on that might have overloaded the stock PSU?
Back on topic, the ColecoVision could do this, with the memory expansion at least, definitely above an Atari 2600:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tOdSysOyy4
I think that the Colecovision can do pretty much any MSX game with the right kind of ram and audio expansion. If a better cpu is required it likely could be included in the expansion or game cart.
The same company that makes the current Super Game Modules was going to produce a hardware upgrade for Intellivision for a while and even worked on several games for it (one of which was Castlevania). It was an fpga that could emulate arcade games from the 80's. Theoretically they'd incorporate a token amount of actual Intellivision assets in each game, but none of their previews did.
It was designed for the same purpose as the SGM, to turn game production into minimal adaptation of existing games' code/assets instead of having to build games from the ground up. So that physical games could be sold as fast as the market would bare.
Thankfully they cancelled the Intellixpander before homebrew efforts shifted to it. IntyBasic has proven how priceless an easy to pick up development kit is best thing that can happen to classic consoles.
Some more impressive 2.5 gen homebrew, this time something for the Atari 800 (the computer version of the 5200):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUPszuchkks
Was the Vectrex capable of doing a close port of Star Wars arcade game back in the day? I'm having trouble grasping its capabilities tbh.
I notice there was a clone released for it called Star Fire, but this was homebrew released in 1999 and its missing the trench run barriers.
For what's worth it, Star Fire was an actual arcade game from 1978 (or 1979? I've seen both dates), the Vectrex one seems to be a port of that.
Anyway, I suppose it depends how good you're at optimizing the 3D math? And may or may not need to lower the detail of the models, not sure how far you can push it. The way vector CRTs work is weird, you draw line by line, and if you draw too many (to the point where the refresh rate starts getting too low) it starts flickering.
Not that I know much about these systems but considering both the Vectrex and Star Wars arcade are powered by a single 6809 at 1.5 MHz (my understanding is that the arcade uses the second 6809 for sound only) I would think the math and game engine would be fine. Whether or not the Vectrex vector generator is equally capable I have no idea.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
I don't know if it can. It can do a pretty decent port of Star Castle though, but the console's sound seems even more primitive than the Atari 2600.Quote:
Originally Posted by axel
This guy isn't very good at Star Castle, but you can see how close the game is to the arcade. The rings move a bit slower than the arcade game though.
AFAIK it uses an AY chip, same one used in the Intellivision, MSX, ZX Spectrum 128k and Amstrad CPC. It's a pretty decent chip (better than the master system's) so if the game sounds lame, it's on the developers/audio people.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
That is very close, I would not be surprised if it's running a lot of the same code considering the CPUs are the same. Seems to flicker more but it's hard to tell with the vector games since a lot of people film them off the screen. I'm just curious is there any other big difference between the arcade and home port, does the arcade have more RAM or maybe a bigger ROM for the game? The fact that it's a bit slower could be intentionally lower difficulty for the home port, maybe it speeds up a higher levels?Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
That's cool, so the Vectrex could feasibly do fairly up to date games in its specific early 3D niche.
Black and White isn't really acceptable for other types of games at the time though, but then Vectrex has the portability element too so maybe that should factor into measuring its capabilities. Whilst obviously not a true portable console like the Game Boy (needs to be plugged in) your kid could at least chuck it in his rucksack and take it with him to play when you're visiting relatives or something.
In the late 80s I used to have one of these which got some play in that way -
Attachment 15265
Far more limited than the Vectrex obviously (though far cheaper as well).
It's missing the star field and some of the sound effects. I was a big fan of the arcade game and was a fairly decent player, after spending tons of quarters on the game. This was probably one of the hardest arcade games ever.Quote:
Originally Posted by axel
Insanely impressive. Its amazing how close they got it to the NES version, albeit cut down in a lot of ways.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
The Intellivision seems to be very good at hardware scrolling, I'd say thats its biggest strength.
Someone should also port Castlevania to the ColecoVision, seems like it would be a good match with the sprites rarely being on the same scanline.
Opcode Games sort of is, depending on what you consider a real Colecovision. They were debating whether to go with a screen-by-screen or choppy scrolling version for the Colecovision + Super Game Module. Apparently they gave up on that and are now making it for their new FPGA console, the hardware of which is in their new Super Game Module 2 which has a cart port.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yharnamresident
This is pretty much what their Intellipxander was going to be and the footage below of their SGM2 game shows why I was relieved that they cancelled the Intellixpander:
Scrolling aside, Castlevania still isn't friendly to the actual Colecovision hardware. Colecovision (meta/)sprites would pretty much have to be built using 16 x 16 sprites. So to do the NES version player sprite in a single color and a single hallway zombie in a single color would require 2 sprites each, which has already hit the hardware's horizontal limit. The higher resolution means that you must use more sprites to give them size.
Intellivision sprites are the same vertical resolution as Colecovision, but they can be scaled vertically up to 8 times and horizontally to double width. So you can get much more mileage out of the fewer overall sprites and they can all appear horizontally at once. At full scaling, the 8 sprites can cover 2/3 the height of the screen and 4/5 of the width.
A good example of how scaling also saves you cards/tiles, turning the SMB base player sprite into the super sized sprite can be done completely with scaling and requires no additional assets.
Re: scrolling, there's already precedent on MSX2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGVMM2cpQsg
But yeah, I can't see how to work around the sprite issue, other than making it choppy and have most objects drawn into the background. Though you can still make it "decent" if you know what you're doing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6nPqgR0PK8
There is already a "Castlevania" for the "ColecoVision".... sort of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynPAdLn0xRE
And Valley of Rains has to be the most graphically impressive ZX Spectrum game ever made, not counting the Nirvana Engine games (those are just nuts).
This is what people are figuring out how to do on the Spectrum, it's insane:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE1KylKQDrQ
The Cure is the kind of MSX port I really like. The original developer put in the extra work to make it run on a stock Colecovision, instead of relying on the SGM.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
Screen flipping seems a bit more apropos anyway. I still think it's a little anachronistic to put too much emphasis on hardware scrolling as making the difference between these systems. As of 1982, it's easy to look at the gaming landscape and notice that hardware scrolling been around for years yet still wasn't really being utilized that much. Defender is a big exception, but most of the most popular games weren't side-scrollers, even on the Intellivision itself. We're talking about a time when the biggest home game was Pitfall and the biggest arcade game was Ms. Pac-Man. This is despite the hardware scrolling issue not really being a constraint on arcade games or on multiple established platforms. The Atari 800 and Intellivision were both three years old and both still very focused on non-scrolling games. In 1982-84, the Colecovision was perceived as graphically superior to not only the Intellivision but also the Atari 5200. The scrolling seems like a bigger deal now because the industry went strongly in that direction from 1987 on. So, I don't fault the Colecovision's engineers too much for overlooking scrolling, because they didn't predict Super Mario Bros and its outsized impact. Defender was one of the biggest games of its time but two years later it still hadn't resulted in a glut of side-scrolling "Defender clones".
I'm inclined to think Atari basically agreed with Coleco's thinking in this area too, as despite the hardware difference, Atari never highlighted the 5200 for its scrolling specifically. Atari themselves made hardly any scrolling games at all. It seems that the expectation was a transition from mostly fixed-screen games to mostly "into the screen" games. More along the lines of Space Harrier than Super Mario Bros. The design of the 7800 and the way Atari initially presented it in 1984 is consistent with this vision. Of the 13 announced games, 3 were 2D scrolling games, 3 were viewed from behind, and the remaining 7 were fixed screen arcade games. [Incidentally, the 2D scrolling games were 1 for each direction (1 horizontal, 1 vertical, 1 diagonal) but that's probably a coincidence.] Atari's May 1984 press release boasts that it will have the "best versions of the recently announced ATARI/LUCASFILM titles", i.e. Ballblazer and Fractulus, and also touts having Pole Position II as a pack-in. Track & Field, Xevious, and Desert Falcon are merely names on a list of "other games available".
Yeah, for the most part, that is true. Atari, however, did port Vangaurd to the 2600 and 5200 consoles, and Zaxxon was one of the earliest titles for the CV.
Most of the popular Intellivision games aren't arcade ports or ports at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by j_factor
The Intellivision stood out at the time and the library has aged well because from the initial planning stages the intention was the opposite of Coleco's: to provide unique gaming experiences and to avoid ports and "Atari" type arcade games. Even though Mattel Electronics would later decide to license properties to bring to Intellivision, the design of the console still lead first party and unofficial publishers to create innovative and unique game experiences. Scrolling played a big part in that, but features like sprite scaling also lead to unique games with 3D effects and 16-directional control was a huge influence.
In the end the features that made Intellivision unique, even after Coleco aped so much from it, did play a major role on in the kind of library it received as well as made it stand out from "pre-crash" consoles. More importantly, if the crash hadn't happened, you would have seen more games for all of these consoles struggle to keep up with the popularization of scrolling in games. Especially if the NES and SMS in North America wound been delayed due to the market strength of existing consoles.
The Intellivision hardware held up so well that INTV Corp changed the name of the Intellivision version of Monster Truck Rally so that it wouldn't detract from the NES version.
Regardless there were a lot of scrolling Intellivision games:
<1982 scrolling Intellivision games:
The Electric Company: Math Fun
NFL Football
NASL Soccer
Auto Racing
Horse Racing
U.S. Ski Team Skiing
Triple Action
Stampede
Demon Attack: scrolling is used for arcade quality cinematic transitions.
Microsurgeon
Swords & Serpents
Tropical Trouble
Space Hawk
Space Spartans
B-17 Bomber
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Cloudy Mountain
Tron: Maze-a-Tron
Roughly 1/3 of all <1982 Intellivision games.
Many more games were complete before 1983, but had their release delayed because of Mattel Electronics politics. Many complete Mattel games never wound up being officially released at all.
19 more scrolling games were released in 1983 alone. That's roughly half of all releases that year. An indication of what the new state of gaming was:
Bump 'n' Jump
Kool-Aid Man
Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-Man
Mission X
Motocross
Pinball: used for bump/tilt effect
River Raid
The Dreadnaught Factor
Defender
Dracula
Fathom
Ice Trek
Nova Blast
Safecracker
White Water!
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Super Cobra
Tutankham
The Jetsons' Ways With Words
More non-homebrew scrolling games that followed:
World Cup Soccer
Hover Force
Super Pro Football
Thin Ice
Diner: used for transition effect. The full He-Man game would have featured scrolling segments.
Commando
Body Slam: Super Pro Wrestling
Mountain Madness: Super Pro Skiing
Super Pro Decathlon
Stadium Mud Buggies
Uh....the Intellivision version of River Raid was the choppiest version on consoles. The sound effects are the worst of the bunch as well. The explosions are the generic sound you'd get in most games for the console. Hell, even the 2600 had better explosion sounds in this game.
The Intellivision had the best version of Super Cobra IMO
Well to be fair the 2600 is really good at explosion sounds. I don't think any chip besides the POKEY can do better (without PCM)