Porting arcade games to consoles

[VenomMacbeth]

As I'm sure most of you are aware, I've been shamelessly geeking out about Genpei Toumaden recently.

After playing through it on the PSP (Namco Museum) and PC Engine, as well as finishing its sequel earlier today, I had a thought...you know what console could pull this game off pretty much flawlessly?  The Genesis.

Seriously, though.  The PCE version got so much right, but I would venture to say that the Genesis would be capable of near-arcade-perfection, from the rotation of the character sprite (if Earnest Evans can pull it off, why not Kagekiyo?) right down to every layer of parallax in the backgrounds.  The voice samples would suffer a bit, but nowhere near as much as the PCE version's, and the music?  C'mon!  It already sounds like Genesis audio as it is!

My question is this: how easily could an MD port be made?  I know the arcade runs on namco's system 86 board, which uses a Motorola 6809 CPU and Yamaha YM2151 sound chip.  How similar are those to the Genesis' 68000 and YM2612, as far as programming language is concerned?

I guess what I really want to know is how feasible such an idea is, because if I go the extra mile & teach myself programming, this is the sort of thing I'd be most interested in doing aside from straight homebrew. 

[SuperDeadite]

Well the X68000 port is a perfect port and yes it has the 2151 as it's internal sound chip which helps.  A genny port would most likely be a downgraded port, it would lose color, probably some sprites.  Sound is a hard one to guess on.  The 2151 is a much better chip then 2612, however Genpei sure as hell doesn't really take advantage of it.  So the genny could sound close, but clarity would certainly suffer.   If you want an easy idea take a look at the older Wolfteam games such as Granada, Sol-Feace/Deace, and Arcus Odyssey.  All were created for the X68000, and the Genny ports were all downgraded, especially the colors.

[Black Tiger]

As I'm sure most of you are aware, I've been shamelessly geeking out about Genpei Toumaden recently.

After playing through it on the PSP (Namco Museum) and PC Engine, as well as finishing its sequel earlier today, I had a thought...you know what console could pull this game off pretty much flawlessly?  The Genesis.

Seriously, though.  The PCE version got so much right, but I would venture to say that the Genesis would be capable of near-arcade-perfection, from the rotation of the character sprite (if Earnest Evans can pull it off, why not Kagekiyo?) right down to every layer of parallax in the backgrounds.  The voice samples would suffer a bit, but nowhere near as much as the PCE version's, and the music?  C'mon!  It already sounds like Genesis audio as it is!

My question is this: how easily could an MD port be made?  I know the arcade runs on namco's system 86 board, which uses a Motorola 6809 CPU and Yamaha YM2151 sound chip.  How similar are those to the Genesis' 68000 and YM2612, as far as programming language is concerned?

I guess what I really want to know is how feasible such an idea is, because if I go the extra mile & teach myself programming, this is the sort of thing I'd be most interested in doing aside from straight homebrew. 

Most imperfections in ports bitd weren't based on the hardware, it was the budget/effort. The PC Engine is capable of a much better port if it was also given unlimited memory and pushed as far as needed. A Genesis port bitd would also have been neutered, but the balance would have been different. More parallax would be possible, but not all of it.

Rotating sprites are just pre-rendered frames of animation (see the PC Engine pull off 32-bit quality shaded and textured polygns in Sapphire). Even if you are porting something that does it in real-tme, it is a waste to not just use animation instead of burdening the cpu (even for Sega-CD), unless the hardware is much more powerful than 16-bit consoles. The PC Engine can do higher quality samples on HuCard as well, but a CD version could used apcm samples with recordings of the arcade music. The Genesis could do good enough overlapping sound samples in the right hands, but a regular cart port bitd likely wouldn't have. Not all FM is the same and the Genesis' sounds unique, but it definitely could sound more like the arcade if done right. But much of the sound is also similar to PC Engine chip sound.

As for how hard it is, if you want to push for as faithful a port as you say (better than the PCE version), you should make it an ongoing lifetime project and just see how it goes. Otherwise, you should get into programming just for the sake of it and if you ever get as good as developers bitd, then you can begin to work on this port, which would likely then take years of your spare time. Even if you gain the greatest skills in the world, actually doing it will be a lot of work after that. The PCE port developer had access to source material, but you'll have to piece together the aesthetics and mimic the engine/gameplay.

[VenomMacbeth]

Well I'm going to learn programming for, just as you said, the heck of it.  I have ideas & they won't come to fruition by just sitting here doing nothing.

I've read that porting software is done mostly by modifying the original script to run on the console's hardware.  So there's absolutely no way to acquire the source material? 

[Black Tiger]

Well I'm going to learn programming for, just as you said, the heck of it.  I have ideas & they won't come to fruition by just sitting here doing nothing.

I've read that porting software is done mostly by modifying the original script to run on the console's hardware.  So there's absolutely no way to acquire the source material? 

That's the big problem with trying to unofficially port games. Source code is available for very few games. Even official ports more and more often stick to emulating hardware since original assets have been lost forever.

If you want to create the ultimate version of the game, why not make it for SuperGrafx ACD? You could have perfect sound plus all the parallax and sprites, with zero flicker.

[VenomMacbeth]

If you want to create the ultimate version of the game, why not make it for SuperGrafx ACD? You could have perfect sound plus all the parallax and sprites, with zero flicker.

While I do have an affinity for the Genesis & lack a Supergrafx, that's not a bad idea!  Anything to increase the system's meager library.  Hmm...I shall have to look into this.

[Tatsujin]

[VenomMacbeth]

Good nuck? 

[esteban]

GO  ODLUCK!