Slashdot Mirror
Classic GBA Game Ports We'll Never See?
Thanks to LoonyBlog for its entry discussing classic games that could be converted to the Game Boy Advance, but are unfortunately not likely to appear, since "the Game Boy Advance is an almost exclusively franchise driven platform." The writer points out: "I think the GBA could have some amazing classic games ported to it, although the failure (apparently a spectacular failure at that) of the Blizzard Classic Arcade line pretty much means we'll never see many of them", and singles out commercial releases of Sam N' Max Hit The Road ("has a point n' click interface that would translate well to the GBA"), Heroes Of Might & Magic III ("its bright and colorful style would make for a beautiful GBA game"), and Ys Book I & II ("really an 8-bit game at its core") as top of his wishlist. What would you like to see officially available on GBA?
some of the 16 bit goodness that the gba could handle, like rock and roll racing, maybe a mortal kombat trilogy-style game, not to mention everything square and enix had released, that haven't been remade.
oh, and some kirby and megaman would be good to see.
How Jaded Are You?
I would like to see some of Sid's classic games like Pirates! and Civilization......
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
Dead Badger Linux!
Get paid to code OSS
I've always hoped to see an anthology of the old NES Castlevania games for GBA.
The GBA isnt _that_ difficult to code for, is it?
Why couldnt scummVM be ported to gba?
According to zophar's gameboy page there are lots of nifty emulators for gba already.
Sierra's AGI, NES, SMS, SNES (!), tg16, and even spectrum.
While I would like to see more oldschool PC games ported to gba, I certainly wouldnt put this in a crisis situation. There are some pretty good alternatives.
no
I mean, all 3 vikings on the move at once, trying to coordinate verbally in synch... as well, adding a few missions that required realtime coordination between the vikings would have been a lot more stimulating than what we got...
Lets face it, blizzard did a crap job with The Lost Vikings, and instead of taking responsibility for its el-cheapo approach, it blamed the GBA platform.
Lost Vikings with no network support? I think I'll keep my $X in my pocket, thank you.
... because the GP32 can do all the same things, and more. There's been ported a lot of games to it, and the ScummVM is also available. You can play MPEGs. MP3s. Mmm. Why buy an inferior product at a higher price?
I like Nintendo, and I like the GBA. However, developing software ports for proprietary systems is pricey, and seldom done unless you can prove profitability...or unless you are a hobbyist. In either case, I don't think we're going to see a lot of non-NES classic games getting ported.
That said, why not just re-release 'em on the PC? Truth be told, in many cases, somebody's already done the work of porting the game to some emulator or other. If I'm Bob's Software Company, author of the Sega Master System classic "Spork Wars," I would just find the person doing the emulation and say, "Ok, I don't have a problem with you releasing this game. Have fun!"
Unless you are re-releasing an absolute classic like The Legend of Zelda, you are not gonna make enough money on the re-release to make it worth your while. Therefore, it's not gonna get released on a platform such as GBA. Therefore, the "nice" thing to do is just let people have fun with emulators.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
I thought such a thing was impossible, but I'm proud to say that I contributed my boycott to it. :P
Seriously, some classic game GBA ports that I would love to see but will never happen:
Strategy:
Master of Magic (What happened to Simtex?)
X-COM/UFO
Platformers:
Duke Nukem
Commander Keen
Combat Sims:
F-19 Stealth Figther
Silent Service II
I could probably name many more, but those are all games which I feel are consistent with the small screen, limited processing power and few controls of the GBA. Plus I used to love playing them!
Random and weird software I've written.
If they port Chrono Trigger to GBA, but why hasn't this happened yet? Anybody?
Are you secure enough in your masculinity to run 'man touch'?
a portable Final Fantasy 3/6 would kick ass
it has a point n' click interface that would translate well to the GBA It sound like he has never actually played a GBA. All of those games would be horrible on a GBA. A point & click on a tiny GBA screen would be absolute torture. I have about 50 GBA games (I do a lot of travelling). With the exception Advance Wars all the good games are really simple finger twitching games. If those games were ported to GBA they would be dumbed down horrible version like all of the other horrible dumbed down ports to GBA. Have you tried Sim City for GBA?? It is so dumbed down its boring after 10 minutes.
singles out commercial releases of Sam N' Max Hit The Road ("has a point n' click interface that would translate well to the GBA"),
Umm...we *are* talking about the device w/o a touchscreen or mouse, right?
Heroes Of Might & Magic III ("its bright and colorful style would make for a beautiful GBA game")
Not quite enough pixels on that little screen, bucko. That'd make for some nasty porting problems. Hard to see what you're doing.
I agree that there's a place for classic games on the GBA (though whoever the idiot was who decided that the GBA shouldn't be as vertically high in pixels as the NES/SNES should have his kneecaps removed), but for old console and arcade games, not so much for old PC games.
May we never see th
For classic games, how about Ultima II, III, and IV (Apple IIe). Lakers vs. Celtics (Apple II). Dr. J vs. Larry Bird 1-on-1 (Apple II). Thexder (Apple IIgs).
But my number-1 wanted port for the GBA must be... the original RBI Baseball (NES) and add linked play for head-to-head action.
How about: Contra (NES) (2-player link), X-Men (Genesis) (4-player link on this one!).
And how about a -real- port of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out (NES).
MORTAR COMBAT!
Just about the only company that can make any money writing Gameboy games is Nintendo (and a select few others with established franchises).
All the "this would be soo cool" posts are largely pointless - nobody in their right mind would touch that platform with a bargepole.
They are all older games that had excellent playability and would work well with a small format. A good naval tactical game would be good - submarine, modern navy or sails and cannons. That would also be great with a link cable.
As a nod to Linux, I'll toss in Prince of Persia, the game that almost prevented the OS from being. :)
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
robotfindskitten
The problem with the gameboy port of Global Thermonuclear War is walking around with the Gameboy in your pocket and having to put up with the constant, plaintive voice: "Professor Falken, want to play a game?" that just does not know the meaning of the word "no"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The original Final Fantasy would be nice!
Very nice!
And that explains the rave reviews on Wario Ware
Earthbound!
And River City Ransom (which already has a port in Japan, it seems).
Seeing as how FFI and Dragon Warrior pretty much were the start of my console RPG fandom, I would love to see FFI ported to the GBA. I may have to resort to using Flash2Advance or some other cart writer and dropping ROMs onto it, but there's so much more they could do (and make better) with a good port of a great game.
--trb
I'd be happy if they'd just port the original 8-bit Legend of Zelda to the GBA.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
When the GBA first came out, almost everyone wrote about what games thay'd love to see on the system. The only thing that makes today different from back then is that Square-Enix has made nice with Nintendo. With that in mind, I think the trend here should be for porting not just individual games, but series of classic games on one cart. Phantasy Star Collection was a good start (but it's too bad PS4 still hasn't made it out yet), but Sega has plenty of old franchises they could put together (how about a "Master System Classics" disc for GC?).
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Ultima 7, and Ultima 7 part 2. There is already a Super Nintendo version of U7, just needs to be ported to the GBA, common PLEASE someone port Ultima 7.
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
Title speaks for itself. Give me Chrono Trigger.
-Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat-
I'd like to see Blaster Master [vgmuseum.com] ported to the GBA.
We've seen some Cinemaware games ported to GBA, I'd like to see Shadow of the Beast and other Psygnosis games on the GBA.
Apparently was partially ported then abandoned - very sad. I would absolutely buy it the second I saw it.
For those of you who don't know, in theory it's a standard Gauntlet clone. Top down maze based 2D shoot-em-up. Always 2 player cooperative and if you're alone, the computer plays as the second player. Yeah, you'll comfortably beat the computer player but it's far from a liability.
What this doesn't tell you is the superb atmosphere it creates and sheer, manic speed. The basic premise is all about some primitive Victorian era steam powered computer (the eponymous Chaos Engine) going wrong and causing a rift in time, leading to all sorts of dinosaurs and weird monsters appearing, and you being part of the gang of mercenaries who are cleaning them up. All have different balances between strength, speed and weaponry, and you can buy power ups after levels to improve performance quite markedly. Everything really looks Victorian - lots of analogue dials, brass plaques and heavy engineering. Being a Bitmap Brothers game, it's very heavy on stats at the end of each section. It'll tell you how much you've cleared, how much of the available cash you got, level times, kill rates and so on, and show the breakdown of you against the computer player or your friend.
The monsters? They just keep running at you, hard, thick and fast. I remember several levels where I was averaging around one kill per second - seriously - and I wasn't that great at it. It's just constant running flat out through the levels, taking out huge lines of monsters running towards you - many of which drop powerups or cash behind them.
Maze design was superb. Genuinely challenging with a lot of dynamic elements, keys and switches, but always ultimatlely both navigable and learnable. And the sound effects whenever you activated a node and started that torus bounding up and down its shaft while the lightning crackled, picked up a key or even opened the final level gate. I remember one where you open the final gate to get out (and hear the speech telling you this) right in the middle of a major battle section a fair way from the exit and where you haven't come close to seeing it yet. Just brilliant, and slightly worrying when you're playing.
That music. Fast techno - not something I'd normally like at all but it fitted the atmosphere so well. Constantly pushing, driving you on, fitting in so well with the pace of the game.
It sounds silly but the level coding system! Used alphanumeric level codes to allow easy resumes without worrying about save games (remember, consoles or pre-HDD computers) but they didn't just kick you in at the level, they accurately saved your game state. There was genuine purpose to going back and replaying the early levels to get a better level code to take you forwards.
I'd love to see something new like that. Short levels (2-3 minutes maximum) once you've learnt them but you could be 5-10 minutes in a level learning it. Well balanced difficulty, great level variety, structure to bring you back again and again to find that last bonus and pace of a type we seem to have abandoned in the mad rush to go 3D. It's the sort of game you can play in small chunks but keep going back to again and again. In other words, ideal handheld territory as far as I'm concerned.
On a much simpler level, I pine for a port of that old Spectrum classic Deathcase 3D! First person 3D motorbike based shoot-em-up in 9K (seriously) - you were riding headlong through a randomly generated forest chasing two other bikes and trying to shoot them with a gun mounted on your handlebars - so, you can aim right but not if there's a tree ahead and to the right... If you shoot those two bikes it becomes night and the screen turns dark for the same challenge, shoot those two bikes and it's day again but the forest is thicker, and thicker, and thicker until you're steering on reflex alone. There's bonus vehicles that appear on the horizon every now and then, and shooting them can get you a big bonus but they're far fr
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
I would love to play that game. Most any Square Enix classic RPG would do, though (like a port of CT without the super-long loading times of the PS version).
The legal hassle that takes to coordinate an old property to a new platform is pretty much hell.
Move on kids, it's time to let go, those were great games, but we live in an age of Yu-Gi-Ohs and Lizzie Maguaires (oh I hope for a misspell). Licenses sell, so I propose to do an art swap on all those old school games we all crave, stick a license and let the games begin.
So let's talk about Contra-Hamtaro (contra, guns and lovable hamsters).
Doesn't automatically mean it'll translate well to the GBA. You probably like those games enough that you'd enjoy a version of them on your (ugh!) cellphone or toaster oven.
Personally, point-and-click games do not tranfer well to anything that doesn't have a MOUSE.
That aside, I've noticed that the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series (VIII on PS2 specifically), have evolved very little graphically and are mostly reused sprites and text along with a simple menu driven interface. Games usually take a very long time to play and it is played in rounds that normally take a few minutes. Given its gameplay it is easy to take your time and think through options, save, turn it off, and come back any time. Just switch on the GBA and play a couple of rounds managing your kingdom while you're on the train or between classes.
I would actually PREFER this to the PS2 or (in Japan) the PC version. That way I'm not sitting on the couch for hours on end and I can just play it at a nice pace whenever.
Secret of Mana 2 was an excellent game which never saw a US release. Much like the first, it featured multiplayer action / adventure gaming, perfect for the GBA. Translations are available online, if you do a little goggling.
The first game in the Seiken Densetsu series, amusingly enough, was released in the US as "Final Fantasy Legends." Both were Game Boy games... A release of the third on the GBA would mark a "coming home" for the series.
The ______ Agenda
In my opinion, was 'The New Zealand Story'
This guy has been working on a port, and if there's anyone I can petition to help him release it or publish it (Taito?) then I'll be doing so.
Nothing beats a kiwi with a bow and arrow!
Some games that I'd love to see on the GBA would be all the greats from the Amiga line, since the GBA already has a few ports of Amiga titles like WINGS.... Games like Frontier: Elite 2 would be kinda hard, because of the need to rewrite much of the interface in addition to translating the gamecode, but the result would be terrific. Too much to hope for, I guess.
;-)
Any Amiga Emulators for the GBA?
(and yes, I'm an Amiga zealot, but even I have come to appreciate that even the tiny GBA is about as powerful (in many respects) as a full fledged Amiga 500 when it comes to games at any rate)
Cuz they were all sucky games to begin with. Jeezus, how hard is that to realize. The closest thing to a good game among those was Rock n Roll racing, but in the end even that had its major flaws compared to other similar racing games.
Mediocre x 3 is still Mediocre.
I've had the exact opposite experience. The GBA games I've enjoyed are the slower, strategic ones: Advance Wars 1 & 2 Ogre Tactics FF tactics Fire Emblem I'm the kind of guy that LOVES button mashing, and usually can't handle slow, in depth games, but something about the GBA makes me want to slow down and think...actually, I haven't played a button masher on GBA that I enjoyed. (unless you count chu-chu rocket, which was pure genius)
You don't think the difficulty in locating Atlus software is to blame? Only a month after the respective release dates, I could not find a copy of Super Dodge Ball, Tactics Ogre, and (now) Double Dragon in local stores. I see Nintendo games. I see Capcom games. I see THQ games. I see EA games. I even see Sega games. Atlus is nowhere to be found.
Here's Double Dragon. Man I'm tired, that search was hard. As for Super Dodge Ball, I managed to find one in Best Buy much later than that. One could also counter your point by saying that if they were selling well they would have had another run of them made. *cough*
Konami should port over the arcade versions of the Ninja Turtles (Original and Turtles in Time). God knows I could fund the port with all the quarters I pumped into those two games.
Mappy is one of the mini-famicom titles released with the Famicom SP in Japan, but not in the US (probably because Mappy for the NES never came out here.) I'd love to buy it, but I dunno if it's worth the $40-50 with shipping to import it. (I did pay about $50 to import Mappy for the Game Gear, but that was enhanced quite a bit with 4-way scrolling.)
Of course I can play both the NES and GG versions on my GBA already since I have a flash cart, but I just like real carts better.
Other games that could use a full-on GBA treatment but probably won't are Commander Keen (as someone already mentioned, there's a GBC version.... it's not so fresh), some of the old Amiga Psygnosis games like Menace or Blood Money or Shadow of the Beast (now being developed as a homebrew, Gain Ground or Quartet (cool for link play), or even some of the more involved C64 games such as Fort Apocalypse....
That game was GREAT! It was one of my first RPGs, and definitely the best game to make use of narrative cut sequences at the time in my opinion. I'd get a TurboGrafix just to play it. Y's II was somewhat of a disappointment.
The Raiden series (including Raiden Fighters, Fighters II, & Jet), the Strikers 1945 series, the Gunbird series, Armed Police Batrider, and all the other psychotic sh'mups out there.
One that I really wonder about, though: Why the devil was there never a Punch-Out!!! game for the GB, GBC, or GBA?
And what happened to the Game & Watch eReader cards?
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Have you ever played Broken Sword? This was a fairly standard point-n-click PC game that I thought translated very well to the GBA. Inventory management, NPC conversation, etc. were all handled quite well. I would reccommend it to any adventure gaming fan. I could see something like ScummVM working OK, with some interface changes... What I would like to see is a Roguelike ported to the GBA. I've thought about taking such a project on... Something like Angband. You'd have to set up the macros ahead of time on the PC... (assuming you play on a flash cart) or perhaps a user-modifiable quicklist of frequently cast spells? Some hacks to the menu system to allow you to scroll through menus instead of pushing a key to select would help too.
Some of you people making comments really need to look into what you are saying before you post.
Some of the games I've seen that you want already ARE or are in the PROCESS of being ported, like Zelda, Earthbound, Kirby, Mega Man and Prince of Persia.
Heck, Heroes of Might & Magic 1 and 2 were already put on the Game Boy Color.
It's like you guys have no clue about what's going on and just want to fill the void.
Duke Nukem Forever.
DoomIII?
;-)
Perhaps, when i found out how to integrate a radeon 9800 into the gba
Nobunga's Ambition Romance of the Three Kingdoms Liberty or Death Ghengis Khan Conflict Any of the Early Ultimas Chrono Trigger Did I mention Chrono Trigger Those cool Japanese games on the Wonderswan Did I mention Chrono Trigger?
STOP ROCK VIDEO
On a more serious note, Nintendo should try and convince Sega to re-release the original Sonic games on the GBA instead of those awful Sonic Advance games, if possible. A 4 player Gauntlet game would be a pretty good idea too if they could give it some depth other than Gauntlet Legend's shallow 'find runes' only main barrier. (Maybe make a model after Shining Soul 2? Thats a really good hack-and-slash game for the GBA.)
While getting four friends with GBAs and a GC together is really difficult for a game of FF:Crystal Chronicals (roughly $550 USD there) I think Nintendo and SquareEnix are taking the right approach to the idea of connectivity. Sure its a (very) small niche, but if the GBA somehow manages to price drop again this year (hey I can dream can't I?) coupled with GC's insanely low price of $100, connectivity would be the hot topic of the year.
There's already a GBA interpretor for the Sierra adventure series, but the current copyright owners won't licence the games, or sell them in any other for. I've played a couple of the freeware titles and they rock. I can't imagine these wouldn't be a commercial success.
On the topic of finger twitching...eh, the GBA is getting at least as many (console-style) RPGs and SRPGs as the PS2, and those generally don't fall under the finger-twitching category.
I would like to play Earthbound on my GBA SP. I played it on an emulator and had a blast.
Humorous anecdote, I couldn't remember the name of the game so I went to google and put in "super nintendo rpg bizarre". Sure enough, first hit!
Pah! You Americaens! You sink you are so smart wiz your Market Economy and Free Trade...
But, to answer your remark:
It is probably true that you can get a GBA/SP cheaper in the States. As I understand, MS just lowered the price of their X-Box there, as well.
Not in Denmark.
Apart from that, there are far more possibilities in the GP32.
more
Also, I forgot to warn you, the first one ("far") is in french. Ech.
Pah! You Americaens! You sink you are so smart wiz your Market Economy and Free Trade...
Not in Denmark.
Eh, I thought Denmark went bankrupt and closed doors... Happy to see there's still competition to Wal-Mart!
I just want any decent D&D game to be made for it, personally. And I'm not talking about the Baldurs Gate action-oriented bullshit, I'm talking a turn-based strategy-style D&D game.
They have perfected the turn-based strategy engine, in Advance Wars and more recently Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Fire Emblem... why can't somebody get a Wizards license and use a similar engine with a real RPG ruleset?
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Now you know they actually did this for the tamagotchi game, right? Even when out of the GBA it had its own battery and alerted you when it got hungry. It's a small step to voice. Beware.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
$50 for a Baseball Stars port? Sure. $60? $70? OK.
Set it to $30 and sell it like hotcakes.
Unlike some of the classic NES reissues coming, Baseball Stars is a game designed for lots of replays.
Quite frankly I think there's enough ports on the GBA - How about some original Games ?
I would like to see the origianl version of secret of mana released for the GBA. The fact that it was a multiplayer RPG it would make a good game that you could link up and play with friends. I remember having a lot of fun playing that game with two other people and all of us being able to control our own character. I have a feeling that this installment won't be quite up to snuff for Secret of Mana fans since it lacks a multiplayer feature
"Damn TV, you've ruined my imagination, just like you've ruined my ability to -- to, um...uh...oh well."
The you musn't have played any Golden Sun games or Fire Emblem, Mario and Luigi. Ok, come tothink of it, there' s pattern here, being that these are all RPG's, but still, they're not finger-twiching games. And all these games have tremendous success.
"point-and-click games do not tranfer well to anything that doesn't have a MOUSE"
This true, if the port tries to emulate the mouse (ugh) rather than fixing the interface.
The Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars port to the GBA is fantastic. It's a 1.2GB point-and-click adventure on the PC, and it works beautifully on the GBA even without a mouse. The interface is a marvel of design, doing away with the pointer entirely, and giving you direct control of your character's movement with the d-pad. Action icons appear when standing near an object.
If they can port BS, they can port literally any of the older (Sam & Max, etc...) point-and-click games with ease. Most of the lucasarts games are only a few megs to start with-- there won't be the massive 1.2GB->8MB shoehorning effort with the port.
Nonetheless, if you like adventure games and have a GBA, you should DEFINITELY get Broken Sword.
I know Capcom is releasing the Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the Cube (i think it's out for the PS2). But maybe the first 3 or 4 (3 is, IMHO, the peak of the series), it'd be excellent to play those portable. 2 and 3, anyway, they just never get old.
---
"how can the same street intersect with itself? i must be at the nexus of the universe!" - cosmo kramer
Does anyone have a reference that explains why the Blizzard ports where a failure? I thought they were pretty cool, and was looking forward to more.
Thanks!!
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
What are you people thinking? You haven't suggested Stars!, the classic PC space strategy game. Admittedly the screen is a bit short on pixels, but the multiple menus could be put on different screens and paged through with a shoulder button. Not as simple as Advance Wars but once you get to know it, it's utterly addictive. I still play it ~8 years later...