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DS Game Port Wishlist
LATRINE! writes "Brittlefish has posted a wishlist of games that would make great ports to the Nintendo DS. While this isn't a comprehensive list, the idea of Starcraft on the DS is very exciting." From the article: "The Nintendo DS has given developers a chance to put forth new and innovative games. And with the addition of the touchscreen it has enabled developers to create game ideas that were previously impossible (or at best awkward) on any kind of console. Games like Nintendogs and Trauma Center are proof that new things are happening. One of the great possibilities the Nintendo DS offers is it's ability to emulate a mouse, and thus be able to handle PC ports that are mostly mouse-driven, but so far no ports have been done that utilize the DS hardware well." Any games you folks would like to see on two screens?
See title.
The Picross series didn't get its due over here, getting a port to the Game Boy late in its life, and a limited release at that. Japan got a whole *slew* of releases, including the really really good Super Famicom version. That one was great - every time you thought you almost had all the puzzles finished, *bam* - you unlocked a bunch more. And it's *fun*!
Also, as I stated in the blog comments, Yoshi's Cookie could use a return to the limelight. Better multiplayer and user-customizeable puzzles. I'd also like to see Pipe Dream, but Nintendo's already working on a title of similar gameplay in Japan right now.
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If we had Civilization on the DS, the IT community would fall apart, traffic fatalities would vastly increase and the world would be plunged into a state of anarchy. It's best we don't have it.
Does anyone else see the Nintendo DS has a potential Educational Tool? Why can't companies create Language software for children/adults that want to learn another language.
I wanna see 'em port Duke Nukem Forever to DS, man.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
Honestly, the only PC ports I was hoping for were all brought over with the wonderful ScummVM DS.
I think that RDFK would make a good port to the DS.
The developer of the program actually considered it, but couldn't get nintendo to give him an SDK since he wasn't with a major game firm.
Recently, however, valve has taken his game, and will be releasing it on steam so maybe he will get a chance if the game sells well.
Talking of ports theres been a number of great emulators and homebrew released, in the last few days you have had a Vectrex Emulator, an Atari 2600 Emulator, a Spectrum Emulator and even a Homebrew Starwars gane released. Although i do wish for Red Alert 1/2 for the DS :)
Where is the wish for Elite ?
There is a serious hole in the market for a port of Elite, a seminal game!
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In my opinion this could go so far. The only problem is that Nintendo isn't taking it as far as it could. Example: Nintendogs- I was done with this game by the second hour. It used the touch screen very nicely. The only problem is the game itself wasn't very long or made for long extended play. You could only participate in 3 competitions, meaning you could play for 15 minutes and be done for the day. Not my style. When longer games come out it (IMO) will become much better, but for now I think it has many possiblities.
Now I'm not sure how to do this. I doubt the DS can simulate the all the townspeople. But the gestures for petting/spanking, and casting spells is perfect for the touch screen (could try camera control/navigation also, but it already has a plus pad). Plus wireless online creature to creature interaction.
The islands and the challenges would have to be scaled back. Probably need to be some simplified puzzle-mission version of the original without the town building strategy elements.
Admittedly, this is closer to Nintendogs with a proper AI: reward AND punishment; reinforce any action, not just the premade animations; and a world more lively and self sustaining than a barren apartment.
Anm
King's Quest and Quest for Glory (my personal favorite Sierra games) were a good start, but there are many better games that should be there.
First and foremost Legend of Zelda: OOT for obvious reasons, and it probably wouldnt be that hard to control since they got Mario 64 working. I have not purchased a DS yet, but I would get one the instant a OOT port was announced.
Diablo 2. Starcraft would probably work better because the DS is perfect for RTS games, but the stylus is also perfect for the point-and-click style of Diablo. Diablo 2 still has a suprisingly large online community and many of them being addicted as they are, would love to be able to play D2 on a portable. Of course, this would be all but useless if it was not online
Perfect Dark. There have already been mentions of Rare making DS games and im sure they would be able to perfect the First-person shooter using the stylus and the DS, they way they did on the console with Goldeneye and PD so many years ago.
The final and perhaps most desperately needed port- Super Smash Brothers. I have been trying to figure out why Nintendo has never come out with a portable version of SSB, and i still don't know why, but the DS would be perfect for it. The wireless would be great for having multiplayer battles with friends. The top screen could show the whole used playing field as it does in the console Super Smash Brothers games, while the bottom could show a more focused view on your character (something that would even be useful on the console games when everyone is spread out, yet it would infeasible on a TV screen)
The Metroid Demo proved it was possible, but no one has made a really good FPS yet. I won't buy EA's ruination of GoldenEye, but the real Goldeneye / Perfect Dark would be pretty nice to have. Quake, Unreal, CS, anything would be nice, as Metroid keeps getting delayed.
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Check out gamespot and the screen shots.r eenindex.html
http://www.gamespot.com/ds/strategy/blackwhite/sc
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
If the DS is some bastion of originality and innovation, then certainly ports of existing games are out of the question!
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Yes. A bastion of innovative gameplay. Nothing says fun than playing a rts game with real controls as opposed to the N64 ports of starcraft and command to conquer. Though to be honest. I have no idea why the port of Age of Empires is not rts. :)
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Perfect Dark was not listed
The games from Spiderweb are alresdy ported to OSX Windows, and Linux. This would lead me to believe that porting them to the DS would not be a huge task. These are games that I would consider buying a DS for. As it is, I have purchased no consoles. I just havn't seen many story driven RPGs'. It is possible that I am just not seeing them. I liked the Fallout and Baulders gate series. I just havn't seen any games like that on any consoles.
On my wishlist, besides the children of the world to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace, is to have Zonk quit being the editor of Slashdot Games, so that we don't have to have this inane story that has been already discussed in every forum run by 9 year-olds.
There I said it. I eagerly await the story to be posted tomorrow about Timmy in Walla Walla, WA and his wishlist for games to be ported to the PSP.
The 1993 PC game Syndicate by Bullfrog which was released for Super Nintendo would work awesome on the DS. That was a really fun game.
A nice port of the NES or PC game. I think using the stylus for general actions and having an inventory/map on the top screen would be pretty keen. Add the ability to play the same mansion/game with two friends over WiFi.
Netrek over infrastructure wireless would be excellent, with the galactic on one screen and the tactical on the other. I don't have any plans to buy a DS, but a decent blessed Netrek client might make me reconsider....
Explain to me how even one of these couldn't be done just as well with dual monitors and a mouse? Oh, right, the DS is small and cheap and over-hyped, and dual-monitors are big, expensive, and unknown.
And explain again what's so "innovative" about the DS.
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make the top screen a place for all the popup windows, and the touch screen where the action happens.
The buttons could be used for quick drink items, and for moving around your inventory.
An error in the article:
The original control style for Marble Madness was *not* a control pad, or even a joystick. It was a trackball, of course - a touchscreen would make a good replacement, but that's already been done in Pac 'N' Roll.
How about Strange Adventures in Infinite Space? That would be an awesome port to the DS.
'Nuff said.
Apparently Blizzard sent out a newsletter asking fans if they'd be interested in ports of Starcraft and Diablo. Sounds good to me, although I'd prefer the PSP.
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Where's the DS's most obvious yet most missed PDA software?
I'm not talking anything extremely fancy, but why are they taking so long with launching this sort of software? I understand that Nintendo wants to stay dedicated to gaming, but the lack of regard for their market is incredible. The DS itself is basically a powerful clamshell PDA. While it is a gaming machine, adding support for these features would have been trivial. It's like they went out of their way to make the system as gimp as possible. This I guess should come as no surprise, since it is Nintendo calling the shots.
While I do believe that gaming machines should be use to game with, I think that not including these sort of features is a terrible waste of potential. Imagine the kind of image they could have crafted for their system if they took the time to develop these tools for launch, or at least shortly after.
At least for me, one of the major selling points was the unit's wireless capabilities. The mere possibility that I could potentially have a portable web device that did AIM made me cream myself. The touchscreen for the device gives it a leg up on the PSP for input. However, I was crushed to hear Nintendo's statements of non-interest in any sort of PDA style programs.
I guess I'll be lucky to be getting a PDA-style cart, much less a much needed firmware revision. It would have been too awesome if they could have built all that shit in from the very beginning. It would have been way too cool to have a pocket console that could browse the web, sign onto AIM, and play awesome games.
Of course most of the features rest upon the ability of the user to be in an open wireless network. I've come to realize I'm in the presense of those more often than I'm not these days.
Well I guess I have to be satisfied with built in novelty chat client and an interface that can't even set the clock without rebooting the machine. I just hope that the wireless revolution they're planning on launching is well thought out and not a pile of novelty shit that most Japanese companies produce.
Hey, it's my OPINION that dogs have eight legs and make a sound like a car horn every time they take a piss.
Next up is the AGI 'emulator' already out there for the GBA. this will play the first couple Space Quests and something like the first 4 or 5 Kings Quests, etc. REALLY clever design on the interface for it to work with the GBA. Anyways, this will work on the DS with a regular GBA flash cart. http://www.bripro.com/gbagi/index.php
I really hope that the DS somehow spurs a resurgence in adventure gaming. It seems like a perfect match, with the touch screen and two screens for inventory, main game area, talkie/cutscenes, and the voice control could lead to some cool innovation in the genre. Plus, that sort of game seems like it would fit into the portable world... fire it up for a 15-30 minute session of trying to solve some puzzles and then save it and go back to work.
Picross was just Nintendo's name for an existing puzzle called Edel, or Nonograms. There's lots of books on them, and plenty of websites.
And, if that type of puzzle appeals to you, visit Nikoli Puzzles who produces numerous books of many number/symbol logic puzzles. I particularly recommend Hashiwokakero, and wish there were other books on it apart from the one which Nikoli offers.
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Apparently Blizzard sent out a newsletter asking fans if they'd be interested in ports of Starcraft and Diablo. Sounds good to me, although I'd prefer the PSP.
Why would you prefer a port to the PSP, whose controller is essentially a Super NES pad with a ThinkPad nipple? Compared to a touch screen, how would you efficiently control an RTS with an analog nub or a D-pad? Have you tried Advance Wars: Dual Strike? Or did you just buy a PSP and have no money left over for a Nintendo DS?
Control is not everything. There is still processing power that governs how many enemies can be on screen, and how intelligent they are.
Starcraft's system requirements included a Pentium CPU at 90 MHz. Throw in the fact that the Nintendo DS has hardware acceleration for tile and sprite displays, and you might be able to squeeze it into the 67 MHz of the main ARM CPU.
And then the screen lets you see more on the PSP.
In practice, you need to see enough to tell one type of unit or terrain from another. This was doable in Warcraft 1 and other RTS games of that era, which ran at 320x200 pixels, with 256 horizontal pixels used for the playfield and the rest for the status/command bar, part of which would move up to the top screen.
Bigger UMD allows more levels, more enemy types, in game voice, better music.
Current Nintendo DS games are up to 64 MiB in size. Starcraft was ported to N64, at a size of 32 MiB (256 "megabits"). How big was the spawn install of Starcraft for PC? Audio fidelity doesn't matter as much as it would on a console or PC title, as you typically don't use Sennheiser headphones on a handheld, so you can probably get away with some form of lossy waveform compression on the audio.
An all around better gaming experience.
NOW LOADING is not gaming.
Point is, if you can't easily tell your units what to do, especially in the rapid clickfests of advanced play, the rest doesn't matter. True, good control won't save a bad game, but bad control will wreck a good one.
Because that's what a new and innovative piece of gaming hardware needs - tired old ports from other platforms.
What the DS needs are games that set it apart from the rest of the gaming platforms out there, not games that make it look like a portable PC, just because a touch screen can take the place of a mouse.
-- I like the cut of your thinking, young man. - me.
Wow, this thread makes me want to get a DS - the possibilities ROCK - and knowing Nintendo, a lot of them will probably happen. If the DS achieves even a fifth of the popularity of the original Gameboy, it will be around for a LONG time, and it will have some intense games... Hmmmm...how much does it cost again? 8)
I'd kill for a copy of Populous on the DS! The hand of god would finally be my hand!
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What about lemmings? The snes version sucked, but with a stylus, it seems like an obvious choice...
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Reading through the drunkencoders.com site, I'm wondering: What's the best way to get this running? It seems using a GBA Movie Player would be easiest, but then you'd have to change the firmware...
Plus, I have a Mac, so most of the software won't run.
Any hints?
AfterLife has got to be ported. Sure with Populous, you can play God, but in AfterLife, you can play Satan. :)
And the DS is a platform that cries out for the different variations of SimCity. No SimCity 4, though. It's starting to get that "EA owns me" feel.
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While I'm sure it won't happen because Squeenix are busy making Final Fantasy sequels, I'd love a new version of Actraiser. The touch screen would be excellent for the "sim" mode where you have to help the people build a town and survive, while normal controls could be used for the "action" parts.
The two screens could also be used to good effect by perhaps having the "action" and "sim" portions of the game occurring simultaneously (with the "action" on the top screen) forcing players to switch between looking after the people and fighting off monsters.
Picross could make it very easily. There's already a picross game on the Palm platform that someone made, so Picross is almost a natural fit.
For that matter, I'm very surprised Astraware and Popcap haven't been porting their Palm titles to the DS. The stylus is nothing new in gaming (heck, its just a one button mouse essentially), since Palm/PocketPC games usually involve the stylus. The DS is different with the two screens and the introduction of the stylus to the mainstream.
Regardless, Panel de Pon/Tetris Attack/Pokemon Puzzle Challenge could probably fair well. Can anyone explain what makes this different from Yoshi's Cookie? And for that matter, is there any difference from Diamond Mine/Bejeweled?
I would love to see an F-Zero game on this as well. Hopefully if Mario Kart DS pulls off well, that'll usually be Nintendo's follow-up racing game. A Mario Paint-esque title would be good as well. Simcity should get brought on because that would work really well too. Maybe even some sort of networked version too.
I would also love to see something from the Seiken Densetsu series on here, since the multiplayer would be cake to pull off with the built-in wireless. Hopefully Square's World of Mana that was announced recently will do this.
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Another Code was a great game - I'd like to play more Point and Click adventure Myst like games (in fact even the original one would be great - it seemed to old to play on my PC when I tried). LucasArts Adventures have a good rep as well.
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The DS is a wonderful platform for RPGs, but SRPGs, in particular, would benefit from the 2 screen setup. The bottom half is your playfield, and the top is the battle order, current unit's stats, and action list.
Just being able to see the area of affect without having to block out the playing field first would be great.
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Many PSP games support the ability to eject the disc and hand it off to the other player. You could just as easily have many friends that like the game.
But then you couldn't use "CD quality" music, as it wouldn't be able to stream "CD quality" (44.1 kHz 16-bit stereo PCM) music from the UMD anymore, and there's not enough room in the PSP's RAM to fit a map's soundtrack.
You could use fast loader 0.7 to copy the game to your friends memory stick.
Memory Stick Duo media shipped with the PSP is 32 MB. A "CD quality" soundtrack won't fit on that. For the price of a larger Memory Stick they could just buy a copy of Starcraft. And isn't Sony likely to frown on a publisher endorsing copying a commercial game to the Memory Stick?
It could support online multiplayer.
Online multiplayer has historically required using battle.net, which has historically had growing pains with each new title and tends to be banned at universities, which excludes a large part of the 18-22 year old market. In addition, where are the free hotspots that accept devices other than Nintendo DS systems, even in your geographic area?
well I think it must have CD quality music.
It's a handheld. How, specifically, are you going to tell the difference between true CD quality music and a waveform compressed with MP3, Vorbis, or GSM, especially in the noisy environment where a handheld is typically played? There's no reason why a Nintendo DS game can't use compressed audio given that GBA games such as Super Puzzle Fighter II and Luminesweeper use it. Besides, in the situations where you'd typically use a handheld in preference to a console or PC, the ambient noise is louder than it would be on a console or PC, so you can get away with a lower bitrate for the audio.
How easy would it be to play quake III where you can use the d pad to strafe and go forward and back and the screen to turn and just tap where you want to shoot? That actually might be more acurate than the mouse.
As for Real time strategy you can just draw a big box right on the screen around the units you want to select and have the top screen always showing your base, so you can have one eye on your war party and one on your base so you dont have to flip between them all the time!
It stands to reason that the PC version of StarCraft also used hardware accelerated DirectDraw, so this probably can't be counted as a reason to decrease the CPU requirements. Rather it would be neccessary to show that the ARM9 (I think?) is that much faster clock-for-clock than the Pentium.
The ARM9 is not faster than the Pentium, but on the Nintendo DS you also don't have Windows 95 taking up RAM and CPU, and you don't have several layers of hardware abstraction within DirectDraw and the kernel to worry about; you can use drawing functions that eventually expand inline to direct writes to video memory.
StarCraft already did a lot with the limited resolution it had available. With the DS's resolution of 256x192 , it's going to be crowded.
If you apply a clever trick, you can double the DS's effective resolution at the cost of some minor color fringing, which will help keep text readable even at smaller point sizes.
All the CD was used for in StarCraft, IIRC, was the music, and the cutscenes.
And the copy prevention.
The music could probably be redone at acceptable quality with the wavetable synth of the DS, meaning it'd barely use any space.
But then you have the AC a few comments over who would buy a PSP version with less-adapted controls just because it has CD quality music. Is such a customer representative of the handheld gaming public?
The video is a different story
The Nintendo DS has 3D acceleration. If you'll accept wavetable synthesis of musical instruments, I'm sure that at least some of the cut scenes could be redone using a 3D engine instead of compressed video.
Nintendo really needs to make some sort of hybrid of these two items.
:-)
I think it would be a blast taking pictures of people/things and then drawing stuff on them like you can with photoshop and then transmitting them to other DS owners in the area.
Also, they could use the camera/wireless to do video chat. It would be like having a video walkie talkie.
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One of the great disadvantages of D-pads and analog stick controls is that control is, at best, poorly incremental. On a d-pad, you are either pressing or not pressing a direction. On a thumbstick, your control is limited.
Games where fine control is a factor, like driving games, would benefit a lot from the DS screen. Add in some short-range wifi multiplayer, and you could create a new kind of portable racing game.
This game is just a shoe in. Using the stylus for mining and trotting around the galaxy, then dropping it and using the d-pad and buttons for melee. Not to mention the possibility of Wi-Fi multiplayer melee.
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X-Com. X-Com, X-Com, X-Com ... X-ComX-ComX-Com.
say it until the word has no more meaning (not that it had heaps to begin with).
X-COM ON DS. then i might actually be able to pull myself away from WoW.
also, the Wizardry games and the Persona games would be great. someone gimme a call when they're done.
Noone has mentioned Nethack yet? The nerd quotient at slashdot is really declining.
Come on, people. This device has a top screen and a bottom screen. It has a built-in clock with an alarm, and you're trying to tell me I can't play old-school Donkey Kong on it?
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Because they're both gadget-related, it's really easy to slip up.
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but the additional space allowed by umd grants you to have your soundtrack stored as atrac or aac or even mp3s sampled at any quality you like. 32kbps? how about 96 or 128 kbps?
How can you tell the difference between 32 kbps and 128 kbps through a 2cm speaker in a noisy outdoor or motor vehicle environment?
if the timeline actually monitored the waveform of the music; changing the music tracks yourself could allow you to build your own custom "skins".
Games such as Lumines, DDR, and Frequency have their BPMs programmed in the skin definitions. The only game I know of that uses beat detection is Vib Ribbon, which (like Kuru Kuru Kururin and Payback) was released everywhere but North America.
nothing wrong with a bit of self-promotion, but if you could rely on external equipment for everything
GSM Player for GBA relies on external equipment only because there aren't any DS-native flash cards available to the public. A developer of an official Nintendo DS game would of course have access to DS-native flash cards during development in order to port the codec.
King's Quest, Space Quest, Quest for Glory, Police Quest...
I don't know that the smaller resolution would work so well, if it's a small area you have to click on... but I LOVED these games.
A classic head-to-head gem perfectly suited for wireless and the dual screens. Ran pefectly on the PS1 and 3DO, so it should port flawlessly.