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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.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
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.
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.
SAILING MISHAP
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.
"And explain again what's so "innovative" about the DS."
We have to explain it *again*? Ok, but I swear this is the last time.
1) It's a portable console with built-in wifi. Yeah, sony has it too, and there is even better support for infrastructure mode on the PSP, but you know that's a me-too after seeing the DS.
2) It does not have a d-pad as it's main source of input. It has a stylus used on a touch screen. This is unheard of in the set-top console world, let alone for a handheld.
3) It has a microphone and a decent speech api which enables simple recognition. Again, even set-top boxes aren't there yet.
4) It has *two* screens. What the developer does with them is up to them, for better or worse. Name one system, ever, that had two screens. Some obscure arcade game? Possibly. A *console*? Never. A portable console? Why that sounds insane!
5) It still has good 'ol GBA battery life. This is arguably not 'innovative' but damn impressive.
6) It's still backwards compatible with the GBA. Not really innovative again, but come on, you have to give some credit.
You may not like these features, and I agree there have been some silly uses of them, but to not call nintendo innovative for trying this out is ridiculous. Many have already called nintendo's demise when the DS was announced.
**Disclaimer, I own every current gen set-top console, a DS, a PSP and a GBA. Try not to call me a fanboy. I know it hurts not to, but just try. If it helps, check my user name.
-- I have fans? Wow.
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.
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.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
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.
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.
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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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.
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
The DS cart is Matrix Semiconductor 3d FRAM, and the block mechanism allows a theoretical limit of 4 gigabytes
No, it doesnt. 4 gigabits wouldve been beleivable, but 4 giabytes is a blatant lie
Maybe you should learn what you're talking about before you start calling people liars. It's a 20-bit addressing mechanism where the blocks are 4k. It's simple mathematics.
At a cost of $10 per 64 megabytes according to Matrix
No publisher will ever pay that much for a game that large
1) I said that's what the device could hold. Whether anyone will actually do it remains to be seen.
2) Given that the cost of producing a cart is currently hovering around $2, I'd love to hear where you pulled this $10/64 meg number. Hell, GBA carts were less than a third that price, and one of the major reasons Big N switched to MS3DF was cost. Please provide a link to your numbers, so that people aren't able to accuse you of making things up.
Actually there is load time. Ive played Star Wars ep 3 on a DS with 6 seconds of load time.
Don't confuse application lag with load time. The load time on the DS cart is less than six cycles. You don't think that fast, but even if you did, the screen doesn't update anywhere near that fast. To the end user, there is literally no percievable effect, because no output device refreshes fast enough to have its behavior changed.
I figured Id explain you lied.
Yes, based on your made up numbers and lack of technical knowedge. Real easy to say something like that when you don't feel you have to back yourself up, isn't it? Links to $10/64meg please.
(By the way, considering as how MS3D FRAM claims a 50% cost reduction over flash, and considering as how I can get 64 meg flash cards including shipping, the manufacturer's profit and the store's profit for $9, I think you're going to have a damn hard time defending that made up number. Nintendo charges the publisher $1.81 for 64 meg. Making things up to defend calling someone else a liar is simply craven.)
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Maybe you should learn what you're talking about before you start calling people liars.
Maybe you should quote what Nintendo themselves have, 1 gigabit. Your number is 32 times bigger than Nintendo's. Not plausable
4k blocks and 20 bits is clear as day. Where are you getting your random numbers?
Given the cost is $10/meg, Id love to see where you got $2 from
A 64MB Matrix memory card will sell for about $10, Matrix said
Okay, that's a reasonable error to make, I guess. First, that's the wrong kind of memory - that's 2d writable memory, and 3d ROM is much cheaper. Second, that article is five years old. Prices have come way down since.
Don't confuse application lag with load time
Have you even played the game? It was specially labelled "LOADING"
I don't have to. I write software for the platform. It could say "beaming data from Mars;" it still wouldn't be true. It's six cycles, no matter what you read in some game.
Then links to the $2
Unfortunately, NDA prevents me from giving out the data I have; this is typical of the gaming industry. That said, if you can't see how $10 for writable five years ago might be $2 for nonwritable today, well, I don't know what to say.
links to the 4 gigabytes
I've already given them several times. Two are in this reply alone.
dont demand proof from me
Why not? You're the one calling me a liar, and making absurd claims on guesses.
when your numbers can just as easily be made up
Sure, except that they aren't. It's relatively easy to find GBA cart prices at $2.14, and it's relatively easy to find Nintendo claiming that they switched to MS3DFR for cost. Do the math.
Making things up to defend calling someone else a liar is simply craven
Then you're craven, cause you're guilty of it
When you don't have the sense to even check what year your prices are coming from, much less that you got the right device, you really need to stop calling people in the industry liars. You're out in left field calling people who do this for a living idiots.
Does it occur to you how that makes you look to the people around you?
StoneCypher is Full of BS