Ports, Trademarks, and Originals

[carlsson]

If you make a completely original (*) or a very loose cover of an existing game, you don't have the same pressure and requirements to make it play like the original does. If there are elements you don't like or find extremely hard to implement, you simply don't use those. If you make your own game, you don't have to invent complex graphical effects that are very hard to accomplish on your platform of choice. Instead you can make effects that are easy to implement but still look very good. Whenever I'm trying to make a game, I'm usually so lazy that once the basic engine works, I leave it at that. I don't polish every pixel until perfection, I don't mind if some special feature seen elsewhere is missing, but then again I never aimed at making a perfect port of an existing game. Actually I'm more thrilled about successful mixing of two genres, picking elements from two completely different games and make it playable.

 

Whether the hardcore gamers and collectors would bother to download or even buy a game that is playable but has no direct relation to classic arcades or other gaming, I think it is their problem. I gave up modern gaming more than 15 years ago, so I don't really know if all those games made today for the Xbox 360, PS3, PC, handhelds and so on are trying to introduce new concepts or if software companies are scared stiff of inventing new kinds of games that people won't recognize and thus refuse to buy. The question is mostly irrelevant for this discussion though, but if modern gaming keeps driving in old tracks, I think it is time for the retro gamers to lead the way out of those muddy tracks. If however modern gaming can distinguish good from bad even if those are games not previously seen, those of us stuck in the 1970's and 1980's should not be stubborn with reinventing our old games.

 

(*) Well, almost NO game will have an entirely new gameplay, it will always remind of something else.

[newcoleco]

In my opinion, if you do something from scratch, not yet available in the games library of your favorite game system, something that may be inspired but not a copy of another game, it's original. And if you're proud of what you do, it's even better.

 

And it's important to experiment to see the possibilities.

 

 

From my personal experience...

 

I didn't know before MS Space Fury how many levels I can fit in a cartridge for a plateform game like this.

I didn't know before Gamepack how many little games I can fit in a cartridge.

I didn't know before Reversi how fast a min-max AI can "think" and be "challenging".

I didn't know before GhostBlaster that the ColecoVision was capable of a game like this.

 

Of course, I did use a couple of tricks for some projects that was not a surprise like using digital voice in Jeepers Creepers, but for a coleco homebrew game this game was the first one to use it, and it's an action horror game as well, a great combination!

 

I'm amazed to see things the Atari homebrewers can do with their Atari 2600 consoles... and I like to think what the Colecovision scene can do based on this observation... like a ray-casting engine.

 

I'm still experimenting suff like doing my own codecs to do full motion video tests and using a flickering effect to do multicolors bitmaps.

 

* Matrix Motion Pictures Tests ( based on trailers ) done in 2004 : Coleco Matrix Movie Tests.zip

 

* Multicolor Bitmaps ( based on pictures from the net ) done in 2003 : Coleco Multicolor Bitmaps.zip

 

I hope people appreciate my work and enjoy my games, whatever if they are considered original or not.

Edited November 20, 2009 by newcoleco

[youki]

The technic you used for multicolored bitmaps is a technics well known on MSX. The effect is acceptable on a 60hz console, but not good on 50hz , far too much flicker and not really usable in game unfortunaly.