BladeJunker

Came close to getting a Video cart a few times for the novelty of it but passed. That kind of compressed content from the GBA is never going to look good on Youtube no matter how good a capture device since that is capture compression on top of high GBA compression, on top of YT compression. You could use an emulator and capture raw video to 1080p and it wouldn't make a difference. Not many games with lossy compression for in-game graphics except Broken Sword, even on the native screen I could still see block compression artifacts. I'm not surprised GBA videos have playback problems not on GBAs as the format is very proprietary and difficult to emulate, different developers could use completely different implementation of video compression when trying to squeeze FMV into small cartridges IE. not AVI or MP4 or MOV. Actual game engine graphics can be captured to 1080p in an emulator, not increasing the game resolution but preserving its native resolution crispness even with compression from Youtube. Works out to 1440X960 for GBA at 6X which would probably need some letter or pillarboxing unless you want to distort the aspect ratio a little to fit YT standards. I Bought FRAPS a year or so ago and haven't tried that yet but I've been meaning to see what I could do with all those varying old aspect ratios using crisp pixels. It's really hard to get clean native footage from a game console especially when old or portable, like for a Sega Genesis you'd need to mod it to RGB through SCART or at least Component output to get a clean source which makes emulators so much easier to use for getting sharp pixel footage. Seen quite a few YTubers use this approach sometimes adding a scanline filter effect "in post" if that floats their boat. Audio from the GBA is definitely a problem whether video or regular raster graphics as the compression is higher, a lot of people have noticed in the case of SNES to GBA ports that the sound was scratchier than originally heard. I don't know what could be done about that on YT because that is compression with more compression thrown on top. Older game consoles don't have that problem because the sound is chip generated raw before capture compression is added but the GBA is new enough to have compression issues even more severe than PS1 or Saturn. We're started to see more options for capturing better portable console footage with clone systems but it still needs work since I haven't seen or heard of any that work exactly like the native hardware or have enough options to replicate SD-TV images approximately. Sound is probably the hardest factor with multi-systems, I'm no audiophile but hearing the wrong tones in Sonic1 music makes me cringe "That don't sound right." . Still I understand the convenience of clones.

I remember that multi-console game starring Dwayne Johnson which was going to be a movie but then wasn't. Well it's like anything where a decade or more goes by and then they make something new that doesn't remind you of the original in the slightest EGs. NARC Paperboy. You know as bad as the end result is for 3D GBA games it is really hard to find a single GBA video sample that doesn't look absolutely horrible, Youtube can compress things badly but the source videos people are uploading must be pretty bad to begin with to have it look like that. HD too good for the GBA, these games look better than this representation? As a MK fan the 3D era was a dark time for old fans, I just liked MK3 and the 3D graphics approach lost me. I take for granted how many MK games they made that I shouldn't be confused why MK started to be disliked. Coming back to it later on Xbox the quest mode was interesting but it didn't feel like MK anymore. I don't why Midway thought MK could be franchised to the degree of John Madden games and beyond, Capcom had long periods of time between SF2 and SF3, also it was a long time till SF4 happened. At least the last 2 MK games have gotten back to form.

Of sure the highest resolution dictates that actual video output. I was thinking Popeye arcade reminds me little about 2600 graphics construction like the Playfield is chunkier but it fills in the background, a couple of Player Objects with a third on a separated scanline, and objects and details made of Missile or Ball bits. Not exact but a funny layout design similarity. Yeah I mentioned Bally/Midway's Arch Rivals,Pigskin 621 AD as well as Xenophobe using the same board, pretty popular. It does make some crisp main sprites but it was quite a while before home gaming hardware could reproduce that on screen, probably PC SVGA first. Speaking of Wacko that was a pretty fun game I wouldn't mind on 7800 or any port of it really. That was one crazy cabinet, saw one for a few months at the local mall around 1989 roughly. A conversion kit wouldn't replicate that slant lol. A little challenge replicating the control panel without a coupler but I guess they don't need to be together, just adjacent. Secure the joystick for one handed grip while the trackball stays from its own weight. How heavy is the 2600 trackball?

Well the main sprites are 512X448 in Popeye but the backgrounds look about 128X112, and the signs, grass, and water look about 256X224. I'm not sure why this approach was done but the hardware must have had no trouble doing 2X or 4X pixel inflation per layer but didn't have much memory for bitmaps maybe. I think Defender_2600's version of Popeye graphics look good too, most of the details are still there despite the reduction in resolution.

Yikes sorry to hear that. 6 weeks, it would take at least 3 weeks for me to write a design document for a game. Thanks for shedding some light on the situation for GBA games, the rest of us can only speculate without recorded history. At least these days we're seeing some books being written about lost periods in gaming development history, so much of that disappears once people move onto new jobs and sometimes it was so bad people don't even want to talk about it. I've heard about the phenomenon of making something cheaply, fast enough, and with a popular license that it still makes a profit even if the game ends up in landfills. Enter the Matrix would fall under that, bought a PC copy for $3 in clearance, wow was that product terrible, clunky, twitchy graphics, bugs, and driving stages that I couldn't believe passed a QA stage. Dave Perry worked on this, so much for name developers. Still it sold like crazy when new.

I'll stick up for KS here. Atari graphics are an intimate affair for programmers "Leave me alone with my work damn it!" ^_^ where the results can be efficient but plain quite often. I've tried to at least suggest an art director can do something for 2600 graphics but its a steep argument when it comes to racing the beam. You would think the nature of the beast changes as hardware improves but it doesn't, I remember a late 90s anecdote where it took a lot of meetings to convince John Carmack to add swimming animations into Quake3 but it didn't click with him till he saw it on screen to see the value.

Lol, good comparison on Buffy GBC genre. I can't figure out how things looked so bad on GBC even if the developers were a younger generation because you got to figure they had at least seen what good 2-bit color graphics look like on the NES, C64, 7800, GB, EGA/CGA, CPC, etc. Can you believe MK4 made it to GBC in that form, it looks and sounds dreadful that 2 buttons is the least of its problems, SFA on GBC is crunched down but it looks and sounds decent, plus you can actually pull off a fireball and dragon punch unlike those pirate NES fighting games. Was actually wondering if the 7800 could pull off something similar, if not SFA GBC then maybe International Karate? Well I tried to find the sharpest, least compressed videos possible so even at its best sprites are mushy, CGI needs a lot more resolution for detail than hand drawn stuff. Don't get me started on billboard sprites that always face the player, practically nobody even tried to add a few more prerendered angles for all those years and all those advances in system memory. I think Outlaws was the first time I saw an object sprite change angle based with the player camera "Woah that horse actually has a 8 angles.". ^_^ The GBA was strong with graphics effects just like the Lynx was but there was a preoccupation to make 3D games on it because the big brother consoles were doing that so it had to rather than sticking to smoother 2D presentations. I tried a lot of 3D GBA games, impressive software engines but the lack of perspective correction in texture mapping and the extremely low polygon output meant it couldn't subdivided surfaces to compensate warping like the PS1 and Saturn did. Well you sure would hope that the company that made the console could get the most out of it. Sega Saturn had a similar deal, only Sega understood how to program on their platform. Its just too much to ask of the GBC to replicate the prerendered sprites that the SNES did, even the Genesis had a hard time getting that art technique to look good with 64 colors in Toy Story and Sonic 3D Blast while most other such games looked like crap such as X-perts. Yeah that was a big problem for Atari as ownership passed through several hands like Warner Bros, a bunch of business dudes that never played a video game who were more interested in their next cocaine bump than the future of video games. You can only blame consumer perception so much as computers changed business very ssslllooowwwlllyyy, remember the Xerox geniuses that gave away a fortune in advanced GUI technology to Apple. Atari was a super power of gaming just like Nintendo was in the 90s but they just mismanaged it into oblivion rather than recognizing it for the profitable and sustainable business it was. I often think of the alternate universe where Atari remained a competitor, they would probably be where Sony is now if I had to guess.

Yeah that is true but I don't see that as a bad thing per se, unlike Amstrad or Commodore, Atari had a much better position at the time to "consolize" their existing technology into cheaper packages. Things like the Amstrad GX4000 or Amiga CD32 would end up only slightly more well known globally than things like the Apple Pippin which are quite expensive and hard to find compared to the 5200 which I should be able to acquire easily enough at a moderate price. Are 5200s common where you live? I came across an Amiga CD32 here because Amiga had some market penetration in Canada but not much while the Amstrad CPC/GX4000 never came out where I live. I can definitely see the INTV influence on the addition of a keypad for the 5200 and it was pressure but let's be honest, Atari had a near monopoly early 80s for console gaming so it wasn't such a bad thing to have some competition rise. I mean if INTV and Coleco didn't happen would the 5200 or 7800 even happen or would Atari just extend the 2600 into an even longer life cycle while arcade games and computers advanced. The 5200 is pretty "thrown together" and rushed as a design, it certainly indicates Atari didn't have a strong plan for a 2600 successor till they were forced to make one. I'm guessing the 10-bit Video System X was more of paper plan, does anyone have a prototype unit of it? Still other than the price and joystick I think the 5200 showed promise. Yeah most people like the 7800, the conveniences built into are very appealing. I think if backwards compatibility had been in the 5200 out of the box could have helped with the transition of game consoles from appliances to the evolving product they needed to be but weren't thought as initially with average consumers.

Lots hmm, some cherry titles maybe, I mean there's more bad Superman games than good, Batman has fared better than most but he still has garbage titles. Laziness is definitely part of what went wrong on the GBA and even the GBC but it was also a time of transition for developers. Most of the great developers that were at the best on NES went towards 16-bit hardware never looking back mostly and the new developers of 8-bit games on GBC didn't seem to have any idea how 2D games or 2-bit color worked. That's how things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Mortal Kombat 4 could get released despite looking as bad or worse than the 1st generation NES titles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXr4__bEmEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWOEBio6cA0 With the GBA it was more about an over dependence on CGI, yep even CGI can ruin games not just like movies when you have a whopping resolution of 240X160 on a unlit screen. Even when the games weren't 3D in gameplay the tiny screen turn CG prerendered sprites into JPEG postage stamps of pixel mush. When you're low res you have to hand drawn even if only tracing 3D models because with that level of definition every pixel counts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht9qH34vsZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2Vj0zq4qzg As far as java cell more often than not you're scraping the bottom of the barrel for quality developers, the kind of companies that might last a year or successful ones that pump out crap by the ton. Java cell games are usually so bad I don't even acknowledge they exist because it's a 90% disappointment factor. Pre-crash consoles had there own problems unique to the era like having too much of the same thing mass produced. Since jumping on this subject I've looked at 10 years of arcade titles (1980-1990) and a large chunk of it is blatant copies or reskins of the classics we know and love, the number of games with spaceships at the bottom of the screen shooting descending aliens is as staggering as Pong clones produced in the 70s that caused there own crash with saturation. I love the 2600 but Atari made way too many of them and for way too long for something that has a limited lifespan like video game technology but even the concept of buying a game system every few years was a new way of doing things as consoles were likened to a refrigerator or toilet by the then adult buyer IE. "I already bought you a vidyo game 5 years ago, go play with that.". Atari pulled out all the bells & whistles for the 5200 but it didn't sell as well as the 2600, to apply a different era that would be like if the NES stuck around forever and fewer bought the SNES which would have been unthinkable from that time frame's perspective. Personally I think the 2600 was a little too spartan when it came to sprites and specifically the number of colors possible horizontally when it's like 3 versus 192 vertical lines of color as that makes it hard to express even basic shapes. While it is extremely impressive what people pulled from the 2600 it was also like pulling teeth in difficulty, pain staking effort and planning. I know the 2600 was cost effective for its time but man did it make programmers work hard, no slack, no easy outs, just a grueling balancing act of assembly and reassembly to add anything new to the mix just when things work. That's kind of why it was sad the 5200 didn't do better because the graphics and sound output were topnotch for a game console in 1982 as it was much easier to approximate the arcade titles from then. Listening to the '5200 Super Podcast' much of the old press seems to indicate that console was being marketed to an older audience rather than a general one which tends not to work as was the case of the 3DO with its higher price point and limited market. The 7800 has a pretty low amount of color count vertically compared to the 5200 or 2600 but I think it at least was designed to reach more of a market with the backwards compatibility. I can't even guess what price the 7800 would have costed if it came out when it was supposed to but I have to assume it would be cheaper than the premium 5200. There isn't much on the 5200 but the quality was high at the time compared to 7800 which was struggling with budgetary concerns so in some ways I think it needs more arcade ports to fill the gap left by the crash fallout. Boy that got long. ^_^

Lol I guess my expectations were very low, I expected much worse so I wasn't as disappointed with it. ^_^ It's pretty bad on GBA for licensed characters, people mention the Wii but the GBA was overflowing with licensed character crap. Nothing new though, lots of people's favorite cartoon characters have starred in lots of bad games over the years. Oh I know that E.T. GBA game was so bad, he's never done so well with video game adaptions but they keep making them. The Atari 8-bit one looks nice but the sound is horrible while the PS1 game looks okay but dull. It's hard to make a game about a slow moving pacifist vampire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00qlpNuA9sw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQqwI-5u404 That sucks about Popeye: Ijiwaru Majo Seahag no Maki only coming out in Japan, it was 1994 but they didn't think the USA or Europe would like a Popeye game??? Got far worse titles on the SNES that made it to cartridge. T_T Reminds me about the BTTF SFC game too, the world doesn't want a decent platformer with Marty Mcfly that captures some of the film's charm, they want heart catching, monster hopping, and impossible horse riding, that's the good stuff.

That's a completely different game, it's like a side scrolling race game. Popeye Rush For Spinach, looks okay, a little claustrophobic in graphics scale IE. make the sprites smaller or the screen resolution bigger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ55H7U7_JA

The vector approach through software rendering has its advantages like the Death Star zoom looks great as its a flat "vector drawing" that scales big efficiently. Harder to approximate with straight 2D sprites but they didn't even try on the second port. For the ships they got the vertex/line count down as far as they could in the 3D version but any kind of clustering or peaks in rendering gets really slow for a game about fast action. In the 2D approach the frame rate was better but the sprites were kind of small as you only get one distance sprite rather than 2 or 3 versions which I think the 7800 could do better than 5200 using sprites especially in size. I think the 5200 suffers in controls mostly because of the way ship sprites are more of an overlay rather than approximate 3D objects that can move independently. Idk maybe a combination would be better, 2D fighters with a vector based Death Star and background objects.

No my point was the 5200 port ran faster at a more consistent frame rate because it was 2D based while the other ports used true 3D models and slowed down to a crawl when more than 1-2 ships were on screen. So to be clear I'm suggesting the 5200 version is better for its graphics approach, not worse.

That's too bad, happens all the time, hard to keep that motivation in the long run. Many people like things but it takes real love to follow through to the end. I'm no better, I got passion but I can't stick to one project at a time. I don't get bored of the projects but a lot of them can only go so far with my skill set without a partner to fill the spaces I can't. Actually makes me think of the scene from Blazing Saddles. ^_^

I wonder if the Atari 8-bit version could be used on the 7800, maybe just visually with a Dark Chambers code base.

I'm no expert but it looks like it could work within Kangaroo mode like Froggie did, basic straight up and down color layout without heavy orthographic projection. Detailed sprites but not that many, although a lot of hearts even if only 1 color lol. The backgrounds look easy enough, whatever hardware they used it did that weird blown up low res thing you'd see in some arcade games in the 80s, Bally Midway was using that in sports games and Xenophobe for some reason. The arcade Popeye backgrounds are actually quite chunky and have looked better in most of the ports. http://www.spriters-resource.com/arcade/popeye/sheet/64376/ http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ballymidway/ballymidway.htm I can't find any sprites either, just GBA ones. It's amazing that a fairly popular 1982 arcade game still doesn't have a sprite rip in 2016. I'm just not seeing any good proxies in the other versions. The Coleco ones have a nice size but are muted in color while the NES ones are decent but squashed shorter than the arcade ones. Would be a lot better to converting the arcade sources down. Not much sense in replicating the arcade "res-mixing" thing and just unify everything into a 320X240 resolution or 160X240 if it ends up not running fast enough.

Hey it has color, are those overlays in black & white? ^_^ The Vectrex could probably come very close, I've often thought in homebrews they could try to do more 3D perspective stuff since they can scale vector objects more efficiently than non-scaling sprites can.

Oh, well that vector based list to 7800 is much smaller than I thought. I am far behind on 7800 news lol. Were many carts made? I see Space Duel is in 160 mode, could PMP chime in on final reasons for going lower res in that instance.

Idk, it looks like most of the 8-bit computer ports are doing actual vector graphics through software rendering and it gets sluggish quite easily once a few ships occur. Star Wars on the 5200 is 2D based but it renders at a more consistent frame rate, I think 2D and 160 mode are needed to run a game like TESB on the 7800 imo. There's just so much stuff and big stuff happening on the screen most of the time. Needs a lot of prerendering just like Space Harrier did on most consoles, a very 3D game even if you fake it.

That could be fun. Looks doable with a basic sprite prerender of the original wireframes rotating.

I do too but mostly because it offends my pixel art sensibilities lol, so much bad art. I'm tinkering with it atm to see if I can make it less ugly but just as bloody. Odd company Exidy, lots of differing arcade titles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exidy Are you speaking of Showdown? That does look good and the variation in gameplay mode is nice. http://gamesdbase.com/game/arcade/showdown.aspx Actually you're probably talking about Cheyenne, that looks a lot like Crossbow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUMs6OTcguY

I wonder what to do with vector based games if ported to the 7800, 320 mode or 160 mode? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Vector_arcade_games Asteroids kind of went for a "filled" look on 7800 as did Space Fury on Colecovision. I guess it depends on the rendering overhead of the game in question. I took a stab at what Major Havoc might look like in 320 mode. http://www.mobygames.com/game/space-fury/screenshots 320 mode has a nice crispness to it but it can only approximate actual vector based graphics. Idk the more 2D the game the easier it is to approximate into sprite form. Black Widow and Major Havoc seem like popular choices, I'm partial to Space Castle as that 2600 homebrew is quite impressive and would welcome one for 7800.

Well went back to look at my first design, 4 years ago, time flies lol. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/195839-custom-controller-designs/ Still some of that will make it into the Uber Controller, especially Input Concentration for more control layout options. Something that always bugged me about the NES Advantage was it used 2 ports but it only added options to the existing buttons but didn't add anymore face buttons despite quite a few arcade ports having to prune down to 2 buttons on NES and down to 1 on 2600. That Paddle pin/lock still sounds good for switching between Paddle and Driving Controller. Still they are different enough to be a pain, 4 Paddles but only 2 Driving Controllers. Always seemed like overkill to have a driving variation to me, I mean you can spin a real steering wheel a lot but eventually it stops because the steering mechanism can't go any further. It's oddness is reflected somewhat with the small number of titles for the Driving Controller and how it's harder to find them compared to Paddles. Then again it was an odd choice to have 4 Paddles on a system as graphically limited as the 2600 compared to having 2 Fire buttons per player which a lot of 80s arcade games adopted early on. C'est la vie. Figure the Paddle Knob and Analog Trigger will just use the 2 Paddle lines, I'll need to make some kind of spring back for the trigger but the basics are pull the trigger to turn the potentiometer. So together more of a future feature for 2 player racing games IE. Gas Pedal & Steering Wheel, although you could control 2 players (sort of)using existing Paddle games with this controller. Shoulder buttons are going be Left & Right from the joystick as one option to approximate control feel similar to a pinball machine. I only have Midnight Magic, but I assume they all control the same way? I wonder why there wasn't more pinball on the 2600, 5200, or 7800, was it just different tribes back then that didn't talk, why no homebrew pinball? Another basic to get in is being able to move Up on the joystick to a face button for better platforming control, all the rage on C64 these days. ^_^ I've warmed up to keypads and see some value in them but you can't tell me there was tons of arcade games that used them, go ahead name one. ^_^ Just look at it from an acreage standpoint, most of the face is covered in keypad on such controllers and they shrink and tuck the Fire buttons away on the side like you aren't constantly using them lol. I think the 2600's approach was more sensible of a keypad as an optional peripheral, I blame George Plimpton for the phenomenon. ^_^ I think it will be handy to have a keypad for the 7800 as an option, could use some more strategy games and generally more home-centric gaming experiences outside of quarter munchers. As peripheral in this design it would be somewhat like a fat credit card. At the very least I can get away from the soft membrane approach to something more durable and clicky for long term usage. Looks like the average is 1-4 face buttons in most mid to late 80s games, and 6-8 face buttons around the Jaguar's time frame when it comes to direct button control. Limited pins but damn did early consoles not want to give players buttons. The average for "Option Buttons" is 2 but the 5200 has 3, idk maybe you hold Pause & Start to activate Reset. For the most part such buttons branch off the keypad circuit as they are only pressed one at a time only.

Wow those are a lot of nice cart options. I've seen plenty of sweet homebrews in the Store here, going to get Frenzy asap, last Colecovision copy I saw was $80 CAD yikes. Looks like any game within this level of throughput is covered with the different cart options. I've been looking at Rolling Thunder on and off, same graphics scale or smaller? All I could decide was to not do a HUD overlay and sharpen up the font. NES port was decent but the 7800 might do bigger sprites. Regardless the sprites are weird so conversion has been slow on Albatross, skinny and low contrast palette. Also haven't had much luck finding source images of the backgrounds or other sprites. Got so many other things to do but it's been a fun sideline to play with.

Yeah I saw that one, really impressive stuff, like wow. I'm not against 320A or 320B but it seems quite particular what you can do with it, like I've seen some impressive C64 hi-res games but it looks hard to find the right balance in performance and graphics. I guess it helps to have something with horizontal lanes being a big part of the design.