Porting Possibilities

[Shawn Jefferson]

Curt Vendel posted some source code over in the Atari 8-bit forum some time ago for some classic video games from the Atari 8-bit series. Since the CPU is the same, porting would be a matter of replacing the sound and graphics routines only...

 

Among them: Donkey Kong, Dig Dug and Defender. The Atari 8-bit version of Donkey Kong was very good compared to many of the consoles/computers of the day.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/210244-source-code-palooza/

[108 Stars]

I made this mock-up a while ago.

 

 

Sadly matashen doesn't like Donkey Kong, so he won't spend time porting the game.

 

 

That said, I love the idea. IIt would be nice to do a compilation or two with the remaining great arcade classics of the golden age. It would be fitting since these kind of games were always a strong point of the Lynx with the excellent versions of games like Joust, Ms.Pac-Man, Battlezone etc.

I have also been thinking, there's that great homebrew "His Dark Majesty" for the Atari 8-bits, it's a clone of one of my favorite Mega Drive series Langrisser/Warsong and would make a great Lynx port, the first strategy RPG on Lynx.

Edited April 6, 2013 by 108 Stars

[Der Luchs]

too bad

 

http://www.atari-lynx.de/mp3s/dk.mp3

[Emehr]

I dunno, there are so many classic consoles that have these games already. The Lynx came about during a later generation of arcade hardware and it does an excellent job replicating that era (STUN Runner, Xybots, Roadblasters, etc.). I'd rather see more games from that generation get ported over and see the Lynx used to its potential.

[GadgetUK]

Certainly worth looking at! Part of my problem is i've got wayyy too many projects on the go at once =/ So far i've got a list of about 5 games I want to do for the Lynx...

[Der Luchs]

Yeah, like LynxOps

 

Go Gadget, Go Gadget

Edited April 7, 2013 by Der Luchs

[Shawn Jefferson]

I made this mock-up a while ago.

 

That's a nice mock-up screen. I don't personally like any of the "vertical" games on the lynx, it just doesn't feel nature to hold it that way. The atari 8-bit version of Donkey Kong made some changes to account for the different orientation of the screen, and generally they seemed to work. Maybe a similiar thing would work for the lynx-although the lack of resolution hurts.

 

I have also been thinking, there's that great homebrew "His Dark Majesty" for the Atari 8-bits, it's a clone of one of my favorite Mega Drive series Langrisser/Warsong and would make a great Lynx port, the first strategy RPG on Lynx.

 

That is a great game. Probably it could be ported fairly easily (I think source is available?)

[GadgetUK]

Yeah, that Donkey Kong appeals to me =) If someone doesnt beat me to it

[108 Stars]

 

 

That's a nice mock-up screen. I don't personally like any of the "vertical" games on the lynx, it just doesn't feel nature to hold it that way. The atari 8-bit version of Donkey Kong made some changes to account for the different orientation of the screen, and generally they seemed to work. Maybe a similiar thing would work for the lynx-although the lack of resolution hurts.

 

I can see your point. I just attempted to go the original arcade style route with that mock-up, but I'd also be fine with the screen horizontally.

As you say, the Lynx low resolution hurts; 40 lines are missing vertically compared to GB or GG. So the Lynx has kind of a widescreen aspect ratio.

 

The result would be an even more squashed screen than for the 4:3 picture the old home versions had.

I could shift the status bar with score, lives etc to the side, to free a few lines vertically and cut off a bit horizontally to get closer to a 4:3 aspect ratio for the playfield; but of course the remaining resolution would be very low.

It would be possible to have the screen scroll and make the graphics more detailed that way, but that would hurt the gameplay; DK was conceived as a single-screen, non-scrolling game. The player sees the rolling barrels coming far in advance, and having a playfield in a res that requires scrolling destroys that.

 

So the best options to me were either vertically oriented like in the mock-up, with lower res than the arcade, or horizontally with really ultra low res.

 

It's always tough to make a choice like that. :/

[johannesmutlu]

too bad

 

http://www.atari-lynx.de/mp3s/dk.mp3

damm if nintendo had accepted the deal with epix,we would,ve now mario,donkeykong,xelda and kirby on the (nintendo) lynx haha lol.