How much would it cost to port a game(GBA or lower quality game)

[TheObscureGamer]

How much would it cost to port(commission someone) a game from say the SNES platform to an entirely new platform? Just asking for no reason with no ulterior motive at all?....

[DragonGrafx-16]

First thing you would have to take in consideration is if the GBA even has enough buttons to port the game from the SNES. The GBA has two fewer buttons. (Which is why the GBA Super Mario World port has spin jump on the right shoulder button). 

[godslabrat]

On one hand, if all the buttons on the Controller aren't used, the person doing the porting could *probably* find some button combo to handle a command that isn't used much.  It's part of the porting process

 

On the other hand, you're basically asking someone to write a whole new game for you, albeit with a lot of reference material to work from.  Expect some sticker shock when you get a quote...

[fiddlepaddle]

If you really want to know how much it would cost, you probably need to identify both game and target system, then talk to an experienced programmer about your ideas.

[Tanooki]

Maybe ask Piko?  They do various conversions and finishing up of games that weren't done along with the full game releases on stuff they licensed or bought out.

[TheObscureGamer]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

Maybe ask Piko?  They do various conversions and finishing up of games that weren't done along with the full game releases on stuff they licensed or bought out.

Piko?

[Steven Pendleton]

1 hour ago, TheObscureGamer said:

Piko?

https://pikointeractive.com/

[TheObscureGamer]

5 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

https://pikointeractive.com/

Ok thanks,as long as the number is below 70 thousand I feel like I can work with that ?

[Mikebloke]

Also consider that GBA has a smaller resolution and not so good sound chips than the snes. It seems like it would be a nice easy conversion as so many SNES games did get ported to GBA, and perhaps from a coding point of view there might be some level of ease moving one to the other, but its the redesign of interfaces that might catch you. Platformers generally handle this better but expect a harder job if you wanted something like... Sim City.

[BydoEmpire]

It very much depends on the scope of the game, what platform you're going to, and the size and experience of the team.

 

[Edit] I thought you were asking about SNES->GBA...

FWIW, the team at Virtucraft (Italy?  I forget, it was 20 years ago) ported SNES MK2 to GBA in about 8 weeks, start to finish.  It got a 0 out of 10 review from EGM, it was a buggy mess... but they got it out the door which to me was an amazing accomplishment and feat of engineering.  I don't know the team size or makeup, but clearly they were experienced in both SNES and GBA development to even come close to that time frame.

 

Going from GBA to PC/Unity/UE or something is a whole other ball of wax, you might as well just redo the game from scratch, using the original as reference.  There's little you could pull over other than art assets which you'd need access to (or have a way to rip).

Edited August 5, 2020 by BydoEmpire

[turboxray]

On 8/4/2020 at 4:56 PM, TheObscureGamer said:

How much would it cost to port(commission someone) a game from say the SNES platform to an entirely new platform? Just asking for no reason with no ulterior motive at all?....

If they're retired or just feeling really generous (and not working full time).. probably something like 50-60k. That's on super cheap side. There's definitely people that would do it for less, but doubt they'd have the skills.

[Tanooki]

20 hours ago, BydoEmpire said:

It very much depends on the scope of the game, what platform you're going to, and the size and experience of the team.

 

[Edit] I thought you were asking about SNES->GBA...

FWIW, the team at Virtucraft (Italy?  I forget, it was 20 years ago) ported SNES MK2 to GBA in about 8 weeks, start to finish.  It got a 0 out of 10 review from EGM, it was a buggy mess... but they got it out the door which to me was an amazing accomplishment and feat of engineering.  I don't know the team size or makeup, but clearly they were experienced in both SNES and GBA development to even come close to that time frame.

 

Going from GBA to PC/Unity/UE or something is a whole other ball of wax, you might as well just redo the game from scratch, using the original as reference.  There's little you could pull over other than art assets which you'd need access to (or have a way to rip).

Speaking of that, also european (France I believe) there's foxysoft and they took a small pile of Atari ST stuff (which in this case is also SNES) such as Another World(Out of this World) and successfully converted it to GBA too.  It wasn't a dumpster fire that MK2 I guess was, though hey in 8 weeks at least it worked.