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Is an "action/adventure" game the single biggest hole in the 7800 library?


Pac-Lander

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2 hours ago, Cafeman said:

 

I imagine a 7800 Adventure 3 (not including PMP's idea) as basically a clone of NES Legend of Zelda. Inventory, health, enemies to battle, multiple weapons to use.  

 

how about a 7800 role playing game that has character classes and battle strategy like Shining Force but includes Atari characters, like Crystal Castles creatures,  the Yars, the Adventure dragons, etc. 

An 7800 ‘Adventure III’ could have many character classes, include all the enemy-characters of Adventure 1 and 2, - giving them dialogue and more personality, - have all sorts of extras, coins, shops, mini-games, non-player-characters, differing story-lines... and still be ‘Adventure’...

 

Adventure one and two both used a top-down perspective long before Zelda...

 

What is needed?

 

Extraordinary quality...

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Hey Guys-

 

19 hours ago, Giles N said:

I think there are many elements of interest here, but I still think the title ‘Adventure III’ would perhaps keep it more continuous as to the franchise, and I also think that having several character-classes and other non-player characters to encounter and interact with would add depth; they could give hints, sell stuff, be part of a story-line (perhaps a princess in there somewhere - The Princess of The Chalice or something).

 

2 hours ago, Cafeman said:

I imagine a 7800 Adventure 3 (not including PMP's idea) as basically a clone of NES Legend of Zelda. Inventory, health, enemies to battle, multiple weapons to use.  

 

...so that's basically 2 votes against me doing Adventure III.  I understand; people want a more 'advanced' version of an adventure game.  I have other things I can do...

 

 

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28 minutes ago, PacManPlus said:

 

Hey Guys-

 

 

 

...so that's basically 2 votes against me doing Adventure III.  I understand; people want a more 'advanced' version of an adventure game.  I have other things I can do...

 

 

 No, no, I’m not voting against you doing ‘Adventure III’...like at all; I just threw out some initial thoughts...

 

... I haven’t even thought through this deeply...

 

Go on with Adventure III...! ! 

 

I was just throwing out some ideas...

 

... they can be used, wrecked, tweaked, modified, whatever, be inspirational, be non-inspiritual...

 

... this is discussion, not ‘orders’...

 

- - -

I’m at loss to see why such an open dialogue on an, as yet, undeveloped title, should be problematic as it only moves in the realm of ‘want-to-be... perhaps’ rather than ‘this, and only this, is the way it should be...’.

 

 

 

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37 minutes ago, PacManPlus said:

 

Hey Guys-

 

 

 

...so that's basically 2 votes against me doing Adventure III.  I understand; people want a more 'advanced' version of an adventure game.  I have other things I can do...

 

 

Dude, I haven't seen ANYTHING you've done that hasn't turned out awesome. You just follow your muse.

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25 minutes ago, The Usotsuki said:

Bubble Bobble and Puzzle Bobble both sound like they'd be a good fit for the 7800. Someone's been working on a C64 port of the latter which is looking to be so close it even has the Neo Geo POST sequence.

Link?

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1 hour ago, PacManPlus said:

 

...so that's basically 2 votes against me doing Adventure III.  I understand; people want a more 'advanced' version of an adventure game.  I have other things I can do...

Your Adventure III idea is awesome, and I definitely cast a vote in favor of it FWIW!

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6 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Definitely in agreement with the above.  Would also love to see more ports of arcade games (à la Baby Pac-Man) that either didn't see releases on Atari's 8-bit systems or that were good games but obscure enough to not really merit a home version BITD.

 

Oh, and the Bubble Bobble series.  There's enough in the way of sprite capability that this might be doable.

I would love to see more obscure arcade games get ports to the 7800. There's a ton of hidden gems from companies like Namco and Taito that unfortunately didn't get ported to much back in the day. And I think the 7800 would be a perfect home for them. I hope that I can live to see Fairyland Story or Toypop on the 7800 one day.

 

Bubble Bobble definitely has a lot of potential on the 7800, especially with its sequels like Rainbow Islands and Parasol Stars. I almost could see it being a flagship series for the system if ports were made for these games back then.

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4 hours ago, PacManPlus said:

 

Hey Guys-

 

 

 

...so that's basically 2 votes against me doing Adventure III.  I understand; people want a more 'advanced' version of an adventure game.  I have other things I can do...

 

 

No no no no no no no no no. That was not my intention! We’re just talking what if’s. Your split screen adventure three idea would be enjoyed by all!

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48 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

No no no no no no no no no. That was not my intention! We’re just talking what if’s. You’re a split screen adventure three idea would be enjoyed by all.No no no no no no no no no. That was not my intention! We’re just talking what if’s. Your split screen adventure three idea would be enjoyed by all.

I wish you would start up your own second adventure game you were starting many years ago. Those screen shots were so amazing looking.

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Action Adventure. I'm surprised nobody mentions God of Thunder much...

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_Thunder_(video_game)

 

It's Zelda without being Zelda, and a lot of fun. I found this game BITD and I think I actually sent in the shareware fee for it.

 

Since it's now freeware and open source ... Might be worth a look?

 

Edited by CaptainBreakout
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21 hours ago, Cafeman said:

I imagine a 7800 Adventure 3 (not including PMP's idea) as basically a clone of NES Legend of Zelda. Inventory, health, enemies to battle, multiple weapons to use.  

While I don't disagree that the 7800 invites all of this complexity, in the past I've advocated for something between Adventure and Zelda. (for both complexity and story). Reason being that Zelda had a dev team of 6. When people say they want a Zelda clone, IMO they really mean something more like the sequels, which had even bigger dev teams.

 

zelda-chart.thumb.png.94898ca32c6bc4179ad41d16aa481e8a.png

 

A lone 7800 dev taking on a true-to-form Zelda clone will be metaphorically eating an elephant one bite at a time.

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30 minutes ago, RevEng said:

While I don't disagree that the 7800 invites all of this complexity, in the past I've advocated for something between Adventure and Zelda. (for both complexity and story). Reason being that Zelda had a dev team of 6. When people say they want a Zelda clone, IMO they really mean something more like the sequels, which had even bigger dev teams.

 

A lone 7800 dev taking on a true-to-form Zelda clone will be metaphorically eating an elephant one bite at a time.

1. Thank you for sharing the interesting Zelda dev-team statistics chart!  

2. A lone 7800 programmer could not do a Zelda-style game/clone, true.   Even with Adventure II, a 32K game on 5200 hardware, we had 3 people contributing. I was the main programmer, but also I needed Raccoon Lad as the artist or else the game would not have been done. He used Calamari's Antic4 utility to make the character sets and then most of the actual screens.  He also designed the sprites and moving BG images and their animation.    It would have taken me forever to attempt that, I'm not an artist.   Then I had to do the coding work of compressing the BG Antic 4 screens, converting all the sprites and animation into ASM/hex bytes and tables, in addition to coding the actual game engine and routines. And it took years of part-time work.   

 

I thought about re-using tweaked AdvII screens, but hacking off the bottom 4 rows for an inventory panel, and also allowing another display list for each screen so that you could pause and 'pop-up' the more detailed inventory/status panel.  I could likely do that myself in a timely manner (I am NOT suggesting I will ever do so, especially not for 7800 which I'm not familiar with).   But to reinvent all the graphics  and design all new mazes - a coder needs a good artist for such a big game idea.   Oh, he likely needs help from a musician too, someone who uses RMT for example.   Personally, I've been through all that and smaller projects appeal more to me, now. 

 

EDIT - actually, John Swiderski had a Zelda-ish 5200 game demo he shared (Irata Quest?) years back. It functioned and looked all right. I wonder if he did that all himself, how long it took him, and why he bailed on it eventually. 

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30 minutes ago, RevEng said:

While I don't disagree that the 7800 invites all of this complexity, in the past I've advocated for something between Adventure and Zelda. (for both complexity and story).

While I understood your meaning and point here, this evoked a funny image of what a cross between Adventure and LoZ might look like. Whether it's shooting duck-dragons with your sword beams, or emerging from the dungeon with a piece of the triforce, only to have it stolen by a bat, it would for sure have some interesting gameplay.  ? 

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15 hours ago, PacManPlus said:

Ah - ok, I misunderstood then.  I completely understood if someone wanted a more 'involved' version, but thank you for liking my idea :)

 

There are, of course, lots of opinions on what a 7800 Adventure game could be. I've been personally looking forward to what you would come up with since I first came across that topic in the forum. I'm definitely hoping that you pursue it!  ? 

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1 hour ago, Karl G said:

While I understood your meaning and point here, this evoked a funny image of what a cross between Adventure and LoZ might look like. Whether it's shooting duck-dragons with your sword beams, or emerging from the dungeon with a piece of the triforce, only to have it stolen by a bat, it would for sure have some interesting gameplay.  ? 

I actually sort of love this idea. 

 

A game that is - as you said - a 7800 hybrid in terms of complexity between 'Adventure' and 'Zelda'. Still would be super ambitious, but it seems to place the bar at a reasonable level. 

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2 hours ago, Cafeman said:

1. Thank you for sharing the interesting Zelda dev-team statistics chart!  

2. A lone 7800 programmer could not do a Zelda-style game/clone, true.   Even with Adventure II, a 32K game on 5200 hardware, we had 3 people contributing. I was the main programmer, but also I needed Raccoon Lad as the artist or else the game would not have been done. He used Calamari's Antic4 utility to make the character sets and then most of the actual screens.  He also designed the sprites and moving BG images and their animation.    It would have taken me forever to attempt that, I'm not an artist.   Then I had to do the coding work of compressing the BG Antic 4 screens, converting all the sprites and animation into ASM/hex bytes and tables, in addition to coding the actual game engine and routines. And it took years of part-time work.   

[...]

 

EDIT - actually, John Swiderski had a Zelda-ish 5200 game demo he shared (Irata Quest?) years back. It functioned and looked all right. I wonder if he did that all himself, how long it took him, and why he bailed on it eventually. 

With AdvII being on the Adventure->Zelda spectrum, that's a nice data point for complexity. :thumbsup:

 

It's deceptively easy to put together a quick Zelda-ish demo, but the full game is another beast. I imagine this is where Irata Quest went off the rails. AtariusMaximus quickly put together a 7800 Zelda map traversal demo in pretty short order. (he never planned to take it past a demo). But full-game stuff requires dialog trees, npc behaviours, etc., and all of these needing to be malleable with progress through the game. It's only tenable if you take a well-thought-out data driven approach, with tools being written to support the data generation and encoding.

 

Aside from dev time, I think there are other reasons to consider a design on the Adventure->Zelda spectrum. The shorter play-time commitment and better replayability of Adventure would be worthy design goals. (while trying to maintain some of that richness of the Zelda world.)

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14 minutes ago, RevEng said:

With AdvII being on the Adventure->Zelda spectrum, that's a nice data point for complexity. :thumbsup:

...

Aside from dev time, I think there are other reasons to consider a design on the Adventure->Zelda spectrum. The shorter play-time commitment and better replayability of Adventure would be worthy design goals. (while trying to maintain some of that richness of the Zelda world.)

I agree. Adventure has a strange world and strange overlapping maze paths. It has a fair amount of randomness. A sequel should keep these identifying traits in some way, thus distinguishing itself from a Zelda game with a more static memorizable placement of items and creatures. 

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6 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

I agree. Adventure has a strange world and strange overlapping maze paths. It has a fair amount of randomness. A sequel should keep these identifying traits in some way, thus distinguishing itself from a Zelda game with a more static memorizable placement of items and creatures. 

 

Now we're getting somewhere! 

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13 minutes ago, juansolo said:

There's no Indy 500 / Sprint style top down racers on it. I assume the driving controller works with it? That said, Super Sprint plays just fine with a joystick on the ST so it could be done that way for those without a DC.

This :) and yes DC's do work on the 7800 as far as I know. I also like Badlands and Indy Heat.

 

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I would love to see more light gun games and racing games, but that's just what I like. 

 

What's missing?  Well compared to the other 8-bit consoles back then, the 7800 did not get the piles of licensed games that often didn't fit into specific genres.  Granted they usually weren't very good though. 

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