Classic GBA Game Ports We'll Never See? 132
Thanks to LoonyBlog for its entry discussing classic games that could be converted to the Game Boy Advance, but are unfortunately not likely to appear, since "the Game Boy Advance is an almost exclusively franchise driven platform." The writer points out: "I think the GBA could have some amazing classic games ported to it, although the failure (apparently a spectacular failure at that) of the Blizzard Classic Arcade line pretty much means we'll never see many of them", and singles out commercial releases of Sam N' Max Hit The Road ("has a point n' click interface that would translate well to the GBA"), Heroes Of Might & Magic III ("its bright and colorful style would make for a beautiful GBA game"), and Ys Book I & II ("really an 8-bit game at its core") as top of his wishlist. What would you like to see officially available on GBA?
Sid Maier (Score:2, Interesting)
I've sold my GBA SP... (Score:1, Interesting)
PC a better re-release platform than GBA (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, why not just re-release 'em on the PC? Truth be told, in many cases, somebody's already done the work of porting the game to some emulator or other. If I'm Bob's Software Company, author of the Sega Master System classic "Spork Wars," I would just find the person doing the emulation and say, "Ok, I don't have a problem with you releasing this game. Have fun!"
Unless you are re-releasing an absolute classic like The Legend of Zelda, you are not gonna make enough money on the re-release to make it worth your while. Therefore, it's not gonna get released on a platform such as GBA. Therefore, the "nice" thing to do is just let people have fun with emulators.
Blizzard games? A failure? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, some classic game GBA ports that I would love to see but will never happen:
Strategy:
Master of Magic (What happened to Simtex?)
X-COM/UFO
Platformers:
Duke Nukem
Commander Keen
Combat Sims:
F-19 Stealth Figther
Silent Service II
I could probably name many more, but those are all games which I feel are consistent with the small screen, limited processing power and few controls of the GBA. Plus I used to love playing them!
Some of the classics (Score:2, Interesting)
And River City Ransom (which already has a port in Japan, it seems).
Final Fantasy I (Score:4, Interesting)
--trb
Amiga Games (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:PC ports (Score:2, Interesting)
Not quite enough pixels on that little screen, bucko. That'd make for some nasty porting problems. Hard to see what you're doing.
I'm assuming you haven't played HOMM1 or 2 for the Gameboy Color. They have awful graphics (obviously) but they are quite true to the originals otherwise.
Re:I've sold my GBA SP... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Chaos Engine! (Score:5, Interesting)
For those of you who don't know, in theory it's a standard Gauntlet clone. Top down maze based 2D shoot-em-up. Always 2 player cooperative and if you're alone, the computer plays as the second player. Yeah, you'll comfortably beat the computer player but it's far from a liability.
What this doesn't tell you is the superb atmosphere it creates and sheer, manic speed. The basic premise is all about some primitive Victorian era steam powered computer (the eponymous Chaos Engine) going wrong and causing a rift in time, leading to all sorts of dinosaurs and weird monsters appearing, and you being part of the gang of mercenaries who are cleaning them up. All have different balances between strength, speed and weaponry, and you can buy power ups after levels to improve performance quite markedly. Everything really looks Victorian - lots of analogue dials, brass plaques and heavy engineering. Being a Bitmap Brothers game, it's very heavy on stats at the end of each section. It'll tell you how much you've cleared, how much of the available cash you got, level times, kill rates and so on, and show the breakdown of you against the computer player or your friend.
The monsters? They just keep running at you, hard, thick and fast. I remember several levels where I was averaging around one kill per second - seriously - and I wasn't that great at it. It's just constant running flat out through the levels, taking out huge lines of monsters running towards you - many of which drop powerups or cash behind them.
Maze design was superb. Genuinely challenging with a lot of dynamic elements, keys and switches, but always ultimatlely both navigable and learnable. And the sound effects whenever you activated a node and started that torus bounding up and down its shaft while the lightning crackled, picked up a key or even opened the final level gate. I remember one where you open the final gate to get out (and hear the speech telling you this) right in the middle of a major battle section a fair way from the exit and where you haven't come close to seeing it yet. Just brilliant, and slightly worrying when you're playing.
That music. Fast techno - not something I'd normally like at all but it fitted the atmosphere so well. Constantly pushing, driving you on, fitting in so well with the pace of the game.
It sounds silly but the level coding system! Used alphanumeric level codes to allow easy resumes without worrying about save games (remember, consoles or pre-HDD computers) but they didn't just kick you in at the level, they accurately saved your game state. There was genuine purpose to going back and replaying the early levels to get a better level code to take you forwards.
I'd love to see something new like that. Short levels (2-3 minutes maximum) once you've learnt them but you could be 5-10 minutes in a level learning it. Well balanced difficulty, great level variety, structure to bring you back again and again to find that last bonus and pace of a type we seem to have abandoned in the mad rush to go 3D. It's the sort of game you can play in small chunks but keep going back to again and again. In other words, ideal handheld territory as far as I'm concerned.
On a much simpler level, I pine for a port of that old Spectrum classic Deathcase 3D! First person 3D motorbike based shoot-em-up in 9K (seriously) - you were riding headlong through a randomly generated forest chasing two other bikes and trying to shoot them with a gun mounted on your handlebars - so, you can aim right but not if there's a tree ahead and to the right... If you shoot those two bikes it becomes night and the screen turns dark for the same challenge, shoot those two bikes and it's day again but the forest is thicker, and thicker, and thicker until you're steering on reflex alone. There's bonus vehicles that appear on the horizon every now and then, and shooting them can get you a big bonus but they're far fr
Super Mario RPG (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Instant money for Square (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because it's your favorite game (Score:1, Interesting)
Personally, point-and-click games do not tranfer well to anything that doesn't have a MOUSE.
That aside, I've noticed that the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series (VIII on PS2 specifically), have evolved very little graphically and are mostly reused sprites and text along with a simple menu driven interface. Games usually take a very long time to play and it is played in rounds that normally take a few minutes. Given its gameplay it is easy to take your time and think through options, save, turn it off, and come back any time. Just switch on the GBA and play a couple of rounds managing your kingdom while you're on the train or between classes.
I would actually PREFER this to the PS2 or (in Japan) the PC version. That way I'm not sitting on the couch for hours on end and I can just play it at a nice pace whenever.
Seiken Densetsu 3: Secret of Mana 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
The first game in the Seiken Densetsu series, amusingly enough, was released in the US as "Final Fantasy Legends." Both were Game Boy games... A release of the third on the GBA would mark a "coming home" for the series.
Re:Amiga Games (Score:3, Interesting)
The Original Secret of Mana (Score:2, Interesting)