XM games - Imaginary game release thread

[S1500]

Battlesphere Platinum - will cost more than the GDP of China.

 

ESPN, TMZ, and numerous other non-video game websites will have news coverage if a copy hits eBay, because all the other news sites are down.

 

Twitter will crash from the overload of #battlesphereplatinum hash tags from all the hype.

 

Kim Kardashian said she would date whoever has the one copy of this game.

 

A Bugatti Veyron will be offered for trade for this game. Refused. Fine. TWO Bugatti Veyron Super Sports.

 

Religions will be made around the almighty sacred cartridge.

 

Any Jag CD that plays the game will instantly go 100x in value. Individual serial numbered play sessions will be recorded with a camcorder to prevent counterfeit play sessions. Records will be kept at Twin Galaxies.

 

 

A worldwide manhunt will be conducted from just one forum poster asking for the ISO to the game. That person was..."taken away".

 

You can't have this game.

[GroovyBee]

Any Jag CD that plays the game

 

I see you found the XM hardware easter egg.

[+Stephen]

beat um and eat um 2

Geez - would we really want NE146 to have a detailed hi-res animated avatar?

[carmel_andrews]

3 games i'd like to see a 7800 do

 

Turrican

 

I.O or Armalyte (probably the best side scrolling Shootemups on the '64)

 

Great Giana Sisters (or a hack of the ST version of super stario land which is similar or the A8's crownland)

 

Can i have oner more....please

 

Brundles or that A8 lemmings clone by Datri

Edited February 16, 2011 by carmel_andrews

[8th lutz]

I forgot about this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFrlH-ekkJA&feature=related

Edited February 16, 2011 by 8th lutz

[8th lutz]

Strip Poker

Bobble bath babes 2

Strip Fighter

Custer's Viagra

Edited February 16, 2011 by 8th lutz

[gdement]

Hell how 'bout a fighting game? Though it'd have to be original content unless you wanted to see Keystone Kelly vs Strawberry Shortcake.... hmmmm....

 

I used to think it would be funny to have a fighting game involving the common mascots for various holidays.

Santa Claus

Frosty the Snowman

Easter Bunny

Grim Reaper

Cupid

..etc

 

No licensing issues there. They wouldn't be happy and cute, instead all these guys would be really pissed off and brutal in combat. I always envisioned it with 16/32-bit era graphics though.

 

On a more serious note, the bankswitching and RAM features of the XM would probably be very helpful for fighting games. You'd need at least 2 independent bank switches, and I think the XM can do that on the RAM. Existing cartridges aren't that sophisticated, they just have a single switch.

[Rex Dart]

...you ever play Clayfighter? It had a snowman, bunny, possibly Santa..... and a banana man and Earthworm Jim for some reason.

[raskar42]

I used to think it would be funny to have a fighting game involving the common mascots for various holidays.

Santa Claus

Frosty the Snowman

Easter Bunny

Grim Reaper

Cupid

..etc

 

No licensing issues there. They wouldn't be happy and cute, instead all these guys would be really pissed off and brutal in combat. I always envisioned it with 16/32-bit era graphics though.

 

On a more serious note, the bankswitching and RAM features of the XM would probably be very helpful for fighting games. You'd need at least 2 independent bank switches, and I think the XM can do that on the RAM. Existing cartridges aren't that sophisticated, they just have a single switch.

 

had an idea for a game called 'holy war'

 

various religous and political leaders fighting all over the world.

also santa.

[HammR25]

had an idea for a game called 'holy war'

 

various religous and political leaders fighting all over the world.

also santa.

Having a caricature of Muhammed in it would be awesome.

[toiletunes]

Featuring…Grampa!

[atarian63]

Okay, my "wishlist" for XM games:

 

- Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles 2+3 and/or Double Dragon 2 with pokey sound

- Mario Land Clone with pokey and (ab)using extra RAM

- Raiden with Yamaha sound and tons of sprites

- Sonic

- Total Carnage

Really good ones!

Add PacMania please!

[atarian63]

had an idea for a game called 'holy war'

 

various religous and political leaders fighting all over the world.

also santa.

Having a caricature of Muhammed in it would be awesome.

and probably get you killed!

[Bakasama]

I already threw this out there in an earlier XM thread, but Crystal Castles would be great. Not only would it sound good with XM, but it would be fully possible to have an Arcade perfect port, and room to throw in some extras. Also, this project would be perfect for any XM programmer, since Crystal Castles was slated to be released for the 7800, but never seen the light of day.

 

I actually did a little work on some mockup shots of that game. I think the castles can be made pretty close to the arcade versions. I believe the characters can be made like the arcade version.

[gdement]

...you ever play Clayfighter? It had a snowman, bunny, possibly Santa..... and a banana man and Earthworm Jim for some reason.

 

Never played it, but sounds amusing.

[GroovyBee]

I actually did a little work on some mockup shots of that game. I think the castles can be made pretty close to the arcade versions. I believe the characters can be made like the arcade version.

 

Are they available on AA? It'd be interesting to look at the feasibility. However, I'm not interested in doing a port of the game but it might inspire others.

[DracIsBack]

Double Dragon XM would be awesome. I always found the Activision version seemed rushed, sloppy and cheaply done ... though I still found it fun. Maybe someone who loves DD the way PacManPlus loves Pac Man will take up the cause. Where's a genie when you need one ...

 

 

[kool kitty89]

!!!

[off topic rant]

 

 

 

32X was VERY different:

 

- It transformed the 16-bit Genesis into a machine capable of about 1 million instructions per second to a 32-bit console capable of running 40 million instructions a second. This doesn't give the 7800 additional CPUs

- It enabled a console that couldn't do scaling, rotation and 3D texture mapping to do so in hardware, typical of other 32 bit machines. This does not jump the 7800 up a tier into 16-bit or 32 bit consoles.

- It increased the 64 colors onscreen out of 512 colors to 32,768 on screen colors out of 16.7 million! This does not increase the color palette of the 7800.

Wrong on several accounts: the 32x does almost nothing in hardware, it's more or less like a VGA PC with very little RAM, like an 8 MHz 16 bit ISA VGA card with 256 kB of video RAM (that would actually have slightly higher bandwidth than the 32x -which uses 7.67 MHz 16-bit DRAM framebuffers), and dual (fast) 486SLC CPUs with zero wait state SDRAM. (but only 256k -plus slow ROM for mass storage)

The SH2s are stuck on a 16 bit bus to save cost and SDRAM was used to save development time. Likewise the system was clocked based on the Genesis, rather than fully asynchronous like the Sega CD. (same 80 ns DRAM, and as such it could have been 12.5 MHz -and if they'd done that, they could have used cheap DRAM for main memory on a 32-bit bus rather than expensive fast SDRAM on a 16 bit bus -plus 12.5 MHz 32-bit is higher bandwidth than 23.01 MHz 16-bit)

 

There's a LOT of other trade-offs, like going all software vs dropping a CPU in favor of a VDP that did more than manage a framebuffer and offer single plane hardware V/H (and per line) scrolling, or dropping the slave SH2 in favor of a faster/lower cost DSP even. (still inefficient as a blitter, but much faster for many dedicated tasks than the SH2 -even the low cost SSP1601 in the SVP chip would be considerably faster at some things than the SH2)

All games use the 8bpp (256 color) framebuffer mode in-game (a few have highcolor splash screens I think), and the limited framebuffer bandwidth would go a long way towards making it unattractive for the highcolor mode. There's also the issue of all blittign being done by the CPUs: all rendering (other than simple line fill) has to be doen in software, very much like VGA PC games. (there's also the Genesis graphics, of course)

There's also the PWM DACs, but those are also CPU intensive to drive without DMA enabled. (and apparently the dev kits never good tools supporting DMA -the preproduction dev units had broken DMA sound, but all consumer models had that fixed -that's one feature that current homebrew is taking advantage of)

 

Some of that is excusable due to the less than 6 month development time (going from a sketch on a hotel napkin in January to a solidified prototype in June at the Summer CES to production less than 3 months later), but you'd think they could have accelerated various hardware acceleration option by deriving the hardware from the Sega CD's blitter+memory interface, and/or SVP, and/or DSP/VSP1 logic from the Saturn, etc. (the MCD ASIC with texture mapping blitter and memory interface would probably be the best bet to rework for a cartridge add-on -as it is, it's begging to have a framebuffer to work with rather than being tied down to the MD VDP and related VRAM/DMA/color issues)

 

But yes, it is quite different from the 7800 since it uses genlock and an added video layer as well as a coprocessor rather than just RAM+sound upgrades, plus the 32x needs its own power supply. (or does the XM as well?)

Something more like the XM would be a module with a 512k DRAM chip (like the 256kx16-bit ones already used in the Sega CD), either DMA sound or the ricoh PCM chip used in the arcade and Sega CD, and maybe another YM2612. (for the ricoh chip, you'd preferably want DMA to DRAM rather than having to use the 64 kB PSRAM block of the MCD, or simpler amiga-like DMA sound that reads directly from RAM or ROM -though you'd also have bus contention issues to deal with since the VDP asserts total bus bandwidth with burst DMA for vblank updates, and there's hardware and software solutions for that -software is to stagger V-DMA with "holes" in vblank for shared access to avoid missed reads/writes or at least reduce timing error -especially for audio reads for PCM data)

 

Though given the context of 1994, adding a low-cost coprocessor on top of that would have made a lot more sense too. (like makign the SVP into an add-on rather than putting it on cart -especially since they had no other on-cart enhancements, not even RAM, on the Genesis, unlike the NES or SNES, so it could be a standard for upgraded/enhanced games-) In that case, probably the 512k DRAM chip in place of the 128k one used in Virtua Racing, and simple DMA audio with added mixing/scaling/etc handled by the CPU or SVP (it is a DSP after all, an reasonably capable for sound duties if not monopolized by other coprocessing). So tons of possibilities for decompressing sound and graphics data into the nice chunk of RAM, ports of games otherwise extremely difficult without the RAM, on the fly DSP driven decompression, various coprocessing for polygons, ray casting, etc. (let alone in conjunction with Sega CD games, couplign the SVP's 3D math capabilities with the drawing and texture mapping hardware of the Sega CD -it also includes bitmap to tilemap conversion on the fly) 128k would be cheaper, but while the 512k chip would be some ~$8 more in component costs than the 128k chip in '94, the amount of board space would be the same, and the other advantages could really pay off. (especially in further facilitating smaller ROM sizes in games with much more compression and thus lower prices or higher profit margins -perhaps enough to push for the module to be sold at a loss, definitely at cost at the very least)

All for MUCH less than the 32x's multi-bus, multiple RAM banks, dual high performance RISC CPUs, VDC ASIC, etc. (and potentially low power enough to avoid a separate power supply -as it is, the 32x uses less than .35 amps)

 

Something more like that probably would have been a much better idea than the 32x for multiple reasons. (available sooner -ie in place of the standalone Virtua Racing in spring of '94, much lower price point -probably less than 1/2 the price of the 32x- that could drive popularity, make it more feasible to integrate with later genesis models, be more realistic to push for CD games using the 2nd add-on, and then there's the lower price and more modest capabilities -especially remaingin color limits- that would make it clash much less with the Saturn -which, granted, had its own long list of hardware/software/timing/marketing issues, and it also would have meant adding the reasonable potential for forward compatible games that could still work -with limited content or features- on a bone stock Genesis -which you could do with the 32x, but not without sticking to genesis graphics alone and wasting the 32x layer or adding a lot more ROM for redundant Genesis graphics to be used without the 32x -otherwise you'd just need added code for the enhanced modes, very small compared to graphics data)

 

The other thing is that the Genesis easily supported RAM and stereo sound on-cart (let alone added expansion signals -far more comprehensive than the gimped port the Sega CD used), but for whatever reason, no games used that at all. (not even with Sega's massive stock/supply line of 64 kB PSRAM chips -or 32kx8-bit earlier on- would have offered a very good option for embedded RAM expansion without investment in custom logic for DRAM interfacing -or more expensive SRAM-, or adding another YM2612 -or various other options Sega or 3rd parties could have pushed- for more sound synth capabilities and a 2nd DAC port to optionally use, let alone low-cost embedded DSPs for math coprocessing and such for help with 3D games, realtime decompression, etc -like the SNES was using almost from day 1 with the cheap DSP-1 chip followed by later revisions as that became obsolete -bug fixes and enhancements- let alone the more substantial super FX GSU -though that's getting close to the point where an add-on becomes more cost effective)

It's rather ironic that the 7800 chucked full 32kx8-bit SRAM chips into several games back in 1987/88 and a full 40 pin DIP sound chip yet the Genesis had absolutely nothing in its entire life on cart other than SRAM for batter backup (surprisingly uncommon), EEPROM for a handful of late games using saves, FeRAM for a few games (must have gotten a special deal on mass market testing or something given how exotic FeRAM was -or is today even- and especially given the reliability issues seen on many Sonic 3 carts), and of course the 1 game to use the SVP+128k DRAM chip (same 80 ns 64kx16-bit Toshiba DRAMs as the MCD word RAM and 32x framebuffers used) and that was in 1994.

 

 

 

This is getting way off topic though and has all been discussed on Sega 16 before. (well, aside from the direct parallel to the 7800 XM, which hasn't come up on Sega 16)

 

- Adds RAM, much like cartridges back in the day did. See IMPOSSIBLE MISSION, WINTER GAMES, TOWER TOPPLER, JINKS

- It adds sound hardware, just like COMMANDO and BALLBLAZER did with the POKEY. Atari also originally intended to offer other sound chips (see GUMBY) than POKEY. This chip was used in arcades of the day. While I tend to agree that this one aspect may be overkill, the idea has precendence.

- It adds mapper hardware that enable the existing MARIA to do a bit more, in a way that's similar to the NES mapper chips did with the PPU. See Castlevania 3 or Super Mario 3 Mike Tyson's Punch Out for examples.

- It saves high scores, similar to the intended 7800 HIGH SCORE cart. See Curt's reproduction from a few years ago.

- It allows connection of peripherals, similar to the initial 7800s with expansion ports (removed from most 7800s)

Wrong on the expansion port issue, the original 7800 expansion port was very limited and better off removed. The main cart slot is a FAR better expansion port (even more extreme than the Genesis's cart slot vs side port), though if they'd done like the SMS and simply cloned the cart slot connectivity (more or less) for the expansion port, that would have been a nice route that avoided a piggyback cart module for some things.

 

On top of that, you've got the SIO interface a la POKEY with the XM as well. (and potentially could have mapped the POKEY key lines to an external connector like the XEGS did -unless the XM actually does have that as well, but I haven't seen anything about that)

 

What it does do is enhance the 7800 in a way that would have been how Atari intended and/or how Nintendo enhanced the NES in cartridge ... but without the expense of building invidivual carts to do so.

No, it's FAR more than anything on the Famicom as such, other than the Disk system. It adds as much RAM as Star Fox or Virtua Racing did, it adds an arcade standard YM2151 on top of POKEY, etc, etc.

It's certainly different from 32x, but MUCH more than any on-cart MAPPER or modest VRAM expansion on the NES ever did. (it's also much more than would have been feasible for the 7800 as an add-on until the early 90s -cut it back to 16-32k and POKEY and you'd arguably have something preferable to cramming those things on cart back in '87/88 )

 

The number of NES games to use expanded RAM is rather few, the number of NES games to use sound expansion is zero (due to the removal of the sound input on the cart slot all games had to make do with the onboard sound, and any Famicom games using expanded sound had to be reworked for the NES), MAPPERs are rudementary ICs that range from plain bank switching (which the 7800 did with discrete logic) up to mapping out ROM to get around some limits of the PPU. (like allowing 8x8 color attribute cells rather than 16x16 as it normally is -though raster interrupts would also get around that in the vertical, and with more options since you'd be reloading the palettes completely and you could do any interval from 1 line up rather than just 8 pixels, but still stick you with the 16 pixel wide limit)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Really, it'd only have to turn the 7800 into something of a higher-end contemporary.... like how the 32x turned the genesis into a SNES w/ SuperFX2 chips.

 

I'm pretty sure that if the 32X were pushed as hard as the SNES was pushed, you'd see a hell of a lot more out of it than you would out of the SNES.

The 32x is weak for 2D stuff, it's got no hardware acceleration and, again, is more like a fast 386 VGA PC with graphics overlaid (or under) the Genesis graphics. (with lots of other trade-offs and bottlenecks)

 

It would have a hard time matching the SNES in some areas, and impossible in others (approximate, but not fully match), but would shine for other things like software rendered 3D and such. (somewhat like a VGA PC vs SNES )

 

Comparing the 32x and SNES is a bit like comparing a 128k ST and NES in that respect. (except the color advantages are a bit less for the 32x and it has the Gensis graphics layers and CPU to work with too: maybe more like the ST with gelocked with the A8 vs the NES )

 

 

 

[/off-topic rant]

Edited February 18, 2011 by kool kitty89

[The Usotsuki]

I think Curt said the XM has a keyboard port.

[DracIsBack]

KoolKitty89: You make good points, but it's *REALLY* hard to read them between the run-on sentences, fragments tacked together, lack of punctuation and - honestly - novella length posts. I started going down the path of trying to reply and decided it was too much effort to pick through the meat.

 

I mean that in the nicest way possible ... you have great insight but your posts are REALLY hard to read.

Edited February 18, 2011 by DracIsBack

[Rex Dart]

Really.... a little formatting (and brevity) goes a long way.

Edited February 18, 2011 by Rex Dart

[spiffyone]

lol...yeah...I fall into the same trap as koolkitty does with my long posts, so I can understand there's some initial, I dunno..."excitement" there that causes us to perhaps omit editing and brevity. Gotta get those thoughts down as quickly and as soon as possible lest they float away from us lol

 

A little off-topic, the amount of RAM and the FM chip are my only "concerns" about XM. Something along the lines of at most 64k and just the POKEY would've been more feasible for Atari back in those days as on cart or as part of the keyboard add-on. And because of that, we'll have a harder time showing XM games to NES fanboys and having them take it seriously as it's not running on "stock" hardware, and the argument of "it would've been on cart or the keyboard add on" kinda falls flat due to the inclusion of the FM chip and that amount of RAM (and lack of keyboard, )

 

And I still believe we can get the kind of games folks are listing here on stock 7800 hardware. Would it run as smoothly or look as pretty or sound as good? Perhaps not. But a lot of the games listed had versions running on stock C64, and there's quite a few C64 ports to 7800 (Impossible Mission, Winter and Summer Games) so I'm pretty sure versions of the C64 versions could run on stock 7800 hardware given the right amount of RAM on cart (and POKEY sound).

 

Anyway, topic at hand:

 

If I ever learn to A. program, and B. program on the 7800 (which wouldn't happen without A), I wouldn't port anything but would rather go with original designs. Of course, it's said that there's no such thing as original ideas (mostly true, but I think there's some originality out there). One of them can best be described as a mix of Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania. The latter influence is actually the MSX2 version, btw, which was more an action/adventure akin to the later Castlevania games starting with Symphony of the Night than the original NES Castlevania. As the more action/adventure non-linear style Castlevania games are referred to as Metroidvanias (as they kind of play like Metroid-style action/adventure games), this would hit three different games that aren't on 7800, wouldn't likely to have been on 7800 (Ninja Gaiden might've been, seeing as how there's an exclusive version on SMS), and fills out the library.

 

So, Ninja Gaiden + Metroidvania.

 

A Metroidvania starring a ninja.

 

Ninjatroidvania.

 

But that's pie in the sky.

 

More likely, though still down the road (if it ever comes to fruition, which honestly isn't very likely), would be a Jr. Pac-Man hack I've got in mind that kinda mimics Alien on 2600 with the key hunting of Pac-Man Plus.

 

As for something I'm sure a current dev could do...I wouldn't mind seeing an upgraded version of Pitfall II - The Lost Caverns. Basically the same game with upgraded sprites, and maybe more enemies onscreen to give some added difficulty. And maybe more screens with some of the stuff from the first Pitfall thrown in (particularly the alligator traps, quicksand traps, and vine swinging). But I'd settle for an upgraded port using MARIA graphics.

 

Oh, and since C64 to 7800 are proved possible...wouldn't mind seeing something like the new C64 games released on 7800.

 

Like, say, Knight and Grail:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygbyiXGX6ho&NR

 

The people who published that also published Joe Gunn and The Last Amazon for C64. The former is an action/adventure game (specifically a platformer/adventure) that plays like Montezuma's Revenge, Pitfall II and Impossible Mission mixed together, while the later is an overhead run 'n gun shooter ala Commando and Ikari Warriors. Neither look out of the realm of stock 7800 hardware, tbqh.

[GroovyBee]

And I still believe we can get the kind of games folks are listing here on stock 7800 hardware. Would it run as smoothly or look as pretty or sound as good? Perhaps not. But a lot of the games listed had versions running on stock C64, and there's quite a few C64 ports to 7800 (Impossible Mission, Winter and Summer Games) so I'm pretty sure versions of the C64 versions could run on stock 7800 hardware given the right amount of RAM on cart (and POKEY sound).

 

The kind of games I'm thinking about for the XM would never work on a stock machine.

[DracIsBack]

A little off-topic, the amount of RAM and the FM chip are my only "concerns" about XM.

 

Yeah ... the RAM thing was purely a cost thing. I would have expected it to have 16K, 32K, 48K or something typical of a 6502 system. But turns out it's economics. In this day an age, 128K is cheaper to put in than smaller sizes.

 

The Yamaha chip took me a while to warm up to as well. I also thought it would be more typical just to have a POKEY. That said, now that it's in there, I cannot wait to see the music demos that programmers come up with.

 

we'll have a harder time showing XM games to NES fanboys and having them take it seriously as it's not running on "stock" hardware

 

With some of them, we'd get that anyway because of the form factor of the XM ... particularly if they don't know the hardware additions that live in some NES carts as well.

[GroovyBee]

we'll have a harder time showing XM games to NES fanboys and having them take it seriously as it's not running on "stock" hardware

 

With some of them, we'd get that anyway because of the form factor of the XM ... particularly if they don't know the hardware additions that live in some NES carts as well.

 

Not that most of the latter day NES games ran on stock hardware either