Game conversions suitable for TI

[am1933]

I know what I would like to see on the TI but am aware it may not be physically possible, it got me thinking about games on other systems that were highly playable and would possibly work on TI hardware, If I had the required assembly skills I would have a go myself.

 

Here are a few I thought could work.

Kennedy approach(with speech),Atari 8bit

Jet boot Jack, Atari 8bit

Atic Atac, ZX Spectrum

Pepper II, Colecovision

Frak!, BBC Micro

 

I shall now sit back and wait to be shot down in flames

Edited March 21, 2014 by am1933

[Retrospect]

TARG from Exidy.

 

Looks like it was using a 9918 or something close.

 

 

 

Edited April 26, 2017 by Retrospect

[+save2600]

Targ is a great game. Always think of it when playing Chisholm Trail! lol

 

Turtles would be great to see as would Wizard of Wor. Kaos was fun BITD and would translate well too I would think.

[Retrospect]

Turtles could be good ... saw that on the Spectrum, very colourful.

Other games in my opinion which would work are;

Frenzy .... this is the Colecovision version

Berzerk .... now, this game has already been ported to the Commodore Vic 20 and C64, and both versions are very good, but it could be argued we might end up with an equally good version for the TI99 , as with Frenzy

(unless the 4-sprites-in-a-line thing lets us down, in that case it would be do-able for F18A)

 

[+arcadeshopper]

Turtles could be good ... saw that on the Spectrum, very colourful.

 

Other games in my opinion which would work are;

 

frenzy.jpg Frenzy .... this is the Colecovision version

 

berzerk.jpg Berzerk .... now, this game has already been ported to the Commodore Vic 20 and C64, and both versions are very good, but it could be argued we might end up with an equally good version for the TI99 , as with Frenzy

 

(unless the 4-sprites-in-a-line thing lets us down, in that case it would be do-able for F18A)

 

 

 

We have bezerk/frenzy

 

http://tigameshelf.net/Files/Bandarc.bin

http://tigameshelf.net/Files/Emu/Bandit.dsk

 

Greg

[Retrospect]

I downloaded Bandit and played it earlier, actually surprised at how good a game it is, the player character has a level of inertia when you are pulling the opposite direction, almost like a skids a little bit. Well coded. I notice the gameshelf stated the author is unknown.

[am1933]

Targ is a great game. Always think of it when playing Chisholm Trail! lol

 

Turtles would be great to see as would Wizard of Wor. Kaos was fun BITD and would translate well too I would think.

Almost forgot about Wizard of Wor, loved that game!-great as 1 or 2 player. The speech synth could come in handy for that genuine arcade experience.

[Omega-TI]

Noooooooo!

You can't do both Targ AND Frenzy/Berzerk! I would NEVER get away from my TI as I love both those games.

[am1933]

Noooooooo!

You can't do both Targ AND Frenzy/Berzerk! I would NEVER get away from my TI as I love both those games.

Well, what about a meeting of titans-ladies and gentlemen I give you TARGZERK!

[+acadiel]

How about Lady Bug from Colecovision?

 

http://www.consoleclassix.com/colecovision/lady_bug.html

 

With the F18A, I betcha you could make it look REAL nice.

 

 

 

[am1933]

Well-if we are on a Colecovision conversion kick-howabout,

Space Fury! Smurfs.

 

Keystone Cops.

 

Had to squeeze this one in, ELITE on the TMS9918/28 based Tatung Einstein, and it moves along at a decent rate.

[Asmusr]

I like Atic Atac for the Speccy, and Sabre Wulf:

There is a game in the GameBase with similar graphics to Sabre Wulf, which unfortunately suffers terribly from lack of speed:

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that there is a lot more to game development than programming. Making the graphics/sprites/maps/music for my games has taken as least as long as the coding. So if you're interested in designing graphics/music for a game or can provide graphics ripped from a game from another platform I'm always interested.

[TheMole]

Well-if we are on a Colecovision conversion kick-howabout,

Smurfs.

 

Really? The game in which you immediately die if you run into a friggin' fence?

[Retrospect]

Speaking of conversions ...........

Does anyone remember the Atari VCS game "FREEWAY" with the two chickens trying to cross the road?

 

The final release of Freeway is available on a seperate thread in the forum

Edited March 22, 2014 by Retrospect

[am1933]

 

Really? The game in which you immediately die if you run into a friggin' fence?

Yes indeed-never mind all this mechazoidonal death machines that spit laser fire from there multiple detachable cannons, The Smurfs give you "THE FENCE OF DEATH!!!!!"

[Retrospect]

Yes indeed-never mind all this mechazoidonal death machines that spit laser fire from there multiple detachable cannons, The Smurfs give you "THE FENCE OF DEATH!!!!!"

There's a review on youtube for this game, by Steve Benway, and he mentioned something about the fences. "I wouldn't mind if the enemy was convincing, this wasn't, it was a fence" or something along those lines

[Willsy]

Sabre Wulf is beautiful and I would say well within the abilities of the TI.

[robotwo]

Wow... It isn't until now that I realized that Sabre Wulf is made by 'Ultimate' (who later became 'Rare').

 

This explains why this name was used for their wolf character in Killer Instinct (albeit without the space, 'Sabrewulf')

[am1933]

Sabre Wulf is beautiful and I would say well within the abilities of the TI.

I would tend to agree, there is nothing in the game that seems to be outwith the technical counds of the TI with the possible exception of the four sprites per line-but lets face it, the Spectrum has no hardware sprites and it did ok.

[CosmicBoy]

Wow... It isn't until now that I realized that Sabre Wulf is made by 'Ultimate' (who later became 'Rare').

 

This explains why this name was used for their wolf character in Killer Instinct (albeit without the space, 'Sabrewulf')

 

There is a version for the GameBoy Adcance , but its a total different gameplay.

- http://rare.wikia.com/wiki/Sabre_Wulf

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_Wulf

 

I like to see a game like Zak McKracken or Maniac Mansion ....

[Willsy]

I would tend to agree, there is nothing in the game that seems to be outwith the technical counds of the TI with the possible exception of the four sprites per line-but lets face it, the Spectrum has no hardware sprites and it did ok.

 

Totally agree. The spectrum had a bitmapped display (only) that happens to be the exact same resolution (256x192) as the TI. It had 8 colours (14 if you include the "bright" modes) and that was it. For sprites it had nothing. You had to draw your characters on the screen byte-by-byte. The normal practice was to render the part of the background that was going to change, then render the characters on top, then blast the lot onto the screen. Some tricks were used like setting the stack to point to the screen ram, then you could have fast loops that simply pushed data to the stack (and hence the screen).

 

Here's an awesome HTML map of the entire SW play-area: http://www.icemark.com/spectrum/sabrewulf/map/index.html

 

"Outwith". Hmmm are you based in Scotland by any chance?

[Retrospect]

This is interesting ... so, as we know, the Spectrum uses software sprites .... is it possible to have the TI use software sprites in the same way?

[TheMole]

This is interesting ... so, as we know, the Spectrum uses software sprites .... is it possible to have the TI use software sprites in the same way?

 

 

Since the TI has separate VRAM and RAM and it is quite costly to move data from one to the other so I don't think we can't directly mimick that way of working efficiently. I would also be much more memory intensive as you need a copy of (part of) your screen buffer in RAM.

[Willsy]

 

Since the TI has separate VRAM and RAM and it is quite costly to move data from one to the other so I don't think we can't directly mimick that way of working efficiently. I would also be much more memory intensive as you need a copy of (part of) your screen buffer in RAM.

 

That's how I see it too. It is possible; you choose the smallest affected rectangle, restore it, then draw your software sprite on top, then blast it into the correct place in VDP. You don't have to do a whole screen at a time (though a lot of spectrum games did, for example, Manic Miner updates the *whole* screen every frame) just the rectangular areas in which a change has been made.

 

Some games use XOR to remove the software sprite.

[am1933]

 

Totally agree. The spectrum had a bitmapped display (only) that happens to be the exact same resolution (256x192) as the TI. It had 8 colours (14 if you include the "bright" modes) and that was it. For sprites it had nothing. You had to draw your characters on the screen byte-by-byte. The normal practice was to render the part of the background that was going to change, then render the characters on top, then blast the lot onto the screen. Some tricks were used like setting the stack to point to the screen ram, then you could have fast loops that simply pushed data to the stack (and hence the screen).

 

Here's an awesome HTML map of the entire SW play-area: http://www.icemark.com/spectrum/sabrewulf/map/index.html

 

"Outwith". Hmmm are you based in Scotland by any chance?

Funnily enough, I am not based in Scotland-but am from Scotland, I now live in North West England due to work.

 

That SabreWulf map is good enough to hang on the wall as an art piece.

Edited March 21, 2014 by am1933