Why nintendo NEVER ported all their arcade games to the nes?

[johannesmutlu]

While nintendo did ported donkeykong,DKjr,donkeykong 3,mariobros,popeye and wild gunman in digitized form to the nes,but they never ported radar scope,sherrif to the because those games were successful in japan and they did reasonable in the us,there was also nintendo head on,space fire birth,monkey magic, othello among others,but even stranger is that despite sky skipper did saw a limited release It did get ported to the atari 2600 but not to the nes,wich is ironic on it’s self, but what’s also ironic is that nintendo opted for a 6502 chip for their nes rather then opting for a Z80 chip,this since their arcade systems were based on the Z80 chip,so why not??? This since the colecovision was based on the Z80 chip in wich nintendo was impressed with once they saw donkeykong running on the colecovision,so it’s a weird decission from nintendo not going for Z80 chip for their famicom and nes system,mmmm

[S.BAZ]

Hmm... my first thought about that is... probably they decided that the big thing was gonna be side-scrolling, action-platforming type games, rather than classic arcades. So they designed the NES around this idea and only ported their arcade titles which already had a lot of success and fame.  Also, they apparently aimed at taking over the home video game market. So I think that means moving on from the same technology that the current systems were using.  Didn't Sega opt to compete with the NES using some Colecovision-style hardware?  And Sega's SG-1000 failed to compete. It looked and felt like playing MSX or Colecovision. Maybe I'm missing something here but this is my point of view at the moment.

[roots.genoa]

On 4/7/2022 at 7:45 PM, johannesmutlu said:

radar scope,sherrif to the because those games were successful in japan and they did reasonable in the us,there was also nintendo head on,space fire birth,monkey magic, othello among others,but even stranger is that despite sky skipper

I guess most of these games were already perceived as "old" in 1983 (Sheriff is from 1979 iirc, Monkey Magic is even older, etc.). And if Radar Scope had been seen as a "reasonable" success at the time, the cabinets wouldn't have been turned into Donkey Kong I guess. And as said above, the NES had hardware scrolling and it was more relevant to create games benefiting from it.

[Atariboy]

Radar Scope also was a poor seller. Edit: I didn't notice roots.genoa had already covered that.

Edited April 12, 2022 by Atariboy

[johannesmutlu]

On 4/12/2022 at 9:23 AM, roots.genoa said:

I guess most of these games were already perceived as "old" in 1983 (Sheriff is from 1979 iirc, Monkey Magic is even older, etc.). And if Radar Scope had been seen as a "reasonable" success at the time, the cabinets wouldn't have been turned into Donkey Kong I guess. And as said above, the NES had hardware scrolling and it was more relevant to create games benefiting from it.

Well the nes might have been made with scrolling in mind but the odd part is that only nintendo’s sky skipper did had scolling,but that game was never ported to the nes,BUT  it was ironically ported to the atari 2600,other arcade games such as moon patrol,defender,jump bug And scramble etc,,, also did use scrolling and were also ported to the atari 2600 and that despites the atari 2600 were never designed with scrolling in mind,but not only that but those games  were also from other company’s and only defender was ported to the nes,wich is pretty ironic.

Edited June 6, 2022 by johannesmutlu

[tripled79]

I want to know why didn't Nintendo port a more Arcade like version of Donkey Kong to the NES. Could the NES not handle the cement factory levels?

[CMR]

Just now, tripled79 said:

I want to know why didn't Nintendo port a more Arcade like version of Donkey Kong to the NES. Could the NES not handle the cement factory levels?

They added the cement factory level into the virtual console release.  Some one later extracted the rom and you can play it on real hardware.  No Idea why they didn't put it in the original release.  Maybe they just didn't have time.

Edited April 16, 2022 by CMR
fix spelling

[roots.genoa]

It may be because of the size of the ROMs; those cost a lot back in the days. Ghosts 'n Goblins was the very first 1Mb cart for Famicom and it was only released in 1986, for instance.

Edited April 16, 2022 by roots.genoa

[tripled79]

3 hours ago, CMR said:

They added the cement factory level into the virtual console release.  Some one later extracted the rom and you can play it on real hardware.  No Idea why they didn't put it in the original release.  Maybe they just didn't have time.

Not on Wii or Wii U or 3DS. Which virtual console are you referring to?

[roots.genoa]

I think it was in the version that was included in a special Wii bundle, but it was not sold separately.

[CMR]

9 hours ago, tripled79 said:

Not on Wii or Wii U or 3DS. Which virtual console are you referring to?

It's called Donkey Kong Original Edition, and it does look like it got a very limited release.

 

https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Donkey_Kong:_Original_Edition

[Frozone212]

The NES only understands tile maps and sprites. If someone wanted to port, for instance, Star wars arcade, they would have to take the system's limitations in account

 

1. 8 bit with no save capability

2. Ram is minimal. Just 2k onboard. 

3. As said before, the system only understands tiles, tile-maps and sprites. There is no ability to form Vector graphics without in depth ASM and even then, the 6502 in the NES is clocked at 4 MHZ. Most arcade games would be too fast for the NES.  If Star wars arcade was ported to the NES, it would achieve at most, 10fps max due to all the action on screen. Now if a talented programmer sucked all the juice out of the NES and found a way to closely replicate the source machine ( utilize the extra ram from Carts, un-needed sprites in the border, reduce number of enemies etc), it would still be a pale imitation

4. Sound is ok. Three square waves, noise and Triangle. Not terribly bad but far from Arcade sound

5. Lastly Slowdown. The NES suffers from slowdown when too many sprites are onscreen. This is why only a select few games were ever ported seamlessly (Defender II, Arkanoid) and others were disasters (Millipede, cropped and butchered) and still others would be suicide (The aforementioned SWA and any arcade game that utilized specialized hardware (I robot, Dragons Lair etc). Even IF (big if) they were attempted, it would be like fitting Superman 64 onto a ZX81 with 16k Ram and ZXPand.

 

Feel free to correct

[roots.genoa]

8 hours ago, Frozone212 said:

Feel free to correct

Well, you're not necessarily wrong but we were talking about early Nintendo arcade games, that didn't use vector graphics afaik.

 

Once again, except the specific case of Sky Skipper (I guess the arcade game was not very successful, so I don't know why 'someone' ported it to the 2600), I think it didn't feel right at the time to port 3/5-year-old games on a brand new console, quite powerful compared to its competitors (in 1983, at least).

[Leonard Smith]

I'm more perplexed by why the original Goonies never made the transition from arcade to home.

It was just the sort of thing that would have played well on the NES...a cross between Gyromite and Super Mario Bros.  

Perhaps it was a rom size issue.  Who knows.
 

Instead we got the god-awful Goonies 2 which overcomplicated the core fun platforming sections.  

 

[mbd39]

6 minutes ago, Leonard Smith said:

I'm more perplexed by why the original Goonies never made the transition from arcade to home.

It was just the sort of thing that would have played well on the NES...a cross between Gyromite and Super Mario Bros.  

Perhaps it was a rom size issue.  Who knows.
 

Instead we got the god-awful Goonies 2 which overcomplicated the core fun platforming sections.  

 

The original Goonies was originally released for Famicom and then in the arcades. Not sure why it didn't also get a North American NES release.

 

Edited April 18, 2022 by mbd39

[NE146]

Yes.. I'm sure it's because the games were old.  By the time the NES came out in the US, I remember buying NES Galaga around 1988-ish, not because I was a huge fan of the game, but because I had nostalgia for it!    If Galaga was old, imagine how much moreso thought was Radarscope, Sheriff, etc. They were friggin ancient.  There wasn't a huge demand for those games when Super Mario Bros, or Contra, etc. and the NES in general brought on a whole new video game paradigm with bosses, and endings etc.  It was a new age. ?

 

On that note I also bought Donkey Kong out of nostalgia and was quite dumbfounded at the time why it wasn't arcade perfect. But it wasn't that big a deal anyway because again, DK was old. ?