MORTAL KOMBAT for ATARI JAGUAR is in the works!?

[+Biff Burgertime]

Mortal Kombat's cool and all, but it just occurred to me that we've all got the technology to create digitized human sprites in our pockets nowadays. All you'd need is a cheap tripod, you don't even need a green screen - I use remove.bg to remove backgrounds for parody images and that works like a charm. Even using it on still frames of VHS-ripped shows from the 90s works well most of the time, it's extremely rare it hasn't been able to distinguish the human from the background.

 

So get rid of Scorpion & Sub-Zero, go buy $15 worth of colorful outfits at the nearest thrift shop and make me an original fighting game!

 

[Fadest]

This is kind of what they did with Insame Pain on MegaDrive I guess...

Edited November 12, 2023 by Fadest

[agradeneu]

I think Mortal Kombat on the Lynx was pretty cool as it pushed the boundaries of what you can achieve on this machine.

 

As for the Jaguar, there should be no doubt that the machine is more than capable to run an near perfect arcade port, and with more knowledge, even arcade perfect.

 

Despite from the occiasonal, idiotic remark on fb, I don't think that the original homebrews were compromised. These projects are present on all retro machines and usually it helps the reputation of the machine. Sadly, it gets a bit more coverage than some really good original game as the average news homepage is focused on popular titles to get more clicks.

 

As for C&D, there is a risk, but people are doing it left and right anyway. Some fan projects are even supported and endorsed, e.g. Black Mesa (Half Life 1 fan remaster) by Valve.

The Metroid fan projects fate was unfortunate, because Nintendo wanted to create their own 2D modern reboot of the franchise. 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

2 hours ago, Fadest said:

This is kind of what they did with Insame Pain on MegaDrive I guess...

All characters in that game are prerendered models.

The result is not that impressive honestly, as the assets are downsampled and the loss of quality is quite appearent. The animations look clunky. 

The Jaguar would be a better fit for that kind of graphics, more colors, more RAM. But even then it does not mean you could achieve good results that easily. 

Edited November 12, 2023 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

2 hours ago, Biff Burgertime said:

Mortal Kombat's cool and all, but it just occurred to me that we've all got the technology to create digitized human sprites in our pockets nowadays. All you'd need is a cheap tripod, you don't even need a green screen - I use remove.bg to remove backgrounds for parody images and that works like a charm. Even using it on still frames of VHS-ripped shows from the 90s works well most of the time, it's extremely rare it hasn't been able to distinguish the human from the background.

 

So get rid of Scorpion & Sub-Zero, go buy $15 worth of colorful outfits at the nearest thrift shop and make me an original fighting game!

 

 

It's no problem to do another shitty 2D fighter

[Fadest]

2 hours ago, agradeneu said:

All characters in that game are prerendered models.

The result is not that impressive honestly, as the assets are downsampled and the loss of quality is quite appearent. The animations look clunky. 

The Jaguar would be a better fit for that kind of graphics, more colors, more RAM. But even then it does not mean you could achieve good results that easily. 

To be honest, I don't care about 2d vs fighting, probably never played MK and will never. 

So I just had a quick look on Insane Pain and found nice they did the job from scratch because this us an heavy and hard job. But did not look too much about the game or gameplay. 

[alucardX]

On 11/12/2023 at 1:07 AM, ArneCRosenfeldt said:

Don't we have enough 2d fighting games on the Jaguar? It is like with the Mario64 rewrite: You don't get the IP ! Do I dare to watch the YouTube video? At least I think that gamers would mix together his game with the Mortal Kombat CD somehow and then play in Jaguar as a proof of principle. Please buy the existing Jag IP for cheap and use that as a placeholder.

Yeah man.

[Billy2600]

Clearly they should port Way of the Warrior instead. 🤪

[amiman99]

On 11/12/2023 at 5:45 AM, Biff Burgertime said:

Mortal Kombat's cool and all, but it just occurred to me that we've all got the technology to create digitized human sprites in our pockets nowadays. All you'd need is a cheap tripod, you don't even need a green screen - I use remove.bg to remove backgrounds for parody images and that works like a charm. Even using it on still frames of VHS-ripped shows from the 90s works well most of the time, it's extremely rare it hasn't been able to distinguish the human from the background.

 

So get rid of Scorpion & Sub-Zero, go buy $15 worth of colorful outfits at the nearest thrift shop and make me an original fighting game!

 

I have a shameless plug for my game I made many years ago.

But, I did what you said, I got a ninja costume, some camera and photoshop, no green screen. I think it looks pretty good.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dvuemedia.ninjavsgunfree&hl=en_US&gl=US

 

Hey, maybe the new Atari could get some kind of agreement with MK owners and get it legit.

[leech]

Here is my take on this project;

 

It's pretty easy to see that the Jaguar was more than capable of a really good port of Mortal Kombat.  Both the Genesis and SNES have pretty decent ports, so the Jag should be able to do it near perfectly.

 

But I think the actual cool thing about the project is how much detail he's going into for the development.  Even if he ultimately can't release the MK rom, he'll hopefully have put forth enough effort into learning how to code for the Jag to be able to do something more original. 

 

Ha, what I think would be cool, is to see a patched version of Kasumi Ninja or Fight for Life, since neither of those seem to run all that well, and I bet could be a lot better with some optimizations.  Of course maybe I'm completely wrong, and those games just are terrible.

[walter_J64bit]

Update!

 

[mdkdue]

Such an interesting update, I really like how he explains everything. I won’t pretend to understand it!, but i still enjoyed listening 😀

 

Great progress 👍🏻

[+CyranoJ]

I really don't think you are "officially" porting MK to the Jaguar

 

In any case, good progress, nice work and informative video. Keep going.

[agradeneu]

 

Hello to the developer (in case you are following the thread):

 

Nice work!  I think you can work around the CLUT/16 color per fighter limit.

 

Make 2 misc, small sprites 16 bit color instead of indexed palette. The OP and Jagstudio can handle a mix of color dephts, as it was done in our games like Jumping or Gravitic.

 

This should free up 2 CLUT slots to bump up the pallette to 32 colors for the fighters.

Of course, you can always push for  more colors, but IMO 32 colors should make the fighters appear identical to the arcade version. 

 

If you are looking for another exclusive Jaguar feature, make the shadows properly transparent by using CRY mode/CRY masks. 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 25, 2023 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

On 11/12/2023 at 12:03 PM, LordKraken said:

 

- They actually take most of the light compared to original homebrew games. Nothing surprising, but I find it a bit sad imo. 

 

If you look at the majority of releases for the Jag, nothing to worry about

[+cubanismo]

6 hours ago, agradeneu said:

If you look at the majority of releases for the Jag, nothing to worry about

No, no, this is Jaguar. When bad things happen, we should endlessly overanalyze it. When good things happen, we need to endlessly overanalyze those too. For consistency.

[+madman]

19 hours ago, cubanismo said:

No, no, this is Jaguar. When bad things happen, we should endlessly overanalyze it. When good things happen, we need to endlessly overanalyze those too. For consistency.

Do you think Mortal Kombat could've saved the Jaguar?

[+grips03]

Great start. 

[roots.genoa]

6 hours ago, madman said:

Do you think Mortal Kombat could've saved the Jaguar?

Well, to be fair, if it had been exclusive to the Jaguar (which would have never happened anyway), it might have helped a lot.

[Cris1997XX]

On 11/26/2023 at 9:54 PM, roots.genoa said:

Well, to be fair, if it had been exclusive to the Jaguar (which would have never happened anyway), it might have helped a lot.

The SNES version was famously censored and suffered from input lag, the Mega Drive version had the blood code but looked like crap and a lot of stuff was missing, etc. I'd argue it would've been the closest thing to the real arcade machine outside of the MS-DOS port, which required a good enough computer anyway

[tripled79]

On 11/12/2023 at 4:45 AM, Biff Burgertime said:

Mortal Kombat's cool and all, but it just occurred to me that we've all got the technology to create digitized human sprites in our pockets nowadays. All you'd need is a cheap tripod, you don't even need a green screen - I use remove.bg to remove backgrounds for parody images and that works like a charm. Even using it on still frames of VHS-ripped shows from the 90s works well most of the time, it's extremely rare it hasn't been able to distinguish the human from the background.

 

So get rid of Scorpion & Sub-Zero, go buy $15 worth of colorful outfits at the nearest thrift shop and make me an original fighting game!

 

Why is this guy not sitting on the toilet seat? 

[+Biff Burgertime]

6 hours ago, tripled79 said:

Why is this guy not sitting on the toilet seat? 

I heard Todd Rogers' ass is too big for any toilet seat sold at traditional hardware stores, and since his Dragster cheating controversy, he has not been able to afford a custom-made one.

 

If in the future you have more Todd Rogers-related questions, a list of things people have heard about Todd Rogers is being compiled at https://twitter.com/heardtoddrodg

[Soulios]

It's surprising to me how the 6 MB max cart size is an issue. The arcade game is only 7.75 MB uncompressed, according to MAME info. So there isn't a huge difference like the 2 MB SNES/Genesis carts they used for their MK1 ports.

I would guess there's enough space to keep the full detail/color of the sprites and maybe reduce the sound quality a bit, it's not like the Jaguar would be able to reproduce the sound in the exact same way anyway.

 

[Cris1997XX]

17 hours ago, Soulios said:

It's surprising to me how the 6 MB max cart size is an issue. The arcade game is only 7.75 MB uncompressed, according to MAME info. So there isn't a huge difference like the 2 MB SNES/Genesis carts they used for their MK1 ports.

I would guess there's enough space to keep the full detail/color of the sprites and maybe reduce the sound quality a bit, it's not like the Jaguar would be able to reproduce the sound in the exact same way anyway.

 

He could just use MOD music like the Amiga port to save on space, but possibly more accurate to the arcade original rather than Matt Furniss' rearrangements

[walter_J64bit]

Update!