What if games were ported this way...

[Bryan]

Would anyone be interested in games that were ported with the original "portrait" orientation of the screen (PacMan for instance)? It would be cool to keep the game as accurate as possible, but would anyone be willing to flip their monitor?

 

-Bry

[+Sauron]

It would be better if an option in the game allowed you to "flip" the screen. I don't think too many people would be willing to turn their monitor/TV on it's side just to play a game, but having the option to do so would be nice.

[ZylonBane]

It would be cool to keep the game as accurate as possible, but would anyone be willing to flip their monitor?

If you're willing to take 30+ years of world-wide multiplatform gaming history as a representative sample... then no.

[andylama]

It would be cool to keep the game as accurate as possible, but would anyone be willing to flip their monitor?

If you're willing to take 30+ years of world-wide multiplatform gaming history as a representative sample... then no.

 

Funny reply. Funnier avatar!

 

The idea is good, but I don't think there's a game out there that I'd be willing to tilt my monitor for. Although there is wasted screen space, the way it was handled on the PC ports of the Atari Arcade Classics was acceptable: shrink to fit vertically on normal monitors, then box in the right/left sides with 'cabinet art' or just plain nothingness. Good enough for me.

[Bryan]

The idea is good, but I don't think there's a game out there that I'd be willing to tilt my monitor for.  Although there is wasted screen space, the way it was handled on the PC ports of the Atari Arcade Classics was acceptable: shrink to fit vertically on normal monitors, then box in the right/left sides with 'cabinet art' or just plain nothingness.  Good enough for me.

 

Yeah, it's just that the "shrink-to-fit" method costs you a lot of resolution on the A8. You've got 160 across, and if you don't use it all, you end up with a pretty crude representation. If you do use it all, then the game ends up being very different from the original.

 

Other than the radius tilting monitor, I've never seen any way of dealing with this issue. Oh well...

 

-Bry

[ZylonBane]

You've got 160 across, and if you don't use it all, you end up with a pretty crude representation. If you do use it all, then the game ends up being very different from the original.

Correction-- The graphics end up very different. The actual game ends up closer to the original.

[Bryan]

You've got 160 across, and if you don't use it all, you end up with a pretty crude representation. If you do use it all, then the game ends up being very different from the original.

Correction-- The graphics end up very different. The actual game ends up closer to the original.

 

But, it doesn't, really. PacMan on the 800 is not very close to the original IMHO. The long horizontal distances always bugged me. Ms. PacMan is closer because it doesn't distort the maze so much (it's more of a square).

 

Gameplay must be affected when such an adaptation is made. I don't think rotating the screen is really a practical option, I just wondered what people here thought about the idea of "arcade correct" translation.

 

-Bry

[Nukey Shay]

True that. The earliest arcade ports that I'd played on a computer (like Puckman) used the tilted screen method. It sucked. Big time. Even when said game's graphics were tilted and the controls were changed to be normal (i.e. Snoggle), it still sucked donkeys. True, neither were an accurate game of Paccy anyway...but the sideways maze didn't help. Then along came Taxman...and it was nearly perfect. That one just stuck the scores and game level graphics on the side...and it remained to be my favorite version/clone of PacMan until Mame was created. Heck, the AppleII had loads of titles that did that, and it didn't hurt playability in the least. The Atari computer could have easily done the same on it's games that differed from the arcade counterpart. But most chose to orient them horizontally anyway (I wonder if the display list being so easy to create had anything to do with that? All the Apple had to work with was just a couple modes opposed to Atari's limitless combinations).