I didn't know this till today, but it seems there was a Crazy Taxi game for GBA that was more or less a proper port of the original. I was just looking at the related videos on youtube and by dumb luck stumbled on a tech demo of the engine they actually used for this port.
Pretty cool eh? GTA3 for GBA anyone?
also, here's some footage of Crazy Taxi GBA
All things considered it's a pretty respectable port. The graphics are pretty bad but if you watch later in the vid, it's clear they did use the original maps. All the crazy hills and overpasses are still there.
Now that I've seen this, it just makes Sonic Genesis seem even more pathetic.
Admittedly, it seems kinda crappy compared to the Dreamcast original, but all things considered it's pretty good for a GBA port. It certainly is much better than that piece of shit GBA port of Jet Set Radio.
I still find it quite amazing that the GBA could do full 3d like that, the first ever footage of v rally 3 was amazing at the time, shame not many games fully used this kind of stuff (personally I think most of them were poor, even v rally 3 had it's problems)
I played this all the time in High School on my FlashCart. =D
Same here, haha! Except I used to have the actual cart. It was pretty fun.
The GBA had lots of propper good 3D games that didn't make the cut, though, such as Resident Evil 2, Silent Hill and a racer game that I forgot the name. So unfortunate. Here's a video of the GBA version of RE2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65AUaENFlHg...feature=related
Whaa? Can the 32X really do all that? If so, then stuff SM64 - we should do Sonic Adventure for 32X-CD.
I don't know, that's pushing it somewhat, but I really do think that SM64 on the 32X could be possible. If only we had the source code or reverse-engineered it to the point of Sonic games or Super Mario World...
The primary limitation of the 32X is available memory. Remember that the SH2s only have 256KB of SDRAM. 32X cart games get around the limitation by throwing as much as possible into the rom. 32X-CD has no rom to do that with. Instead, the MD 68000 would need to pass data from the CD Word RAM (128KB if double-buffered, or 256KB is single) to the 32X side via the DMA channel in bits and pieces as the SH2s decide what they need.
It makes it FUN to program the 32X, but by no means is it impossible.You could store the data in compressed format in the CD Word RAM, then the MD 68000 could decompress it on the fly as it stores it to the DMA channel. Keep a small cache in the SH2 SDRAM, and ask the MD to DMA blocks as needed to that cache.
I'm still disappointed Banjo-Pilot didn't stick with its technically amazing build.
Apparently it got canned because the framerate took a nosedive once more stuff was added during the races. Honestly if having only a few other racers let the game look that good I'd have been perfectly fine.