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)
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
God I can't believe it, they made RE games for GBC and GBA and neither were finished. I remember seeing the GBC one in magazines and shitting myself.
But not the Sega 32X. Which reminds me, would it be possible to port at least some of SM64 to the 32X? As hard of a job as that would be...
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.
Have you ever played Conker Live and Reloaded? My mind is continually blown by the quality of visuals in that game. It's better than most of the 360 games I've been playing and it's running on a fucking Celeron EDIT That video didn't even do the game justice, it had narrow pathways. Look at this fucking track! HOLY HELL. It's like Diddy Kong Racing Portable or something
That one isn't near as impressive. It's just a massive flat plane with an image. The other stages had mountains, hills and shit.
Yeah you're right. At first glance I was tricked by that big loop thing in the distance. That's the kind of stuff that Rare specializes in though, which that level may be just like the 3d racers on the SNES, it LOOKS like a "real" level.
Holy! I can't belive the 32X is able to do that. I never imagined the 32x could render gourad shaded polygons, let alone texturized ones. The expression in my while watching this video was fuuuuuuuuuuuuu-- I thought it could only render flat shaded polygons, as I have only seem games featuring these. That makes me wonder if the release of the Saturn was really necessary, if at all. Well, concidering that they were released really close to each other, then again, the 32x was being developed by the american team, while the saturn was being developed by the japanese team, and neither new about each one's projects, and that the Saturn is a stand-alone console, while the 32x is just a Genesis add-on. An amazing Genesis add-on, I must say. Well, now, I'll research the 32x development, to see if I can do some amazing shit with it, even if using flat shaded polygons only.