I find it fascinating that some games are pretty identical in certain aspects. Such as, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (Ubisoft: NES & Game Boy), having faithful graphics, music, and gameplay. Or Battleship for NES & Game Gear having similar music, despite the different sound capabilities and different tones. They use MIDI music composed on Cubase according to these 2 VGMPF pages (NES/GG). Other than that, graphics and surely the code is different.
One game in particular, Cosmic Spacehead, seems to me at least very faithful, in the NES (unl) and SMS versions. I heard that the SMS is an extension of the NES version, maybe it's the "Linus Spacehead's Cosmic Crusader" (US ver.), since the European NES version is also a bit different form the OG. But music is pretty much the same, just different sound hardware and the SMS music key is higher by 2 semitones. One would expect the SMS to have superior graphics to the NES, but again, it's largely the same beside a slightly different color palette. Here are some screenshots (NES & SMS respectively):
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My thoughts: When it comes to having identical graphics, idk how they did it, especially back then. Maybe it's similar to digitizing graphics, I'm not sure. I know you can swap tile/sprites with Tile Layer Pro, but in the 80s & early 90s that didn't have that luxury. Next is sound. I suppose the best way to por the sound is making a MIDI. I just don't know how one would implement it into a system's sound driver. Although for the NES, SMS, GB & GG, the infrastructure of the sound chips are similar. The 2a03 (NES), SN76489 (SEGA PSG) & LR35902 (GB), have 3 melodic channels + a noise, so composing for these 3 chips shouldn't be too bad. Next is the code. I've heard that devs used C prorgramming, which I think bridges the gap between systems with different CPUs. I don't much about C, but do have a book on how to learn it, and it's from the 80s, so I think it could be of some use.
Lemme know, if I'm somewhat right with my explanation, bc I don't know jack sht about this stuff, maybe I'm too dumb to comprehend lmao![Rolling Eyes :roll:]()
One game in particular, Cosmic Spacehead, seems to me at least very faithful, in the NES (unl) and SMS versions. I heard that the SMS is an extension of the NES version, maybe it's the "Linus Spacehead's Cosmic Crusader" (US ver.), since the European NES version is also a bit different form the OG. But music is pretty much the same, just different sound hardware and the SMS music key is higher by 2 semitones. One would expect the SMS to have superior graphics to the NES, but again, it's largely the same beside a slightly different color palette. Here are some screenshots (NES & SMS respectively):


My thoughts: When it comes to having identical graphics, idk how they did it, especially back then. Maybe it's similar to digitizing graphics, I'm not sure. I know you can swap tile/sprites with Tile Layer Pro, but in the 80s & early 90s that didn't have that luxury. Next is sound. I suppose the best way to por the sound is making a MIDI. I just don't know how one would implement it into a system's sound driver. Although for the NES, SMS, GB & GG, the infrastructure of the sound chips are similar. The 2a03 (NES), SN76489 (SEGA PSG) & LR35902 (GB), have 3 melodic channels + a noise, so composing for these 3 chips shouldn't be too bad. Next is the code. I've heard that devs used C prorgramming, which I think bridges the gap between systems with different CPUs. I don't much about C, but do have a book on how to learn it, and it's from the 80s, so I think it could be of some use.
Lemme know, if I'm somewhat right with my explanation, bc I don't know jack sht about this stuff, maybe I'm too dumb to comprehend lmao

Statistics: Posted by FloResolution — Sat Jan 11, 2025 10:39 pm — Replies 3 — Views 142