Nintendo Handheld Gaming Thread (Game Boy to DS)

[BogusMeatFactory]

Man have you guys played smash bros. lately? Nintendo really Mario Partied it up by adding dice and boards that you wander and compete for stars with.

[ExedExes]

Those Doom GBA games are pricey!

The first game goes for around $20, and the second near $30!

I've got V-Rally 3 for GBA, so the engine is good on that?

[Tanooki]

Yup they've gone up in price which sucks but the reward is there still if you're a fan of DOOM or just FPS games and don't hate DOOM.

V-Rally 3 is the earlier rendition of the V3D engine. Other games like Stuntman used it in the US, and then in the UK/EU alone was Asterix which is a stunning third person exploration/platformer (think more like Gex than Mario as it's paths not free range Mario64 style.)

V-Rally creates the tracks like the Saturn did for V-Rally where it does it all with a 3D engine and a lot of math. I creates in the game a full 3D terrain for the cars to drive on and the hill/cliff sides too, and then some flat polygons get used to have trees or road side stuff as pixel art on those thrown on a polygon to keep the sensation of depth. Like the Saturn Sega Rally I think you've probably noticed playing it that the game has an in car view and out which does change the perspective of the course (on top of the hand, wheel, and cracking windshield from damage.) Also like Sega Rally it has the same bad faults in VRally too -- warbling/warping polygons and their textures around the fringes of the road where they're at the largest, and of course the instant pop in (due to no fog effects) of the background imagery once it hits a specific range.

Stuntman and Asterix to a lesser degree with the engine upgrades do it as well, but less. I'm fairly certain Driv3r was done by them too which is a respectable gta wannabe for the GBA which is fairly surprising given the hardware limitations. I mean the blue roses engine with Wing Commander Prophecy is nothing to sneeze at but a lot of it is still empty space and ships, while a world is a world with cars, objects, people, buildings, etc.

OH hey for fun, I found a post from the beginning of Jan 2014 I did on digital press where this was discussed. I pulled this info about the blue roses engine in relation to Wing Commander Prophecy and it's nuts what they managed to pull off.
http://www.raylightgames.com/games/wing ... phecy-gba/
http://web.archive.org/web/200208091154 ... sesdoc.htm

Raylight made BlueRoses and their old webpage is still up. It appears they did Smashing Drive, SRS Racing, Ozzy & Drix, and Big Motha Truckers all using this engine as does parts of Spiderman 2.

They have a feed promo resume reel of all their games 7.45 long) but starting here at 1.55 is Wing Commander Prophecy, check out the 3D quality of the engine. Ozzy & Drix again at 3min, Smashing Drive at 3.20min, Spiderman 2 at 3.55min goes 3D over a city, SRS at 4.30min. There's a hot wheels game after, not blueroses just flat polygons like virtua racing then goes into PSP and Wii games. Here's Big Motha Truckers left off that list -



Edit: By the way, I found the V3D engine guys own website. They have some amazing stuff you should check out. http://www.vd-dev.com/ The screen shots of Driv3r and Asterix are very nice. I'm not sure I'd personally enjoy the first, but that Asterix game looks enjoyable when I've seen video of it such as this (wish it was nicer, but the others are foreign or have a moron talking over it.) And one other thing, Top Gear Rally on GBA, that uses the Torus 3D engine that DOOM2 and Duke Nukem uses as well, full 3D cars and terrain which is quite impressive.

[ExedExes]

Cool demo video there. WCP looks amazing, was that a video clip of the defeated ship in the corner? Looks like the real thing too. I had no idea they also did R-Type III on the GBA but I know the story about the missing source code. Spiderman 2 looks nice too.

[Tanooki]

You mean that thing that tracks along and the big pinkish explosion ring? Yes that is a ship going down. If it were closer it actually would show sparks on the ships as you hit it, and before hand a bubble with some other colors lightning over it signifying the shield bubble being damaged shows too. Missiles even track out as pieces with some cloud rings behind them so it can get pretty busy on screen.

[ExedExes]

You mean that thing that tracks along and the big pinkish explosion ring? Yes that is a ship going down. If it were closer it actually would show sparks on the ships as you hit it, and before hand a bubble with some other colors lightning over it signifying the shield bubble being damaged shows too. Missiles even track out as pieces with some cloud rings behind them so it can get pretty busy on screen.

Yeah it was at 2:12. The explosion and then a picture on the upper left screen with a small animation. That's some heavy duty stuff on the GBA.

Duke is gonna be finished tonight. Spent all afternoon on it. So many enemies, so little ammo.

[Tanooki]

Yup, what they did there was attempt to emulate what they did with Wing Commander 2 as a compromise. They had to nix the FMV so you had stills for conversations between stages. In flight they can't do that to block the screen so much, so instead they did what WC2 did was a few frames of animation in a small box to give a sense of reality to it and then have a few common phrases spoken (which the GBA does too) and for longer stuff just small out of the way plain small font white text which works quite well.

[ExedExes]

Picked up Basewars (NES), Mario Golf (GBC) and a CIB Mario Kart DS today for what my local game store wanted for a card only MK ($20).

[Tanooki]

Wow that's an interesting spread of games and for a nice price.

I just don't look anymore unless it falls into my hands because this area and counties around really don't have much of anything at all and if it is, it's already in collector's hands not for sale or up on ebay for too much. It's weird, there are a few stores that post for '$ for games and toys' in the area and have for years, but you don't have the usual junk I saw out west of mass volume and more mass poaching and flipping.

Yesterday I did net a red boxed Mario Kart 7 complete for $20 which I can't complain at all about. And if I never mentioned it like 2 weeks ago there was Solar Striker for GB, one of the only if only vertical shooters Nintendo ever made. And other than a CIB Beatmania GB that came in from Japan late last week I've not bought stuff in a little while, not since I got that Duke Nukem GBA mid last month and then PS4 Godzilla and Wolfstein Old Blood. I'm just intentionally being more choosy on the new and the old it's just not there or it's the real awful stuff or mascot games that sits weekly at indoor flea market shops I won't touch over price.

[ExedExes]

It was at a flea market I haven't been to in a while, these guys set up every Sunday. Their prices were very good, slightly below VGPC averages on most of their stuff. They even let me test out Basewars on an NES they had setup. But I could NOT pass up that Mario Kart DS. No way would I have paid $20 for card only when it's far more affordable than that, even CIB is around $10-$15, which for a Nintendo property is amazing.

As for Mario Golf, that was an easy pick seeing as we're playing it here this month, plus I really need more GBC stuff.

Solar Striker is really good! That's one I need.