Screen orientation for Arcade game ports

[almightytodd]

Am I the only one with questions about why so many ports of arcade games fail to consider the screen orientation of the original game they are porting? Particularly with the 2600's graphics limitations, it would seem to me, that the most important aspect to capture, in getting the "essence" of an arcade hit, would be the game-play. An example of a game that does this fairly well is "Joust". The level of graphic detail is not nearly as important as the response of the controls, and the movement of the objects on the screen.

 

There are quite a few games that were ported to the 2600 (and other home systems) that began their lives in arcade form using a "portrait" oriented screen, with the screen being much taller than it is wide. Titles that immediately come to mind include "Space Invaders", "Galaxian/Galaga", and "Pac Man". The gripes of the lack of faithfulness of the original 2600 Pac Man port are numerous, so I won't bother to elaborate. But I've observed that even when Ms Pac Man "corrected" many of the shortfalls of the original Pac Man port, the layout of the maze is a "squashed" version of the arcade version, rather than turning the maze on it's side.

 

I've noticed that the NES port improved on this situation by putting all of the scoring information off to one side and then orienting the layout of the maze in portrait form like the arcade version. A similar tactic has been used in the "Namco Museum" port of the original arcade games for the Nintendo Game Cube and some portable systems.

 

In the shooters that all derived originally from Space Invaders, the screen orientation is critical to the game play, because it is so much more difficult to time the firing of shots at the targets that are so far away, such as the top row of invaders or the mother ships. This is also true of derivations such as Galaxian and Galaga.

 

When using a joystick contoller, which limits the speed of movement of your base ship or blaster cannon, having more ground to cover from side to side is a definite obstacle. To a certain degree, the 2600 Space Invaders port compensated by having fewer columns of invaders than the coin-op version. This kept the game play closer to the arcade original, but I maintain that hitting the Mother ship is still easier on the 2600 than it ever was at the arcade.

 

I've only seen a few games that attempted to capture the game-play characteristics of a multiple approaching targets shooter, by laying a portrait view orientation on it's side. Planet Patrol does this, but still gets a very negative review in the attempt.

 

This observation carries over to the 7800 arcade ports, but since there are so few 7800 games in general, and this forum seems to be more active, I thought it would be more appropriate to bring it up here. Obviously, asking gamers to lay their TV sets on their sides isn't a very viable option (...although I seem to recall reading about one such game that did that very thing), but for some games (such as Pac-Man style games) it seems to me that the final resulting game play would actually be more true to the original by maintaining the ratios of the original arcade maze layouts, turned side-ways, and then re-orientate the Pac Man and the Ghosts, with Pac Man starting off to the right, and the Ghosts in a box at the left.

 

As I think about it, it is somewhat ironic that the Vectrex system was designed assuming a portrait orientation while some of the most popular vector graphics arcade games (Asteroids and Battlezone) were landscape oriented. If this has bothered you too, please add your thoughts. And if you think I'm just full of crap, feel free to tell me that too.

 

Thanks,

 

Almighty Todd

[supercat]

I've noticed that the NES port improved on this situation by putting all of the scoring information off to one side and then orienting the layout of the maze in portrait form like the arcade version. A similar tactic has been used in the "Namco Museum" port of the original arcade games for the Nintendo Game Cube and some portable systems.

 

The 2600 has limits on how much stuff can be displayed on one horizontal line. Putting the score off to the side would have made sense from a screen-layout perspective, but would have caused severe difficulties from a programming perspective.

 

It is somewhat curious, though, that more games didn't confine themselves to the central 80% of the display, given that in many cases doing so can considerably simplify programming. Donkey Kong would not be able to show the level of color and detail that it does if the board spanned the full width of the screen, but since it doesn't, it can.

[shadow460]

It seems to me that the 7800 arcade ports really don't suffer a whole lot, though. Pac-Man Collection! faithfully captures the gameplay I remember form the arcade, and the maze is squished horizontally with the score info on top and lives/fruit on the bottom, just where you'd expect it. Centipede is similalry oriented, as is Dig Dug.

Most of the other ports just speak for themselves. Food Fight, Joust, Asteroids (which actually built on the original some), Xevious, and some others do quite well on the landscape layout.

[alex_79]

I've noticed that the NES port improved on this situation by putting all of the scoring information off to one side and then orienting the layout of the maze in portrait form like the arcade version. A similar tactic has been used in the "Namco Museum" port of the original arcade games for the Nintendo Game Cube and some portable systems.

 

The 2600 has limits on how much stuff can be displayed on one horizontal line. Putting the score off to the side would have made sense from a screen-layout perspective, but would have caused severe difficulties from a programming perspective.

 

It is somewhat curious, though, that more games didn't confine themselves to the central 80% of the display, given that in many cases doing so can considerably simplify programming. Donkey Kong would not be able to show the level of color and detail that it does if the board spanned the full width of the screen, but since it doesn't, it can.

IMHO another reason is the fact that the "playfield" (one of the graphic objects that the vcs can display) is low in resolution (only 40 pixel).

This is used for example to display the maze and the dots in all pac-man games (also in the awesome pacman4k). Using a potrait aspect ratio would have reduced the number of dots displayed on a line and affected the gameplay.

Edited March 19, 2007 by alex_79

[almightytodd]

A very good point, Alex. Obviously, the NES solution for Pac Man is not feasible for the 2600, given it's limitations. The 7800 might not fare much better, although I would still like to see what would happen if the portrait layout of the arcade maze was flopped on its side. Ironically, the resulting maze would have tunnels going from top to bottom as was the case in the original 2600 port and Nukey Shay's excellent hack (...thanks for providing that link by the way. A fascinating discussion thread and a new ROM for me to play with ).

 

It's interesting that you brought up Xevious, as that is another game that I would like to see ported as a left-to-right scroller instead of top-to-bottom in landscape; using programming techniques similar to what was done in Planet Patrol.