Please note that I'm throwing this introductory post up 3 days early so folks can start brainstorming and planning in the thread, continuing discussion from the voting topic. February's TR theme is still active and ongoing, so please enjoy it for another 2 days!
This month's theme is all about looking at how arcade titles made the transition to home consoles and portable systems during the 8- and 16-bit era. We will be focusing on ports and not adaptations. To clarify, that means we'll be playing games that were ported directly to consoles and handhelds, not arcade games that were retooled to better suit the home market, like Bionic Commando or the Double Dragon titles. Adding an extra level or weapon to the game is OK, as is remastering or remixing the soundtrack, as long as the core gameplay experience is largely the same (insofar as it can be on a home system).
Why are we playing this theme?
- To enjoy awesome arcade games (or not-so-awesome arcade games, if you are so inclined).
- To admire the skills of the programmers and artists who faithfully ported these games to very different and less capable hardware.
- To admire the noble failures of programmers and artists to faithfully port these games to very different and less capable hardware.
- To marvel at, ultimately, just how capable our home and portable systems of the era were.
- To see just how well these ports hold up now, especially compared to the arcade originals.
Eligible consoles and handhelds include:
NES, Sega Master System, TurboGrafx 16, Genesis, Super NES, SuperGrafx, Turbo CD, Sega CD, Gameboy, Turbo Express, Game Gear, Lynx, 7800.
Gameboy Color, Neo Geo Pocket, and WonderSwan are technically part of the 5th generation (32-bit era) of video games, and so are not a part of this arcade exploration. The NeoGeo AES and CD also are ineligible due to sharing the exact same core hardware as their NeoGeo MVS arcade sibling.
Edit: I might allow Gameboy Color if someone is really interested in looking at arcade ports on that platform. It really is a relatively basic upgrade to the Gameboy, regardless of which generation it came out with.
Since this topic has a lot of possibilities, let's brainstorm options together instead of me just throwing a bunch at you up front in this introductory post. I'm happy to clarify any details if there are questions.
