next »

[fatso]

Hi everyone, we're The Rotting Cartridge, and we're ready to announce that we're porting "Kale In Dinoland" to the iPhone.

Our logic is simple: instead of making a new game, why shouldn't you just rip off an existing game and port it? It's a lot less work, and requires nearly no originality.







So we chose SkySoft's "Kale In Dinoland," which originally came out on the GameBoy in 1992. It didn't get that much attention, being eclipsed by some of the bigger titles that year and loaded with bugs. But we decided to give it a second chance in the new age of mobile gaming.

[richy486]

I like the scratched up effect

[Golds]

This is a cool looking project.  

But something about trying to trick people into thinking that it's a port a nonexistent classic game rubs me the wrong way.  It's almost like you're introducing yourself to people who might evangelize your game by insulting their intelligence.

This is the Internet.  It has records of things like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_for_the_original_Game_Boy

What's more, the resolution is higher than a Game Boy and the aspect ratio is wrong.

 Maybe I'm being too harsh though.   In any case, I'll likely buy it as soon as you release because it looks like a fun platformer.

[Kramlack]

But something about trying to trick people into thinking that it's a port a nonexistent classic game rubs me the wrong way.  It's almost like you're introducing yourself to people who might evangelize your game by insulting their intelligence.

This. I get that the joke is in good spirits, but perhaps try to make it more obvious as some people will think you're serious, and as Golds said, you're literally insulting their intelligence.

Dark Void Zero did something like this, making it sound like an old, long lost title. Which worked pretty well. They weren't tricking anyone into believing it was a real game, just saying that it could have been but never was.

What's more, the resolution is higher than a Game Boy and the aspect ratio is wrong.

Also this. I'm tired of people saying 'this is 8bit', just because it's tiny and doesn't have a lot of colours. As someone who reads into low-res specs often (too often), it irks me like if a grammar nazi saw a Gilbert Timmy post.

If you're interested in making it true to a GameBoy game, here are a few technical notes and tips;

GameBoy Palette:

• GameBoy does in fact run off a grayscale palette, the green tint is purely from the screen. With that said, obviously you can tint it to look like it's running off a normal screen. Just wanted to explain that to people who were unsure why it was black and white.
• The GameBoy screen resolution is set to 160 (width) x 144 (height). Obviously since you're making it for the iPhone, you can jerk around with that a bit, but perhaps keep the screen at that resolution and put the buttons on the side so it's not so obnoxious?
• Sprites use three shades, usually using 1, 2, and 4, but I have (rarely) seen it use 1, 3 and 4. Likewise, tiles can use all four shades.
• A technical note although this one is pretty much impossible to recreate and serves no actual purpose other than giving people like myself a retro boner, is that there can only be eight (or maybe it's ten on GB and GBC) sprites per raster line (horizontal, one pixel thick, line). If it goes over that, sprites on the line that has too many of them will start to flicker, which is most notable when lots of things are happening on screen.
• Another technical note that isn't too important is that the GB could only run 56 unique 16x16 tiles at a time. This made it so developers had to be careful with their usage of tiles, usually recycling them or being clever in their uses.
• Ishi did an insane job of filtering over one of my now ancient GameBoy mockups. You can see it over here. Would this be applicable to a game? That's beyond me as I have no idea how he did it, but it looks pretty damn awesome!

[fatso]

I like the scratched up effect

Thanks! 

In regards to the aspect ratio, we did play with setting it to the correct resolution early on, but we learned quickly that that was a waste of screen space on the iPhone.

I'm tired of people saying 'this is 8bit', just because it's tiny and doesn't have a lot of colours.

And I'm just as annoyed as you are. I know how it looks now, what we're doing and all that, and that's the point. The graphics not being completely true to the GameBoy was a conscientious decision.

Beyond that I don't have anything more to say other than we're glad people are interested!