Sonic The Hedgehog For The Atari 2600

[Don Panetta aka 404]

shocked i didnt see this sooner. Anyone played it? Looks hilariously awesome.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/214639-sonic-the-hedgehog-aka-zippy-the-porcupine-demo/

! No longer available

[Niloc]

On the one hand it's somewhat technically impressive.

On the other hand this is to Sonic on the Genesis as Pac-Man on the 2600 is to Pac-Man in the arcade. Kind of a painful conversion.

It's like Double Dragon on the 2600:



No... why did you? Just stop...

[Don Panetta aka 404]

I'm sort of in the same boat with you Niloc but i absolutely hated the Atari2600. I felt 99.9% of the games were unplayable garbage.

 On the other hand, it is an incredibly cool tech demo of sorts. One may even argue that it is probably one of the most visually and technologically impressive games for the atari2600. Especially considering how much sprite animations, enemies and levels it has.

[lordtakuban]

Double Dragon on the 7800 was pretty decent compared to the NES version.  They were nearly identical IIRC.  I have the 7800 cart.  I should try to pick up the NES cart soon and do a quick side-by-side .... Oh .. I got side tracked there.  The sonic thing is a good tech demo for sure, but yeah, it's not the original at all.  And the analogy to Pac-Man Arcade vs. 2600 version is pretty spot on.

[number six]

What the Atari 2600 was pushed to achieved years later is pretty impressive when you consider it was only designed to play Pong (and variants therof).

Rom size has a lot to do with some of the more impressive efforts. During the height of the 2600 most games were probably 4k, rom space was extremely expensive.. atari was cheap.. and there's only so much you can cram into 4k. Look at a late 80s game with 16k or 32k rom and its night and day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wo8-6GPnBQ

2600 Rampage was pretty impressive for what it was.. but then again by the time this came out you had to really be the 'poor kid' if you were buying 2600 games.

I did pick up 2600 Ghostbusters simply because I was so damned curious about how they managed to shove a relatively complicated games into the 2600. They actually did an amazing job all things considered but its not replacing the 8-bit computer versions.

With games like Double Dragon its impressive that the 2600 can play anything that resembles Double Dragon once again given how far from Pong or Breakout the concept is. But once again at time it came out very few people would have been excited about finally getting that port to their Atari.

[number six]

Double Dragon on the 7800 was pretty decent compared to the NES version.  They were nearly identical IIRC.  I have the 7800 cart.  I should try to pick up the NES cart soon and do a quick side-by-side .... Oh .. I got side tracked there.  The sonic thing is a good tech demo for sure, but yeah, it's not the original at all.  And the analogy to Pac-Man Arcade vs. 2600 version is pretty spot on.

Atari 7800 Double Dragon is a bit rough. The graphics are pretty good by 7800 standards and it has 2-player play (take that Nintendo!) but it still looks a bit 'small' in comparison.. although the backgrounds are good. The music is the same as the Atari 2600 port so its just terrible.

I hate the NES version for a variety of reasons but overall it looks a lot more polished than the 7800 version.

[lordtakuban]

Atari 7800 Double Dragon is a bit rough. The graphics are pretty good by 7800 standards and it has 2-player play (take that Nintendo!) but it still looks a bit 'small' in comparison.. although the backgrounds are good. The music is the same as the Atari 2600 port so its just terrible.

I hate the NES version for a variety of reasons but overall it looks a lot more polished than the 7800 version.

Yeah.  I hadn't played the NES version in a while when I tested out my 7800 cart and thought the backgrounds looked quite impressive.  The audio is horrible though as you mentioned.  And I remember the NES version flickering a lot and not playing very well (even with my nostalgia goggles on).  I was just impressed that the 7800 was able to have a game look that decent at all. 

[number six]

Yeah.  I hadn't played the NES version in a while when I tested out my 7800 cart and thought the backgrounds looked quite impressive.  The audio is horrible though as you mentioned.  And I remember the NES version flickering a lot and not playing very well (even with my nostalgia goggles on).  I was just impressed that the 7800 was able to have a game look that decent at all.

The 7800 had a lot of untapped potential. Most of the games look like crap because they were once again.. using small ROM sizes and while Nintendo Games were big productions with a team of dozens many of the 7800 games were still being done by just 1 or 2 people. This is why most of the 7800 games look so unpolished and cheap in comparison. It would be interesting to see somebody really push the system as I think it could have done some nice things.. the early Famicom / NES games look similiarly basic but of course the Famicom evolved.

As far as 8-bit Double Dragon ports, i always preferred the Sega Master System version. It has some hella flicker but its the closest to the arcade of any of them.

[Don Panetta aka 404]

Aside from Double Dragon for NES only being single player, its a great game

[number six]

Aside from Double Dragon for NES only being single player, its a great game

It's not a very good recreation of arcade Double Dragon though, which is why it always deeply dissapointed me.

[Don Panetta aka 404]

It's not a very good recreation of arcade Double Dragon though, which is why it always deeply dissapointed me.

No double dragon home console port is. Even the genesis version which had arguably the best graphics had terrible music and gameplay.

[number six]

No double dragon home console port is. Even the genesis version which had arguably the best graphics had terrible music and gameplay.

The genesis version is very flawed too, no doubt.

The Sega Master System version comes a lot closer. The NES version screws with more than just the 2 player aspect. They tried to add depth (?) by making you 'earn' moves which is silly. The game is still a short arcade experience so it's not like say NES Strider where they turned it into an adventure game.. its still an arcade style game but now you spend most of the game without your moves. It would be like needing to gain experience to do moves in Street Fighter II.

Then there's the art design. Obviously compromises needed to be made for the NES but the game doesn't even look like Double Dragon. Finally there's the weird sprite limit along with the vastly different sound and music.. it all adds up to something thats so far from the source I'd hesitate to call it 'Double Dragon' anymore.

At least the SMS with all its flickering was in the same ballpark and was recognizable as the same game.