PixelKnight
Observing the process
- Pronouns
- He/Him
How R-Type Was De-Made For The Game Boy, Before Demakes Were A Thing
"It was thought it would be impossible to convert it to the Game Boy"
www.timeextension.com
Fascinating article on Jas Austin, who had only ZX Spectrum experience when he worked on the porting process here, I loved this game as a kid.
What tricks did you use in order to shrink a coin-op down to work on a monochrome portable?
One sneaky trick I used was multiplexing the sprites. Because of the screen was LCD, there was a very slight latency when turning off a sprite. So I was able to re-use some sprites by switching them every other frame. Because of the latency, they just appeared duller than normal. I used this mostly on bullets and the large R9 weapons, like the ripple laser.
What was the hardest aspect of the port?
The hardest was the constant fight with memory. Back then, the cartridge size had a huge impact on production cost, so we always tried to use the smallest cart size we could. This was why two levels were cut straight away. Video space was also a problem. With the first level, we couldn't fit both the background graphics and the boss in V-RAM. So you'll notice a very short pause before the boss, this is where I dump some of the now unused background characters and replace them with the boss graphics.
How long did it to take to complete the conversion?
It's so long ago I can't remember how long it took us. I think it was a few months in total. I do recall that with the first meeting with Foo, I walked away with a basic dev kit, and we were tasked to get a first pass on level one in two weeks or so. There were some late nights, but we managed it. Having never developed on the Game Boy, I was certainly thrown in at the deep end
Also, I wasn’t even aware there was an unreleased GBC port of Jet Force Gemini!
Can you give us a little snapshot of where your career has taken you since the Game Boy days?
After R-Type, I worked on a number of other Game Boy games including Terminator 2, Alien 3 and two Spider-Man games. I stayed at Bits till the end, around 2006 working on various other consoles. Including coding and co-designing the unreleased GBC version of Jet Force Gemini
Much more at the link.