On the topic of Megaman 1 for PC, some people think the problem is that it was developed for MS-DOS. I developed a bunch of games (crappy and amateurish games) for DOS, and can say that in that respect really it doesn't matter that it's DOS. DOOM was made for DOS. Jazz Jackrabbit was made for DOS. One Must Fall 2097 was made for DOS. It took a really long time for games on Windows to match or exceed what was possible on DOS.
The problems with this game are 3-fold.
1. It was made for EGA graphics. EGA was a digital graphics standard consisting of an R, G, and B line, and an intensity line, all of which can either be a 0 or a 1; So you had 16 colors total, and they were hardware defined. This is contrasting to the 16 colors you could display at once on the NES where you could choose from a palette of 64 colors, so you could choose colors that complement each other. Games on PC that looked good came about in the VGA era when 256 software definable colors became the standard.
2. It wasn't made with Megaman's art style. There have been dogs or insects or birds in Megaman games, but they tend to follow the same art style with large expressive eyes and big animations. The fact that megaman looks nothing like megaman is really relevant, there's no reason they couldn't have made a pixel perfect set of sprites given the colors they worked with and the fact that the game was fully licensed.
3. It really wasn't made with Megaman's enemy style. There is a huge reliance on enemies that are too short to shoot (such as the dog in the introduction), which there were some in the Megaman games but they weren't all of them. We also saw attack patterns being quite different than a typical Megaman game. The bats in this game just come towards you and will stop when they hit you. Contrast with bats in an official Megaman game where they tend to swoop and attack then go elsewhere.
It's impressive for what the one dude working on the game was able to do, so you shoudn't be too mad at the guy, but those are the essential problems it faced.
The problems with this game are 3-fold.
1. It was made for EGA graphics. EGA was a digital graphics standard consisting of an R, G, and B line, and an intensity line, all of which can either be a 0 or a 1; So you had 16 colors total, and they were hardware defined. This is contrasting to the 16 colors you could display at once on the NES where you could choose from a palette of 64 colors, so you could choose colors that complement each other. Games on PC that looked good came about in the VGA era when 256 software definable colors became the standard.
2. It wasn't made with Megaman's art style. There have been dogs or insects or birds in Megaman games, but they tend to follow the same art style with large expressive eyes and big animations. The fact that megaman looks nothing like megaman is really relevant, there's no reason they couldn't have made a pixel perfect set of sprites given the colors they worked with and the fact that the game was fully licensed.
3. It really wasn't made with Megaman's enemy style. There is a huge reliance on enemies that are too short to shoot (such as the dog in the introduction), which there were some in the Megaman games but they weren't all of them. We also saw attack patterns being quite different than a typical Megaman game. The bats in this game just come towards you and will stop when they hit you. Contrast with bats in an official Megaman game where they tend to swoop and attack then go elsewhere.
It's impressive for what the one dude working on the game was able to do, so you shoudn't be too mad at the guy, but those are the essential problems it faced.
@sj_zero The problem with "DOS" is that it's actually a massive era with loads of different standards, hardware, etc. that's somehow treated by outsiders as if it was a console gen
Excellent point. My first computer was an 8088 without a hard drive, and it really didn't compare in any way to late DOS games running on a Pentium. There was hardly anything remotely similar about the two platforms.
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@coolboymew @sj_zero Not even different standards as much as wildly different computers that ran their own port of DOS. The PC-98 and FM Towns are considered their own distinct platforms in their own right due to the fact that aside from a handful of exes built to run on multiple platforms, they are distinctly incompatible and will crash running exes for other platforms without an emulation layer of some sort (this was done for the PC-98 on DOS by Epson after they pulled out of that market).
In the West while these computers died off once Phoenix BIOS and other clone BIOSes came to the market, there were notable computers like the DEC Rainbow, the NEC APC III (a modified incompatible PC-98), and the Mindset that were incompatible with the PC as well. There were also computers like the Tandy 1000 that were "extended" as well.
In the West while these computers died off once Phoenix BIOS and other clone BIOSes came to the market, there were notable computers like the DEC Rainbow, the NEC APC III (a modified incompatible PC-98), and the Mindset that were incompatible with the PC as well. There were also computers like the Tandy 1000 that were "extended" as well.
@coolboymew @sj_zero
It might sound specific and yet it's not. Japan saw DOS as the PC-98 for the longest period of time, and so their idea of a DOS game was "16 out of 4096 colors at 640x400 with a YM2203/YM2608 sound chip". They don't have the same memories of the DOS era as we do. If anything it really hammers home just how DOS was wildly different depending on not only when you got your PC, but also which country.
There's new DOS games/demos still being made today, mostly on the regular PC (or PC/AT as it's called in Japan), but even a few for the PC-98 and FM Towns.
It might sound specific and yet it's not. Japan saw DOS as the PC-98 for the longest period of time, and so their idea of a DOS game was "16 out of 4096 colors at 640x400 with a YM2203/YM2608 sound chip". They don't have the same memories of the DOS era as we do. If anything it really hammers home just how DOS was wildly different depending on not only when you got your PC, but also which country.
There's new DOS games/demos still being made today, mostly on the regular PC (or PC/AT as it's called in Japan), but even a few for the PC-98 and FM Towns.