Following on from the conversation about Axelay's excellent speed patch for Elevator Action, I made some quick mockups to see what the arcade game's graphics might look like on CPC hardware.
Just for fun...!
Nice approach :)
I do like the mode 1 a lot! but for a more colour faithful to the arcade I'd go for mode 0. Plus would probably be arcade perfect (or pretty close) even when it could use mode 0, the main sprite on mode 1 and perhaps the enemies
I figure 16 sprites on the Plus ought to be able to cover the player, four enemies and six bullets all as sprites. And you might even be able to multiplex the bullets. Making them travel down the escalator, appearing to go behind the scenery layer, would be a nuisance though.
The graphics in the game are pretty small so the sprites come out looking a bit unrecognisable when crushed down to 4-5 mode 0 pixels wide, sadly. As usual, the CPC palette makes it hard to match the colours exactly, which doesn't help.
I bet the Sega Master system could run this game perfectly; too bad it was never ported to the Master System.
What about using full screen overscan for mode 0 in order to have a bit more resolution? horizontal overscan only, would probably kill the aspect ratio...vertical overscan instead? :-\ .The good thing would be a nice vertical scroll using the CRTC tho
If it was mode 1 in this case, I'd go for the lightest & closest colours possible, so yes on CPCs something gotta give hehe. If it was for SMS it would certainly be a perfect arcade port in the rights hands and even better if wanted so I dare to say.
192 pixels wide is a full horizontal overscan, which would give 3 pixels for every 4. But it would be very wide... at that ratio the doors would look square! Anyway, this is the challenge, something has to be compromised - just something fun to think about.
Go on, you've got 6 weeks before christmas!