Why did they port Prophecy to the GBA?

V

Vinman

Vice Admiral
I'm enjoying it but since I haven't played the game in a while, the cutscenes really don't make much sense.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to port the original Wing Commander to the GBA?

No need for awkwardly-written cutscenes, reasonable system requirements and an introduction to the franchise for people who have never played Wing Commander before.
 
It would be great to have the original WC to the GBA, but how tha makes the WCP bad I have no idea. I think think they did a good job by the screenshots I saw, porting the 3D engine.
 
Delance said:
It would be great to have the original WC to the GBA, but how tha makes the WCP bad I have no idea. I think think they did a good job by the screenshots I saw, porting the 3D engine.
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I'm not saying that the WCP port is bad, but I think WC1 would have been a much better fit on a handheld than WCP.

The WCP port is clearly aimed at people who have played the game on the PC, and I think WC1 would have had wider appeal, particularly to people who only know of Wing Commander from the movie.

Also, WC1 had more replayability and it was more fun to play on-again-off-again than WCP, which had a more involved storyline.
 
Vinman said:
The WCP port is clearly aimed at people who have played the game on the PC, and I think WC1 would have had wider appeal, particularly to people who only know of Wing Commander from the movie.
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Well, Prophecy was intended to be the most stand-alone primary game in the series after WC1. That's part of the reason why it wasn't Wing Commander 5. Prophecy was made because it was possible to do so using Raylight's advanced Blue Roses 3D engine. There may have been additional licensing restrictions on the time period from which they were authorized to recreate Electronic Arts properties. I think everyone here would agree that WC1 would make a fantastic Game Boy game, but I don't know that it would have been a better game to market than Prophecy. The superb recreation of the Vision Engine on a handheld was one of the major selling points.
 
Yeah, I guess that Raylight wanted to do a full 3D game to showcase their (marvelous) engine. It is pretty impressive, and looks good on a DS.
 
You may recall that the 'Star Giants' tech demo which Raylight created to convince Destination to grant them the Wing Commander rights was based on Wing Commander I: https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/4004

The actual game was done as Prophecy for several reasons, but the most important one was that Destination's GBA publish deal with Electronic Arts covered all games developed in a certain time -- meaning Wing Commander Prophecy and not Wing Commander I.

There's some other issues, too. Including:

* The game was designed to show off Raylight's spectacular "Blue Roses" 3D engine. A Wing Commander I port wouldn't use it, and "3D on the GBA!" was seen as a big selling point.

* There are some rights issues regarding early Origin games. Specifically, 'work for hire' elements that were done by non-employees without any sort of formal contract. That's why The Fatman still has the rights to his Wing Commander music, for instance. When EA wanted to use classic Ultima music in Ultima X they had to go around tracking down people and paying them money for the rights Garriott didn't get in the late 80s.

Lets see... note that the original plan called for having the cutscenes be done with little 3D people in the 3D engine. I'm not sure at what stage that was dropped.

I traded e-mails with the guy who developed Wing Commander I for the Amiga some years back (it was done by one man!), and he said he'd love to develop WCI for the GBA and believed he could do it very quickly. So, lets all remember him when WC is cool again.
 
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The DS would be a great place to have WC1 and WC2 ports, and to introduce them to a new generation. The "outdated" grapics would look much better on the DS screen than on a 17" monitor.
 
As long as we're talking about Prophecy Advance... does anyone have any experience running it on the new Nintendo DS's? I acquired a DS recently, and just realized that I can play GBA games on it.

Specifically... how does the multiplayer work with GBA games on the DS?
 
It doesn't, GBA games don't multiplay over the DS.

Which is certainly bad news for Pokemon trainers.
 
yeah, the "no-GBA-multiplayer" thing is the biggest DS weakness to me. It is really good for native DS games multiplayer though. And it will probably work fine with the Revolution.
 
I also don't like how it doesn't let you play GB/GBC games.

And how it's really really big, but I hear they're fixing that.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
It doesn't, GBA games don't multiplay over the DS.

Which is certainly bad news for Pokemon trainers.
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That's really ironic, because I am about fifteen hours into Pokemon Ruby on the DS.

I think I'm going to go kill myself now.
 
Don't worry too much. You can still use your cartridge with an older GBA later for trading... and supposedly there will be some DS-specific method for transferring your Ruby/Sapphire/Fire/LEaf/Emerald Pokemon to the next generation of DS games.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if the first Pokemon DS is able to import all your pokemon from GBA carts... Given that the DS can have both inserted. Considering that Metroid Pinball uses the Slot-2 for a rumble pack...
 
I think they should make a WC game for the PSP. I don't have one, but I know a quite a few people how would buy it.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if the first Pokemon DS is able to import all your pokemon from GBA carts... Given that the DS can have both inserted. Considering that Metroid Pinball uses the Slot-2 for a rumble pack...
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It should be able to -- all five of the GBA Pokemon games are compatible (Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Fire Red and Leaf Green). The problem was always the older GB and GBC games (Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver and Crystal), which never had any way to transfer their Pokemon to the GBA-only games.
 
The GBA was Gameboy-compatible thanks to a secondary Z80GB CPU. The DS doesn't have one, so it can't play GB or GBC games.
 
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