# LucasArts says old adventure games "impossible" on DS



## m2pt5 (Jun 4, 2008)

I don't know if this is the usual kind of news GBATemp would cover, but it's definitely interesting. Also amusing.



			
				QUOTE said:
			
		

> According to associate producer Jeffrey Gullett, porting any of LucasArts' old genre-defining adventure games to the Nintendo DS is impossible. "The cart size of the DS makes it impossible to put out ports of any of our old graphic adventures," claims Gullett. "There's literally not enough room on those carts to put the games out." The message is clear: LucasArts games on the DS would require both the pixie dust of mystical fairies and the compression technology of a 29th century quantum matrix to squeeze on a DS, and only a fool would say otherwise.



More at the link:

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/06/03/l...says-old-a.html


----------



## Hadrian (Jun 4, 2008)

Yeah they know NOTHING!  If Runaway & other games can be ported to the DS, I can't see why Lucasarts games can't either.

Bullshit excuse if you ask me.

*plays on ScummvDS*


----------



## Issac (Jun 4, 2008)

m2pt5 said:
			
		

> I don't know if this is the usual kind of news GBATemp would cover, but it's definitely interesting. Also amusing.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



What? Hahahahaha.. what bullshit!
"only a fool would say otherwise"... okay... so the scummvds is not real... it's all in our heads.... CONSPIRACY!!! 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





Stupid and lame excuse, and they should check their facts before stating something like that as an excuse! 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



Lucas Arts trust: -20 points


----------



## pilotwangs (Jun 4, 2008)

Haha,Lame.

ah well,i guess ScummvDS is still an option.


----------



## fischju (Jun 4, 2008)

The versions with full PC textures wouldn't fit (just saying)


----------



## arctic_flame (Jun 4, 2008)

Love it. You'd think their PR department would have had internet access and googled before making such a stupid statement.


----------



## CockroachMan (Jun 4, 2008)

Yeah.. sure, a floppy disc had more space than a DS card.. ¬¬

They could come up with a better excuse than that


----------



## noONE (Jun 4, 2008)

Errr, the biggest SCUMM game i got is .. like 100MB.. max DS card size=256MB..
what did they say wouldn't fit?..
also, to show that the DS can HANDLE the games, just look at SCUMMVM..


----------



## arctic_flame (Jun 4, 2008)

Not to mention before the DS came out, Nintendo said their cartridges could Go as large as 1GB if a developer required it.


----------



## noONE (Jun 4, 2008)

Yeah, but that would probably cost too much to be worth it for them, but sure, it's certainly possible.


----------



## Hadrian (Jun 4, 2008)

noONE said:
			
		

> Yeah, but that would probably cost too much to be worth it for them, but sure, it's certainly possible.


A lot less than it would be to develop a new game from scratch.

I'm really not fussed for official releases of these games anyway now, we have homebrew and as we saw with the disgraceful Myst port its probably better to stick with it.


----------



## teonintyfive (Jun 4, 2008)

Hell, they even ported SYBERIA to the DS, SYBERIA!


----------



## Jax (Jun 4, 2008)

noONE said:
			
		

> Errr, the biggest SCUMM game i got is .. like 100MB.. max DS card size=256MB..
> what did they say wouldn't fit?..
> also, to show that the DS can HANDLE the games, just look at SCUMMVM..



Full Throttle and The Dig are about 500MB and The Curse of Monkey Island is around 1GB, so, yeah, they can be pretty big...


----------



## Ruri (Jun 4, 2008)

fischju said:
			
		

> The versions with full PC textures wouldn't fit (just saying)


Wha?

ScummVM doesn't use 'textures'; it's not 3D like that.  And you actually put the data file for the original game itself on your DS -- you can literally download ScummVM, grab the appropriate files off of the old floppies you used to play Monkey Island on your PC, and you're good to go.


----------



## Hadrian (Jun 4, 2008)

Jax said:
			
		

> noONE said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The reissue of Full Throttle was under 150mb.

Anyway Runaway on the PC was 3.76 GB, on the DS it was much less and still looked pretty good.


----------



## Psyfira (Jun 4, 2008)

Remember ScummvDS is emulating the Spectrum. Assuming it works the same way as any other emulator out there it requires a BIOS of some sort to run, which Lucasarts do not have the rights to. So they cannot use the same method as ScummvDS to get their existing titles running on the DS, so the fact that ScummvDS can run it means nothing here. They'd have to dust off the source code and actually port each title to the DS.

Even so, that file size argument still sounds like a load of bull.


----------



## kitehimuro (Jun 4, 2008)

Their loss. They could've made a few easy bucks by porting Fate of Atlantis to the DS, to "cash-in" with the new movie. We can always use SCUMMVM

EDIT: ^^^^^^ I don't think SCUMMVM emulates any one system, less likely the Spectrum


----------



## Richy Freeway (Jun 4, 2008)

Psyfira said:
			
		

> Remember ScummvDS is emulating the Spectrum. Assuming it works the same way as any other emulator out there it requires a BIOS of some sort to run, which Lucasarts do not have the rights to. So they cannot use the same method as ScummvDS to get their existing titles running on the DS, so the fact that ScummvDS can run it means nothing here. They'd have to dust off the source code and actually port each title to the DS.
> 
> Even so, that file size argument still sounds like a load of bull.


Most uninformed post ever!?

ScummVM is an interpreter for the original game files. It's not emulating anything, that's WHY it's so easy to port to other platforms. 

Lucasarts have full rights to do anything, because they own the original interpreters.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScummVM for further details.


----------



## fischju (Jun 4, 2008)

Richy Freeway said:
			
		

> Psyfira said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Nah, see Ace's URGENT MESSAGE post


A lot of these games were on CDs, and those would be 500mb and larger - which can't be put on the DS. But most of that is textures, and if they wanted to they could do a simple port with lower res.


----------



## matriculated (Jun 4, 2008)

Most of the games _were_ on floppy. The CD versions were the floppy versions with voice audio - not to mention I really doubt that they even filled an entire CD. Also, there's no reason why they couldn't port the text/subtitle versions. 

I believe they didn't go exclusively onto CD until Monkey Island 3 and by then their games turned to crap, aside from Grim Fandango.


----------



## Psyfira (Jun 4, 2008)

Richy Freeway said:
			
		

> Most uninformed post ever!? ScummVM is an interpreter for the original game files. It's not emulating anything, that's WHY it's so easy to port to other platforms.


What the hell, I don't think I could be any further from the mark if I tried. Where on earth did I get that idea from?! 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





 I'd put it down to another blonde moment, but I think this cock-up's a little too big to be blamed on genetics. Uh... yeah I'm gonna go hide in a corner now :S


----------



## jinxvorheeze (Jun 5, 2008)

I guess me and my scummvm ds don't exist then....


----------



## silent sniper (Jun 5, 2008)

well, what they could do is put the game on several carts, and maybe have a slot-2 contraption to hold saves.


----------



## Rayder (Jun 5, 2008)

Someone should make Lucasfarts privy to scummvm.


----------



## santorix10 (Jun 5, 2008)

arctic_flame said:
			
		

> Not to mention before the DS came out, Nintendo said their cartridges could Go as large as 1GB if a developer required it.
> 
> I think they meant 1 Gigabit. Nintendo uses bank switching to get 256MB/2GB and higher sizes I believe. (Which works out just fine in the case of the DS because its use of game cards is more comparable to CDs than game ROM.)
> 
> QUOTE(Psyfira @ Jun 4 2008, 02:35 PM) Remember ScummvDS is emulating the Spectrum.



Not to beat a dead horse, but there are way too many onscreen colors and far too many not-monochrome-8-by-8-blocks for it to be a Spectrum.


----------



## Destructobot (Jun 5, 2008)

gbpic said:
			
		

> Nintendo uses bank switching to get 256MB/2GB and higher sizes I believe.


The DS can address up to 512 MB (yes, mega_bytes_) without bank switching. 1 Gbit was just the largest size cart available to developers when the system was launched.

You're right about the DS using carts more like optical discs than old style game cartridges. The old cart based systems used data directly from the game pak without loading into memory first (this is known as xip, or execute in place), but the DS needs to load the data into RAM before it can be used, just like a disc based system.


----------



## teonintyfive (Jun 5, 2008)

Hadrian said:
			
		

> Jax said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


But didn't they port Runaway 2?


----------



## granville (Jun 5, 2008)

Another messed up thing about this idea is that Lucas Arts hasn't even taken into account the compression. Most of theses games run unaltered in ScummVMDS WITHOUT any sort of compression or trimming. Were they to work on a true port instead of just an environment that runs the original unaltered games, they could easily find data everywhere that could be compressed to save space. Most of the time, these 128MB or higher DS games trim to below 100MB.

Resident Evil DS was the full Playstation game (from a 700MB cd) and somehow managed to be 128MB on DS with ALL the original content AND THEN SOME. Rhapsody A Musical Adventure is being remade for DS as is the FULL PSP game Disgaea.

Why'd they even come out with this press release? ScummVM DS is one of the most popular homebrew on DS. It's so easy to destroy this argument just by searching google. I remember SEGA or someone coming out with information that the reason we can't get a good port of Sonic the Hedgehog 1 is because they lost the source code. That logic reminds me of this report.


----------



## osirisFIVE (Jun 5, 2008)

What does this scummVMDS you guys speak of, do?


----------



## arctic_flame (Jun 5, 2008)

osirisFIVE said:
			
		

> What does this scummVMDS you guys speak of, do?



Plays LucasArts' old adventure games. And it works on the DS


----------



## granville (Jun 5, 2008)

ScummVMDS works like any other emulator on DS (except it's not an emulator). It lets you play many of the original Lucasarts adventure games that were released in the 90's (like the Monkey Island series). Scumm was the engine that the original developers created to make these games on. ScummVM is a virtual machine used to play these games, hence the term "VM". It is open source and has been ported to many different platforms. The DS part just indicates it has been ported to the DS. You can place the original games on your flashcard and ScummVMDS will be able to play them.


----------



## dawn.wan (Jun 5, 2008)

pushover.. we gotta find a way to get Kings Quest games on DS!


----------



## FAST6191 (Jun 5, 2008)

@dawn.wan even the GBA had a sierra emulator:
http://www.bripro.com/gbagi/

edit in reply to matriculated

I seem to recall it was added in the last round of betas.


----------



## matriculated (Jun 5, 2008)

dawn.wan said:
			
		

> pushover.. we gotta find a way to get Kings Quest games on DS!



ScummVM does run old Sierra games including King's Quest - does the DS version not support it? I'm pretty sure it does.


----------



## Cyan (Jun 6, 2008)

granville said:
			
		

> Rhapsody A Musical Adventure is being remade for DS


I didn't know that. I's a great and funny game.
Too bad it didn't sold well in USA, and because of that never got next games translated in english.


For lucas art games, maybe they didn't think about old file's interpreter.
something like using old graphics and sounds and doing a new game engine for DS is maybe taking more space. But I think it still could fit in DS cart without problem.

They could do an interpreter like ScummVM, but they would end using the same ScummVM opensource's mechanism for their own games properties. It's like selling other people free source code.


----------



## Hadrian (Jun 6, 2008)

FAST6191 said:
			
		

> @dawn.wan even the GBA had a sierra emulator:
> http://www.bripro.com/gbagi/
> 
> edit in reply to matriculated
> ...


Yeah I remember that the person behind the GBA one actually had an meeting with Sierra to get it officially released but they were against it.


----------



## 2dere (Jun 6, 2008)

Maybe the 'impossible' mentioned in that statement is just meant to wheat everyones tounge that little bit more when it does happen?


----------



## Commander (Jun 6, 2008)

LucasArts are just lazy, they'd rather just milk the Star Wars franchise, then do some real work.

What happened to the good old LucasArts that made great games.

~ Commander


----------



## woland84 (Jun 6, 2008)

Cyan said:
			
		

> granville said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Lucasarts rereleased some adventure games for PC to work with windows xp. They weren't cheap, had nice installer and so on, but when you went to "Program Files" there was scummvm.exe


----------



## matriculated (Jun 6, 2008)

Commander said:
			
		

> LucasArts are just lazy, they'd rather just milk the Star Wars franchise, then do some real work.
> 
> What happened to the good old LucasArts that made great games.
> 
> ~ Commander



The designers moved onto make Psychonauts and the new Penny Arcade game.


----------



## fateastray (Jun 7, 2008)

Makes ya wonder, does LucasArts even know about ScummVM?

Like, if any of us can find it, surely they can too...


----------



## Rayder (Jun 7, 2008)

Lucasarts saying it's impossible just means that they are never even gonna try to make any of those old games available on DS, that's all.


----------



## woland84 (Jun 7, 2008)

fateastray said:
			
		

> Makes ya wonder, does LucasArts even know about ScummVM?
> 
> Like, if any of us can find it, surely they can too...




Like I said: LucasArts used ScummVM for PC rereleases, so I'm pretty sure they know about it


----------



## Grimalkin (Jun 7, 2008)

matriculated said:
			
		

> Commander said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



That said, with their recent layoffs, I hope George Lucas doesn't start producing the games. It'd be hell...

For example:

"Okay sir, we're almost finished the next Indiana Jones game, but we're missing something..."
"I know! How about we put Jar Jar Binks in the game! The fans will love it!"


----------



## Smef (Jun 7, 2008)

To give you a sense of the size of these games, Fate of Atlantis is under 10MB, and Loom is less than 4MB.  With the CD sounds and voices for these games, they are closer to 120MB.  They didn't have all that fancy music or voice when I first played them, and they're still fine without it now.  (I don't keep the cd sounds on my ds.)  I think lucasarts just wants to release their newest versions of these games and don't want to go for the old, lower quality sound releases.

afk playing the impossible


----------



## st0nedpenguin (Jun 7, 2008)

Not to forget that even the largest of the classic LA adventure games could be crammed onto a much smaller cart once you consider that none of the artwork need be any larger than 256x192.


----------



## fateastray (Jun 8, 2008)

woland84 said:
			
		

> fateastray said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I meant the DS port. Doh

I think they know, but they wouldn't admit it, because it nullifies (can't find the word =p dutch = ontkrachten) their statement


----------



## woland84 (Jun 8, 2008)

fateastray said:
			
		

> woland84 said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Oh, Ok.
But yeah, you're probably right. 
Maybe in the future we will hear something like "For all our fans *we did impossible* and ported our adventure games to DS" from LucasArts .

PS. The world you were looking for is "negate"... I think.


----------



## granville (Jun 8, 2008)

I'm doing the impossible every day. I guess the impossibility statement makes me and most obviously, the ScummVM DS developers feel good about ourselves.

Dear lord, though! Almost all the old LucasArts games are below 128MB. If they weren't, the games could be EASILY downsized by converting the sound to lower quality and compressing the graphics. This report was probably the stupidest thing i've ever heard. It reminds me of when Square-Enix (then, Squaresoft) left Nintendo for the PS1's CD storage. Nintendo has proven time and time again that cartridges are just fine for games.

Whoever said these games were impossible should be fired for being an idiot. The last thing we need is for game developers to have idiots in their staff.


----------



## pasc (Jun 8, 2008)

arctic_flame said:
			
		

> Not to mention before the DS came out, Nintendo said their cartridges could Go as large as 1GB if a developer required it.


Now that interests me... sources ?


----------

