Homebrew Alternate NES emu for Wii?

[mightymuffy]

So.... with a single cheat code for Double Dragon. I finally beat a game that I never did as a kid. And I did it in just under an hour.

The one code I used was for infinite lives. This means that the timer was still running, and I that I was still capable of taking damage. I could still die, and I did (more often than I would like to admit), causing me to have to redo entire sections.

For reference (for those who have never played), without the code, the game only gives you 3 lives and NO continues. Also, there's no save feature, which was common for most games of that era.

I have absolutely NO IDEA how anyone ever beat that game legitimately. Today, I was able to witness parts of this game that I had never seen before. I remember playing this game non-stop as a kid, and I never got anywhere near close enough to beating it.

I'm now convinced that most NES games could have been beaten, not only in a single day, but in just a couple hours, which makes sense since most of these games lacked a save feature. I remember playing games like these for months, if not years. The developers of these games stretched an hour's worth of game into months of gameplay. Simply because they implemented the same quarter-munching difficulty seen in arcade machines.

....I'm not sure how I feel about this observation. Sad that I wasted so much time on cheap-ass games that I would've never beat. Or happy, because games like this forced me to play them repeatedly, giving me great memories with their sounds and visuals that still resonate in a way that the games of today don't.

All in all, I guess I'm happy. I beat the game. I saw the ending. And it feels like I can now put away a book that, up until now, I had never finished reading.

I mostly agree with your comment, but you've got to cut the devs a bit of slack here - Double Dragon on the NES had to fit into a 256K cartridge! If we had a remake of the game today, I reckon it'd be a digital only game, so smaller size than a retail, yet would probably still weigh in around the 5GB mark..... you tell a dev today they have to make a game as big as Double Dragon but fit it into 256K and they'd probably have a heart attack.
Also remember it was a console port of an arcade title in the first place, so while the game could've done with adding a few [selectable] extra lives and continues, the difficulty level had to be 'authentic' to the arcade version, or fans of the game would've probably kicked off..

Good to hear you've finally seen what the whole game has to offer, but remember that despite your constant failing at the game as a kid you got months of play out of it - back in the NES days we didn't have the thousands of games in our collection like we do now, so games had to be tough enough to last, and it that meant making them appear cheap (looking back at them), just look at the memory (and budget) constraints they had back then..

 

[portugeek]

I see your point. But size limitations are something every Dev has had to worry about since always. Yes 256k isn't much to work with, but when you consider that just a generation before it, Atari 2600 games were limited to 4k, 256k is a huge leap.

256k wasn't even the NES's maximum. There were quite a few official releases coming in at 512k (which also wasn't the maximum). Although, I'm sure Nintendo was charging Devs more for the larger media, making 256k the more cost effective option. But it's not like this game was a new IP. Like you mentioned earlier, it was an arcade port, so the Devs/Pubs were already making their money. Re-releasing it on the NES was just another way to cash in. So not investing on the larger carts could be viewed as cheap move.

There also could have been dozens of other scenario's in play. Nintendo controlled the supply of the carts. So if they were limited on the number of 512k eproms they had in production at that time, it could've forced Technos' hand.

I'm guessing a bunch of that memory was wasted on backgrounds. Because the enemies were all palette swaps. All except for (spoilers, lol) the 2nd to last boss with the gun. Who the hell was that guy?! I'm sure the addition of that guy, for a "one-time" appearance, used up resources. Another thing to note was that 256k might seem small and limiting, but it was nowhere near the minimum rom size. There were lots of other great NES games coming well below DD's rom size of 256k. Although perhaps not as complex looking, still looked great.

Either way, I never thought about any of this stuff as a kid. I just loved the game. I didn't even know that there was an arcade version back then. In my mind, there was only ONE Double Dragon, and it existed on the NES. Beating the game last night, with an adult mindset, gave me a different perspective. Although perhaps a bit more nitpicky. I have to admit, I'm actually still pretty excited about all the new things I got to see during my play through yesterday. I'm sure I'll play it again. Especially knowing how short it is.