GBA -- 2D's Last resort? ....and question about GameboyPlaya

[Zubiac666]

Is it just me or does anybody else feels that the GBA/gameboy-player is our last resort for "real"(bitmap graphics...not polygon 2d graphics!) 2D gameplay?
I mean: What a great feeling to play "Metroid Fusion","Final Fight","Rayman3" or "Invader" on gameboyplayer....it just feels kinda right
Let's hope they'll continue releasing great 2D shoot'em ups,beat 'em ups and jump'n runs for gba! There are soooo many arcade-classics which should get ported to gba.The possibility is here.
anyways....

I'm searching right now for classic shoot'em ups(Gradius/invader) and beat'em ups(like Final Fight/Jacky Chan) for gba!

could u all be so kind and give other examples for those genres which have(or will get) releases for gba?

The Gameboyplayer-Question:
What if I want to play multiplaya with gameboyplayer?
I heard that I need a gba and have to link it with gameboyplaya.
Ok,that's clear BUT what about games like "Final Fight"?
Is the gba just the "controller" for the second player then and he sees his character on TV-screen OR has he look on gba-screen to see his character?
It would be logical that u see both characters on TV-screen when playing 2-players mode! Wouldn't it be? So,that "player 2" just use the gba just as controller.

any help/info?

uhh..and sorry for my crappy english :D

[Jorpho]

I don't think the Game Boy Player has any kind of linkup abilities, unfortunately.

[SoulBlazer]

Not totaly sure what you mean, but you can play MP games with the Game Boy Player. The GBA can be plugged into one of the ports with the link cable and then use the GBA as one controller, and then a normal Game Cube controller can be plugged in to the GC as the second controller. Hence, two people can play together on a GBA game on the GC.

[jaybird]

Me & a friend have played Advance Wars 2 multi-player using 2 GameCube controllers. That's the only multi-player game I've tried on the GB Player.

[Mayhem]

The GB player can linked like a normal GBA with other machines...

[maxlords]

Neo Geo is still 2D.

[RetroYoungen]

Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but I don't think the GBA is going to be the last place for side-scrolling action. I think that as long as handhelds are still coming out, there will be some sort of 2D love for them. I mean hey, Nintendo is still re-releasing it's classic Mario titles, and they'll probably be re-re-released in the next 20 years or so, simply because they're great games.

Great games and great gameplay never die, and hopefully neither will simply go away. Even if they're re-released on handhelds 20 years from now, I'll be buying 'em. :puppydogeyes: Maybe I'm just a sucker.

[Captain Wrong]

Neo Geo is still 2D.

Yeah, and 20 years from now, I'll still be finishing up my Neo collection, so I ain't sweating it. That and when I get rich I can really start collecting shmup PCBs. I guess I feel like there isn't much in true 2d that hasn't already been done to perfection, so I'll just stick to collecting that stuff and leave the rest of the world to their 3d.

[Stamp Mcfury]

Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but I don't think the GBA is going to be the last place for side-scrolling action. I think that as long as handhelds are still coming out, there will be some sort of 2D love for them. I mean hey, Nintendo is still re-releasing it's classic Mario titles, and they'll probably be re-re-released in the next 20 years or so, simply because they're great games.

there are rumours before that there might be a new game boy in the future with N64 quality graphics. If that is the way they go 3D games might be the next wave of handheld games. Of course they've had all kinds silly rumors like that, It wouldn't suprise me very much if in a few years from now they have games like Mario 64 advanced.

[Kid Fenris]

That and when I get rich I can really start collecting shmup PCBs. I guess I feel like there isn't much in true 2d that hasn't already been done to perfection . . .

Not to thread-jack, but I was actually thinking about the same subject recently. Can you name a game that truly perfected the overhead Commando-style run-and-gun formula? Shock Troopers 2nd Squad and the Pocky and Rocky titles came close, but I wouldn't say they're to the genre what Gunstar Heroes and Radiant Silvergun are to action/shooters and vertical shmups, respectively.

[Ed Oscuro]

I guess I feel like there isn't much in true 2d that hasn't already been done to perfection

I think there's a LOT of room for improvement in 2D, actually. Too bad nobody's really working it right now as well as people are working on 3D graphics. Someday people are gonna rediscover the joys of the sidescrolling perspective...and what a good day that will be. Can't say I really dislike playing 3rd person perspective 3D games though.

[Jorpho]

Can you name a game that truly perfected the overhead Commando-style run-and-gun formula? Shock Troopers 2nd Squad and the Pocky and Rocky titles came close, but I wouldn't say they're to the genre what Gunstar Heroes and Radiant Silvergun are to action/shooters and vertical shmups, respectively.

How about the Bitmap Bros' Chaos Engine? (I believe it was released as Soldiers of Fortune on the SNES.)

Yoshi's Island was such a great 2D platform game. Why can't there be more like that? (Aside from the fact that Miyamoto can't be cloned with today's technology.)

[Jason One]

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[Bratwurst]

I don't see the merits of the complaint, myself. From 1980 to the year 2000 there has been a GLUT of 2D games, in fact at one point that was the only thing being made. I'm positive that I'll never be able to play all of them in my lifetime even if I tried and had access to every one.

Sure, the genre could have room for improvement but there will never be a 'perfect' entry in the history of EVER, just by the simple nature of human creators, personal preferences, etc.

[Ed Oscuro]

I also don't understand what the deal with true 2D graphics vs. side-view 3D graphics is. Side-view 3D graphics allow essentially limitless frames of animation and give the designer much more flexibility...if somebody doesn't like an animation you just have to create a new animation, instead of having to scrap all your sprite work. So even if the GBA is the last truly 2D system to make a major impact, that doesn't mean all the old 3rd person or sideview type games have to die out as well.

Oh look! I am fudgy Castlevania/DMC 3rd person view style of doom! Hoorays! Or this! It's the fantastic First Person Through the Eyes Perspective!

The ONLY problem is that 3D engine work discourages designers from trying more traditional types of perspective in their games. To be fair, though, working on a sidescrolling perspective game hasn't been facilitated with the mess in the switchover from 2D to 3D accelerated hardware in recent years; only with the advent of Direct X 9 and yet higher numbers of polygons/fancier effects have developers been presented with options that could do a 2D game convincingly. Up to this point, it's been either blocky (with a few exceptions,) ugly, gimmicky (nearly every example of cel-shading there ever was up to Zelda: Wind Waker, and arguably there as well) or a combination of all of these.

[Captain Wrong]

I know what you're saying Ed. Heck, if I could think of something to be done better, I'd be a game designer myself. But keeping mind I'm someone who plays 2d games nearly exclusevly and I really can't think any instances of "man, I'd really like to see ___". I'd love to be proved wrong though.

Maybe Fenris has a point about the Commando type games, but I do just fine with Shock Troopers for my fix there.

I don't mean to say everyone should stop with 2d altogether. I guess I've just changed my attitude a bit. I used to be a gloom and doomer about the current state of 2d, but then I took a good look at the older games I play and realized there wasn't a whole lot I felt I was missing.

Of course, I'm also the kind of guy who plays my games with the goal of one crediting them, so I'll probably still be working on these games for the rest of my life. :D

[Ed Oscuro]

I myself liked Castlevania 64 a great deal; me and Jorge (other moderator over at the CV Dungeon Forums) are among the few people who actually didn't mind the camera in that one. For all that's said about the "godawful 3rd person camera" approach, there's always Heretic II, the N64 Zelda titles and a number of other titles (including racers like F-Zero GX) that use it pretty darn well.

What I feel needs work would be the sort of control along one plane possible with modern controllers, and old games really didn't allow this sort of control (especially a game like Castlevania or Mario where all you have in terms of control is pretty much the ability to change how far you jump, and even that took a long time to evolve). Contra and Metroid were on the right path, but it's obvious from titles like Metroid Fusion that the vast majority of game designers have set ideas about how to control a 2D game, and that's unfortunate. Two joysticks and up to four shoulder buttons allows a whole range of control options that so far have been usually utilized to allow 3D navigation only.

[Jorpho]

Heretic II was a third-person game?

How about Virtual Boy Wario Land? It managed to introduce 3D ideas into a 2D game.

[Ed Oscuro]

So did Red Alert (that was the name of it, right?) Anyhow, Heretic 2 was third person all the way. Really tight camera, worked really good.

[zmweasel]

N/A