The Official aMaru Thread: Amazing Mega Drive Hacks!

[Barone]

And here are some more pictures about the advances with part 2 of stage 1 of my Ghouls'n Ghosts ARCADE hack.

This is still work in progress, so some things could change (and some need fixing).

As usual, [LEFT] Original MD game; [CENTER] GnG ARCADE MD; [RIGHT] Original arcade game:

[goldenband]

I don't always have the best eye for spotting the differences in these kinds of hacks, but of course even I can see at a glance how much more faithful and vibrant the revised work is. Looking good!

[Melf]

Holy crap! That looks great! I love this game and can't wait to see the finished work.

[M0L0TOV]

Looks amazing! I never noticed how much detail was missing from the home version.

[OverDrone]

Yeah, this is super impressive work.

[Tor Landeel]

Wow! Beautiful. Can't wait to see more, stage 2 is even worse in terms of cut grafix.

[Allard]

It's amazing how the hacked version looks better than both arcade or the original MD port. Great job!

[MegaDriver]

IMHO, it looks even better than the arcade version!

If aMaru can pull it off till the end then this one is going to be truly epic.

The Genesis 'killer app' getting a 'killer upgrade'. Simply Outstanding.

[aMaru]

Thanks everybody. Just reposting the pics for stage1-part1 (Link) in this new thread (Thanks Barone for helping me create a new one).
I'm still playing aroung with the clouds, so this will likely change.

More pictures coming soon



LEFT: original MD game -- CENTER: modified MD game -- RIGHT: original arcade game

[Bloodreign]

Looks much, much better than the original Genesis version, this is what it would've looked like on an 8 Meg cart? All I can say is, HOT DAMN! I do hope the sound effects, like hitting the gravestones with your weapon are improved, they are just a little too harsh on the Genesis, they have a softer sound on the arcade/Saturn/PS1/PS2 versions.

[axel]

This is what it could have looked like on a 32meg cart. Very impressive!
Not to nitpick - but some of the assets are using the same aspect ratio as the CPS1, so when viewed side by side they will look wider on the Genesis.
I don't know if that's the artist's choice or if it has to be done to line up with the level structure.

[Cyttorak]

Just amazing sir! What ROM size are you using up until now?

Thanks for your job!

[aMaru]

This is what it could have looked like on a 32meg cart. Very impressive!
Not to nitpick - but some of the assets are using the same aspect ratio as the CPS1, so when viewed side by side they will look wider on the Genesis.
I don't know if that's the artist's choice or if it has to be done to line up with the level structure.

The assets preserve the correct aspect ratio. Which ones were you referring to?
Consider that in many cases the assets are heavily modified: to reduce the number of tiles I'm hand drawing a lot of tiles (on average I'm using one third of the original arcade game tiles).
I believe the assets you are referring to might just be different from the original, and thus might appear "fatter" because of how I have redrawn them.

[aMaru]

Some more updates and comparison pictures.

The bridge and the swamp. Although I can use a very limited number of tiles for the swamp I believe I can still improve it, which I'm currently trying to do.
Anyhow this is where I'm at at the moment.

ORIGINAL MD GAME

MODIFIED MD GAME

ARCADE GAME


And here is the background for the boss battle.
The original MD game really simplified the graphics, both for the lush tree canopies in the foreground and for the suggestive lightning animation in the far background.
I have now restored both, which took a lot of work because nearly the whole content of the VRAM needs to be updated in very limited time.
I'm pretty satisfied with the result, however. What do you think?

Here's the forest with a dark background

ORIGINAL MD GAME

MODIFIED MD GAME

ARCADE GAME


and here the animation of the lightning

ORIGINAL MD GAME

MODIFIED MD GAME

ARCADE GAME

[turboxray]

The assets preserve the correct aspect ratio. Which ones were you referring to?
Consider that in many cases the assets are heavily modified: to reduce the number of tiles I'm hand drawing a lot of tiles (on average I'm using one third of the original arcade game tiles).
I believe the assets you are referring to might just be different from the original, and thus might appear "fatter" because of how I have redrawn them.

I think he means that the CPS-1 aspect ratio (the PAR) is 0.76 where as the Genesis PAR is 0.914 but in the pics some/most of the assets aren't scaled to compensate this, so they're going to appear wider than how arcade system shows them.