detail vs. gameplay

Talking about a possible version of Donkey Kong for the Lynx made me think (again) about a topic that has bothered me a while.

I'm talking about the right way to cope with the Lynx very low resolution, and the unusual aspect ratio.

Let's face it, pretty much all classic games were developed with a 4:3 aspect ratio in mind, and higher resolution. Or in the arcades for vertical screens. So Lynx ports of such games have a problem to deal with to begin with.

The example of Donkey Kong for one is, that it is originally a non scrolling game, and the player is meant to see the barrels the moment the ape throws them. He can thus plan his strategy.

We have the DK sourcecode available now as it was used for the Atari 8-bit computers; running in 320-200ish resolution (or 160 stretched)

This is how the game roughly looked on the Atari 800:



Now if we went with the original graphics plus scrolling, this is what it would look like on Lynx, bar life, score etc which would take a few more pixels away.



Is this desirable? Would people want to play such a version? I don't know. I already have the player sprite more at the bottom so the player can look higher u, but still I feel the overview is too lacking.

The alternative would be redrawn graphics to fit on a single Lynx screen. Less detail, but more accurate gameplay.

I have made this mock up for the Lynx in vertical position, and I have already posted it numerous times; it is but a try to fit the game on one screen.



I have not yet tried to squeeze it on one horizontal screen, but it would definitely look even more squashed.


Now this is not only about Donkey Kong (that's just the specific game that brought the problem back to my mind), it's an issue for many possible games; and even the dev back in the day dealt with it differently.

See Double Dragon:
the sprites here have original arcade size, being almost screen filling. in the arcade game and most home ports, the sprites appeared rather small with a wide look at the surrounding.

to the left the Lynx, to the right the Master System:


Ironically, despite the overall higher res of the SMS, the devs made the sprites smaller than Telegames made the Lynx sprites. The result is that while the game looks almost arcade perfect on pics the Lynx screen is very crowded and you don't see what's coming; the SMS version, while not as pretty retains the true DD gameplay.

Which way would you go?

With Ninja Gaiden III the approach was the exact opposite. Left on the Lynx, right on NES.



Here the developers basically squeezed the entire NES screen on the small Lynx screen; it's almost as if they used an automatic resize option of some graphic program. The result is full overview over the game, but admittedly the sprites have lost all detail and it's hard to tell what they are supposed to be.


And I feel that other developers had to trade off gameplay for looks or vice versa also; Electrocop comes to my mind, where I really wish I could see more of my surroundings to have more time to react. Or Zarlor Mercenary, which being a vertical shooter on a horizontal screen leaves you very little time to react imo.

The old fake Mortal-Kombat-II-demo...



GadgetUK considers doing a demo of MK for the Lynx, and again I've been thinking if this is a good size for the sprites. Characters can jump quite high in MK, how would that work here with such a zoomed in view? it would also be impossible to get a good distance between you and the enemy. Yet downsizing the sprites would take away from the MK look.


I am really wondering what you all think in general about that problem. What would you do? After all homebrewers work for the community to enjoy the games, but I'm just not sure how things like these are best handled.