With the DS being the most loved gaming system in the galaxy, one might think that it's the perfect platform for a graphic adventure title. From a business standpoint, it's a no-brainer, but the stylus and touch-screen also provide the perfect control scheme for titles in this genre. Not only do we, but the fine folks at Eurogamer also, think that bringing old adventure titles to the DS would be a very good thing. Lucasarts shot down our hopes, however."The cart size of the DS makes it impossible to put out ports of any of our old graphic adventures," claims assistant producer Jeffrey Gullett. "There's literally not enough room on those carts to put the games out." Kind of an odd answer, when you think about the size of older adventure titles such as The Secret of Monkey Island.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
6-02-2008 @ 12:40PM
pas said...
Well, I heard the DS could technically support up to 4 Gigabyte of Data...
If Nintendo wished to they could always bring out a decent card size.
DS Cards are using similar technologie than SD Cards, so it should be possible technically, and moneywise.
Reply
6-06-2008 @ 9:03AM
Danny said...
That's 4 Gigabits, not gigabytes. So that maximum size is 512mb. Should still be plenty though for games that used to ship on a handful of floppies.
6-02-2008 @ 12:40PM
pas said...
BTW: I don't believe them, cause Runaway - Dream of a Turtel, a FULL FLEGED PC GAME was ported to DS without loss of content...
Reply
6-02-2008 @ 12:48PM
elend said...
Yeah, can't believe that either. I just think they don't want to do adventures anymore. They are sick of them maybe.
Reply
6-02-2008 @ 12:56PM
Puddles said...
The original versions of Monkey Island 1 and 2 are 4.6 MB and 10.2 MB respectively. I know that some DS carts are 128 MB.
Reply
6-02-2008 @ 1:01PM
pas said...
there are even some that are 256 Megabyte, I really think that there might be more possible, 512 Megabyte the least *hopes*
6-02-2008 @ 12:57PM
jsutcliffe said...
Don't forget that many of the old adventures (stopping just before Full Throttle, I think) can be played on ScummVM DS. The limitation cited by the guy making ScummVM DS isn't cart size, but RAM.
Reply
6-02-2008 @ 10:36PM
Eleniel said...
You're exactly right. I'm calling bullcrap on this one.
6-02-2008 @ 1:05PM
Safiel said...
Sounds like they are either trying to do something really crazy graphics wise in their ports, or they are being lazy. I think I know where I'd place my bets.
It reminds me of nippon ichi saying that they could hardly get disgaea 3 to run right with the power of the ps3 (ie, not drop frames), just because you don't have the knowledge/time/money to do something doesn't mean it can't be done.
Reply
6-02-2008 @ 1:08PM
Sean said...
The specs escape me at the moment but even Full Throttle didn't require THAT high end of a system to play. I'm sure the DS can match the specs.
I find it hard to believe RAM is the issue 'cos I'd bet the DS has more RAM then your average mid-to-late 90s PC did. I imagine most of the size of theses games comes from the music and voice overs.
Reply
6-02-2008 @ 4:39PM
iofthestorm said...
The DS has 4MB of RAM, and I don't think any computers in the mid-to-late nineties would have anywhere near that little RAM. My dad's old 486 has 8MB of RAM.
6-02-2008 @ 5:28PM
Sean said...
Sweet jesus - 4mbs of RAM? That's pretty sad.
I still have some of our old 4mb sticks floating around. I remember my dad helping me to get Sam and Max run in DOS with music. What fun.
But yeah, a quick glimpse reveals that Sam & Max Hit the Road only needs 4mb of RAM. Full Throttle is 8mb. And Grim Fandango is a whopping 32mb.
Seriously, though, Nintendo needs to not be so damn cheap. Up the RAM!
6-03-2008 @ 1:31PM
Mertruve said...
There's a RAM expansion for Slot-2.
6-02-2008 @ 1:43PM
SleepingDragon said...
Well, they could always issue a game on 2 CARTS! I mean, movies and other video come in 2 CD Sets, why not put a particularly large game split on 2 carts? Hasn't been done b4, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be.
Reply
6-02-2008 @ 2:04PM
jsutcliffe said...
Well, the DS has no internal space for saving games, so retaining game progress when switching carts might not work. That said, the ds rom wifi download tool* allows you to change carts (from your flash cart to the cart you want to back up).
However, I can just imagine what Squenix would charge if they started putting out two-cart games. Ouch. ;)
* all above board - lets you copy your legally-purchased games onto a flash cart so you can have them all in one spot
6-02-2008 @ 2:35PM
chispito said...
You can switch cards while the power is on and a program is running. This is actually required to make your own ROM dumps with a flash card.
A game could theoretically reach a certain point, load save info into memory, and then have the carts switched and pick up the game at a further point, I believe. Add in even a modest sized flash expansion in slot 2 and it would be incredibly easy.
But manufacturing two smaller carts would almost by necessity cost more than manufacturing one larger cart.
6-02-2008 @ 3:18PM
Ben Combee said...
The DS has 4MB of RAM, so that's comparable to early Windows systems and all of the DOS systems. The main 66MHz ARM chip is roughly equivalent to a 33MHz 486 without the math coprocessor, although a lot depends on how the cache is used. The largest cartridge is about 256MB (or 2048 megabits), so games that were significantly smaller than a CD can be ported. With compressed music, you could do Loom or either of the first two Monkey Island games pretty well, IMO.
Reply
6-02-2008 @ 5:01PM
J.K. said...
Factually that's a bold faced lie on Lucasarts part saying the DS cards are too small. All their old text 'SCUMM' engine adventure games took no more than around 5 floppy disks (1.44MByte a piece) and if you got into the talkies those were around 150-200MB a pop. 1Gbit card = 128MB and mind you this is the old DOS day stuff with poor compression, they used MONSTER.SOU(their own madeup file) files that just jammed all the body of the game into a master file. There's NO reason it can't be compressed in original form at all. Furthermore, google up the SCUMMVM website, you'll see that 'talkie' versions of things like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis DO work and very well on the NDS right now using Lucasarts own old files with their frontend.
It's crap I tell you, got a better story Lucas?
Reply
6-02-2008 @ 5:21PM
Husky said...
There's no room? One word: ScummvmDS.
Reply
6-02-2008 @ 9:02PM
ViRGE said...
For everyone commenting on the amount of RAM the DS has, keep in mind that it's designed not to need vast amounts of the stuff. Large quantities of RAM are necessary on a PC/disk-based-console because the time to access content on any kind of disk is in the milliseconds, upwards of 100ms (1/10th of a second) if it's a CD/DVD. As such, you need to copy your entire working set (all audio, art assets, etc) to the RAM so that you can access it in a timely manner.
With a cartridge based system, you can access assets at speeds close to that of RAM. Reading off of a ROM is very, very fast (on the order of nanoseconds). Because of that, you don't need to load assets in RAM any longer, meaning you need much less RAM; everything you need you can just pull from the cartridge when you need it. The only use for RAM at this point is storing dynamic data such as the gamestate, the framebuffer, and any variables you need. 4MB still isn't a lot in this respect, but it's enough for a system of the DS's capabilities.
Reply