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.
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
6-03-2008 @ 12:15AM
Brent said...
With an lame-compressed MP3 file for speech, I'm playing Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis on ScummVM DS, and the total file size is 90 MB. So, you know what LucasArts? Keep your ports, I'll keep my ScummVM DS.
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6-03-2008 @ 4:44AM
Edo said...
http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com/
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6-03-2008 @ 8:37AM
Hyre said...
My take on this is that while there is plenty of room for, say, one full-fledged port per cart, Lucasarts would want to do a collection of ports with bonus features or perhaps the entire set on one cart so that we wouldn't just be buying the same old game. Then again, Lucasarts could have their heads on backwards and be reciting Star Wars dialogue in reversed Latin for all I know. Probably neither, but it's fun to think about.
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6-03-2008 @ 9:16AM
rikki said...
What's really being said in that article sounds a little more like this to me—
"According to the guy who pays me, trying to port the old adventure games somewhere (especially to the DS) is not worth the development cost to our company. We're trying for a compilation of some form, but Lego Insert-Franchise-Here and Star Wars games are so profitable that we can't pull any developers from those projects. Nor can we expect any adventure games in the near future, because they won't make the company enough money in comparison."
"We may cash in on nostalgia and the old guard at some later date, though."
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6-05-2008 @ 1:33PM
John H. said...
Let's put this one to rest.
There is really no reason an experienced DS developer couldn't make the likes of Sam & Max work on the DS. Cart sizes can be surprisingly large, and access speed, while not ROM-quick, is still much greater than from floppy or CD, AND the system doesn't have to constantly keep an operating system in memory, AND the DS's lower screen resolution means graphics can be downsampled, further saving memory. Even Grim Fandango would probably work on the DS; in fact, it might work better than the later 2D adventures, seeing how low-poly its models were. Mario 64 was an early DS port, after all.
But Lucasarts wouldn't want to use an experienced developer for this. They'd cut corners ruthlessly. It's not like the adventure guys still work for them, after all.
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6-06-2008 @ 10:07AM
Danny said...
I hope someone can get The Dig to work via Scummvm. The DS doesn't have enough RAM apparently.
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6-07-2008 @ 5:36AM
Matdredalia said...
Too bad they're full of crap. Someone made a SCUM emulator for the DS, and I've already played Maniac Mansion II on my DS, and it fit just fine on my 2 gigabyte R4 cartridge, even with all the freakin' other stuff I have on there.
It'd fit, they just don't want to.
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