Balloon Fight: transfer from VS system to NES

Foreword

So, for starters, I would like to note that although I write in the sandbox, this is not my first text on Habré. Once I wrote how to for the blog of foreign retro gamers, and since they are foreign, the articles had to be translated into English. And I was a little surprised to find here an article about debugging games for NES , translated back into Russian .





In general, I am very interested in the history of arcade machines, consoles, games, and a little bit of programming. About how they program for the NES these days, I wrote in another "making of" article, which was also published on Habré.





Today I would like to try to post the material myself, and we will talk about all of the above at once, and about arcade machines, and about the NES and about retro games and their debugging.





Slot machines

The history of arcade machines goes back almost 60 years, their evolution was bright, albeit short-lived. From mechanical, electromechanical and discrete logic, to serious devices on serious microprocessors. Many arcade games, in addition to being officially ported to other platforms, have become a source of inspiration for other game creators, both home computer enthusiasts and professionals.





Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom (Sega Z80-3D System) and its remake (BC 0010-01)
Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom (Sega Z80-3D System) and its remake (BC 0010-01)

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R-Type (Irem M72) and its port for ZX Spectrum
R-Type (Irem M72) ZX Spectrum

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Dendy

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Contra (NES)
Contra (NES)

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Balloon Fight

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Balloon fight, licensed NES version
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Game two-screen field Balloon fight for VS system
Balloon fight VS system

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Ballon fight title screen for NES
Ballon fight NES
  Balloon fight title screen for VS system
Balloon fight VS system

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In the NES version, the backdrop of all bonus levels is the same
NES
The arcade version of the game placed different pipes for each bonus game

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Lobby screen NES port
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The music / sound engine of the game is quite simple, and stores melodies in the form of arrays of notes and additional parameters for them.





In conclusion, I will once again briefly give a list of changes in the game after the port from the arcade machine to the NES.





  1. Access to DIP switches in the ported version has been moved to a different location.





  2. The game has become exclusively single-player.





  3. Added the ability to "autorepeat" one of the joystick buttons to make it easier to play on the console.





  4. Added an additional sound for the popping of bonus soap bubbles.





You can find this and much more in the source and compiled ROM file in my github repositories.








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