Star Wars DS

[Great Rumbler]

Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith represents the closing chapter of the epic Star Wars saga. Closely following the storyline of the upcoming movie, players will have to choose their paths between light and dark, playing either as the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi or Anakin Skywalker.

The DS version of Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith features 3D action multiplayer gameplay and touch screen control. Other key features include: 3D space flights, wireless multiplayer up to four players, and three singleplayer modes.

It combines 2D side-scrolling goodness with some interesting looking 3D space battles.

Here's a trailer!

[OB1]

Haha, I saw screens of this a couple of weeks ago. The 2D part is literally an exact port of the GBA game, with some stupid touch screen things on the bottom screen. And the 3D parts look like a 32X game.

Good seeing more quality third-party DS games, eh?

[OB1]

Why don't they just port over Rogue Squadron? Or better yet, the X-Wing/TIE fighter games? They could do some cool things with the touch screen.

[A Black Falcon]

X-Wing/TIE Fighter would never work on a console... those really need a joystick. And I don't mean a thumbstick. :)

But Rogue Squadron would be great, and would probably work very well on a console... yeah, they should have ported that instead of a mediocre GBA game.

[Great Rumbler]

Good seeing more quality third-party DS games, eh?

I thought it looked like fun.

[Weltall]

...

[Great Rumbler]

:shake:

[OB1]

X-Wing/TIE Fighter would never work on a console... those really need a joystick. And I don't mean a thumbstick. :)

But Rogue Squadron would be great, and would probably work very well on a console... yeah, they should have ported that instead of a mediocre GBA game.

The touch screen could do it, sissy!

[Dark Jaguar]

The darkness controls all who use it, but what if one was to TRULY enslave the darkness to their will? To see the darkness exactly for what it is, and then truly bind it to their will and not submit to any of it's temptations? To enslave the darkness to the power of the light, now THAT would be a cool Jedi.

[OB1]

what?

[Great Rumbler]

[Dark Jaguar]

No, I didn't think you would understand...

[A Black Falcon]

The touch screen could do it, sissy!

No, it really couldn't. Mouse is an abysmally bad way to control TIE Fighter -- I should know, I tried once -- and touchscreen would be just as awful. Either you've got to simplify the controls to Freelancer levels (oh wait, you WILL have to do that... otherwise how do you fit a game that uses dozens of keys (maybe ten to fifteen of which you should know to play) and a joystick onto a controller with eight buttons?) or you have a mouse control scheme where you move the mouse across the desk, pick it up, move it back, move it across again, etc, and slowly turn... like TIE Fighter is when played with a mouse (it just maps the turning to the mouse axis)... and you'd lose a major aspect of the game in the controller! The feel of having a joystick, the resistance, that is all very important to a game like TIE Fighter... I've thought about console TIE Fighter before, but even there, without a real joystick, you can't do TIE Fighter (or X-Wing, or Freespace, or whatever) on a console. Not without compromising the controls and the complexity of the simulation. Because there aren't joysticks for consoles... now, if someone wanted to release a flight sim for consoles that came with a joystick/throttle combo (or joystick/keypad), go ahead, but short of that...

[Great Rumbler]

They could probably map a lot some of the buttons to the touch screen, like adjusting your shield and so on.

[OB1]

Oh the controls would be just fine. A touch screen is not a mouse!

[A Black Falcon]

I thought of that, yes. And you could, and it'd work pretty well, actually...

There's just one problem: Where do the turning controls go, then? :)

D-Pad flight sims are just not the same.

[OB1]

Your imagination is so limited!

[A Black Falcon]

So explain how it would work.

[OB1]

I could come up with something if I wanted to put time and effort into it, which I do not (posting here is already a waste of time). There's always a solution, especially with hardware with as much potential as the DS.

[A Black Falcon]

I'm just saying, you'd end up with the touchscreen for some commands and the controls on the d-pad, or the controls on the touchscreen ("touchscreen analog") and maybe a couple of buttons on the touchscreen but most of the controls in simplified form on some of the buttons. You can't have both a screenful of buttons and an analog control on the same small touchscreen at the same time.

Now, they did port Wing Commander Prophecy to the GBA... but Wing Commander has always been simple, and there have been past console versions of that series, compared to X-Wing/TIE Fighter, which is PC-only. A Wing Commander, Rogue Squadron, or Terminal Velocity would make a lot more sense than X-Wing... X-Wing is like I-War or Freespace II, not Rogue Squadron.

...

Actually, Terminal Velocity DS would be awesome! They should make that!

[OB1]

You couldn't even imagine how Grim Fandango would work on the DS! Then DJ and I explained how it would work just fine.

[A Black Falcon]

Again, TIE Fighter is about the joystick. It might be playable, but there's no way in the world it'd be as much fun. Sorry. It's quite impossible.

[OB1]

It wouldn't be as much fun, but it'd still be plenty fun. F-Zero GX isn't as fun as the arcade version, so why play it, right?

[A Black Falcon]

The difference is, TIE Fighter will run on any computer made in the last eight to ten years that has a $10 joystick. F-Zero the arcade machine costs thousands of dollars. :)

Sure, in 1996 or so I thought of the idea of TIE Fighter for N64... I tried to figure out how I could map all the controls to the N64's buttons. It's on a piece of paper in one of my "games I drew on paper" folders, I think. :) I think I did a half-decent job... it wouldn't quite be TIE Fighter, but of course it wouldn't be moving to a console and its pitiful selection of buttons... oh, it'd still be fun. But I just don't think it'd have the same greatness to it... it seems to me that it'd be kind of like playing Donkey Konga with a normal GC controller: fun, but not as fun.

[OB1]

That's beside the point.

[A Black Falcon]

I added more.

[OB1]

The DS can do more than the N64. It can't do everything that the N64 can do, but it can do more.

[A Black Falcon]

Graphics-wise, sure, but that's not an issue for this game... ;)

[OB1]

I'm not talking about graphics.

[A Black Falcon]

What, then? Controls? Close... but not exactly. The N64 has an analog stick and a trigger, after all. Neither of those are present in the DS (and both would help a TIE-Fighter-for-consoles, though nothing could make it as good as the PC game -- a fact I'm sure I realized even back in 1996...)...

[OB1]

The touch screen can do things not possible with an N64 controller.

[A Black Falcon]

That's true, and it could potentially do cool stuff like interactive cockpits... but it can't replace the tactile feel (or control) of a joystick (of course, that's not something the N64 really had either, and that's always been my biggest problem with N64 TIE Fighter... the inadaquacy of ministicks for such a game. Well, that and the lack of buttons...)...

[lazyfatbum]

That game looks like shit.

Shit I tell you.

[OB1]

GBA game:


DS game:



AWESOME!

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah... joy...

[Great Rumbler]

GBA:



DS:



:)

[OB1]

Yeah but the 2D stuff is the exact same as the GBA stuff. And the 3D stuff looks absolutely terrible.