"Breakout"-like games

This is an archive of a topic from NESdev BBS, taken in mid-October 2019 before a server upgrade.
View original topic
"Breakout"-like games
by on (#124014)
Apart from the "Arkanoid" games and "Crackout", are there any "Breakout"-like games for the NES? Games that were released only in Japan for the Famicom are fine too.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#124019)
There's also Family Block / Thunder & Lightning.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#124046)
Right. I didn't remember it anymore.

Are there any others? I'd like to have a complete list in the end so that I can compare them.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#124064)
This odd game has breakout style gameplay: Adventure Island - Bug tte Honey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lgUr2ucqio

Very hard game.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#124068)
Wow, Movax12, that game (高橋名人のBugってハニー ) is weeeird. (Maybe I shouldn't be surprised; it was named after Hudson Soft's at-the-time CEO!) Well beyond Pinball Quest, which was my previous "bizarre mashup up two game genres" leader
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#124182)
Thanks. Are there any more? I'd like to have a complete list.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125265)
"Nazo no Kabe - Block Kuzushi" for Famicom Disk System.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125266)
That's the game "Crackout".
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125274)
Oh I didn't know about Crackout.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125275)
Yeah, it only came out in Europe, never in the United States.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125282)
I'm from Europe but never heard about it. Maybe it wasn't released here in Scandinavia. I have the FDS version though. lol
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125283)
I also only got to know it from the internet. (I'm from Germany, but I play NES on an American console with an American CRT TV.)

The funny thing is: Even though they released it specifically for the European NES, they didn't even bother to adjust the speed. If you run both versions, FDS and PAL, next to each other in two emulator windows, they will only be in synch if both emulator instances are set to NTSC or both to PAL. If you set the FDS version to NTSC and the PAL version to PAL, the speed will be different. Which means the two versions will play at different speeds on their repective consoles. Which means playing the European game on an American NES (if the NES accepts it at all) will give you the original FDS speed.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125284)
Quote:
Even though they released it specifically for the European NES, they didn't even bother to adjust the speed.[...]

The same could be said of 99.99% of PAL released NES games. At best they just adjusted music's speed (or/and pitch). They didn't adjust the overscan glitch either, so it's very common to see shit in the top and bottom 8 pixels, which was not noticeable on NTSC, but became extremely noticeable on PAL.

Also I'm pretty sure it's the same for more modern consoles, but I'm not 100% sure.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125288)
One of the reasons why I bought an American NES. Even the adjusted games are often shitty. (I can't stand the European "Super Mario Bros.")
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125294)
Not a Breakout-like (and I sense a split coming if this side discussion takes over), but does Thwaite adjust well?
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125297)
Bregalad wrote:
Also I'm pretty sure it's the same for more modern consoles, but I'm not 100% sure.

I'm pretty sure that in more modern consoles (although it depends on how modern we're talking about) the game events aren't directly tied to the display's refresh rate. I believe that game engines run based on a more consistent timer and the video system renders as many pictures of the game world per second as necessary for the display.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125298)
There is a semi-recent game (circa 2003 to present) that is tied to refresh rate (well not monitor refresh, but a specific redraw interval), where the game mechanics are tied directly to that interval: Final Fantasy XI. The PC version is capped at 30fps, which is the same cap on the version for the PS2, and that's intentional. People have found registry hacks to do things like increase texture resolution, draw distance, etc. but nothing for the framerate cap. Someone supposedly did hack some exe/dll that removed it and their character ran around at 2x the speed, resulting Square/Enix banning said person. My guess is that this is due to the game being coded questionably for the PS2, then ported to the PC with the same "design requirement" being applied to ensure everything is consistent.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125300)
Now that you mentioned it, I do remember reading about other recent (post PS2) games being locked to low framerates. I honestly don't know what the deal is with present-day game development, but you'd imagine that by now they'd be handling gameplay speed and framerates the "correct" way, since the hardware is so powerful.
Frame rate-dependent physics
by on (#125303)
By "correct" do you mean no time quantum at all, that time is a floating-point value? If so, that has caused issues where behavior differs from one machine to another. For example, in Quake 3, players could make jumps when the engine was running at a specific frame rate that they couldn't make at other frame rates. (The form on that page requires a genuine Windows operating system because it is written in VBScript; the article below the form is useful elsewhere.) This was caused by the engine approximating the jump trajectory as a polyline with one side per frame, where the number of sides differed from one machine to another, and trapezoidal/Euler integration produces different results with different step sizes. Quantizing game logic time at least assures consistent behavior between machines.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125315)
Just to get back to topic, maybe Daimajin Attack counts? (http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=8234 Game 7)
It's not really an officially released game but you can't deny that it's a Breakout clone for Famicom. :)
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125318)
I think that so long as the graphics hardware supports reporting Vsync, it's not a bad way to time a simple game, like a 2D platformer or some such. The ease of making a game with no tearing that runs smoothly and allows characters to move at n-pixels/frame is a great advantage.

Then again, there are terrible drivers like nouveau that don't properly implement Vsync, and games relying on it will run far too fast and must fall back to timer-based game timing.
Re: "Breakout"-like games
by on (#125323)
There's nothing at all questionable about a fixed time step for physics simulation, koitsu. It is a completely valid technique, for modern games or otherwise. There are lots of situations in gameplay design where this becomes a requirement, for various reasons, most of which I think tepples has covered so I won't reiterate.

Physics simulation with a variable time step is also quite valid and in common use. It has its own set of advantages and disadvantages.

Neither is the default or more correct way to do it; it is a significant choice that affects gameplay, so you need to use the appropriate technique.