Phalanx is a great game and that GBA conversion was done well, the antithesis of that rank ruined R-Type 3 release. I totally forgot that was a 2001 title.
You can probably place a lot of the blame on the publisher for R-Type III. In the case of Earthworm Jim and Earthworm Jim 2, Majesco were super assholes about getting the games made, and hired development teams that consisted of two or three people to convert the games. The few people who worked on those versions are prevelent in youtube comment sections, and make sure people know it wasn't their fault as they were given a ridiculous deadline and barely any help.
DSI is even worse than both Majesco and THQ, as I can't think of a single good game they've published, where I can think of many good games THQ and Majesco put out. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out DSI gave the dev team next to no money to convert R-Type III.
I can give you only one case of a DSI game I know of that is not only playable but is actually fun and pretty well made. Wing Commander Prophecy. That one is the PC game converted pretty accurately to the handheld and is a full 3D game uses that old Blue Roses engine some Italian company made back in the day. The only large loss of the game is that you get dry pop box cut scenes in place of all the countless hours of poorly acted FMV from the game along with part of the verbal comments you get when in the cockpit.
BAM was another notorious time crunching outfit that cheaped out hard on releases. You have this nearly perfect conversion of Wolfenstein 3D, but they ran out of room on the chip to include any of the game music, so instead of going up in size they removed it so the game is a mute outside of the sound effects and vocal samples which is just a crime.
Comments
Phalanx is a great game and that GBA conversion was done well, the antithesis of that rank ruined R-Type 3 release. I totally forgot that was a 2001 title.
You can probably place a lot of the blame on the publisher for R-Type III. In the case of Earthworm Jim and Earthworm Jim 2, Majesco were super assholes about getting the games made, and hired development teams that consisted of two or three people to convert the games. The few people who worked on those versions are prevelent in youtube comment sections, and make sure people know it wasn't their fault as they were given a ridiculous deadline and barely any help.
DSI is even worse than both Majesco and THQ, as I can't think of a single good game they've published, where I can think of many good games THQ and Majesco put out. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out DSI gave the dev team next to no money to convert R-Type III.
I can give you only one case of a DSI game I know of that is not only playable but is actually fun and pretty well made. Wing Commander Prophecy. That one is the PC game converted pretty accurately to the handheld and is a full 3D game uses that old Blue Roses engine some Italian company made back in the day. The only large loss of the game is that you get dry pop box cut scenes in place of all the countless hours of poorly acted FMV from the game along with part of the verbal comments you get when in the cockpit.
BAM was another notorious time crunching outfit that cheaped out hard on releases. You have this nearly perfect conversion of Wolfenstein 3D, but they ran out of room on the chip to include any of the game music, so instead of going up in size they removed it so the game is a mute outside of the sound effects and vocal samples which is just a crime.