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| And coming not at all soon! Moon Patrol, Kung Fu Master, R-Type, Time Pilot, Gyruss, Kicker, Bubble Bobble, Parasol Stars, Rodland, Super Buster Bros., Commando, Tiger Road, Black Tiger, Son Son, Son Son II: Son of Son Son, and at least three flavors of Shinobi and Ghosts 'n Goblins! (image from RetroMags) |
Submitted for your approval! A die-hard teenage Sega Genesis fan gets the arcade experience he always wanted thirty years later... but it comes with a terrible price. Welcome to... The Twil-AI-ght Zone.
Before adopting the Sega Scream (yeah, that whole annoying thing. Look, it was the '90s), Sega marketed the Sega Genesis as an arcade in the comfort of your own home. It's a lot like the angle Coleco used to sell its ColecoVision seven years earlier. Actually, there are a lot of things these two machines have in common that's not apparent at first glance, including a shared family lineage thanks to the SG-1000, but that's beside the point.
Anyway! When Sega switched advertising companies in 1993 and went for the more aggressive, in-your-face commercials that became their trademark, the push for arcade-quality games at home was pushed to the back burner. They still happened, because arcade games were still a thing thanks to Street Fighter II, but it was no longer Sega's primary focus.
It's a pity for 1993-era Jess, because that's why he enlisted with Sega in the console wars. He was quite annoyed with Sonic the Hedgehog after the dreary Sonic Spinball, and while games like Streets of Rage II and Gunstar Heroes slaked his thirst for arcade action at home, they weren't literally arcade games. (Unless they were in that Mega-Tech cabinet, but that doesn't count.)
1993 Jess would be overjoyed to discover that dozens of new arcade ports exist for the Sega Genesis in the far-flung year of 2026. However, 2026 Jess has some reservations, because not all of these conversions are good... and most of what's in them aren't even built with human hands.
Yep, most of this bounty is from the tree of AI knowledge. Many of these games are converted straight from the arcade originals, with each instruction rewritten for the Sega Genesis' 68000 processor. Since porting a game from one CPU to another on a per-line basis is a time-consuming, tedious affair that might eventually warp the mind of an ordinary human programmer, AI clients like Claude are recruited to do all that dirty work.
So the resulting game plays exactly like the arcade version, aside from the expected modifications to the graphics and sound (in other words, they drain all the color out until it looks like a Civil War tin type. Ouch, stop hitting me, 1993 Jess!). This is good! But also bad, because AI is entirely too literal when converting a game to a different format. Put a brick wall in front of a human programmer and he walks around it. Put the same wall in front of AI and it walks through it, common sense and property damage be damned.
Case in point: the port of Shadow Warriors (aka Ninja Gaiden). It does everything the arcade game does, when the Sega Genesis is capable of it. However, because the Genesis putters along at 7.5MHz while the Ninja Gaiden arcade game runs at a peppier 12MHz, the Genesis quite often isn't capable of what the AI-modified code demands. Sound effects are clipped off, the color palette looks as though Dracula stuck a fang in its neck, the crashes and smashes of nearby breakable objects carry less weight, and both slowdown and flicker, the twin banes of 16-bit console gamers, are frequently present.
It's not a fun way to play Ninja Gaiden, which stings because this is one of those games I would have loved to play on the Sega Genesis. Improvements are steadily being made on the code to make it more Genesis-friendly, but most of that has to come from human programmers, who have the pragmatism to understand what won't work on this hardware and can adapt the code accordingly.
AI assistance seems to be a grim inevitability for arcade ports on the Sega Genesis. However, from my personal experience, the best of these conversions puts the human developer firmly in the captain's chair, while leaving the number-crunching and other tedious busywork to the AI.
Let's take a look at an example of this in action. MXRetroDev, the celebrated creator of Final Fight MD, recently released a Genesis port of Capcom's military shooter Commando. While AI had a hand in its design, the real brilliance of this conversion comes from the uniquely human trait of creativity. A computer wouldn't think to add strafing (and twin stick firing! Holy crap, Smash TV Commando!) to the gameplay for easier aiming and a more enjoyable experience. (Really, it makes a huge difference.) A computer wouldn't think to include soundtracks from the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 ports of Commando... they're not faithful to the arcade game, but it's a big plus for gamers who grew up with those versions.
AI reiterates, rehashes, regurgitates. At best, it can re-contextualize what already exists in a semi-cogent form. Human engineering can work outside the limitations of computer logic and create fresh new ideas that harmonize with the old ones. It can give a port of Commando its own unique flavor on systems that couldn't handle a straight conversion, and build onto the framework of its sequel MERCS with a new mission mode to offset the lack of a two-player option. It can tweak Chiki Chiki Boys to make it a more console-friendly experience, forcing the player to rely on their mastery of the game rather than a fistful of quarters to advance.
In other words, humanity does what AI don't.
POST-SCRIPT: Here are the best games in the bumper crop of Sega Genesis arcade ports.
MEGA COMMANDO: From Final Fight MD creator MXRetroDev! That alone speaks volumes. It's his first AI-assisted Genesis game, but there's tons of evidence that he wasn't leaning too hard on Claude for this. Strafing with the machine gun and even the grenades (!) makes your soldier more nimble and precise, and there's a wealth of new features including soundtracks from other ports. Color takes a slight hit, but considering that the arcade game was mostly olives, browns, and greens, it's not terribly noticeable.
BUBBLE BOBBLE: An extremely close port of the beloved Taito arcade game. It's not perfect... stage transitions are a little wobbly and performance dips when the screen fills up, but beyond that it's very close to the original. You also get the jaunty X68000 soundtrack as a bonus. Colors are arcade-faithful, although sometimes you'll get something weird like Bub's girlfriend being reddish-pink, as if she's been holding her breath for too long. Superior to Parasol Stars, ported from the Turbografx-16 but with questionable color choices and some big, big slowdown after the first stage.
SHAOLIN'S ROAD/KICKER: I friggin' love this follow-up to Yie Ar Kung Fu, and it's better here than it ever was on Microsoft's short-lived Game Room. You're a martial artist who fights mustached rivals in three story playfields with the expected Chinese ambiance. Green kick-ees award power ups, including a shield, fireballs, and my favorite, the mace, which can be boomeranged back to you infinitely if you know the trick. It's awesome on Genesis... its low color output is no issue for a game this old. A status bar preserves the tate aspect ratio but leaves the game feeling slightly cramped.
The same author ported Time Pilot, Gyruss, and Pandora's Palace to the Genesis, often with the caveat that it's a BYOR (bring your own ROM, and a very specific ROM at that!) situation. Time Pilot is the best of these. Gyruss needs a little more work in its sound effects. Pandora's Palace has promise but the sound is dreadful. (Doesn't sound much better in early versions of MAME.)
SHINOBI: There's at least three of these. Mr. X Todd's port is the one you want, since the purely human engineered one seems to be in permanent limbo and the others are, well... hmm. This looks, feels, and especially sounds like the arcade game. I mean, the Genesis could do Revenge of Shinobi and Shinobi III... of COURSE it could do the first Shinobi, but it's still awesome to see the first-person shuriken-chucking segment fully intact. Colors could use touching up- the gunmen's bullets are a dull, ColecoVision-y brownish-yellow when they should be yellow-yellow, improving their contrast. Voices are also pretty rough, in that fine Genesis tradition, but I know from using SecondBASIC that they could be a lot better than this. Still, this ain't a bad way to play the original Shinobi. It's probably your best option on this system.
FIGHTING STREET MD: You ever play Street Fighter 1 and think, "You know, this could be a pretty good game, if they only did this and this and this, and maybe this too?" Covil Games did all that for you. It's a much better playing game now, with special moves that trigger after one or two joystick motions, rather than five or six like the arcade game. Heck, it's a more advanced game than Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition, with super moves and a counter/advancing guard feature I have yet to decipher. It's still got that Street Fighter 1 jank, with derpy voices and weird animations, but all that's kind of charming when the gameplay doesn't stink. And oh yeah, Dan's in here! Why wouldn't he be?
MEGA PANG/SUPER BUSTER BROS: I adore this series, and it was always a burn that it never came to the Sega Genesis, opting instead to find a home on the Super NES and TurboDuo. (TurboDuo?! Oh, come ON, Capcom.) These days, there are all kinds of versions of Buster Bros. for the Genesis, but this is the best version... and it's also the best game in the series! Is it on par with the Super NES version released many years before? Not quite, but dang if it's not close. The Genesis's limited color palette is well optimized and the game even has Panic Mode, which challenges you to stay alive as long as possible in a thickening swarm of balloons and hexagons. Total thumbs up for this one.
TIGER ROAD: Yeah yeah, it's always "Ghosts 'n Goblins this, Ghosts 'n Goblins that." But when you want your pain and suffering in Chinese flavor, and the nearby Golden Dragon buffet got shut down for health code violations, just take a bite of this! As a smart-alecky monk, it's your mission to rescue your temple's kids from a mysterious villain. This elusive arcade game gets a 90% accurate conversion on the Genesis, drained of its color but otherwise virtually identical, right down to the FM sound and those unique sound effects Capcom used to use before the CPS1 era. It's better and more accurate than the Turbografx-16 version, but be warned! This game kicks like a mule. Be prepared to swear up a storm as you're swallowed by skulls, knocked into bottomless pits by stone-rollers, and manhandled by a half-dozen clones of Ron Jeremy.
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES GENESIS: A slightly rough but promising port of the original TMNT arcade game. Early builds were REALLY rough judging from the YouTube videos I've seen, but the latest build is a lot closer to the mark. You even get the "throwing foot soldiers into the camera" feature from Turtles in Time, although it's imitation scaling, as you might expect from the Genesis. Color choices are iffy and some damage ratios and behaviors feel off... I WISH Mousers were that easy to beat in the arcade game. Music was provided by SanSenpai, and while some tunes seem a little high-pitched and bleepy, the BGM he wrote for the two stages formerly exclusive to the NES and the last couple of stages rock hard. This is one to watch, all the more so if you're a Turtles fan. (Four player gameplay on the Genesis is a bit of a pipe dream, though. What, are you trying to burn down the player's house with that?)
