Ghoulsn Ghosts ARCADE Episode 3 - The (re)making of Stage 2 - PART 2 aMaru 2022-12-10 | Some updates on my work on Ghouls'n Ghosts ARCADE Stage 2.I have completed the mid section of the stage, with plently of detailed background elements, sprite and background animation restored.There are some relevant modifications to the first part of the stage, too.I have written all the routines for VRAM management, so everything is now working without manual intervention (like it was in the previous video).Looking forward to your comments and suggestions.
Ghoulsn Ghosts ARCADE EDITION for the SEGA MegaDrive - STAGE 2 aMaru 2023-11-07 | I finally managed to complete the restoration of the third and last part of Stage 2 for my hack. This has entailed dealing with a crazy amount of missing animation frames for the enemy sprites (entirely redrawn, as usual) and for the backgrounds. All those flames everywhere... a lot of care has been put in designing the animation routines so as to avoid slowdown as much as possible.Here's a comparison video for the whole stage. I am preparing another video to discuss the usual behind-the-scenes details of the hacking process - for those that are interested - and what comes next.Looking forward to receiving your comments and suggestions.
Ghoulsn Ghosts ARCADE STATUS UPDATE aMaru 2023-07-26 | A brief video to show the current status of my GnG ARCADE hack.I've had very little time to devote to my project in the last six months, but I promise it is alive and well.I finally managed to devise a satisfactory scheme for overlaying graphical assets for the third and final part of Stage 2.To fit the constraints there was a lot of manual tile redrawing involved, but overall I am satisfied with the result, so far.All the routines for dynamic loading of tiles and palettes have been implemented as well, so most of the work with the backgrounds is complete.I am currently working on background animation. I have fixed the lake animation and sketched color cycling for the distant background in the burning city section (I still have to play with the palette here).All the frames of animation for the flames in the upper and lower parts of the foreground are ready, I just have to code a routine for their dynamic replacement, which I'm currently working on.After that, I will take care of all the sprites.Stay tuned for more updates!
Ghoulsn Ghosts ARCADE Episode 2 - The (re)making of Stage 2 aMaru 2022-08-01 | Here is the second video for my Ghouls'n Ghosts ARCADE EDITION hack for the SEGA MegaDrive.In this video I am showing the progress with the hacking of Stage 2.I have currently reworked the first half of the stage, redrawing and recoloring the original arcade assets and reducing their tile count to fit in the smaller video RAM (VRAM) of the Sega Megadrive.At this stage I haven't implemented all the routines to decompress the new data from the ROM to the RAM or VRAM yet, so I thought I'd show how the changes look as the modifications are applied in real time through the debug features of an emulator (GENS r57 shell mod).Please let me know in the comments if you think this type of content is interesting, if you'd rather just look at the end results, or if you'd like me to cover more or less technical aspects of the hacking process.In any case, if you get bored at some point you can directly jump to the comparison segments at 8':04''.The amazing piano transcription (and execution) of the music from Stage 2 that plays at is from @Tuengxx's channel. Check the video at youtube.com/watch?v=j_gdenBYHY0
Ghoulsn Ghosts ARCADE EDITION for the SEGA MegaDrive aMaru 2022-03-06 | This is a first comparison video for my Ghouls'n Ghosts ARCADE EDITION hack for the SEGA MegaDrive, an ongoing project that you can read about on the SEGA-16 forum at this address:sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?35772-The-Official-aMaru-Thread-Amazing-Mega-Drive-Hacks!. The original conversion from 1989 from SEGA was impressive for the time, but it really had to heavily cut the graphics to fit the small 5Mbit cartridge.I am trying to restore the gorgeous aesthetics of the arcade game as much as possible, increasing the level of detail, the number of on-screen colors and the animation frames. I have now completed a first version of stage 1, and while many things remain to be fixed I am sharing a first video where I compare my hack to the original MD game from 1989 (first run) and to the arcade game (second run).For the MD games I am using the GENS emulator, and for the arcade game the MAME emulator.During the second run the aspect ratio of the MD video is adjusted to match that of the arcade game.
