Lucasarts: "DS cart size too small"

[Jacksteruk309]

With the DS being the most loved gaming system in the galaxy, one might think that it's the perfect platform for a graphic adventure title. From a business standpoint, it's a no-brainer, but the stylus and touch-screen also provide the perfect control scheme for titles in this genre. Not only do we, but the fine folks at Eurogamer also, think that bringing old adventure titles to the DS would be a very good thing. Lucasarts shot down our hopes, however.

"The cart size of the DS makes it impossible to put out ports of any of our old graphic adventures," claims assistant producer Jeffrey Gullett. "There's literally not enough room on those carts to put the games out." Kind of an odd answer, when you think about the size of older adventure titles such as The Secret of Monkey Island.

from http://www.dsfanboy.com/2008/06/02/luca ... e-too-sma/

Any opinions?

[clem]

Any opinions?

See also http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=5727

[agentq]

Perhaps the reason Lucasarts wouldn't put their adventure games on the DS is that the games would not be huge sellers. Sure, the fans on this forum might disagree, but for those who didn't play these games growing up, it's a bit different.

Personally, I love the games, but I think they're a little too difficult to appeal to a mass audience, and for most of the titles, the graphics are not up to the standards of current DS titles. So then you're relying on nostalgia value. I'm sure that would sell copies, but we wouldn't be talking in the millions, would we?

Nintendo have sold millions of games by making them simpler and easy to understand. Compared to this, a lot of the old Lucasarts adventures have really complex interfaces.

But of course they're wrong about the cart size. You could get any of the talkie games which run on ScummVM DS to run off an official cart if you want without losing anything. You could even do Full Throttle or The Dig if you wanted to.

[LurkerScum]

You could even do Full Throttle or The Dig if you wanted to.

Are you serious? Could someone actually make Full Throttle work? I hear the DS just didn't have the processing power to do it. Man, that was one of the greatest computer games ever. If that could be ported, I'd buy it in a second.

[Ferid]

lol. There is NO WAY the Secret of Monkey Island takes up more space then some (most?) of the current DS games.

[superfighter]

well im sitting here playing (almost) all of the Lucasparts point and click library, so i sense lazyness on there part!

[SonataFanatica]

(...)but for those who didn't play these games growing up, it's a bit different.

Personally, I love the games, but I think they're a little too difficult to appeal to a mass audience, and for most of the titles, the graphics are not up to the standards of current DS titles. So then you're relying on nostalgia value. I'm sure that would sell copies, but we wouldn't be talking in the millions, would we?

Then again LucasArts re-released "Full Throttle" and "Sam & Max Hit The Road" for Windows XP/Vista recently.

And... thinking about all the other graphic adventures that were released on handhelds ("Broken Sword" on the GBA and "Syberia", "Ankh", "Runaway 2" and "Secret Files Tunguska" on the DS, for example), I don't think the old LucasArts adventures would sell worse than those 'newer-generation-and-not-as-great-as-LucasArts-adventures'-titles...

The only thing that could make LucasArts unsure about releasing a classic adventure game on the DS is that they believe the majority of DS-gamers consists of "casual gamers" who only buy crap like "Pet Vet", "Nintendogs" and "Brain Age"...
And who knows? Maybe they do? There were ridiculously wrong in the past, too... *cough*samnmax2*cough* ... sorry... *cough*fullthrottle2*cough*...

[Bad Asp]

There is NO WAY that Maniac Mansion takes up more space than the DS version of Clone Wars! I mean, there was a Maniac Mansion for the NE-frickin'-S, for God's sake!

I think it's time to sue Lucasarts for slander. I can't allow any more lies from that company.

[MusicallyInspired]

Morons.

[InnocentBystander]

Yeah, Lucasarts is full of (Ampersand-Dollarsign-Asterick-Poundsign) on this. I download and play around with the file structure of DS games, so I know for a fact that they go up to 256 Megabytes in size. And as far as I know, that isn't even the upper limit; it just gets really expensive to make DS carts even that large.

By comparison, all of the classic non-talkie Lucasarts games are under 25 megs. Most are under 15 megs. If you just wanted a straight port of, say, Monkey Island, it would fit onto the next-to-smallest chip available. Or you could do a "Classic Collection" of all the pre-talkie games and have it fit, probably, on a 32 meg chip. 64 at most.

Also, all of the pre-Dig talkies would easily fit within that 256 meg limit as well. Even using uncompressed WAVs, games like Sam & Max and DOTT didn't take up that much room until they did things like adding CD audio. Using the audio compression tools available on the DS, I have little doubt you could get them onto a 128 meg chip, which is still fairly common.

So, yeah... Lucasarts is just looking for excuses. Personally, I wish they'd just say "We don't think it would sell." But, hey, what can you do?