Remember Battle Arena Toshinden? Anyone? It was one of the the PSone’s earliest games and one of the first wave of 3D beat ‘em ups. It soon got superceded in terms of popularity by the likes of the Tekken and Soul Edge series, but for its time it turned a lot of heads thanks to its nippy gameplay and attractive looks.
Enter the Game Boy. Small. Green. Unable to be played in direct sunlight, let alone do polygons. With a resolution of 160 x 144, Toshinden on the Game Boy was always going to be a bit of a squeeze.
So they didn't squeeze it at all. Instead, the developers remade the whole game as a charmingly playable side-on 2D fighter. Not only that, but they made the most of the technology available by completely redesigning the graphics in a Super Deformed, cartoon style. Let's face it, the Game Boy was never too adept at creating detailed, realistic graphics (Look at the GB Mortal Kombat port for evidence, if you can see it with your bleeding eyes), so switching to bold Manga visuals was a very clever move. The game looked and played completely differently from the original, but it looked and played just as well if not better within the context of the format. It perfectly crystalises rule number one of tricky ports. A good new game with the same title beats a crap re-creation of the old one every time.
No list of incredible ports is complete without the stunning RType conversion to the Master System. That machine had no right to run that game but it did.
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