The Great Giana Sisters...

General software. From trouble with the Banyan Tree to OCP Art Studio, post any general software chat here. Could include game challenges...
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PeteProdge
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The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by PeteProdge »

...does seem to be absolutely terrible.

It's probably the most sought after MIA title, and its controversial 'inspiration' gets it a lot of attention. I did delve into a bit of Commodore 64 emulation last month, where you can at least play the game there and it's highly regarded. I don't know why though. It's utterly appalling.

My conclusion isn't driven out of opposing the Commodore side of things (Rick Dangerous is absolutely perfect on that platform, best on the 8-bits), nor is it that I don't like the obvious source 'inspiration' Super Mario Bros (quite possibly the most played game on my NES and SNES emulators).

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The Great Giana Sisters is like a really bad PD take on Nintendo's famous platformer. Like those knock-offs of arcade games in the early 8-bit era, it's a bastardisation of a classic title.

My opinion goes against the grain of the Lemon64 site, where the C64 game is of the most downloaded and has inspired fan-made spin-offs.

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SpaceCadetFarley
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by SpaceCadetFarley »

I completely agree.

I remember tracking it down on the Amiga around 1991, and when I finally played it I was very disappointed.

The game tries so hard to be Super Mario Brothers but isn’t anywhere near as fun.

I much prefer Qwik and Silva. Just a shame up is jump.
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Ivanzx
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by Ivanzx »

There is some controversy about GGS, because apparently somebody found a beta or the game (somebody who usually visits WoS but he never cleared the facts!) and there were even some pictures:

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AndyC
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by AndyC »

Honestly, there's a pretty good reason Nintendo weren't happy about it. It's a fairly terrible game on all platforms.
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by Ralf »

Well, it always seemed to me that C64 guys loved it.

The Spectrum version could be much worse. We have available Amstrad version for comparison and it extremely slow, like moving in a glue. And we have good reasons to believe that it shares 80% of code or so with lost Spectrum version so it would be similar, just monochrome.
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by Guesser »

Ivanzx wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2017 9:25 pm There is some controversy about GGS, because apparently somebody found a beta or the game (somebody who usually visits WoS but he never cleared the facts!) and there were even some pictures
I knew this would crop up. :lol:
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R-Tape
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by R-Tape »

Sorry if this is going over old ground but I'm a little puzzled by the status of this game. It's missing in action but we have two different screenshots, I recall someone once suggestion it was an ebay hoax. The game has reviews (including comments on the speed of the game as mentioned above). Both screenshots are the same bit of the game and match the inlay screenshot. We have versions for the C64 and Amstrad.

So does this game actually exist? Were cassettes produced? How many people have seen it?
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ZXDunny
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by ZXDunny »

R-Tape wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2017 10:24 pm Sorry if this is going over old ground but I'm a little puzzled by the status of this game. It's missing in action but we have two different screenshots, I recall someone once suggestion it was an ebay hoax. The game has reviews (including comments on the speed of the game as mentioned above). Both screenshots are the same bit of the game and match the inlay screenshot. We have versions for the C64 and Amstrad.

So does this game actually exist? Were cassettes produced? How many people have seen it?
It existed, and probably in demo form that was passed out to magazines for preview purposes. Tracking down that demo tape is one of the goals of the Speccy community. Not because it was any good (actually it was great on the Amiga and the DS version was also very good) but because it's very, very rare and MIA. There were at least two mags that got copies, but where they are now is anyone's guess.

It's debatable that it got much further than the demo stage - a playable framework with one or two levels for the speccy - before it got canned. Though the existence of the Amstrad version may indicate that they had all the 8bit versions completed. We shall likely never know.
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4thRock
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by 4thRock »

I converted this from a magazine scan, pixel by pixel:

Image
http://zxart.ee/eng/authors/letter20332 ... qid:74823/

Doesn't look that great...
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R-Tape
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by R-Tape »

Good pixel art, the red on yellow is a... courageous choice though.
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Guesser
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by Guesser »

Yellow is a lot less... yellow on a spectrum though. :)
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by Ralf »

Red on yellow happens in Spectrum games. See for example this map of Super Wonder Boy.

http://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=SuperW ... rt=19&ath=

But yes, it's a terrible choice.
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R-Tape
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by R-Tape »

4thRock wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2017 10:56 pm I converted this from a magazine scan, pixel by pixel:

Image
http://zxart.ee/eng/authors/letter20332 ... qid:74823/

Doesn't look that great...
It could be a case of "I wouldn't start from here" but:

Superwonderboy's blue on cyan just about gets away with it, but if you're going monochrome with paper surely black ink is the best choice.

Image

But I wonder how a flip screen might have looked.

Image
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by Sokurah »

I think it's only a matter of time before someone (not me) codes a version for the Spectrum Next.
That has hardware scrolling, so that's the worst CPU bottleneck taken care of. You heard it here first :lol:
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by Hikaru »

Ralf wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:11 am But yes, it's a terrible choice.
Depends.
Sokurah wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:37 pm I think it's only a matter of time before someone (not me) codes a version for the Spectrum Next.
Yes, using a BASIC interpreter written in compiled BASIC, with eyes closed and one hand tied to the back.
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4thRock
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Re: The Great Giana Sisters...

Post by 4thRock »

R-Tape wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2017 10:06 pm But I wonder how a flip screen might have looked.
Not that bad, but still those sprites don't look nice...
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