After seeing some of the games that have come out on Nintendo's teeny little DS, I think it could definitely handle both Daggerfall and Arena.

Here's my reasoning: First off, the DS is oddly wired to better handle 3D applications. After seeing titles like Ninja Gaiden: DS, Nanostray 2, and other primarily 3D apps, it could easily handle DF or Arena.

Yes the storage cap on the DS carts is a bit off-putting, but the textures and whatnot could be toned down to conserve space. As well, movie compression has been greatly improved, so the movie files on the original disks that used to take up like 60MB could now take up like 5kb. If not the movies could just be made still frames with text.

I think the predominantly mouse driven gameplay of DF would work great on the DS screen (Think Metroid Prime: Hunters)

Top screen could just be a generic map display or other info.

I think it would be a good way to get a bit more out of the old titles, without people complaining that the games look dated, since the DS's graphical capability isn't that far above these games.

As well, it would fill that nice little RPG hole that the DS has, as it lacks proper RPGs (too many tactics games.)

One game that comes close to this idea is Deep Labyrinth. Though it's more of a Proof of Concept, since the game stinks.

daggerfall on DS?
it would be great...
expecially if there will be new features, new quests and a more varoius landscape :drool:

too bad this will never happen....

At this point I'd settle for a 1:1 port.

I wish it would, I know I would buy it.

Daggerfall is a large (something like 400+ MB) game that's glitchy even on its native platform, and odds are that it'd be easier to just completely rewrite the whole thing if they were going to bring it to something like DS. Now, rewriting a game like Daggerfall while keeping everything intact, that's no small feat, and I think that the amount of work it'd involve would be enough that they'd be better off just trying to make a new game. Maybe something designed specifically for the DS rather than just another port of a classic with touch screen controls.

Arena, on the other hand, you could probably get running on the DS... but why? It's ancient, and the gameplay, content, and style all feel about as old as the game itself. Moreover. it's free, and most of the people interested enough in it to buy it probably already have it on their computer and probably wouldn't be willing to pay extra for a portable version.

Really, I don't think either of them are viable options. The best thing to do would be to make a new game with similar style, not to port the old ones.

Unless I am mistaken, parts of the Daggerfall sources went missing years ago when Bethesda moved from one place to another, and this was a reason nothing else ever came of Daggerfall. They've even said that it would be better to start a new DF engine from scratch on several occasions, unless my memory is fooling me. Porting it to DS would be impossible, but assuming you had the storage capacity, a new engine written to sue the existing content could be possible. Not worthwhile in my opinion though. Too many kids today expect flashy 3D models and such, and a game like DF wouldn't be graphically to par, so it probably wouldn't sell very many copies beyond the existing Daggerfall players.

Couldn't Bethesda retrieve one of the copies and recover the sources? Or is that not how it works...I'm not a game designer, so I don't know :wacko:

If in some parallel dimension, A Daggerfall remake would be done for a Nintendo Console, I would take the first fly to Rockville, turns into a terrorist proclaiming the PC supremacy, and blast away the whole Bethesda Softworks headquarter !!! :nuke:

It would be a good idea to port Daggerfall. Since it is very dead right now and the only way to get it now is to buy it on Ebay.

Besides. Bethesda can easily get a new copy of Daggerfall. They can just offer 100 Dollars on the site for a copy of Daggerfall and they are going to get loads of people sending in copies for the chance to get their name put on the credits

Who cares about a copy of the game? The thing is, the game is compiled code, not sources. It's useless for porting. You could reverse most of it to assembly, but it would take a god to be able to use that to do much! The only thing Bethesda could do with a copy of Daggerfall is copy the CD and release it on PC again, in the original form.

Yup. It has been said many times but it sill have to be said : Daggerfall Source code released would be so cool.

It's a rumor and nothing more. Always has been, and unless we ever get an official comment on it, it always will be.

Don't forget the licensed technology that comprises XnGine that Bethesda would have to sort out in order to get the ball rolling. Not to mention poor sales (a remake/port of an old, now-obscure game that isn't mainstream shovelware on a modern Nintendo console? Ha!), it's a lot easier for them to earn their keep by just focussing on Fallout 3/TESV.

It's a rumor and nothing more. Always has been, and unless we ever get an official comment on it, it always will be.

Even "an official comment" would not serve to quell doubts if one were so inclined as to refuse to believe it's true. And note that even if it's not a literal truth, it serves as an indicator of Betheda's willingness to deal. If they have the source, they're not going to release it.

Having worked for software companies large and small, I can easily believe the source is gone. It would take very little effort...or rather, it takes effort to save it, and that effort might well not have been exerted.

I always find it funny when people call games from the mid-90's ancient... :hubbahubba:

I don't care if it is ancient. Older games were more fun because graphics systems svcked. There were no 3D accelerators back then (well, they were coming around during Daggerfall's time), so developers focused on GAMEPLAY. New games tend to focus on 3D graphics and surround sound, then toss together a storyline in five minutes. I can't count how many new games and sequels and such have let me down due to focusing too much on graphics.

So yeah, call DF ancient, it means it's good.

I don't know it would be so impossible. The Japanese do this all the time with their more popular/classic franchises (I've probably bought the original Dragon Warrior on three separate occasions, now), and if a crappy game like "Eye of the Beholder" (heh, sorry SSI fans... ) can get ported to the GBA, I see no reason why a version of Daggerfall made for the DS (assuming they could write an engine capable of playing off the old game files without too much of a hassle) couldn't be at least a mild success. And of the systems out there, the DS would be easiest to port the gameplay to, since stylus slashing would make a good stand-in for the mouse-dragging of the old Daggerfall. (It could also work on the Wii, though that would be overkill, I think, in addition to the fact that old game ports just seem to make more sense on handheld systems.)

The main problem isn't technical, I think, but rather cultural. With a few rare exceptions, that simply isn't done in America.

Hmmm... An interesting idea... Being a Microsoft fan I always thought that it would be a good idea to try and put it in with the Xbox Live Arcade (they managed to port Oblivion pretty well to console)...

I don't know it would be so impossible.

Get coding, then!

I have to agree with Rabish, given the bugs the game has in DOS porting it to another OS or platform would be a headache. A new game done done with the same feature set seems like a better possibility.

Even if the game was brought to the DS I think it's likely to be expigated. I'm not sure what Nintendo's current stance is on nudity (even low-res nudity) but I'm going to guess they're against it.

Again, they'd have to find the lost sources and even if they had them, they've said more than once that it would be easier to start a new engine from scratch. I don't see any porting going on, sources or not. I can see them creating a new engine and using the DF world, but not a direct port.

Yes, Nintendo is against nudity. Odd though, because there was a nvde picture of Princess Peach in Mario Kart 64 (or maybe it was the SNES version) from a few years back.

Disclaimer: I am not a programmer.

But I don't think even the old sources are necessary. If a few amateurs can write a totally new engine that uses the old game files for Ultima 7 in their spare time (this when not even Origin or EA has the original source), I don't see why Beth couldn't spare a few hackers/programmers to study those old data files, figure out how to interpret them, and write up something that could interpret them on a new system. I can't help but think such a project would be significantly less expensive than creating a whole new game, since they can reuse all the old art and music resources, rather than recreating them.

Of course, that whole "nudity" thing is a deal breaker on most console platforms... unless they just write the engine in such a way that assumes the childguard is always active. Then, of course, some clever hacker could figure out what bit to flip to turn it off.

If I remember right, the childgaurd only removed nymphs, blood, PC portrait nudity, and replaced the corpse sprites with a generic "Bones" sprite. However, nudity in places like witch's covens and other nekkid women was neglected.

But replacing a few sprites with clothed variants doesn't seem like too big a deal, as there weren't that many nvde sprites.

Well, U7's engine wasn't nearly as much of a steaming pile and it's a much more popular game, so Exult is a bit of a different situation. Of course, Bethesda could still do what you said and make a new engine (Interkarma was already doing so), but it probably wouldn't be as easy as you think. I doubt anyone there still knows all the ins and outs of how Daggerfall worked, making a new engine that can handle the old stuff the same without new issues pretty hard to build. And, of course, they could still pump those resources into a new game instead, one that has a fair chance of doing better if it's designed specifically for the platform. That said...


Nintendo isn't against nudity (when BMX XXX came out, only one of the three major platforms didn't have nudity, and it wasn't the Gamecube). No console manufacturer is. What they're against is games with AO ratings, and games with nudity aren't necessarily AO-worthy (Daggerfall most certainly isn't).

Daggerfall isn't hard to remake, I already have a GL engine coming along nicely that can read in almost all of the data in Arch3D.bsa and display it in an untextured format. The format of the BSA files for Daggerfall is mostly known, and another forum member here is working on discovering the rest with me, and we have already figured out one huge thing that could help figure out several others. The hardest thing I imagine, would be figuring out how many points each bonus or weakness would have to adjust the slider on the character creation menu. That kind of stuff would be difficult, but the rest is not so hard.

The thing is, it just wouldn't sell on some kiddie-platform where most of the kids today can't play anything unless it runs in 2048x1536 and has high-resolution 3D models. Sound stupid? Guess again! I love it when some kid playing WoW says he can't play Doom because of the resolution. It'd be the same thing with DF on a DS. They'd have to overhaul the resolution of the sprites and textures to make it viable, and since we're making an engine from scratch, why not just make a whole new game?