1. General analysis - Historn/Project-1 GitHub Wiki
Content
Genre
It's a sports game completely based on an imaginary sport such as some kind of a mix of a beach volley and frisbee trowing. This means that an element, in this case a frisbee, goes from one end to another of the screen and in case it that the player doesn't catch it, it counts as a score and gives a certain value to the goal. The player can't surpass the middle of the field and they have to stop the opponent from socring and at the same time they have to score to win the game.
The genre origins come from the game PONG developed in 1972.
Similar Games
Pong is a game where two people can play and the one that scores more points wins the match. It consists on passing a ball from one end to the other of the screen and if the player that has to stop the ball doesn't reach it on time, the other player scores a point. It's a very similar game to Windjammers but much less developed and without characters, color, or textures fo the field. This is because when it was created (1972) technology wan't as developed ad when Windjammers was created (1994).
Although it's not a videogame, and it was created long before Winjammers, Air Hockey follows the same principle: one player against each other and they have to score on each others goal. It's a very popular game and also very fast paced.
Technical Profiles
The technical profile for the Neo Geo system is the first one for which the game was released.
The CPU is based on a Motorola 68000 running at 12MHz and Coprocessor Zilog Z80 at 4MHz.
For the memory the machine had 214KB of RAM. 64KB were from the main Motorola 68000 Processor, 84KB from VRAM, 64KB from battery-backup save NVRAM (a memory that saves information when power is turned off so data could be saved in case that the electric flow is interrupted), and 2KB from the Z80.
The storage was a removable Memory Card of the NeoGeo of 8Kb for saving the match. The game weights 45Mb.
The sound chip was a Yamaha YM2610 but it also worked with the Yamaha YM3016 sound chip.
The display was provided by the SNK video chip that allowed the machine to draw sprites in 16 pixels wide and from 16 to 512 pixels tall. It could draw a maximum of 96 sprites per scanline. It didn't use scrolling tilemap for the backgrounds but used a single non-scrolling tilemap. This represented a leap between conventional sprites vs tilemaps.
The origina resolution of the Neo-Geo CD was of 320x224 in mode NTSC and 320x256 in mode PAL.
The visualization on screen was of 4:3 in a horizontal monitor.
The frame ratio was of 59.599 fps in NTSC AES system, 50.429 fps in PAL AES system and 59.1856 fps in MVS.
The colors that it could display were 65,536 in the palette and 3840 colors simultaneously on screen.
It was powered by a 5V of direct current in the older systems with a 8W consumption it used a direct current of 9V adapter in the newer systems with a 5W consumption.
The maximum sprites that coul have on screen at the same time were 381.
The size of the sprites went from 16x16 to 16x512.
The dimensions of the console and the controller are the following ones: console's dimensions 325x237x60 mm and controller's dimensions 280x190x95 mm.
The arcade version of the hardware is named Multi Video System and it is capable of loading up to 6 slots. Also, the console version of the hardware has the name Advanced Entertainment System. Both can execute identical code, but one was more expensive than the other.
History of the game
Windjammers by Data East in 1994. Data East was founded in 1976 by a japanese student of the Tokai University. Its first game was Jack Lot, a game based on Blackjack developed for businesses. During the seventies more than 15 games were released by Data East. In June 1979 they established their U.S. division after Sega and Taito. After twenty years of launching games and being relatively successful, in 1996, the company was closed due to bankruptcy and everything was done whithout prior notice.
Windjammers was originally released for arcade machines and shortly after it became availiable for the Neo Geo arcades. This second version was the most popular and the one that had the best reception as well as becoming the most popular.
It's a multiplayer game but you can also compete against the machine where you have to score more points than you opponent in an established time. The player that scores more points wins and advances to the next round.
There was a remasterization of the game and was released for modern consoles such as Nintendo WII and an online release by Dotemu for PS4 and later in 2018 a version for Nintendo Switch.
In January 2022 Windjammers 2 was released for PS4, XBox One, Nintendo Switch and PC by Dotemu, a french company, and recieved good critics according to different media.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windjammers_(video_game)
https://www.hobbyconsolas.com/reviews/analisis-windjammers-clasico-neo-geo-ps4-ps-vita-162766
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7098102/
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