[Daniel_BMS]

Is there a rom for Shinobi reverse engineered from the actual SEGA System 16 arcade hardware to the NES?

[nixon]

Huh?

[TheRedEye]

Yes.

Wait, no.

Wait...huh?

[KingMike]

I think he wants to know if somebody took the arcade ROM of Shinobi and somehow hacked it to work on NES.
The answer: no way! Just going to have to live with the Tengen game. Or get MAME.

[Daniel_BMS]

Tengen game?

[TheRedEye]

What?

[adaml]

The Tenagren. Don't you know?

[kap]

[merp]

[Daniel_BMS]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=22295955&highlight=#22295955

[lugnut]

Okay, I think I finally see where the confusion is coming from.

The "reverse-engineering" mentioned in the penny-arcade thread refers to Tengen's reverse-engineering of the code used to defeat the NES's lockout chip.

Tengen's version of Shinobi is a brand-new port built from the ground up, not a magical conversion of the original arcade code altered to somehow run on the NES.

Clear now?

[kap]

And yeah, Tengen's port of Shinobi for the NES is dumped. It is one godawful game.

[merp]

Well... When programming games, you really don't need to do any reverse-engineering unless you want to emulate the hardware. Games are usually just programmed in the pertinant assembly language in which the CPU of the console can understand.

Let me try to explain with foreign cartoons as the example:

We have a Czechoslovakian cartoon from the late-1950's and we want to introduce it to the western market. The story is about a little mole named Krtek who wants a pair of trousers. By watching the cartoon we understand the concepts, the morals, and the characters. We may not be able to understand Czech, but we could relay the story to friends if we wanted to--regardless of actual storyboard. Samurai Pizza Cats is a wonderful example of this; as it was "not translated, new scripts were written to go with the animation" (1).

So, we would dub the cartoon's voices over with our regional language to fit each vocalization. Accuracy is unimportant as long as English speakers in the West can understand and relate to the dialogue and the related concepts, morals, characters, and et cetera.

Video game porting is much like this. Programmers know how to ...program. If they know the language for the necessary console, knowledge of the original language is unnecessary. The only knowledge they need is knowledge of game programming, dynamics of the proposed game, the goals, storyboard, characters (protagonists and antagonists), and the feel. The programmers just try to do their best to make a reasonable facsimile of the original with the guidance of their producers. As this website suggests, some make it, and others don't.

In summary, reverse-engineering is usually not done in the development and programming of videogames--unless we are talking about 3rd-party/pirate companies. In which intense reverse-engineering is done on hardware and software to create bastardizations and copy-protected cluster fucks.

Also, if you're not sure about a question you are about to ask, it's generally good to admit your current state of ignorance, or use the wonderful World Wide Web as a reference to your inquiries.

[Daniel_BMS]

OK I get it. Thanks

[lugnut]

[merp]

The arcade version is pretty amazing, man.