Hi Tom.
I would never suggest giving up on an attempt to replicate mainstream
mechanics in audio games entirely, certainly i've occasionally been quite
surprised at the ingenuity of developers.
My problem however, is that as you said yourself, developing games is not
easy and developers aren't always in a position to know how to implement
something in a game. The problem is this has too often resulted in partial
convertions, eg, space invaders games with no shields and no shooting
invaders, or supposed 2D side scrollers with no 2nd dimention or
recognizable enemy attacks.
My suggestion is not to completely abandon efforts to try and convert
mainstream games to audio, only that when a developer comes up against a
problem which cannot be solved, instead of simply missing something out and
reducing the game to a reaction test, considder substituting an audio
mechanic to keep the game at the same level of challenge and complexity as
the original rather than reducing it to another boppit clone.
For example, yes your skull suggestion would be quite workable, however if
you can't think of a similar thing to dictate the jewel position and require
the player to vary his/her jump hight to grab them, instead of saying "oh
dear, well we'll just stick the jewels on the floor and let them be easy to
pickup" find a similar audio challenge to substitute into the game, eg, the
falling jewels suggestion.
No, this might not result in a %100 accurate remake, but better a %50
accurate audio remake with another %50 of similar style challenge but in
audio, than just! a %50 remake with nothing added and those mechanics simply
missing.
Btw, with the duckhunt idea, the only problem I see in replicating the
gorbian style levels is that the gorbians were predicated on the idea that
once a ship was targeted horizontally, the target wouldn't move from that
horizontal position and you would then just have to target it vertically,
which is why you always hit the left and right arrows before the up or down
ones. Obviously this worked for space invaders sinse most invaders don't
move horizontally much.
To be accurate, the ducks would need to move in diagonals and the player
would need to move the target in both horizontal and vertical incriments at
the same time. you'd therefore probably need two distinct target sounds, one
for vertical target one for horizontal target, and require the player to get
both solutions correct before the shot would hit.
That! could be a most challenging game, sinse the player would need to line
up their target quite carefully and continually try to keep a beed on the
moving duck much as in the graphical version, making for a game which would
be much more interesting to play.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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