The Maze of Galious gets its deserved revival

A MSX2 version of The Maze of Galious is underway as IPS patch format for those who want to modify their own original ROM.

A team of titans has been working for some time on an ambitious project involving one of the most iconic games of the MSX standard: The Maze of Galious.
This adaptation is not limited to taking a handful of graphics and altering them to look different, nothing is further from the truth, the game has been completely disassembled to remake it using MSX2 specific graphics routines.

Toni Gálvez is in charge of making The Maze of Galious even more attractive, using the benefits of SCREEN 5. And far from being satisfied with just touching up certain elements, he has gone further and completely redone each and every one of the elements that make up the graphic set. In this way you can appreciate a remarkable difference between the original version and this one for the second generation MSX.

Besides the change in the graphics, we are taking advantage of the fact that the game is completely shredded to add more details to both the backgrounds and sprites and also to the font, which now presents a very cool gradient. As an example of this, here we have the look that Popolon and Aphrodite, the main characters, will have in the item selection screen.
The screenshots you see in this entry are of the game in operation, not a mockup. This is how it will look on screen once it's finished.
Víctor Martínez and David Madurga are in charge of programming the game.

Source:
MSXblog by konamito

Media browser (5)

Commentaires (32)

Par msd

Paragon (1532)

25-10-2020, 09:23

Very nice

Par Turrebo

Expert (84)

25-10-2020, 10:14

That looks amazing!
Good thing Konami isn't as tight-arsed as Nintendo, otherwise your game overhaul would be greeted with a lawsuit or two.

Par hamlet

Scribe (4106)

25-10-2020, 10:20

A I heard, it will be released as IPS patch, so there is no worry about legal isues.

Par KdL

Paragon (1485)

25-10-2020, 14:57

This project is great!

As I posted in the comments on the site (never appeared), I want to clarify that it is noticeable a little too much dithering and blending on graphics. So I'd like to ask you to keep Konami's very clean and well-defined graphic style.

For example, see how stairs are drawn in Treasure of USAS.

Par ren

Paragon (1947)

25-10-2020, 16:00

Forum thread.

@santiontanon shared a link there to an MSXBlog vid where Konamito is talking with Toni, discussing the gfx.

(ps: when sharing links, I'd suggest to try to post clean links. E.g. remove the ?fbclid=... (facebook tracking crap). I see it popping up every now & then.)

Par Randam

Paragon (1431)

25-10-2020, 19:30

This game could become even more legendary than it already is. I hope this upgrade is already a decent amount along the way, but I will gladly wait for a polished version of one of my very favorite msx games.

Keep up the good work.

Par valkyre

Paladin (702)

26-10-2020, 08:08

An interesting project. The title is spelt wrong though!

Par gdx

Enlighted (6437)

26-10-2020, 09:28

Hats off to you, it looks nice. If the graphics were a bit more Screen5 style than Screen4, it would be perfect.

Par konamiman

Paragon (1211)

26-10-2020, 11:21

Awesome! I always thought that MoG was a great game but it deserved more love in the graphics side, glad to see that I wasn't the only one!

While we're at it, could we also add SCC musics?

Par ToriHino

Paladin (927)

26-10-2020, 11:59

konamiman wrote:

Awesome! I always thought that MoG was a great game but it deserved more love in the graphics side, glad to see that I wasn't the only one!

While we're at it, could we also add SCC musics?

From the source:

MSXBlog wrote:

Víctor Martínez and David Madurga are in charge of programming the game. And in the musical section, the maestro José Vicente Masó ( WYZ ) is the one who is remaking the original melodies from scratch so that they sound even better with SCC.

Par tonigalvez

Champion (312)

26-10-2020, 12:13

KdL wrote:

This project is great!

For example, see how stairs are drawn in Treasure of USAS.

Sorry, that's my style, I love to add as much detail and shading as I could, and there will be some dithering in the graphics, but not too much.

I am using 16 different colours, the colour 0 is 1 1 1 value and the colour 14 is black.

I lost many hours sortering the colours for the best Or colour combinations for the sprites.

Par JGM

Master (144)

26-10-2020, 12:51

it is simple AWESOME!

Par wolf_

Ambassador_ (10135)

26-10-2020, 12:53

Yes, in Usas black/grey/white (coins, ghosts, doglike statue etc) is on 13/14/15. In fact 15 is the most popular bonus color, so I'd have put black on there. But hey.

One major aspect of the MSX 1 palette is that you always have various colors at your disposal, meaning that Konami would actually use all those colors in some way. On MSX 2 you could choose to have one big color-spread of 8 (e.g. black-brown-yellow-white) for detailed objects with soft shadows, with only a few other color left for sprites. Porting an MSX 1 game to MSX 2 will imply that the MSX 2 palette is more or less a tweaked MSX 1 palette, as the MSX 1 keeps the architecture of the palette down to what it used to be. So there's not all that much screen 5'ish stuff to add really. I think these current screenshots leave nothing else to wish for.

You can see an example of a big spread and a few extra colors in Magnar. A big grey spread, and then some colors for red-orange-yellow and some colors for blue/cyan.

Par Rataplan

Champion (354)

26-10-2020, 14:05

It looks great, but honestly I don't like the player likt this. It could have just the white colors, but not the grey (shadow?) colors in the lower part of it. Also for the back of the player when climbing stairs, I'd rather have that just in white. It would make the player better visible in my opinion.

Great achievement!

Par KdL

Paragon (1485)

26-10-2020, 18:35

tonigalvez wrote:

Sorry, that's my style, I love to add as much detail and shading as I could, and there will be some dithering in the graphics, but not too much...

Hi Toni. I didn't say it's bad, but you could also create two or more graphic styles so users can choose the graphics they prefer. As you can see we are all excited and there are certainly several people who can help on this development path. The important thing is to have fun doing it.

Par timbru

Rookie (32)

26-10-2020, 18:49

I really like it! I guess we all have our preferred style. For me this is great!

Par gdx

Enlighted (6437)

27-10-2020, 08:49

Rataplan wrote:

honestly I don't like the player likt this. It could have just the white colors, but not the grey (shadow?) colors in the lower part of it. Also for the back of the player when climbing stairs, I'd rather have that just in white.

A lighter gray would be better. The skeleton is too gray. The water is also either too green at the bottom or too blue at the top but it may look different on a real MSX.

Par Wolverine_nl

Paragon (1160)

27-10-2020, 13:01

Very very nice....!! I applaud you guys for this, one of my favorite classics in a new jacket

Par iamweasel2

Paladin (722)

31-10-2020, 18:13

It is always great when some of our most talented MSX friends get together to enhance an MSX classic. History has shown that great things result from this kind of cooperation.

Looking forward to be amazed again with another MSX1 classic upgraded to MSX2.

Par rolandve

Champion (372)

06-11-2020, 22:14

Somewhat like KingsValley 2. Same game, different graphics. So what would he do? The same thing as always. Perhaps some SCC+ music? It is however an appreciated endeavor.

Par bear77

Rookie (28)

01-12-2020, 22:46

Superb! Looking forward to this patch!

Par Manuel

Ascended (19682)

26-02-2022, 19:43

Is this still on, the patch?

Par Victor

Champion (509)

26-02-2022, 19:58

Manuel wrote:

Is this still on, the patch?

Yes... It's finished... Just adding some decoration, and solving small issues...

Par valkyre

Paladin (702)

26-02-2022, 21:06

Can't wait to see your hard work.

Par Manuel

Ascended (19682)

26-02-2022, 21:57

Same here!

Par tfh

Prophet (3430)

26-02-2022, 23:44

Victor wrote:

Manuel wrote:

Is this still on, the patch?

Yes... It's finished... Just adding some decoration, and solving small issues...

Nice! Looking forward to it. I've really enjoyed playing it as a kid. It was one of the games i had as an original.
If you also want to have an online playable version on the day of its release, you know where to find me

Par Manuel

Ascended (19682)

27-02-2022, 17:06

If you want me to do some beta-testing, please contact me. I know the game very well.

Par tfh

Prophet (3430)

25-04-2022, 23:13

And it's here for all to enjoy: https://github.com/bladeba/MSX/tree/master/Enhanced%20Games/...

Par valkyre

Paladin (702)

26-04-2022, 07:36

What a fantastic job they have done.