How do you port games to other systems?

[conicteam]

I'd really like to know how to do a simple port of a game to other systems (ex: SEGA Genesis). If anyone knows how to I'm open to suggestions.

 

[IIMarckus]

This requires at the least a disassembly of the game you wish to port, and the knowledge and capability of programming both systems (the system with the original game, and the system to be ported to) to turn this into a usable game on the final system.

Disassemblies can be created through use of a disassemblers, although the process is more complex than running a single disassembling program—generally you'll need to go through the disassembled source and fix up problems, and of course you will need to modify it to work on the target system.

Here is an example of a working port of Sonic 1 to the Game Boy Advance. This was created by taking a disassembly of Sonic 1, converting it to the C programming language, and making some changes to make it match GBA I/O.

As an alternative to porting, one could write an emulator for the target system that mimics the original system, and simply inject an original ROM into the emulator file. This is what Nintendo did when releasing the Classic NES series on the Game Boy Advance. However, this is possibly even more difficult than porting (though in the end, you will have a solution that could work for several games, rather than porting each one individually).

 

[dragonarche]

you can't
well actually yes u can but its not worth the trouble

 

[conicteam]

I really meant for a pc game to a sega genesis game, but I got the general idea