If you are still doubting the drive of retro gaming fans with the talent to create games then you may want to begin rethinking that stance. Take Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar console (and later other platforms) for instance. A fan is porting it to the Sega Master System and the results are quite impressive. Are they 64-Bit? Of course not, but neither was the Atari Jaguar so there is that.
Bringing Back the Memories
Whenever I discuss the Atari Jaguar with fellow retro gamers, Tempest 2000 comes up as nearly as fast as Aliens vs Predator (vs Marines) does. It is an iconic game that definitely stood head and shoulders above the other releases on the Atari Jaguar, though it simply had to sit up straight to be above 90% of the releases.
Tempest 2000 was known well for its music and graphical effects. This fan port by itch.io member, heraldo-ok is obviously downgraded from Ataris version.
We are going from something much more powerful than 8-Bit, it is not 64-Bit no matter how you count, so it is going to see a drop in audio and visual departments on Sega’s console.
Plenty of Tricks as Well as Programming Secrets Were Likely Used
On the itch.io page, Heraldo goes into detail on how they made this port happen. I am not a programmer so I will spare you the obvious liberal use of Google to attempt to understand most of it.
The big points are the title screen rotation, warp into and out of the level etc are pre-rendered Full Motion Video (FMV) and not created on the fly. Nifty little trick to get around limited hardware.
Enemies, power-ups, your ship, etc are all pre-rendered, pre-scaled, pre-rotated, etc, again saving pressure on limited hardware.
If you want to read more about how this port of Tempest 2000 is being created, head over to itch.io and leave them some support. We never know when a positive comment, a like, a share, can potentially turn someones day around.