Video game conversion

In video gaming parlance, a conversion is the production of a game on one computer or console that was originally written for another system. Over the years, video game conversion has taken form in a number of different ways, both in their style and the method in which they were converted. In the arcade video game industry, the term conversion has a different usage, in reference to game conversion kits for arcade cabinets. Direct conversions, also referred to as "straight conversions", are conversions in which the source code of the original game is used with relatively few modifications. Direct conversions were fairly rare until the second half of the 1990s. In the case of arcade conversions, this was because arcade systems were usually much more advanced than their contemporary home-based systems, which thus could not accurately recreate the speed, graphics, audio, and in some cases even the gameplay algorithms of arcade games. In the case of personal computer conversions, most games pre-1995 were produced in assembly language, and source-based conversions could not be reproduced on systems with other processors, rendering the original source code useless. Also, while most third-party developers had access to the original graphics and audio, they could not be faithfully reproduced on older home computers such as the ZX Spectrum and developers were forced to recreate the graphics and audio from scratch. In the early 2000s, source-based conversions of games became more feasible and one-to-one pixel perfect conversions became commonplace. Imitations of popular arcade games were common, particularly in the early days of video gaming when copyright violations were treated less severely. While the game was fundamentally the same, the title, names, graphics and audio were usually changed to avoid legal challenges. Developers have created "clones" of their own games. Escape (now Westone) produced a clone of Wonder Boy for the NES by the name of Adventure Island to circumnavigate a number of legal issues surrounding the Wonder Boy name and character.