SNES PORTS DANGEROUS DAVE + SUPAPLEX by ludufre

Translated, not remade

Dangerous Dave never had its source code released, so the port starts from DAVE.EXE itself. The game was disassembled and translated into C one function at a time, running on top of an exact copy of the original data segment. Physics, timings, monster paths — even the quirks — behave like the DOS version, because they are the DOS version.

VGA on a 16-bit console

The levels are drawn in Mode 3, with 256 colors — the closest the SNES gets to VGA. Everything that moves is a hardware sprite. Dave alone uses up to 42 colors in a single frame, so each frame is split into as many as three overlapping sprite layers, each with its own exact palette.

PC speaker → SPC700

The beeps of the PC speaker are emulated on the SNES sound chip, and the game logic ticks at the VGA's 70 Hz on top of the console's 60 Hz — so it runs at exactly the original speed.

What changed from DOS

• The SNES screen is 256 px wide, against 320 on VGA. Pixels stay 1:1: the camera shows 16 of the 20 tiles and follows Dave, keeping the original 15-column scroll.
• The top HUD was rearranged into two lines (SCORE … LEVEL / DAVES … GUN), using the SNES border.
• VGA colors have 6 bits per channel, the SNES 5: a few close background tones were merged (176 → 128). Sprites keep exact palettes.
• Keyboard prompts became joypad prompts, and the high-score name is typed with the D-pad.

Controls

Screens