Introduction
Since first browsing the Internet in the late '90s/early 2000s, I've visited a large number of both official and fan-made video game websites over the years. The very first game site I ever visited was none other than Nintendo's official U.S. site in 2000 or so. The site featured images of various characters such as Donkey Kong, Kirby, Pikachu, and (of course) Mario. There were pages for not only the N64, but also the SNES, Game Boy and Game Boy Color. There were screensho
I decided I didn't want to work on Ugly Uppity Umpire any more, so I've temporarily shelved that project. And so with that, I decided to work once again on Ran-Over Possum Man. But I didn't like that really long name he had. So I changed his name. He's now Superhero Man. I wonder if that's too close to Superman. If need be, I can just change the name again to Hero Man.
I left off at the beginning of level 3. There is still Stupidman on the NES, but I decided to work on the Game Boy game bec
GET THE EPISODE HERE: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/IqjOOafz7zb
The Game Club takes on The Machine, a dystopian sci-fi dark comedy for the Game Boy Color with surprising depth. Conor theorizes on how to keep hippies from turning into cannibals, Bart clarifies that we’re not watching a completely unrelated movie, and Nick embraces ethically compromised decision making.
Still need to play the game? Get it here: https://incube8games.com/collections/the-machine
Or check out a f
I tried again to get the sixth game in my Channel F Celery game working. I think I have it good now.
Mr. Celery is hanging on a rope crossing the five piranha-filled gaps. As you can see, a piranha jumps out randomly out of one of the gaps. Your job is to guide the celery to the other side a whole bunch of times while not getting bit by a piranha.
I found my Channel F multicart! This is basically what led me to continue work on this game. I originally tried to make a similar game,
While I was working on the game and watching it grow, it became apparent that the way I had it set up was not going to be the most efficient way I could do things. So I got some help from the Discord Game Boy programming and with their help, I think I have things ready to go good. The only thing I'd need to do is change the SWITCH_ROM() code, adding some more instances to make it point to the newly added code correctly as I put in some more levels.
I went through all 22 levels in the game s
With "Swat Those Flies" finished, I went back to the Ugly Uppity Umpire. I made a new level. But I still didn't like the title screen. So I decided to change it. It now looks like this:
Now I'm happy with the title screen.
I finally figured out how to make the bugs move behind the clouds. It should have been just a simple change for the CTRLPF register, but I changed it and then the scanline went crazy again. So I had to fix that too. And then I had to even out the clouds and make them uniform. That took about an hour or so.
One thing, though, if the flies move behind the clouds, the fly swatter has to as well. There is no way around that. Say, changing the player1 fly swatter to a missile or something. It wo
GET THE EPISODE HERE: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/7z2PTSaqSzb
Kevin Hanley, creator of NEScape! and co-host of the Assembly Line podcast, joins the Game Club to talk about his history as a developer, what he’s working on next, and why he thinks we’re in a “golden age” for NES homebrew.
Our NEScape! livestream from March 2022: https://youtu.be/xnHryQBMcyE
Kevin Hanley's website, where you can download many of his games for free: https://www.khangames.com/
Get NESc
A Homebrew Draws Near!
A blog series by @Scrobins
Episode 32: Crabbie Attack!
Introduction:
Playing a new game (hopefully) means we are seeing fun through the developers’ eyes. Hints of their own passions echo throughout the code, reflecting on other aspects of their personality that shapes the overall game. Across the Mario franchise turtles are generally enemies, but for other creators turtles might be the hero. Sometimes playing with those personal preferences can be
I worked a little more and I got this:
But as you can see, the fly sprite got bigger. Now I'm wondering if I should keep it like this wih the big sprites, or cloudless with the smaller sprites. I tried to put the two close clouds together to make one cloud, but a line was jagged so I kept it like this. What do you think?
As an experiment, I wondered whether I could put some sort of clouds in this game. I worked and got one. Then I went to sleep. I woke up and discovered for some reason the scanline dipped to 261 when the fly was going towards the bananas at the bottom of the screen. So I fixed that.
I even fixed a bug pertaining to the upper left corner cloud which was thicker than the other upper clouds. But I'm not going to keep these square clouds in because they're square. If I were to make them ro
Introduction
Yes, you read that correctly. Not PC games, but FLASH games. Those games you may have seen on various websites in the past that were playable on the Internet. Sites such as Newgrounds, Miniclip, Iragination, and Homestar Runner.
Flash was discontinued over a year ago, but despite that many Flash Games can still be played today. The Flash games from Iragination, the company behind various Mega Man Flash games such as Fireman: Incoming Storm and Fall of 21XX, are still play
I thought it was possible given the simplicity of the idea. But it took a few days to do it: I now have a steady 262 scanlines (on Stella).
I am going to quit programming for a few days because the heat wave is expected to begin tomorrow. And when it's hot, I call my room "the oven" because it's hot. I don't like being really angry and hot at the same time because it literally hurts. And I'm at a good stopping point now.
I don't know what else I can do with the game. I have ~170 bytes
How hard was this? At one point, I just decided to give up completely. My idea wasn't possible of having the bees move in a straight line. So then I thought, "Well, what if they moved in the same way as the files?" That was seven hours ago. And I worked for 7 hours and now I have this:
Most of the seven hours was spent trying to make the scanline at an even 262. When it's all done, I will put it in my Atari 2600 and see how badly it jumps if at all.
Bees stay on the screen for a
I am making a new Atari 2600 game. Keeping in the old tradition, I have decided that if I can fit all my plans in, it will be a 2k game. If I can't then I will have to bump the size up to 4k. The original goal is to see if I can make an enjoyable game using just 2k.
I was originally going to put this as part of "Going Bananas," but decided that it could stand on its own. Plus, I now have more room to work, whiddling away the 900 or so bytes I have left if I want to make it a 2k game.
T
Introduction
I like the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, both of which I watched in the Theater and bought on Blu-ray. I got some Sonic 2 Movie toys at McDonald's last year, and also got a poster. So naturally, I got excited about the new Super Mario Bros. movie. I remember seeing the first image/poster for it, which was full of Easter eggs and references to many of the games. I watched the Trailer videos. Some people were disappointed about Chris Pratt voicing Mario and sounding different than M
So I got back to working on Going Bananas for the Atari 2600.
I have an idea for the third and final game. My plan was to attempt to put in three simple games on one 4k Atari 2600 cartridge. The three games have one thing in common. Bananas. So my idea for the third game is you're guarding bananas from evil fruit flies that want to eat your bananas.
This is all I have so far. Nothing moves yet and the button does nothing yet. And yet I spent all of last night working on this. So w
GET THE EPISODE HERE: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/9zrci5Xpvzb
Nick talks to Francesco Bacchelli, the creative mind behind Game Boy developer Studio Loading. They discuss his inspirations, his approach to retro game development, and the positive aspects of working with a limited platform like the Game Boy. Hot on the heels of his first game Flying Arrows, Francesco is already moving forward with its sequel, Flying Arrows 2, and this time for a good cause: A portion of the funds rais
Today I made level 17 of Ugly Uppity Umpire.
Now I'm continuing to work on this and other things since it got cooler. But I am so bored. I guess I'll go through the Game Boy collection. I can't add to it because all the listings are either stuff I don't want or stuff that is too expensive on eBay. I don't know, life seems so hard at this point when all you are all the time are bored and sleepy.
I got bored, so I made a title screen for a Virtual Boy game. The trouble is, I don't know the goal of it is. I just made it because I was bored. If I were to make this a game, I would have to think of its premise. I was still bored so later I came back to it and added the pre-game screens (the warning, the VB screen test, and the set the pause for 15 minutes.) I added cloud motion. The clouds move from right to left over and over again. It is super hot in here. I don't know how I am going to ge
A Homebrew Draws Near!
A blog series by @Scrobins
Episode 31: GunTneR
Introduction:
Homebrew is brimming with tales of nostalgia and love letters to cherished games of developers’ childhoods. Though money changes hands, homebrew development isn’t particularly lucrative, and most brewers will tell you their work is done out of passion for the hobby. But some developers exude such an unfiltered, unadulterated joy in their wizardry, that watching them at work, figuring out
Well... not quite yet. While trying to get a complete Quiz Wiz cartridge set, which I still haven't done, I amassed a whole bunch of apparently the obligatory cartridges #1. I thought about what I should do with them and I came up with an answer: Make a cartridge #61. This was about two years ago. Off and on, I had been working on creating new questions. I was going to call it "Lovely Trivia." Then it dawned on me that I really should try to make a themed one. So I'm shelving the Lovely Trivia c
I am working on level 2 of Ran-Over Possum Man, my game I'm making for Game Boy. You can grab the latest version and play it here.
Stuff I did this morning? I put in a test museum for Ran-Over Possum Man. I designed a bunch of room types so they all link together. That is something I need to do when I design the final museum layout. The layout of a finished museum will be much bigger and include the room where the world's oldest raisin was. That is the room you need to go to before you can
