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toma

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  • Birthday 10/08/1981

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  1. I have some EB and Alfonzo test carts done before the Limited Run campaign, just to make sure they worked okay and I was happy with the quality. I think if you're dealing with manufacturing you pretty much have to do that, it'd be irresponsible not to
  2. Thanks! I'm super excited to get these games back out there so people have a second chance at getting a cart. I made a few updates to the ROM versions over the years that weren't in the original production runs so it'll be nice to have those changes in there as well. For Alfonzo, you can replay levels if you missed out on a gold fish or secret exit, and getting a game over won't erase your gold fish count. I feel like those were the two biggest complaints about the original run of that game. For Eskimo Bob, I'm using the CN-ROM version with animated backgrounds, which only had a very limited physical release before (maybe 50 copies?). The original version also didn't let you see the real ending unless you beat it with a death count of under 100. I increased that to 1000 because I noticed a lot of people never got to see the real ending (not that it's that much different). Added the password to the game over screen too, which was a common request. I have had a few other releases with Limited Run but it's been contract work or licensed properties, so it's great to finally get a wider release for my original games. Who knows, if they sell well enough I might be able to justify a third game in the series, which I'd really love to do! I've actually been really busy on another licensed title that will be announced in about a month, so it'd be cool to follow that up with something original again.
  3. The biggest argument for your second issue would be cost. I self-released Eskimo Bob and Alfonzo's Arctic Adventure and they were much more limited than either of my LRG releases. I produced around 500 copies or each and neither one is available any more. I'd love to have more in stock, but being in Canada, making one-off carts is expensive so it makes more sense for me to buy materials in bulk. The demand isn't super high, so it just makes more sense for me to sell them digitally. Games released by a bigger company like LRG are actually way more available than games done at a hobbyist level. Galf was their first game and they didn't know how demand would be so they went with 2000 copies. Based on the sales of other homebrew games and the simpliciity of the title, you'd think that would be plenty, but it sold out within minutes. Mall Brawl was an open pre-order and it sold way more. I don't have the exact sales figures but I'm pretty sure it's a 5-figure number, so there are plenty of carts out in the wild. Thing is, demand and scarcity aren't always the same thing and a lot of it has to do with perception. Since it was released by Limited Run, people have the idea that Galf is my rarest game even though it sold 4 times as many carts as EB or Alfonzo. Maybe it's because it didn't get a digital release, but even accounting for digital sales, it really doesn't make that big a difference. After that initial release when LRG moved to a month of open preorders, I do think that's a much better model than they used for Galf. I think NES/Famicom is still a pretty niche market though, so I doubt larger companies will do more than a single production run of most games. Maybe things will change in the future, but I don't really know.
  4. Looking pretty cool. Just downloaded and played for a few minutes. One criticism I have is that the sprites are spawning at the left side of the screen for a split second as you scroll right which gets pretty distracting. Maybe hiding the leftmost column of 8 pixels with PPU masking would help cover that up a bit? Or alternatively, since scrolling only happens in one direction, make it so that a metasprite being displayed at both edges of the screen isn't rendered on the left side if part of it is visible on the right. Since it happens with every enemy that spawns, it's making the game feel more confusing than it should to me.
  5. I've always found LRG to be really up front and easy to deal with. Working with them has the advantage of having a bit of extra exposure outside of the regular homebrew scene as well which is nice. As far as porting Alfonzo's Arctic Adventure to Switch goes, I actually handled the actual port in-house myself while I was porting Mall Brawl, but LRG published for me as I didn't have approval from Nintendo to publish games myself at the time. After having Mall Brawl and Alfonzo published that may be changing though. If you're interested in doing a Switch port, I'm definitely down to talk about it. Alfonzo and Mall Brawl were both MMC1 as well so getting Witch n Wiz running on Switch using the same porting method shouldn't be too difficult.
  6. Personally, I consider "as-is" to be a coin-flip as to whether it's working or not. I would only buy something listed like that if I had a pretty good idea how to fix it myself
  7. Mall Brawl is getting a PS4 physical release through Limited Run Games! The Arcade Edition has kind of branched out from being a pure NES homebrew at this point, including enhanced graphics and audio. If you've ever seen a graphics pack for mesen, it's something like that I guess. Still the same NES game at its core, but spiced up to be a bit prettier looking. https://www.limitedrungames.com/collections/neo-frontpage/products/limited-run-420-jay-and-silent-bob-mall-brawl-ps4 https://www.limitedrungames.com/collections/neo-frontpage/products/limited-run-420-jay-and-silent-bob-mall-brawl-collectors-edition-ps4 It'll also be available digitally on PS4/5 and Xbox on May 20!
  8. Mall Brawl has been nominated for Canadian Game of the Year. Probably a long shot, but I think it'd be really cool to see a NES game win Game of the Year for 2020. The fact that it was on the radar enough to even get nominated is pretty crazy in itself to be honest. Anyways, you all know what to do!
  9. A bunch of Wisdom Tree games. Specifically King of Kings, Exodus, and Spiritual Warfare. The rest are basically unplayable to me, but since I grew up with these ones, they're classics in my eyes. Especially Spiritual Warfare, that's a hill I'm willing to die on.
  10. This was a really great read. It was super interesting for me to get everyone else's perspective on it. If anyone is curious about how this project came to be, I really encourage you to take a look at this!
  11. I doubt that they ported the entire game with all/most of the polish of All-Stars before beginning Super Mario World. More likely they just got the codebase running on the new system and went from there. Tons of sequels and followups are built on code from previous games just because it's quicker and more efficient than starting rom scratch each time. I started Alfonzo using the code from Eskimo Bob, Mall Brawl using code from Alfonzo, and a few new projects using modified code from Mall Brawl. It's pretty standard programming practice, especially when going into a similar project.
  12. There's a thread in Twitter suggesting that AVS firmware 1.10 should work for Mall Brawl. This could be why some users are having issues and some are not. I still haven't received my carts so I can't confirm but I will give it a shot when I can. *EDIT* Can confirm this fixed the issue for at least one other person. I encourage everyone to give it a shot instead of asking for replacement cartridges. If you need help downgrading the firmware, instructions are below. Just use 1.10 instead of the latest one. If a new firmware comes out that fixes it, then upgrading to that version is probably a better idea.
  13. This feels awfully familiar for some reason... May I suggest a giant robotic fly as a boss?
  14. "But before EA came along sports games were just toys" or something to that effect
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