toma

Just been thinking about good NES games that deserve sequels, or maybe not-so-good games with interesting characters that deserved a better chance to shine. Possibly even era-appropriate properties that never had a NES game. If it were possible to land a license to develop a sequel or spin-off to an existing franchise, what would you guys want to see? Asking for a friend. Examples of stuff that I'm thinking of: Good Games: Little Samson, Bucky O'Hare... Deserved Better: Karnov, Bad Dudes... Never got a NES game: He-Man, Thundercats... All of these are just examples, obviously...

Jay and Kevin have both been sharing info on social media, although Kevin got a bit confused about who actually developed the game. Working on sorting that out... Jay livestreamed the demo about a month ago and plans on streaming the full version. There are some other things in the works as well which should be cool.

I wish... Justin Woodward from Interabang did the rap. He's also in the trailer as the nerdy guy. He was awesome to work with, would definitely like to do it again. The NES cart is still technically unlicensed, although they approved the commercial for the NES version on the eShop, complete with a shot of the game going into a NES console, so I'm gonna count that as a blessing. I didn't get to talk to Kevin directly. There were some plans in the cards to possibly do something around GDC but the travel bans and cancellations kicked in and put a stop to that. Fingers crossed though, there might be something in the mix soon.

For those who don't know, Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl launches on Steam and Switch on May 7. With the digital release of Mall Brawl coming this Thursday, I thought I'd create a topic about it here. https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/jay-and-silent-bob-mall-brawl-switch/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1087440/Jay_and_Silent_Bob_Mall_Brawl/ As soon as I hear anything about the NES cartridges, I will relay that info here as well, although I'm a lot less in the loop with the physical version as that's being handled by Retro-Bit and Limited Run. I've been working a lot more closely with Interabang for the release of the digital versions so I can answer more questions about those, so long as I'm not violating any NDA or anything. It's actually been really interesting working with Nintendo especially as it's my first official release on a Nintendo console. Kind of cool after being a fan for my entire life to finally get to see things from the other side.

It may actually be easier for you to convert to metatiles before handling scrolling. That way you can create a routine that works with what you want instead of writing something, throwing it out, and writing it again. Writing a routine that draws a single metatile to the screen on each frame as you move forward is actually a pretty intuitive way to get started with scrolling as the timing works out pretty nicely. Each metatile is 16 pixels wide. The NES can display 16 metatiles wide and 15 metatiles high. That means if you scroll by one pixel, drawing at least one 2x2 metatile per frame will be fast enough to keep up with your movement. For vertical scrolling, draw the metatiles in rows. For horizontal, draw them in columns and skip every 16th frame. If you want to move faster, draw at least as many metatiles as you are advancing in pixels. That'll give you a basic scrolling engine to start out with. Just make sure to update the attributes as you go. If you're set on doing it with uncompressed levels, you can do it using the same logic, drawing rows or columns of tiles as you move. You'd need to draw 4 tiles for every pixel that you move forward, making sure to update attributes of course. Metatiles are just really convenient to work with when it comes to the attribute tables because they line up perfectly.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it says Jeesy Pat.

I've done a couple of GB mods in the past and they weren't all that difficult. I don't have any backlight LED panels anymore, otherwise I'd be willing to give it a shot. You'd basically just need to find out if you can peel the reflective layer off the back of the LCD. Then you slap in a polarization filter and add in the LED panel. Maybe try finding someone who's into Gameboy chiptune music? Those guys love their Gameboy mods. One of them might have an extra panel kicking around and be willing to give it a try.

If you have multiple systems that you don't mind experimenting on, it's possible that a non-biverted backlight mod might be similar to the Gameboy one if the LCD is constructed in a similar way. You'd basically just need to figure out where the best place to power the LCD is. I don't have one of my own to try it out, but I think that's the easiest route to explore.

There are definitely a lot of genres that, while well represented on the NES, have evolved and grown a lot in the years since. I find it really interesting when modern game design sensibilities are applied to new games developed for a classic system. For example, the NES has plenty of RPGs, but most are early Dragon Quest clones. It'd be really neat to see an RPG employ an ATB-style battle system or even a more modern feeling UI.

I definitely agree with using metametatiles on a per-area basis. Eskimo Bob and Alfonzo both used huge sets of 256 metametatiles for the entire game. For Mall Brawl I used smaller sets of varying sizes depending on what was required for the level and it really helped simplify things, especially when I wanted to make changes.

When my kid was 3, he saw Santa With Muscles. For the next 2 years, he called every Santa Claus that he saw Hulk Hogan. It was so hilarious that I never contradicted him and let him believe it. By the time he was 5 he had figured things out for himself. I never sat him down and said Santa wasn't real, he just came to that conclusion on his own. If a kid wants to believe in Santa I think that's fine, but I don't think it's right for parents to go to great lengths to lie to their kids about something only to set them up for disappointment a few years later.

If you're in a situation where you can afford to make a prototype cartridge of a complete game and would like to find a production run, Kickstarter is 100% the platform to use. Starting with a complete game gives people much more confidence that they'll actually receive the product.

16:40 is my record so far... and I spent way too much time playing this when I should be working

Care to share any gameplay video or screenshots?

I just mean if you are to compare stuff that's readily available on the market right now. An FPGA system is obviously more high-end in both cost and performance to a cheaper, mass-produced console that you can grab on Amazon. That's who the warning is for. If someone wants to play on a chip-for-chip 1993 Taiwanese Famiclone, they likely know more about the quality of their own system than anyone else. For the rest of us though, these are edge case scenarios. 95% of everyone else just wants to know if it'll run on their Retron or Retro Trio.

I don't think "high end" is meant to be snobby. The AVS and NT could both considered "high end" because they cost a lot more than a $50 NOAC clone. Cheap systems give cheap results. I think most people understand this.

I think this is a big part of it. There's a kind of perception that making a NES game is somehow "too hard" for modern programmers to do, so if you are doing it, that you must be "cheating" somehow. And of course, once people can figure out how you "cheated", they can then devalue your work. Maybe I'm being a bit cynical, but there are definitely people with that kind of attitude out there. Honestly, any time a tool is created that makes a difficult task "easy", these kind of people are going to pop up. "Was this cartoon made in Flash?" "Was this game made in Unity?" It's tough to avoid, and whether intentional or not, it creates tiers of sorts in peoples' minds. These type of assumptions also affect some people differently than it does others. Someone making a game or demo just for the fun or challenge of it may not be bothered as much, but if you're running a Kickstarter or doing professional contract work, you really need the public to believe that you are creating a quality product with value. If the public at large decides that your work has no value, it's going to really hurt your bottom line. So far it hasn't really been an issue, but it's also hard for it not to be a worry every time you're asked the question. I think that Micro Mages has been a great thing for the NES scene, not just because of the game, but because of that Youtube video about its development. I've pointed to it a few times when asked how I make NES games, telling people that I've used similar techniques when developing my own games. Rather than make it look like an easy process, it highlights a lot of the critical thinking and problem-solving skills needed in order to fit a full game into a small amount of memory. That sort of thing impresses people and gives a much better impression than the idea that anyone can do it using an "easy tool". It's a tough line to balance, because this scene definitely toes the line between the hobbyist and the indie developer quite a bit. I'm not trying to be some sort of gatekeeper or anything like that, because we all started as hobbyists, but the fact that some of us are able to actually turn this into a real business is extremely exciting as well. We've got NES games being published on modern consoles, new NES games based on licensed properties, and it's all coming from within this scene. It really is an amazing thing when you think about it.

It's a Nintendo property. Look at any other unofficial remake of a Nintendo game and see what happens. If Nintendo knew who made it, the C&D letter would be dropped on them before you can blink.

There is definitely a bit of a stigma when developing new NES games because of hacks. During the Alfonzo Kickstarter I had people asking if it was a hack of SMB3. Same thing with Mall Brawl and River City Ransom. And this is the other question that's becoming common, and I find it's usually used with a bit of derision. The thing with NESMaker among people who don't know any better seems to be that people thing you can essentially throw a bunch of graphics into a program and *BANG*, there's a game. I'm certainly not suggesting that this is true by any means, but since's a fairly new product and it was heavily advertised as "no experience required", there are always going to be a certain set of people who discredit games made with it as taking less effort. I feel like if a random guy on Twitter asks me if Mall Brawl is an RCR hack or made with NESMaker and I respond by saying that it was coded using "a heavily modified version of the codebase for Alfonzo's Arctic Adventure" that it just adds to confusion. The game isn't a hack of Alfonzo, and it's also not built using some tool also used to create Alfonzo. It shares some physics and collision detection routines, bankswitching code, compression for level data, and other stuff like that, but it is very much its own entity. It's just way easier to say it was coded "from scratch", and I don't feel that's dishonest. After all, it's based on code that I created from scratch myself to begin with, so for all intents and purposes, it's the same thing. Sure there are more complex issues like whether or not something was programmed in C or assembly, or if you got your start by using a tutorial, or if a library like Famitone was used, but in the greater programming community at large things like that are universally accepted as standard and for most people would still fall into the "from scratch" category.

Reusing your own engine is pretty much just industry standard, going way back to the NES days. Capcom certainly did it with Mega Man and the Disney games. Castlevania has been mentioned as another example. I think we really need to be clear on what an "engine" in this sense is. In many cases it's basically an underlying framework. Eskimo Bob, Alfonzo, and Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl could all be said to use the same "engine" in one sense because they were all built from something that grew from the original Eskimo Bob game. At the same time, nearly every subroutine in both Alfonzo and especially Mall Brawl has gone through various reworks and optimizations to the point where they hardly resemble the original code base anymore. I'm sure most other games created by the same developer have gone through similar transformations as well. In this case, what could be described as a game engine is actually more like a very malleable codebase, manipulated into different things for different purposes. There are no custom tools or software being used besides the standard stuff like YY-CHR, and the only external library would be something like Famitone. Other games are made with a much more rigid engine. I remember reading that Wisdom Tree used two engines to create all of their games, and it shows when you play them. There's the Bible Adventures engine and the Exodus engine. All of their games fall very neatly into one of those two categories, so it's clear that some type of custom in-house creation tools were used in these games' development. I'd consider games like this to be using an engine in a more modern sense, if that makes any sense. I may also just be ranting because I'm half asleep.

I also have the Pro+ and it's been amazing. I absolutely love it.

Is the the older, more accurate looking Pro, or the newer, less infringing one? I have both an SFC themed old one and a GB themed newer one, and the D-pad on the new one is quite noticeably better feeling.

Mine showed up today. Haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but looking forward to it! I'm gonna try using dual dogbones and see how it feels.

Just a tip - applying for Xbox One development wasn't a particularly difficult process and the turnaround time seems to be pretty quick. From what I hear, Nintendo tends to hold out on Switch devkits until you've had a game published on a rival platform first. I highly encourage anyone interested in getting more new NES games on Switch to try Xbox One first, just due to ease of access for indie devs.

You can also just attach the left NES controller and use a regular joy con for the right side. It fixes the weird A/B orientation issue. Looks like an abomination but it's not uncomfortable for playing retro games.