Scrobins

Please create a WTB thread for this

There’s a handful of PS1 homebrew, and an increasing amount of Saturn homebrew, though disc publications are rare. Dreamcast homebrew and physical releases are plentiful however.

I think @captmorgandrinker has that?

Added Jim & Dill: The Legend of Weed N' Stiff & Jim & Dill II: Bobson's Revenge for the NES, now available for pre-order.

Added Brookwood Pocket Tactics for the Gameboy/Gameboy Color, available for pre-order.

Added Cyber Mission, in development for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.

Added Mischief Castle, in development for the NES.

Added Lost Treasure of Lima for the Gameboy.

Good luck in your search! I recently found the Tanglewood soundtrack cart (with a full Collector’s Edition box), but I left a few feelers out that might still get back to me. If any come back with leads I’ll let you know. Regarding Eternalist, I’m also looking for this one. I reached out to one of the backers and they said the cart never materialized (at least for them). So I’m trying to find out if these even truly exist beyond their Kickstarter promise.

Latest episode is up, covering Flap Happy for the NES & Gameboy by Refresh Games!

I don’t know why I’m getting reports about this one. Stop pinging mods because you disagree with someone. This thread isn’t a flame war yet, but because you’ve deliberately pulled the staff in, anyone who does go over the line gets a warning, or if you’re one of the people who’s been told you’re on your last chance, behave. Everyone take a breath and try and engage in respectful discourse. I swear it used to exist somewhere.

A Homebrew Draws Near! A blog series by @Scrobins Episode 43: Flap Happy Introduction: I’ve covered a number of homebrew games made by veteran programmers with significant experience developing for modern platforms who are now channeling their nostalgia to bring something new to the consoles of their childhoods. These passion projects represent a bridge between the adult skills and modern gaming sensibilities of the developer now, and their inner child craving the chance to make their own game their way for their favorite console. And often as not, the idiosyncrasies of the developer seep into the mix, whether that means other interests or a particular sense of humor…or all the puns you can handle. But whether it’s chickens or wordplay, this game surely is nothing to bawk at. For this entry, I’m covering Flap Happy, a Roguelike platformer for the NES and Gameboy, developed by Ryan Carson aka Refresh Games. As of the time of this writing, the Kickstarter campaign has wrapped up and fulfillment will begin soon. The game’s demo can be downloaded here and future physical editions will be available through Mega Cat at a future date. It’s just the standard edition CIB art, the sky isn’t falling Development Team: Ryan Carson: programming James Gamble (Jayenkai): music Game Evolution: Flap Happy first settled into its roost on NESdev on December 22, 2017, then titled Flap Happy and Fancy Free, based on Flapadiddle by Jayenkai. Its Kickstarter campaign first hatched on January 26, 2024, with the help of perennial partner Mega Cat Studios. By the time the campaign was ready to leave the nest, 248 backers pledged nearly $19,000. Mixed into the feed were some tasty kernals for fans, like the game’s rom, cart, CIB, and limited-edition CIB for the NES, as well as a CIB for the Gameboy/Gameboy Color. Among the extras were the digital OST, poster, stickers, postcard, pins, keychain, diorama, decorative wooden cart, golden egg, and your name in the credits. In line with its theme, Flap Happy is collaborating with Rent the Chicken, an organization that offers people the opportunity to try raising chickens in their backyards for a trial period, providing them with the necessary equipment to do so, even allowing them to adopt, or hatch chickens so they can gain experience at all levels. The cluster fock limited-edition CIB Gameplay: Flap Happy describes itself as a Roguelike platformer. You play as Little Flappy, a carefree bird who inexplicably blacks out and wakes up in a dungeon rife with fireballs and spiked traps. You must work your way through 900+ levels of mazes, landing on all 5 platforms of each level in order to activate the exit platform that will allow you to proceed. Along the way are bonuses, such as fruit that scores you points (3 of which nets you an extra life), and each platform earns a bonus, while completing a level offers a speed bonus in itself. But don’t get your feathers in a bunch, the controls are very simple! Use the D-pad to turn and move, press the A-button to flap your wings, and press Start to pause if you ever need to catch your breath. Little Flappy in Spaaaaaace Review: Flap happy is a challenging bit of arcade fun, reminiscent of infinitely looping games from NES’ black box era. Despite its simple appearance, this game is aggressively tricky with many ways to die from stupid mistakes that will keep you glued to your screen out of spite. Offering myriad possible paths to each platform and countless strategies for success, the speed-running and high score possibilities of Flap Happy offer all manner of tournament challenges. Each level moves quickly, between the straightforward objective and the concentration needed to achieve it. There is also enough variation across levels, worlds, and the enemies that populate them to keep you engaged in light of the sheer number of levels contained within the game. The game’s graphics are simple, but retro charming. A host of colors provides a prettier arcade experience than any comparable NES game. The distinctiveness between Little Flappy’s sprite, enemies, powerups, and environments are sufficiently stark that for all the game’s color, it creates a degree of fairness that ensures the challenge never feels cheap. Meanwhile the game’s music offers cute bops, with different themes for each world that align with their respective vibes, ranging from computer to space. The beats are a gentle rhythm propelling you along, harkening back to arcade games like Joust and Balloon Fight, with a straightforward goal and the drive to get as far as possible. Interviews: Being interviewed can be intimidating, but Ryan was no chicken, even with hard questions he found the sunny side up in his responses. But is he a bird of a feather with other developers? Read on… Ryan Carson @RefreshGamesDev -Before we dive into Flap Happy, I would love to talk about you and your background. What first inspired you to become a homebrew game developer? What is your origin story? What is the story behind Refresh Games? Refresh Games came about shortly after I had closed my Web design business in 2016 and I needed a name that would continue on from it, I’ve been interested and thoroughly loved making games since being a child, learning BASIC on a Commodore +4 and later other languages, the best part was playing the games I’d made with friends, in particular making many versions of the light bikes bit in TRON, that passed many a lunchtime break in secondary school! It just sorta spiraled out from there to Direct X with Visual Basic, a few mobile games in Unity then back to Gameboy development in C and now, finally the NES! -Who are your influences? And whose work are you watching closely now? For Flap Happy? Mainly Jayenkai, his support through this project has been great. James “Jayenkai” Gamble I’m following a few people’s work on Twitter/X quite closely at the moment, but I’m most intrigued by the efforts of https://twitter.com/freeman_HAL that have gone into making an awesome caravan shooter called Habit! It looks like a really good, fun game. -How would you describe your design aesthetic, and what to you are the hallmarks of a game designed by you? In 3 words I’d say “challenging, simple, fun” I love the retro aesthetic and that’s come across in most of the games I’ve made, particularly in game jams. -What tools do you use to code and create? · Programmers Notepad to code · YY-CHR & Photoshop CS3 for creating tiles and sprites and quick prototyping · NESASM3 for compiling the code into a NES ROM · Nintendulator and FCEUX for playing and testing on the PC · Nintendulator seems to be more accurate frame timing and FCEUX has great debugging inside it so, it makes sense to use both. -At the heart of Flap Happy is its nature as a roguelike platformer, complete with 900 levels. How did you create so many, squeeze them all onto the cart, and ensure they didn’t feel repetitive? With procedural generation from a starting seed, so, in order to reference a level in the game I just need to ask it to generate a screen with way less code overall. There are some dupe levels inside the game all but by using different modes I could happily pick and choose which ones would fit into which game mode, keeping some control over it whilst keeping valuable code space usage low, turns out 32kb isn’t that much! -What inspired you to make this type of game? My love for the NES as a kid, it’s always been the one that I always wanted to make a game for. I also had gotten into Gameboy development before the NES so, the idea of making something that works as a game using the Black Box NES game space limits (32kb for code, 8kb for graphics). -What about chickens is so resonant that you wanted to make Flappy the protagonist of the game? (clucks loudly in your general direction) I have no idea (clucks again) ??? -What aspects of Flap Happy are you most proud of? That, after a few years it still holds up to the test of me still enjoying playing through it, which is a good sign. Also, when I showed demos to my friends earlier in development, they all seemed to enjoy it also, although some said it was a bit too tough which I’m okay with. Of course, it achieves one of my game dev life ambitions which is a pretty major thing, so, that’s really cool too! -What new challenges or surprises surfaced in developing Flap Happy? What lessons did you learn that you would like to share with the people who aspire to follow in your footsteps? Assembly language is like no other language I’ve learnt before, it was quite the struggle initially to figure out some things that’d I’d taken for granted in C, etc. I can remember at the very start of the project often failing to see the correct way to accomplish something so simple in C, but, for me, the struggle is worth it, and I look forward to releasing more games for the NES in the future -There has been a lot of support and enthusiasm for Flap Happy on Kickstarter. How does it feel to see so many people excited about the game? Amazing, I honestly went into this unsure if Kickstarter was the right thing to do but it really has been! In the run up I was equally nervous and excited, so it’s just been great to see the support for Flap Happy! Mega Cat have been fantastic throughout and helped get the word out there as well as assist greatly with my questions and asset creation to make the Kickstarter campaign look as great as it does. -Are there any other projects you have lined up on the horizon, NES or otherwise? Any dream projects? Your site mentions another game in the planning stages. Yeah, I want to get some more NES games over the line this year. Bee Happy would be good to get finished and should allow for some interesting co-op and versus modes. Again, it’s a fairly simple game, you gather pollen throughout each stage, avoiding obstacles along the way, finishing each stage off by returning to your hive, I’m more excited for the 2P versus mode though where one player controls Beesley and the second player has control over the enemies. If I can squeeze in a Gameboy port that would be cool also -Are there any homebrew games in development that you are excited to play? I really want to play Habit! I love shmups and have been playing a lot of 1942 of late so, I need to get a copy! I need to dig around for more arcade style games that are being released also. -I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me and share your experiences. Is there anything else you would like to tell readers and fans? Please check out Flap Happy on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/refreshgames/flap-happy-a-rogue-like-platformer-for-the-nes and, if you like, follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/RefreshGamesDev Where I’ll be doing my best to post regular updates on upcoming Nes and Gameboy games I’m working on Conclusion: Thanks for tuning in to this latest episode of the series that shares the stories behind the latest homebrews making their way to you. Are you flocking to your computer to buy Flap Happy? What homebrews are you eagerly looking forward to? Perhaps you’ll see it here soon when…A Homebrew Draws Near! Command?

I can work on a sliding scale

I am a lawyer, but leveraging it to weigh in on this thread any more than I’m about to is not worth it. I’ve tried to explain fraud was committed here, people who don’t know the law think that because there isn’t a specific law means that condones the behavior, but civil law provides for duties and responsibilities based on the representations people make to others. That creates legal liability.

And who openly admitted to cheating on his taxes.