Scrobins

Added Flap Happy for the NES & Gameboy, now live on Kickstarter!

Newest episode is up, covering Oratorio for the NES!

A Homebrew Draws Near! A blog series by @Scrobins Episode 41: Oratorio Introduction: Many of the games I’ve written about draw inspiration from classic games of yesteryear, sometimes while reaching into modern generation technology and gaming sensibilities to bring something new to the cartridges we pop into our very old consoles. Rarer though is the developer who ports an entire modern genre to a modern console, highlighting how the limits of the NES lie much further than we thought them to be. The imagination is the strongest breaker of barriers. It excites homebrew fans thrilled to experience something different, but it also introduces fans of the genre, otherwise used to playing such games on modern hardware to explore the wizardry in their midst on circuits of old. For this entry, I’m covering Oratorio, a rhythm action rail shooter for the NES by John Vanderhoef, and published by Premium Edition Games. As of the time of this writing, the game can be downloaded on John’s itch.io page here, and the physical game can be ordered from Premium Edition Games here. Standard CIB edition, plus challenge card & dog tag Development Team: @johnvanderhoef (John Vanderhoef): programming, design, story @Raftronaut (Jordan Davis): sound/music design Kacper Wozniak: art Anokolisa: art RaccoonTruck: art Quintino Pixels: art Game Evolution: Oratorio was originally developed for the NESmaker Byte-Off III competition in 2022, where it won the Wombat Award, given to the most surprising, unique, or unexpected game submitted. Following the competition, John set up an itch.io page for Oratorio as early as September 1, 2022 (which is what the site states as the game’s publication date). However, John began to truly tease the game soon after on October 19, 2022. Our feeds were soon shot up with more tidbits of gameplay and evolving box art until the game’s pre-order opening through Premium Edition Games on September 11, 2023. Up for grabs were two options: a regular edition CIB and a limited-edition CIB. While both offerings included the CIB, and Premium Edition Games’ typical challenge card and dog tag goodies, the limited edition came with a silver cart and a foil box. As of the time of this writing, fans eagerly await the game, but pre-orders will be fulfilled soon. Stage Select screenshot from Oratorio Gameplay: Oratorio describes itself as a rhythm action rail shooter. You play as Oratorio, a hacker working with Save Organic Life (SOL) on a mission to steal back the copy-protected DNA hoarded by the powerful mega corporation Nu-Li. Nu-Li has made life itself a luxury good in a world falling apart due to climate change. Only in fighting back can you recover what’s been locked away by the few so the many can have it back. Through this game, your actions create the music, with the recommendation that you press the B-button to the beat. Use the D-pad to move the cursor, hit the B-button to shoot, and hit the A-button to use a bomb. Screenshot from Oratorio Review: Oratorio is a playful challenge of colorful coordination. The game plays like Guitar Hero or Rock Band (or D-Pad Hero for you homebrew deep cut fans) if the notes fought back. A game like this could be especially tricky on an older console, with a limited framerate, color palette, and controls, but John is a practiced hand who has adopted the rhythm action rail shooter to the NES quite well. The game, though difficult, never feels unfair with enemies that are clearly distinct from their environments and ample time to line up your targets. Stages don’t feel tedious either, as the areas draw you closer to their respective bosses with an ever-quickening, tension-building pace. The game’s art design is trippy, presenting a mesmerizing bouquet of color that feels like being inside the world of Tron. These graphics aren’t just in service to portraying a shooter, it is clear that the story revolves around nature and being inside a computer world, as though this game was adapting a modern day remake of Hackers, but retaining the deliciously cheesy 90s CGI. I mean, everyone else is doing reboots Meanwhile the game’s music, if you are skilled enough to make it come forth, offers playful romps that propel you forward. As a proper entry in the genre, you quite literally get out of the soundtrack what you put in, but as long as you try to bop along to the beat, there is something to enjoy while you hack the planet. Interviews: I hacked John’s brain to get the real scoop on Oratorio, and connected with Jeff Wittenhagen of Premium Edition Games to steal all the juicy stories for you. Read on for more… John Vanderhoef @johnvanderhoef -Before we dive into Oratorio, I would love to talk about your background. What first inspired you to become a homebrew game developer? What is your origin story? That’s a long story. The first video game I remember playing was probably Super Mario Bros. on the NES. The NES was, subsequently, my first ever game console as well. My ur-console, if you will. So, I’ve always had a certain affinity for the machine, despite moving very quickly, after about three years or so, into the SNES era like most people in the early 90s. I’m still not sure how, but I ended up misplacing my childhood NES sometime in the mid-90s, and I wouldn’t own an NES again until 2012. I was in a PhD program at the time at UC-Santa Barbara, and I was taking a media history course. I decided to write about NES homebrew developers for my seminar paper, since I had a passing knowledge of some of the work and was curious to find out more. As part of my research, or perhaps as just an excuse, I bought a refurbished NES off of a user on what was at the time NintendoAge. I also picked up Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril. In any case, I wrote my seminar paper and, as part of my dissertation, returned to the subject in 2014 where I expanded on it and turned the paper into a chapter on NES homebrew as part of a larger project on the creative economy of indie game development. It’s at this time that I met and interviewed people like Paul Molloy (Infinite NES Lives) and Derek Andrews (Legends of Owlia). It was also around this time that I started to experiment with game-making as a hobby. By the time I finished my dissertation in 2016, I had already fiddled with software like Inform 7, Twine, RPG Maker and Unity. But even then, I never thought I would actually be able to make an NES game. At the end of the day, I’m a creative writer at heart, not a programmer. To try to make a terribly long story shorter, everything changed with the announcement of the NESmaker Kickstarter in, I think, 2018 or so, by Joe Granato. I ended up backing the Kickstarter since I was eager to try making games using a variety of software, but even after the initial program became available, I was too busy with work and Unity projects to give it a try. Plus, I just didn’t have an idea for an NES game yet. That inspiration would come in December 2018. Some friends and I were having what used to be an annual NES MULE tournament – MULE being the classic sci-fi economic simulator game. For those unfamiliar, it’s kind of like a digital board game. It was really innovative for its time and was one of the few truly great four-player experiences on the NES port. Not to be an ass, but MULE is where it began?? Prior to these tournaments, I never had any particular relationship with MULE myself, but it gave us all an excuse to hangout and drink once per year. Anyway, at one point during that extended play session in December 2018, I joked about making an NES game from the perspective of the Wampus, a creature players can hunt in that game after finishing any necessary work during their turn. I always saw the Wampus as an abused and bullied creature in the game and imagined a scenario where the Wampus could enact revenge on the alien settlers or colonists that players control. My throwaway joke took hold of my mind and wouldn’t let go. So, in January 2019, I began development on what would become my first NES game, Wampus, by finally installing NESmaker, following the video tutorials, and befriending the development community in that space. It took several months, but eventually I was hooked. As a result, except for a few side projects, all my development work between 2019 and 2023 has been for the NES. It’s been…an almost surreal journey. -Who are your influences? And whose work are you watching closely now? This is a difficult question to answer. I look to different influences depending on the game project I’m working on. For instance, for Wampus, I was drawing from games like The Legend of Zelda, but also thinking about how to streamline that quest to be something players can fly through in less than an hour. For Wart Worm Wingding, I was inspired by Bubble Bobble and Dig Dug. For Bat Lizard Bonanza, I looked at games like Gradius, Parodius, and other NES shmups. For Leggite Luta Livre, I looked at Double Dragon, and Nemulesis is nothing if not a love letter to Contra and the entire run-and-run genre. So, my influences are a case-by-case basis. I am a student of video game history, and I’ve been playing games continuously since around 1989. I take broad inspiration from every generation of games. Some big influences for me, overall, are the Oddworld games from Oddworld Inhabitants and Lorne Lanning, Shigeru Miyamoto’s work, obviously, Fumito Ueda, the designer of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian, the narrative work in BioShock or The Last of Us – the list goes on. I like games that can inspire or evoke myth and folklore, games that invite us into alien or captivating narrative worlds, and games that invite players in with simple mechanics and then build off those mechanics in novel and exciting ways. Most recently, for Oratorio, my biggest influences were the games of Tetsuya Mizuguchi, specifically Rez and Child of Eden. I try to keep abreast of what’s happening in video games across generations, across genres, across platforms, etc. I might have a Meta Quest controller in my hand one minute and an NES controller in my hand the next. I’ll jump between my Analogue Pocket, my AVS, my PC, my VR headset, and my Switch quite often. There’s so much cultural production in the games space right now – from amazing hobbyist craft to jaw-dropping commercial indie work to the bombastic AAA space which can still manage to wow me now and again – it’s very easy to just keep your nose within even just the NES dev scene and have more than enough to look forward to. But I try to take a peak at everything happening, even if that’s literally impossible today. -How would you describe your design aesthetic, and what to you are hallmarks of a game designed by you? First, while my design changes project to project, I approach most projects from a narrative-first sensibility. I know that sounds silly when you look at some of my NES games. But like I said before, I’m a writer first and foremost. If I can’t crack the nut of what the story is, if I can't imagine the world and characters and stakes, I can’t get excited about building the game, even if the mechanics have very little to do with the narrative shell or framing of the game. That’s just how I work. So, in a broad sense, a hallmark of a John Vanderhoef game is the DNA of storytelling. And to add to that, I would say either a world–building sensibility or a poetic sense of intimacy – and sometimes both in rare cases. Second, my games have a minimalist approach to mechanics. Part of this is to streamline player onboarding and to create very straightforward, but engaging, interactive experiences. The other part of this, however, is probably because I’m not a very good programmer, despite my years of experience at this point. And since I don’t have the luxury of working with one closely, I try to keep my designs simple enough to be executable. Third, as I already hinted at above, I try to create bite-sized experiences that go out of their way not to waste a player’s time. I like letting players jump into the game as quickly as possible. If I include cinematic screens, I make them skippable with a button press. Like many adults, I find myself always busy, so when I get time to play games, I want games that respect my time. Don’t make me sit through your dialogue. If it’s captivating, I’ll read it. Otherwise, let me skip it. Don’t overburden me with tutorials. If I want to know how to play the game, give me the option for the tutorial or I’ll seek it out in the manual or online. Just give me the meat of the thing as quickly as possible. Take the leash off and let me go. These are things I want as an adult player, so this philosophy is woven into all of my games. For instance, you can go from starting up Oratorio to rocking out in any of the levels in less than 10 seconds. I assume. I haven’t timed it or anything. Fourth, and finally, despite not being a trained artist, I try to imbue my games with aesthetically pleasing visuals. That doesn’t mean they have the best pixel art. Far from it. But they are pleasing on the eyes – or on my eyes, at least – and have distinct looks. I’ve improved a lot as a pixel artist over the last four years, but I’ve also gotten really good at mixing the pixel art from different artists to create a cohesive whole. Now, not everybody might agree with this point. I’ve even been told one or two of my games are ugly. I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Fifth, and finally, most of my games have something bigger to say about society or culture or life. They are about things. Even something silly like Wampus. Games like Oratorio, if players look at the story, are very much concerned with some of the most pressing issues of our time. Screenshot from Wampus -What tools do you use to code and create? My primary developer environment for NESdev is NESmaker. I use Notepad++ to write the asm. I often use the NESmaker pixel editor to draw or edit art, but I also use aesprite. In addition, I use software like Gimp and NESst, among others. I try to find a workflow or pipeline that works for me. That’s incredibly important for me. If I don’t have a clear workflow I can slip into when I’m super tired or even distracted, progress slows to a halt. Wish I had more revelations to share beyond that. But once I find something that works, I tend to stick to it. -You’re also known for your Muleniverse series of games. How has this project compared to working on that series? After I moved on from the Muleniverse, which will always have a special place in my heart, I made a game called Orebody: Binder’s Tale, a kind of spiritual successor to Nemulesis but one that takes place in a completely original sci-fi world. I’m still very proud of that game, despite it maybe not connecting with many people. Orebody is also a universe I plan to make many more games within, perhaps just not for the NES. But after Binder’s Tale, I was in between projects and talking with Jordan Davis (developer of Space Raft and Storied Sword), who has been the composer on all of my NES games since Leggite Luta Livre. I asked if he would be interested in collaborating on a Byte-Off 2022 entry – a kind of NESdev compo for the NESmaker community. I was thinking about an NES game where everything the player did contributed to the soundscape. Of course, after consulting with Jordan, it was clear that building something like that would be incredibly difficult given how the NES sound channels work. Luckily, a NESmaker user – Kasumi, I think – had previously shared a method to mute and unmute individual sound channels. CutterCross might have helped me with this, too. I honestly can’t quite remember. I used this concept to develop a system where players would unmute different sound channels through specific actions: firing the projectile, hitting an enemy, etc. However, the REALLY BIG challenge was how to compose a song that would work with players randomly unmuting, very briefly, different sound channels within it. That’s where Jordan worked his magic. I’m going off the rails here, though. I guess I just wanted to share the origins of Oratorio to get at how working on it was so different for me. Every other game I had made previously was based on some preexisting template, some game genre already established on the NES. With Oratorio, I was committed to imagining what Mizuguchi’s Rez might have been like on the 8-bit NES. So, I had to kind of invent the thing myself, while collaborating with Jordan to make the music and rhythm aspect of it work. In many ways, it was exciting to be charting new ground, but it also was a big challenge for me, despite having several titles under my belt at this time. -At the heart of Oratorio is its rhythm-oriented play. Did you find it challenging to program a game with precise gameplay elements for the NES, given Oratorio draws inspiration from games on more modern platforms? I find programming any game challenging. Some experienced NESdevs might either laugh at that or nod in agreement. But the smoke and mirrors of Oratorio – the trick, if you will – is that it doesn’t rely on precise timing. It’s much more dynamic. Part of the design ethos was to create a system that didn’t necessarily punish players for playing the game how they wanted. As a result, there’s no correct rhythm to the game, no exact moment when players should be firing or hitting enemies. They can just experiment and find a shooting rhythm that sounds best to them. The idea is for players to get lost in the interplay between the shooting objectives in the game and the resulting music that explodes from the screen as a result. Once again, I have to hand it to Jordan. He composed the only kinds of songs that work in this scenario. While a basic drum beat is always playing, you can unmute the other two sound channels at any time and it’s always complementary rather than jarring or discordant. Something to do with the use of scales, maybe? If I’m not a particularly talented coder, I’m somehow an even worse musician, if you can believe it. Now, unfortunately, this “freedom” has alienated some players. They ask, “Am I playing right?” or “How am I supposed to be playing?” My answer is always, find a firing rhythm that works for you. And then just allow yourself to be lost in the syNESthesia of it all. Mizuguchi designed Rez and Child of Eden – and even Tetris Effect – to create a sense of synesthesia, a multi-sensory experience where the interplay between gameplay, music, rumble, and even the player’s own mind/body all blend together, creating a kind of zen zone. I’m not claiming Oratorio achieves that milestone entirely, but part of the pleasure in the game, for me, is being able to just slip into the musical experience and zone out. In many ways, as a result, the game feels a bit like an interactive album. Screenshot from Child of Eden for the PS3 -What elements are crucial for a good rhythm action rail-shooter? Well, there’s two approaches one might take. The first approach requires precision timing that forces or encourages the player to fire their projectile at specific times or gives them a small window to hit enemies. We might think of traditional rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero, or even the NES homebrew variations like Hyperbeatz or D-Pad Hero. It’s designing the world/playspace and interactive possibilities around the music, in other words. But as I said previously, Oratorio isn’t a precision rhythm game. Instead, it adopts a free-style approach to player actions. The soundtrack is designed so that certain channels can be unmuted at any time and it will just work in terms of sounding appropriate. What I didn’t want to do was create a game where players felt punished if they weren’t playing “correctly” or where they had an inferior sonic experience for making “mistakes.” In Oratorio, there are no mistakes. Hell, there’s an entire “No Fail” mode for people who just want to play the game like an interactive album without being worried about dying. Players can shoot when they want and just enjoy the dynamic soundtrack as they attack enemies or hit bosses or destroy power-ups to collect them. Every player might fire at a slightly different rhythm. I always recommend that players find a rhythm that sounds best for their ears. To get back to the heart of the question, however – what’s crucial, to me, is to reward players instead of punishing them. To link player actions to sonic and aural rewards, and to create a sense of unity between the mechanics of the game and the dynamic soundtrack. Rez and Child of Eden have a much more sophisticated approach to this design problem, but I was working both within the limitations of the NES and my own limitations as a programmer. Outside of that, I tried to create varied environments that expressed a sense of pseudo-3D but also a unique aesthetic and beauty all their own. Area 1 is based on a minimalist, pared back aesthetic where a digital hallway slowly forms around the player as they progress, at times even resembling sound waves. Area 2 has a spider and insect aesthetic where the area’s boss slowly descends as the background gets covered in webs and the track goes from sparse to filled out as players progress. Area 3 is an underwater aesthetic that goes from being made of binary code to an undersea current tunnel full of fish and coral. Area 4 is inspired by Japanese zen gardens and passes through four seasons before reaching a crescendo with cherry blossom petals streaming across the player’s view. Area 5 leans into an alien geometric aesthetic – I was going for very much non-human – and transforms and grows in its own unique way. Things should feel good, sound good and look good in a rhythm action rail-shooter, following the mold set by Rez. I was also always striving to achieve a sense of synesthesia. At times, I feel the game accomplishes that, despite not having force feedback support as a third level of sensation. -How did you connect with Jordan Davis, Kacper Wozniak, Anokolisa, RaccoonTruck, and Quintino Pixels? What was the working dynamic like across your collaboration? I first encountered Jordan Davis on the NESmaker forums. But I didn’t actually become good friends with him until Frank Westphal reminded me that Jordan lived in Milwaukee. For various reasons, I moved from Long Beach, CA back to Milwaukee, WI during the COVID-19 pandemic. I reached out to Jordan and we sparked up a friendship. After he agreed to be the composer on my third NES game, we’ve worked together ever since. And again, I can’t imagine anybody else pulling off the songs necessary to make Oratorio work. Jordan creates music faster than anybody I know. And he has an incredible ear. He also has a knack for taking my rambling descriptions of what I envision and composing original tracks that somehow nail the assignment. He’s a bit of a chiptunes (and musical) genius. So yeah, great guy, and a great guy to work with. I reached out to Kacper Wozniak, a Polish pixel artist (at least I think he’s in Poland), after encountering some of his work on the Itch.io asset marketplace. I purchase a lot of my pixel art on that marketplace and then adapt it to work in specific projects. For all non-artists who might be reading this, the Itch.io marketplace is a great place to look for visual assets. I can sometimes externalize what’s in my head in pixel art form, and I’m always getting better at doing this, but often I need some help in creating the full visual landscape for an entire game. In any case, I reached out to Wozniak and hired him to create more bespoke enemy pixel art for Oratorio based on an asset package he had already created. The others you mentioned are other pixel artists with assets I purchased on the Itch.io asset store. They each have very small bits in the game that helped bring various areas together visually, even if it’s a small detail. I dig all of their work and recommend them to anybody looking for visual assets. Unlike the majority of my other games, however, the majority of the background art in Oratorio is of my own creation. I just burrowed small elements from existing paid assets for additional art that was needed. Like all of my projects, Oratorio is a chimera, but one I think blends together quite nicely. -How did you connect with Premium Edition Games, and how has working with them been? I think I first met Jeffrey Wittenhagen of Premium Edition Games at Midwest Gaming Classic in November 2021. Maybe? I was showing a very early demo of Orebody: Binder’s Tale there at the time. It was the first MGC since COVID. In any case, Jeff reached out early in 2022 and asked whether I was looking for a publisher for Binder’s Tale. It just so happens that I was. So, we very quickly became partners. Premium Edition Games puts a lot of heart into the physical editions they release, although they work mostly on Switch. Binder’s Tale was their first NES release. But I was impressed with how the packaging turned out. One of my best friends, Milwaukee-based artist Matthew Warren Lee, created an original oil painting that became the cover art for Binder’s Tale. Premium was able to incorporate that art into the release and put together an overall package that feels authentic and beautiful. They also helped me reach a larger audience than I ever would have alone. As many learn once they start gamedev, the hardest part of the process is often not making the game at all. It’s getting people to know about and care about it. It helps to have a concentrated community like NES homebrew fans, but as you can see by the wildly different coverage and sales of some homebrews over others, it’s still all about a media and promotional strategy. People can’t fall in love with what they don’t know exists. In any case, as a result of working with Premium and some other partners, like Nami Tentou, Orebody: Binder’s Tale became my most “successful” game to date. The folks at Premium are also just generally peppy and have a genuine love for retro and indie games. They are at most retro game conventions around the country, so many people reading this can probably attest to their friendly attitudes if they’ve ever chatted them up at their tables. If the name Nami Tentou sounds familiar, it’s because they’re behind this exciting project -Ever since my first episode, M-Tee planted this idea in my mind that a game’s protagonist, who serves as both the player's point of immersion in the game as well as a reflection of its designer. What was the intention behind Oratorio’s design, do you identify with Oratorio and SOLs’s cause? I purposefully left the design of the physical character of Oratorio mostly absent from the game. Players only control a little pulsating computer cursor during gameplay, after all. Now, there is a hint at Oratorio perhaps being female or female-identifying in the game’s story section, but I didn’t put that image in there as necessarily representative of Oratorio. Instead, it’s more of a hint or tease, if anything. Just a general cyberpunk hacker type. Oratorio could be anybody. That said, I would say that the politics and existential concerns of the game are very much in line with my own. It’s a game that is very engaged with some of the most pressing problems in our world today, problems that affect everybody. Global warming and climate change. The mass extinction of species. Surveillance. Artificial intelligence. The growing power and influence of multinational tech conglomerates. These are issues everybody should be concerned about. As mentioned previously, many of my games are engaged in social issues and a critique of specific ideological persuasions. Of course, they can all be enjoyed regardless of one’s personal beliefs; however, if people look into any of them, they all have something to say. -What aspects of Oratorio are you most proud of? I’m proud of the look of the game, given that it's the visual product of many different artists. I’m proud of the dynamic soundtrack thanks to the base code from Kasumi and the unique compositional work of Jordan. And I’m proud of the unique experience it offers NES players. I sometimes feel like I make games for me, and I’m often befuddled when others do not have the same experience of playing them. I’ve already seen that with some players of Oratorio, even as I’ve seen others disappear into it the same way that I do. One of my favorite moments was at Midwest Gaming Classic 2023 when a kid who was about 12 years old sat down at a demo station for Oratorio and proceeded to play through the entire game, in its current form, over a 60-minute or so period. That kid just connected with the game the way I hope most people do when they sit down with it. There’s almost nothing else like Oratorio on the system. The one game that comes close, which is a game Fei at Broke Studios pointed out to me, is Otocky for the Famicom Disk System. I had never heard of the game before he mentioned it to me, and sure enough, it’s doing some really interesting things as far as music shooters go, especially for 1987. So, ultimately, I’m proud for having created a really unique addition to the NES library, especially since it will be the last NES game I develop for quite some time. -What new challenges or surprises surfaced in developing Oratorio? What lessons did you learn that you would like to share with the people who aspire to follow in your footsteps? I’ve shared most of the challenges in answers to other questions. Mostly, the game I had in mind just presented a number of design challenges, not necessarily for the NES itself, but for me as somebody with limited programming skills. I had to solve the dynamic music activation problem. I had to try to squeeze pseudo-3D graphics out of the system with limited programming and art skills. I had to make compromises with pseudo-scaling of enemies because of bespoke drawing code I was using to keep the game from slowing to a crawl based on the bloated NESmaker base code. In other words, I would have ideally wanted more versions of my games enemies to create a better sense of scaling and depth. But I had to compromise on that to achieve more varied enemy movements along with the other concerns I just mentioned. I had to figure out a way to spawn waves of enemies, keep track of which wave the player is on, and basically crack the nut that is the core game loop of – destroy several enemy waves and then warp to the next section of the level. As most experienced NESdevs will tell you, it’s all about variables and timers. And my solutions are far from elegant. But they work. They get the job done. Every one of my games forced me to learn new things, but I had to do the most “original” problem-solving and work on Oratorio, just because there wasn’t a template to adopt and work from. The lessons, if there are any, is to understand exactly what output you want to achieve, make sure that output is possible given the constraints of the NES, and then just start solving each problem, one after the other, making compromises where you must, until the design is more or less implemented in one form or another. Then polish the hell out of it, if possible. It’s funny, of course, because we all have those problems we spend weeks on that another developer might have figured out in less than an hour or even 10 minutes. So, the other lesson is, if it’s not already glaringly obvious, don’t be afraid to reach out to the NESdev or NESmaker community for help if you need it. While there are some prickly people – that’s any community – the vast majority are warm and generous. -There has been a lot of support and enthusiasm for Oratorio since its pre-order launched on Premium Edition Games. How does it feel to see so many people excited about the game? Has there been? I mean that honestly. I really don’t know. I know some of my usual supporters and NES homebrew enthusiasts pre-ordered a copy. But I don’t know the numbers specifically. But I love them to death for it. This game means a lot to me, and their support means just as much. But I often don’t hear directly from players or purchasers. In fact, I’ve gotten very little feedback on any of my games. Maybe the occasional troll. It can feel very isolating. I only go on developing because I’m driven by the creative satisfaction it brings me personally. Sometimes it feels like a sickness. I don’t know. Maybe other creatives feel the same way. I always hope people like what I make, that some even come to love the games the way I do. But it’s just hard for me to ever tell. I know a lot of creators go through bouts of depression when they finish projects. I’m not immune to that. But it isn’t the project being over that does it for me. It’s the void of not knowing if anybody else even cares a lick about it. Because that’s the goal when making the thing, besides pleasing myself. The titillation I designed into the thing, that gets me when I play – I want others to feel that same tingle, to get that same tickle in their pleasure center. Sometimes I feel like I’m the best in the world at making games for John Vanderhoef, but maybe not so great at making games for everybody else. So, if you’re right, that there is genuine support and enthusiasm for Oratorio, it feels good. And I would offer all of those people my sincere gratitude. And I hope they enjoy the game. Grab a physical copy or go grab the ROM on my Itch page. -Are there any other projects you have lined up on the horizon, NES, or otherwise? Any dream projects? I’ve now made seven NES games – eight if you count a small box-pushing game I did as an Orebody side story game. I tend to work fast and overzealously when in the middle of a project. I’m not a perfectionist, and I have literally dozens of game ideas for all kinds of platforms. I’m ready to move on from NES dev for the time being. The next project out of my studio, Orebody Inc., will be another Orebody project. And it’s going to be a Gameboy game. The game is tentatively called Hammermill: An Orebody Story. It’ll take place on the oceans of the planet Orebody – the same planet where Binder’s Tale takes place – and players will take control of a scrap metal scavenger named Xosha, a kind of deep sea diver who befriends a baby alien squid creature and must help it track down its parents. It’ll be a bite-sized, quirky, yet epic adventure for the handheld system that introduces players to new locales on Orebody not seen in Binder’s Tale. The gameplay will include ship exploration and battles, undersea exploration and scavenging, a gradual upgrade system for your salvage ship and your diving suit, and narrative-focused sections to reveal more of the world of Orebody. Everything I just mentioned is subject to change, but that’s the basic design doc, in a nutshell. I thought hard about what kinds of experiences I enjoy on the Gameboy, and this is the design I came up with. Hopefully I don’t end up just creating another game for myself. Haha. Beyond that? If there is anybody genuinely interested in the world of Orebody, I encourage you to play the demo for Sporebody: An Orebody Story. I released that demo in 2022 for the PC. Let me know if you’d want a full game. That’s an atmospheric environmental puzzle-game inspired by games like Limbo and Inside. The reception to the demo was so abysmal, I shelved it after the proof-of-concept. I don’t like to have “dream” projects – I like to stay practical, so things actually get done – but if I did have a dream project, it would involve a dedicated team of engineers, artists, animators, a few more designers, and a symphonic composer, among many other support positions. Having the collaboration of a full studio would feel amazing after so many games laboring, more or less, alone. As a creative, I love to dream, and if I was ever lucky enough to have the resources, I could certainly dream bigger. -Are there any homebrew games in development that you are excited to play? Oh, man. I’m just going to list some, and I apologize if I forget some from my friends and compatriots. The Storied Sword. Courier. Project SKIFF. The Adventures of Panzer III. Mystic Searches. Super Tilt Bros. Get it Together. CrossPaint. Light from Within. Super Sunny World. People should also check out some more recently released titles like Skate Cat, Bobby Six Seven, and Gunhawk. There are so many more. Honestly, I just love seeing what the community comes up with. Whether its NESdev Compo, Byte-Off, and all the games from these and other jams that get developed into full games, the NESdev community has never been stronger. I’ve made some really good friends in this space and, by and large, it has mostly been a very positive community. -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? If you like something somebody has created – be it a book, movie, TV show, game, podcast, video, art, etc. – reach out and tell them so. You might not think that it matters or that they might not care, but it would likely make that person’s day. We’re all just floating through the void together. Might as well spread a little love. Jeffrey Wittenhagen/Premium Edition Games @HagensAlley/@PremiumEdition1 -Before we dive into Oratorio, I would love to talk about you and your background. What first drew you into the homebrew community? What is the origin story of Hagen’s Alley, the VGBS Podcast, and Premium Edition Games? Wow, this is a loaded question as it’s about three major things that I do! Hagen’s Alley Books Hagen’s Alley Books started over 10 years ago when I had a website that went under (vgmastersclub.com) due to not being able to afford the server fees with getting over a million hits a day. All my articles disappeared, and I wanted to preserve the articles in book format. No traditional publishers could handle a book like what I do with tons of images and reviews, so I decided to do it myself! My goal with Hagen’s Alley has always been to offer up affordable avenues for passionate creators to get their books and ideas out there. It’s actually never been about only publishing books on video games either, that’s just what I’m most passionate about! Over the years I have referred to myself as a “reverse publisher” as going around to various big industry publishers, they often offer authors insultingly low payouts with the promise of distribution and sales that frequently do not come to fruition. VGBS Podcast VGBS Gaming Podcast started with my cousin Kyle Gilbert and I recording our 2-3 hour conversations BS’ing about video games. 100 episodes later, with the series finale interviewing the AVGN himself James Rolfe, the podcast took a long hiatus. Many years later, with the passing of Kyle, fellow author and creative mind Tristan Ibarra joined me on the podcast as a tribute to continue the VGBS formula. We talk about anything and everything video games, focusing on collecting and playing a game for homework to slowly tackle our backlog! Which even published a synopsis of each episode of Season 1 on an NES cart Premium Edition Games Premium Edition came about because publishing licensed games for Nintendo has always been a dream of mine. During 2020, Nintendo approved us as a publisher and the rest is history! The key here is that at Premium Edition we will always go above and beyond and at the beat of our own drum. We will always look to do things a bit differently than your traditional publisher. -Who are your influences? And whose work are you watching closely now? For influences, I always like to say I am the “hipster artist” of the publishing community. I am typically trying new things all the time, so I’m not really looking for what others are doing, but what we can do to raise the bar on what physical games can do. Like with our challenge patches, the cards we include in our physical releases have a developer created challenge where the player can earn a physical patch that is mailed to them for free! This hasn’t been done since Activision on the original Atari and it's really fun to get collectors to actually open and play their games to “complete their collection”. As for game developers, I’m always following tons of indie developers and creators, especially in genres that I love such as Metroidvanias and Action RPGs. While I don’t have anyone I’m specific to shoutout here, I am always looking in all directions. -Premium Edition Games releases homebrew & indie games across multiple consoles. As someone who plays new games on old consoles as well as retro-inspired games on modern platforms, how do they compare to you? Growing up in the 80s and coming into my own as a gamer in the 90s, the “retro-inspired” aesthetic is my jam! While I absolutely love my classic retro games, being able to play new games on classic consoles is a dream and add in the retro-revival on modern consoles with indie games featuring retro aesthetics, we truly are living in a gaming paradise nowadays! -How would you describe Premium Edition Games’ aesthetic, and what to you are hallmarks of a game published by you? High quality physical releases with tons of quality upgrades, such as embossing and of course foil! We handpick games that we sign, and the developers have to be as passionate as we are! -How would you describe the range of services that Premium Edition Games provides to potential clients? Who do you wish to attract with your offerings? We offer the best quality physical releases on the planet! So any developer who wants their game preserved physically in the best way possible, that’s who we want to attract. -Do the permanent members of Premium Edition Games have particular roles or specialties? What does the division of labor look like on a given project? We all have our own roles and responsibilities. Some do design, some production, some shipping, some sales and distribution outreach, others marketing. Every part of the business has team members involved with it! A couple of us kind of are a jack of all trades as well, helping keep things running smoothly. -Is Premium Edition Games hiring? Are you looking to bring on more partners, generally or with particular skills, to expand your capabilities? Premium Edition Games is always looking to expand. We are looking for people to bring on with specific skills, especially marketing and sales skills as we can never get our name out there enough! We are also looking for people to join us when we attend conventions to help at our tables. The main thing we consider is you need to be passionate and care about what we do! -What was the working dynamic like in publishing Oratorio? How did you first connect with John? Publishing Oratorio has been surprisingly easy, I’ve known John for a couple years now and he’s always great to work with. We published Orebody: Binder’s Tale, which was the first game of John’s to get a physical with Premium Edition Games. CIB offering of Orebody: Binder’s Tale -What new challenges or surprises surfaced in publishing Oratorio? John has used a specific way of programming Oratorio and there is a specific board that must be used when programming the cartridge. That’s a new one for us, but nothing too challenging! Publishing NES games is a great time! -Are there any other projects you have lined up on the horizon? Any dream projects? Oh, we have tons of games signed and on the horizon at Premium Edition Games that we are excited about, including some amazing dream projects with major IPs. However, we typically unveil these at our Premium Directs on YouTube so I can’t really go into details, or my team would hang me! -Are there any homebrew games in development that you are excited to play? Since NintendoAge disappeared many years ago, I’ve actually been out of the loop when it comes to knowing about new “traditionally programmed” NES Homebrew games, outside of NESmaker games. However, with the influx of Game Boy games recently, I am excited to see what’s in store for that community! Of course, I’m also aware of the thousands upon thousands of indie games programmed for modern consoles and it’s exciting to see what is continually created by passionate developers. -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? I’ve recently been stepping up my production on books at Hagen’s Alley, so be sure to prepare for The Complete Genesis book coming out, which has been over 6 years coming, along with my newest Bookazine series focusing on my favorite genre the Metroidvania! Of course don’t forget that I’m still creating books, going year by year covering physical releases for the Nintendo Switch! Kickstarter concluded, but pre-orders still open! Conclusion: Thanks for tuning in to this latest episode of the series that shares the adventures behind the latest homebrews making their way to you. Are you gunning to add Oratorio to your collection? What homebrews are you eagerly looking forward to? Perhaps you’ll see it here soon when…A Homebrew Draws Near! Command?

Added Even Goblins Fall in Love for the NES, the next game in development from Skyboy Games.

Added 240p Test Suite + Gus' Game Collection for the NES, now live on Kickstarter!

I’m just calling it back on the shelves because I don’t feel like taking a game back and forth between these two threads over and over. It is a pre-order, but it isn’t crowdfunding and at the moment it is just for a limited number of copies. I doubt the 300 will be gobbled up quickly though.

Dead Tomb for the NES is back on shelves in limited supply as the first offering of 8-Bit Legit, a collaboration between Retrotainment Games and Mega Cat Studios.

Added Take It Racing 2 for the Gameboy.

Bump

If you expect anyone to dm you, you’re going to have to show pictures and offer prices. While your post doesn’t violate our rules, your post with its lack of any meaningful info is sus.

Added Legion of Evil for the Gameboy, available for pre-order at Limited Run Games.

Added Deth Complex 2 for NES.

I would recommend reaching out to Roo, either on his website or on Twitter. I’ve known him to be pretty responsive.

I’m getting complaints, so here’s a reminder of one of the VGS Site’s Rules: 11. PayPal Payments: When selling on VGS and accepting PayPal payments, you must adhere to PayPal’s Terms of Service (TOS). 1. In your Selling/Buying/Trading thread, you cannot ask for additional money or percentage of payment to cover PayPal fees (or any other type of fee or charge). This includes offering a discount for F&F payments, or charging different prices for normal vs. F&F payments. These are violations of PayPal's Terms of Service. 2. Seller: You cannot require Gift Payments. Buyer: If you send money as a gift (you do so at your own risk) and the deal terms are not met, you’re on your own. We are sorry about this, but VGS Staff cannot and will not be able to assist in this scenario.

His GemVenture was probably the closest to reasonable, but his idea of budging was something like $20. Even if I did really want it, I don’t want to reward that kind of shitty behavior.

I messaged him a couple of times and tried to make some genuine offers, and he basically said if I was serious I would meet him close to his asking price. Apparently denial really ain't just a river in Egypt.

Added Pocket Penguin to no longer available Gameboy games.

Added A Cat & His Boy for the Gameboy.

Added Cel Story for the Gameboy.

Added Powerball for the Gameboy Color.

Maybe we need a new emote that's a degree higher than "eyeroll" that denotes "this fuckin guy again."

The quality of sound you’re looking to achieve on the NES has been reached, Sole Goose through the 6502 Collective published a music album on the NES: You should really take the time to explore what other homebrewers have brought to the table on this forum and talk to them in our discord. They have accomplished really cool things, and it seems like they could help you with your initial problem regarding music.

For what it’s worth, I think you have really out of the box ideas. I don’t agree with them, but you having interesting thoughts. That said, I think it really matters what your motivation is. If you’re just trying to play with a new challenge, then do what you want. But if you are looking to make money to fund future projects, what’s been said above is solid advice, and my offer to help you publish another run of Star Keeper on the NES with VGS and Mega Cat still stands. If you’re just looking to make money period, homebrew development is definitely the wrong corner for you, because the margins are not great.

I am intrigued and would be interested in purchasing if you reached the necessary threshold. Do you have any games in development for the console already as well?