/vr/ - Retro Games

It'll be another mediocre hipster game with no actual understanding of how the old classics worked and it will never touch them for design/content/playability.

It's not a real NES game yet, so, NOT RETRO.

And I'm tired of NES games and the shitty NES palette. NES wasn't the only 8-bit console.

Give me new Game Boy Color games.

>>5724403
Micro Mages and Battle Kid are fucking awesome
>>5724476
GBC was a garbage system with literally only Zelda games going for it

>>5724394
>it's another shitty PS filter indieshit game with no understanding of how a sprite works or what a grid is.

>>5724482
Micro Mages isn't really very good at all. The 8x8 sprites were not at all typical of NES graphics and it's also an NROM game, yet no actual commercially released NROM games had graphics with that level of detail because it would have taken too much of the very limited available space.

These games also end up trying to shoehorn in their shitty Famitracker wannabe Ron Hubbard music that eats half the ROM up.

>>5724530
So it doesn't look like an NES game and wouldn't have been something that could have existed at the time? So? The game is fun NOW and looks good NOW.

>>5724394
no. fuck off.

>>5724545
My point was these idiots don't have any appreciation or understanding of technical limitations and why you can't make a good game with their design philosophies.

Try and find one commercially released NES game that had sprites like this. They didn't use this kind of design for good reason.

>>5724557
My point is that your appreciation and understanding is unnecessary and games can be good without respecting history. Indeed, it's better to challenge traditions than to follow them.

>>5724557
Genuinely curious but how come sprites like that weren't used?

>>5724568
One of the big reasons obviously was that sprites like Micro Mages or >>5724557 uses would have looked awful and been hard to see on the typical 80s consumer TV. Proper definition, color choices, and contrast all had to be factored into graphics design so it didn't look like a fuzzy mess.

>>5724560
>games can be good without respecting history.
When your main selling point is "retro" graphics it matters.

>>5724530
NROM games were mostly very early though when they didn't have very good graphics tools. They literally had to plot them on graph paper. By the late period of the NES in the early 90s, dev tools had improved a lot and they could use programs like DeluxePaint for graphics.

>>5724579
This shader shits up the image more than any of my SDTVs do, and I think it still looks good.

>>5724582

>>5724594
>>5724560
>>5724545
This is one of the dev guys for these games, he's trying to shill them on here.

>>5724590
All the same you still had very limited space so you couldn't have very elaborate graphics. The really early stuff with 16k PRG ROMs mostly just had black backgrounds.

>>5724394
Gameplay looks pretty fun but the box artstyle and the apparent cutscene heavyness seems pretty tumblr.

>>5724604
I've made a single post in this thread you stupid nigger.

>>5724579
>>5724594
I'd like to see Micro Mages running on a real CRT, either to prove or disprove anon's point. Would be a neat experiment.

>>5724618
In particular a CRT TV from 1985 if a working example still exists.

They learned with time as well. SMB looks fuzzy and has loads of dot crawl, by SMB3 they outlined everything in black and lowered the framerate to make everything look much cleaner.

>>5724609
NES games never had too many cutscenes due to space limitations.

Yeah if you're doing a single bank NROM game it's going to look more Colecovision-esque.

The Zniggy project is working out well because the game is fairly consistently adhering to the norms of Spectrum game design--some of it's not just the developers, it's also the hardware and the hardware does shape what kind of games you can do. The Spectrum just naturally lent itself to those kind of giant, aimless maze games where you wander for days trying to collect gems and find keys.

My understanding is that many of these NES homebrews are made by Yuro demosceners who have not and will never into game design.

>>5724731
MD homebrew is pretty cake. The hardware is straightforward and there's no real quirks or undocumented l33t hax0r tricks, it has the god-level 68000 for a CPU, there's no banking, and normally no expansion cartridge chips.

>>5724579
It looks fine on my C64 monitor and my Toshiba CRT. I don’t know what the hell you're going on about

>>5724394
I hate these games. They want to make something like the games they loved growing up. Yet those classic games were made by people who were working DESPITE limitations. They worked hard to push old platforms to their limits to achieve their vision. People talk about limitations breeding creativity but there's a big difference between self-imposed limitations as a stand-in for hard work and talent and the actual technological limitations the original creators had to deal with begrudgingly. Yet these indie devs think they're just like their idols when they do this when in reality they're nothing like them. The classic creators never had an issue with fetishization of limitations.

>>5724753
Nobody has made a game to push any kind of hardware since 2007.

>>5724753
The story of Maniac Mansion's development on the C64 makes for a great read and you appreciate just how many hoops they had to jump through to get the game to work.

Wolfling is worth playing. It's on NES and C64.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMYWehJ_DHU

>>5724753
The old stuff also didn't try to shoehorn in le quirky Tumblr hipster aesthetic.

>>5724731
What game?

>>5724762
You might be getting at the aspect of it I hate MORE but unfortunately going around saying how stupid the Tumblr/Reddit vibe is won't move the conversation anywhere. I have to be more creative with my criticisms.

>>5724761
Why is SID music so cyberpunk?

Abbaye des Morts was a free game maker game that was later ported to the ZX spectrum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7-XnSAu3Uk

>>5724768
Because people can't resist going crazy with the analog filter

The C64 as a whole has a pretty cyberpunk aesthetic, it was pretty much 80s modernism.

Hydra Castle Labyrinth is a PC game that has been getting a lot of homebrew ports, including the dreamcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqtflKFyAZ8

Also, dig through pdroms.
https://pdroms.de/

>>5724774
NES port when?

>>5724763
Xeno Crisis, says right there in the filename

Also why is every NES homebrew an NROM game? Why deliberately limit yourself that way?

>>5724741
It's also worth mentioning that the MD is effectively a more "modern" console than its competitor, the SNES. The SNES requires many tricks that the NES would've needed while the MD was more straight forward. It's not hyperbole to say the SNES was just an overclocked NES with Mode 7.

>>5724894
The 65816 is haxy to program because the register length is set at run time, not assembly time, and it has segmented memory in a similar manner to the x86, not the nice flat memory space of the 68000.

>>5724764
Say what you want about the art direction, but the artists working on this game really knew what they were doing with their color choices. It looks overly colorful and pastel-like, but it still thoroughly "looks like" any other NES game, if that makes sense. It's not doing anything too crazy with colors and everything looks "right" for an NES game.

>>5724905

>>5724557
The background graphics here are fine and look typically NES, but the sprites though...Jesus Christ how horrifying.

Nobody but Japanese people should be allowed to be doing Famicom homebew.

>>5724886
They're lazy and NROM games are simple and don't require you to play with banking or any of the 65 or something different mappers.

I thought it was because these guys want to release the games on physical cartridges and NROM PCBs can be gotten by just looting some Golf or Tennis cartridge.

>>5725005
>CNROM
>UNROM
>AOROM
>MMC1
>MMC3
>MMC5
These six will account for 80% of US NES games.

>>5725072
I don't know anything about NES programming. Explain the differences?

>>5724731
Upload rom please?

>>5724476
>NES wasn't the only 8-bit console

99% of all retro homebrew games are made for msx, zx spectrum, amstrad and c64

get a clue

>>5725079
>CNROM
PRG bank is fixed, CHR can be paged in eight 8k segments. Most of these games store the level data in the CHR ROM and blank the screen while reading it.
>UNROM
One 16k fixed PRG bank, the others are swappable. The CHR ROM is switched in 8k segments. These games often have a CHR RAM and store their graphics in a PRG bank.
>AOROM
PRG bank is swapped the entire 32k at a time. Only a single CHR bank is permitted. In practice these games always have a CHR RAM rather than a ROM.
>MMC1
This was the first discrete mapper. The PRG banks can be swapped 16k at a time and the CHR 8k at a time. It supports 8k RAM as well, generally for save games. Often have CHR RAM rather than ROM.
>MMC3
Lets you swap the CHR in 1k chunks and the PRG in 8k chunks. Has an IRQ counter for split screen scrolling so you don't need to do the sprite 0 trick. Supports 8k RAM as well, generally for save games.
>MMC5
This was the most advanced Nintendo mapper and is mostly a clone of the Konami VRC6, although interrupts work a bit differently (VRC6 games can be converted with only a few modifications to the IRQ code). It adds 2k additional VRAM so the tile to palette ratio is two instead of four, scanline IRQs, a coprocessor to take some routine tasks off the CPU, and optional 8k RAM for save games. Expansion audio was also supported, although not on US model NESes.

>>5725097
>99% of all retro homebrew games are made for msx, zx spectrum, amstrad and c64
Forgetting the Atari 2600.

>>5725104
relevant platforms I mean, not American ones.

>>5724394
uuuuuuuh doogies, Kickstarter!

I'm pretty sure the retro platforms with the biggest homebrew scenes are the Atari 2600, C64, NES, and Spectrum.

The major Japanese arcade manufacturers all had their own mappers, Nintendo didn't allow third party ones on US NES carts though, at least not until very late when they didn't care anymore (Batman: Return of the Joker uses a Sunsoft mapper).

>>5725134
Capcom didn't have their own mappers, not even in Japan. They always just used Nintendo ones.

>>5725139
Ok them aside. Konami, Namco, Jaleco, Data East, Sunsoft all had their own mappers and usually their own Famicom PCBs. Capcom might be an exception of an arcade company who didn't, they used Nintendo-supplied PCBs and mappers.

>>5725098
There were assorted variations as well, for example Konami had their own CNROM that has some differences from the Nintendo one and TMNT, an MMC1 game, has some small differences against the standard MMC1 boards.

>>5724568
>why sprites resembling a typical 30-40 year old 21st century Starbucks barista with skinny arms and a hipster goatee weren't used in the 80s
Yeah hard to understand why they were more interested in sprites that looked like golden axe or ninja gaiden

>>5725098
AOROM was invented by Rareware, only their games and games they did under contract used that setup.

>>5724753
No they were made by people who were working with the limitations with their vision being shaped by the hardware they're working on. This is of course a good thing because as much as it limited the more interesting things developers could do, it also put a limit on their cancerous inclinations that came in full force once hardware became more powerful and they were given more creative control. Indie developers tend to appreciate the design that resulted from harsh limitations on its own.

Most of the actual guys who worked on games in the 80s don't have any particular nostalgia for the hardware, other than maybe David Crane who loved the challenge of working on the Atari 2600. They usually seem to view the stuff as a tool for getting the job done and when better tools came along, they were happy to move to them and not look back.

Within reasonable limits of course. I don't see the fetish for NROM NES games indie devs have just because they want to show how much they can do with 40k of ROM. Devs back in the day moved past those limitations as quickly as it became possible.

>>5725498
We already went over this. MMC3 or whatever games are complex and difficult to code, single bank NES games are much much easier for amateurs/hobbyists to pull off.

>>5724872
looks like a mod of smash tv

>>5725504
aren't they sort of the equivalent of single load C64 or Spectrum games?

>>5725521
Sort of but the NES is actually more limiting in some ways because NROM games among other things can only have a single tile set while C64 games can fit multiple tile sets into memory without multiloads. Also it has more memory to begin with, even if the NES has some advantage in that it can flip sprites in hardware.

>>5725504
MMC3 actually makes NES programming a relative breeze especially for doing split screen scrolling.

>>5725098
Bunch of mistakes here. UNROM has fixed CHR ROM, MMC1 lets you page the CHR ROM in 4k pieces, and MMC3 banking doesn't work quite like you say.

>>5725528
SMB had to do some insane compression tricks to fit into 40k.

I masturbated three times today. Lately I've been masturbating so much every day. Anyone else get those phases? It usually lasts for half a week to a week or so, I think it's because of stress.

I fail to understand why is this of any insult to /vr/ when games like gimmick and kirby were just as graphically impressive.

>>5724618
I do actually play the game on a CRT and it looks amazing.
But truth be told I'm playing it on the Wii connected to a PVM using component cables so it's not really accurate to how it might have been back then.
I could try again using composite but sadly I don't have a consumer set.
I could post pics later if anyone is interested.

>>5725703
>I fail to understand why is this of any insult to /vr/ when
That isn't. This is >>5724557

>>5725559
Why do you think the clouds are also bushes or why the overworld and underground look the same?

In a way I do like SMB's simplicity. It knows what it wants to do and doesn't try to do anything stupid like shoed-in flying levels or shooting sections or anything like that.

>>5724731
I can’t find the rom anywhere, mind sharing it?

>>5724761
S06b5:07:Inf. Energy
For FCEUX. I'm such a shit. HAHAHAAAA! I ruin games!

Oh wait...Everyone uses Nestopia/Mesen...

>>5724609
>box artstyle
Oh come on it's literally just Kirby's Adventure style. Is that Tumblr too?

>>5724886
easier to manufacture i guess

>>5725961
I don't understand what you're trying to say. I played it on my wii with fceugx just fine..

>>5726106
are you retarded?

>>5726883
>for PC and Mac
Observe how it's just a modern retro-style game and not actually coded for vintage PC/Mac hardware.

>>5726883
Why do these all need a physical cartridge? Damn, just offer the ROM on Steam and people can put it on an Everdrive if they want to play on a real machine.

ITT How dare hipsters exist

>>5724630
>SMB3
>lowered the framerate
Only because SMB3 has more lag, which isn't the normal meaning of "lowered the framerate". And most of the time it's running at the same 60fps.

>>5727470
SMB has more slowdown than SMB3 from what I recall.

>>5727475
You recall wrong. SMB3 isn't Megaman-series laggy, but it has very obvious slowdown when lots is happening at once. SMB1 has so little slowdown you might miss it completely if you don't know exactly what you're looking for.

>>5727505
When you knock a Koopa shell into some other enemies and run towards them fast, it slows down, I know that.

>>5726883
wait, this is the box art for OP pic game?
holy fucking shit it's atrocious. I guess actual 80s/90s games were like that too (shit looking box, good looking game) but fuck that's awful

>>5724535
Why do all these western indie games have shitty tumbr artstyles? I exclusively play jap games for this reason.

>>5724535
few people seem to realize what made Japanese NES music so great is that it was concise 45 second loops and not huge size overly long and overly ambitious shit that brits did for C64

>>5727657
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52IzfiXafDY

Of course there's the great Tim Follins soundtrack for Silver Surfer, but the expensive and limited ROM space forced him to limit the excesses.

>>5727657
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52IzfiXafDY

This is one of the few I've seen that just sticks to a nice basic chiptune instead of bathtub gargle nonsense.

>>5727649
f-fat!

>>5727649
I think this and the Steins Gate demake are the only "homebrew" NES games to have been made by professionals (as in, are they really still homebrew games?), and additionally I believe both utilize the MMC3, something most western homebrews don't even attempt. The Amazon game wasn't released on the eshop but Steins Gate has, which means it's the newest "licensed" NES game as Nintendo still needed to approve it. If Nintendo approves the OP game and if said game runs in an emulator on the Switch, that would make it the newest NES game. Which raises the question, for those documenting games for the NES, should these licensed games be included as well, despite not seeing physical release? Star Fox 2 is considered to be the last "official" SNES game, even though it was only available for the SNES classic. Should Wikipedia include Steins Gate 8-bit and Orange Island on a list of official NES games?

>>5728108
>and additionally I believe both utilize the MMC3, something most western homebrews don't even attempt
Too bad because like mentioned earlier, MMC3 makes NES programming way easier.

>>5725092
>>5725916
That would be because it hasn't released yet.

>>5728115
What exactly makes the Japanese so much more adept at making NES games? Even hacking NES games, their ROM hacks are far more impressive than anything westerners have made. Do the Japanese have much better documentation or some shit?

>>5728115
They probably don't want to deal with all that bank switching (MMC3 games can be a clusterfuck from a structural standpoint).

>>5728123
Why not? It's their hardware and they have a well-established bedroom coder tradition for it since the 80s.

Also it probably doesn't help that most Western homebrew is made by Euro demosceners repeating the same stupid mistakes they did 30 years ago on the C64.

>>5728127
It's ironic when you consider that the NES was one of only maybe 3 Japanese machines that used the 6502, while westerners were exposed to it for far longer, what with the Atari systems and the C64, among others (even arcade systems). I don't think the Famicom had many bedroom coder style games, but some early titles like Portopia and Door Door definitely seem like 1 man projects.

>>5728127
Some of the Euro NES stuff from back in the day was pretty fair. I don't think Americans ever really did anything notable with the NES.

>>5728140
>don't think the Famicom had many bedroom coder style games, but some early titles like Portopia and Door Door definitely seem like 1 man projects.
Studios like Bits Laboratory and Micronics were fairly close to being bedroom coder.

>>5728151
Allegedly Micronics was founded by a recent graduate who credited himself as "Kazzo", and seemed to imply he was one of the only people working there. Over time the workforce grew, and it's suspected that Capcom and other contractors sent out their own staff members to assist. The last game Kazzo was credited with was Aero Fighters for arcades, and he allegedly posted on 2ch about his company. I wonder what Kazzo is up to now, I wonder if the Amazon or Steins Gate games (or the port of Darius to the MD Classic) will inspire him to make his own Famicom game after a ~20 year hiatus.

Bits Laboratory on the other hand didn't seem to make many games. I believe they also made Kings Knight (with Nobuo Uematsu sent over from Square) and were eventually bought by Square.

Most LJN games were also farmed out to literallywho amateur Japanese studios.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIzP5TMp85M

This is amateurish as fuck. No wonder they didn't release it internationally.

>>5728174
Of the 8 Japanese LJN games, 3 (Friday, Karate, MLB) were made by Atlus, 3 (T&C, Gotcha, NFL) were made by Sanritsu, 1 (Jaws) was made by Westone, and the last (X-Men) is made by an unknown developer, believed to be Bothtec due to musical similarities with a game called Topple Zip (which also shares an unknown developer). I can't speak for Bothtec but the rest were known developers in Japan.

Like most arcade companies, Capcom brushed off home consoles as a joke and didn't want to develop Famicom games in-house, so the early ones were outsourced to Micronics. They took over development themselves in 86 and the first such game was Commando, which is glitchy as fuck due to their inexperience with the hardware.

>>5728145
LucasArts was the only licensed American dev of the first rank to develop NES games and they started late and ultimately only put out four of them. A lot of NES games with American publishers were actually developed in Canada by Bits Laboratory-tier studios likely because they were cheap. For example, it appears that most THQ games were made by Canadian studios.

>>5726916
Because suckers will pay for it. I don't even blame them for doing it

>>5728187
And not counting Atari who trolled the fuck out of Nintendo and even developed their own MMC3 clone which was better than the real thing.

>>5728194
You mean Namco. Tengen was run by a Jap from Namco, and Namco had some beef with Nintendo.

EA of course didn't bother with the NES at all, they just skipped ahead to the Mega Drive.

I'm not sure what this beef was, maybe due to NOA's policies.

Atari had a huge pride complex as the "founding father" of video games and resented Nintendo usurping their spot, aside from disliking NOA's controlling policies. Namco also didn't like Nintendo for same reasons. The black-shelled Tengen carts were an intentional homage to the Atari 2600.

>>5728127
>Also it probably doesn't help that most Western homebrew is made by Euro demosceners repeating the same stupid mistakes they did 30 years ago on the C64.
Like making pastiche Ron Hubbard tunes that eat half your memory?

>>5728212
The black cartidges really suit the NES' boxy design, but whoever thought the cartridges needed to get narrow at the top and having awful grip spots should have a bad day for the rest of their life. Like misplacing their keys, stubbing their pinky toe, that sort of thing.

>>5728217
I know...if you think it's annoying getting a normal licensed cartridge to work in a toaster NES, you've never tried it with a Tengen cartridge where there's nothing to grab onto to wiggle it around in there.

Also all modern-day 60 to 72 pin converters, homebrews, and Flash carts use a clone of the Tengen lockout chip, not the Nintendo one because nobody's yet managed to figure out how it works.

>>5728221
At least Camerica had the right idea by having a huge gripping point, but it makes their cartridges look uglier. Tengen's look the best but are impractical, Camerica's are practical but ugly, Color Dreams were both ugly and impractical, unsurprisingly Nintendo's cartridges were the best.

>>5728226
Due to that, Tengen carts are the only unlicensed ones which will work on any NES (or a Famicom with a converter) and have no chance of damaging your system from lockout zappers.

>>5724545
>So it doesn't look like an NES game
it literally runs natively on the NES

>>5728124
If they don't like doing that, CNROM is the simplest banking scheme there is.

>fixed PRG
>eight CHR banks permitted for a total ROM size of 128k
Simple as.

>>5725107
Commodore International was American

>>5728349
Didn't matter. The bulk of their market was in Europe, most games as well as nearly all the interesting ones that pushed the hardware was in Europe.

>>5728216
That above all else.

>>5725496
>David Crane

Is that why A Boy and his Blob looked like a glorified Atari game? The main character is even animated like the Pitfall guy.

>>5724403
Also they make the games for their fellow retro game hipsters/LGR followers not a general audience like the stuff from the console's commercial lifespan.

>>5729684
To be fair, it will be hard to make a game for a 30+ year old console for a "general audience". Do they even sell famiclones in poorer countries anymore?

>>5724394
I hate this shit pastel color bullshit. It's a lazy way of not knowing color theory.

>>5729763
It's no better or worse than Mr. Gimmick or Kirby's color scheme.

>>5729703
Yes China still makes Famiclones and probably will until the heat death of the universe since the modern ones are all just FPGAs anyway.

>>5729787
They still had better colors than that.

ITT: How dare hipsters exist

>>5729703
That still doesn't justify >>5724557

>>5726916
Autism.

>>5725528
For sure. A bare NES with no mappers is a Colecovision with some more colors and smooth scrolling.

>>5724530
>The 8x8 sprites were not at all typical of NES graphics
At least not after the very early days.

>>5729856
Hipster detected.

>>5729856
Nobody likes hipsters.

>>5729684
What's wrong with LGR? He's a cool bro who really knows his shit.

>>5727663
god that game is hard as balls

MM CRT Pic #1 - PVM (20L2MD) on a toaster NES

>>5730015
It would have to be on an actual 80s-early 90s consumer TV to be period-accurate.

>>5730015
MM CRT Pic #2 - Mid-90's 19" JVC on a toaster NES

(these look a lot better in person. I can't take pictures to save my life)

>>5730020
Ok, I have a 1977 Sony CRT I can go get as well as an early 90's 19" Toshiba that are RF only. Gimme a few min.

>>5730025
It's impossible to accurately capture a CRT on camera anyway.

>>5730028
The Toshiba would be ok, the Sony would be a bit before the NES's time (maybe more accurate for an Atari 2600?) though I'm sure poorfags still had TVs of that vintage in the late 80s.

>>5727663
Euros were good programmers not good game designers, though I do believe the rigid Q/C console games had was helpful since it forced them to not make the kind of mistakes they did on computer games.

>>5730025
MM CRT Pic #3 - 1977 Sony Trinitron - RF only - toaster NES

>>5729967
Fuck off Clint.

>>5730065
MM CRT Pic #4 - Early 90's Toshiba on RF - toaster NES

>>5730065
Yeah, a TV of that age destroys any detail the developers put into the pixel art, and the eponymous mages are only barely identifiable.

>>5730078
MM LCD bonus pic - hi-def NES mod

>>5730079
To be fair, RF and age of the set itself don't help.

>>5730079
Now you see why they didn't use 8x8 sprites in most NES games. Too fucking hard to see on a typical 80s consumer TV.

>>5724476
play anodyne

>>5724557
Someone needs to try this out and see how illegible these stupid sprites look.

>>5730090
And that 77 Sony was pretty much what we used back in the day to play. The TV in the den was not the gaming TV. The older TV in the bedroom was, at least in our household.

>>5726113
I figured this was the reason why they stuck with NROM. It's nice to not have to think about the hardware involved with bank-switching and just slap in your fixed ROMs. I'm sure the hardware wouldn't be too hard to do nowadays though.

>>5730085
>RF and age of the set itself don't help
Dude, that's exactly what the guy in the post you were replying to just said.

>>5730101
>It's nice to not have to think about the hardware involved with bank-switching and just slap in your fixed ROMs
Some banking schemes only used a TTL, a discrete mapper wasn't required.

>>5730096
Yeah, mine was a '78 Zenith
I had no complaints then but I obviously would now

>>5730101
No banking and...result=very limited game. I mean, 40k is fucking nothing. You can only have a single tile/sprite table with that.

>>5730103
I thought he meant the era the TV was from.

Master System carts actually had custom ROM chips with an onboard MMU, they weren't off-the-shelf components.

>>5730135
There's Flash carts for those too so it can't be anything hard to recreate.

The Master System only had a single MMU that supported ROM sizes of 32k, 128k, 256k, and 512k unlike the dozens and dozens of NES mapper/ROM setups.

>>5729856
Hipsters aren't even human.

>Google "hipsters suck"
>1.2 million results

>>5730157
As an aside, why is Master System homebrew so rare?

>>5727649
>Why do all these western indie games have shitty tumbr artstyles?
What does this mean? What is this supposed to mean? Does it have any meaning? Is there such a thing as a 4chan style? >implying 4chan actually does anything productive. Is there some difference in "tumblr-style" and any other anime-inspired cartooning other than "4chan Anons don't like it"?

I don't understand.

>>5724482
>Micro Mages and Battle Kid are fucking awesome
No. They aren't. They're mediocre homebrew games that no one would give a shit about or probably even know about if people like you didn't shill them.

>>5730792
As mentioned earlier in here, the Japanese homebrew stuff beats it hands-down.

>>5730812
For one thing they aren't retarded enough to limit themselves to NROM.

>>5728231
>Tengen's look the best.
Yuck. I go for their stock grey shell releases whenever possible. Those black carts look terrible.

>>5730207
You may as well just do MD homebrew instead.

https://www.muramasaentertainment.com/index.php/nes-nrom.html

They probably buy PCBs from here.

>why is Master System homebrew so rare
'cause it sucks ass

>>5730812
What are some good Japanese homebrew games then?

Octopus waifu game on SNES https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwHj5bOmMuY
This actually looks pretty fun

http://pagam.es/docs/DG18-Taco-2.pdf

>>5731703
For the NES, I can think of five; buster blader, Kira Kira starry night, that Amazon game, steins gate 8bit,and heiankyo alien plus. They don't appear to be as common as western homebrew games, but they do appear to have significantly more effort and polish put into them. There's also at least one "8 bit power" music compilation cartridge, but I don't consider it a game.

>>5731814
Blade Buster and Kira Kira Star Night don't look any better than Battle Kid or Micro Mages.

>>5731814
For one thing none of these are NROM.

Games that are just one-dimensional collectatons are the laziest form of design.

>>5724394
Well, in case you didn't know, a ZX Spectrum homebrew is being worked on right now by a bunch of /vr/ anons:
>>5703597
It all started from a joke about many old Spectrum games being kinda shitty. Then some legend of an anon made a working Jet Set Willy-like engine, another one made a level editor, and now whoever feels like helping out can create a room for the game or contribute ideas.
Don't hesitate to come give us a hand! Creating new levels is fairly simple and quick, and with half of the map done so far we've still got plenty of room left for newcomers!

>>5732023
Yea! And best of all, it looks like complete shit!!! :D

>>5732028
Yup! People like >>5724530 will be pleased to know we followed the era's graphical style and design philosophy very closely.

To be honest the Spectrum has such limited audiovisuals that it's hard to not...

I'm not even sure myself how multi-bank NES games are supposed to even work. Perhaps our tech experts can weigh in.

>>5732054
Usually you have a separate bank for code, graphics, level, and audio data. On a game like LOZ, the $C000-$FFFF range contains the core game engine and the $8000-$BFFF range is swapped as needed. The game does its setup by switching in the graphics and level banks, reading them, setting them up, and during actual gameplay the audio bank will be active so that music and sfx can be played.

On some setups like AOROM the whole PRG bank is just swapped in one 32k piece, which means you have to have a lot of duplicate routines between banks.

http://retrostage.net/index.php/product/nes-discrete-mappers-nrom-cnrom-axrom-uxrom/

1. Maybe the games just aren't very good
2. Poor babby can't handle the challenge of programming retro hardware and needs his modern PC C# safespace

Some homebrew like Blade Busters is p. fair. Most however makes Action 52 look like Castlevania III.

>awful design decisions up the wazoo and generally clueless or self-indulgent content like >>5724557
>result being games that resemble what you'd find on some bad bootleg Chinese cartridge

>>5732102
Blade Buster is motherfuckin' beast of a caravan shooter right next to Recca. It could be even better with a normal game mode but I wouldn't expect that with limited cartridge storage (256k PRG and 128k CHR).

>>5732163
SMB3 was 384k. That's not a small game by NES standards.

>>5732083
There's the Zniggy project but then the Spectrum doesn't exactly have a lot of hidden exploits or quirks to learn.

>>5732083
Gameboy homebrew is a lot easier than NES homebrew.

NES Cartridge Database doesn't have Recca: Summer Carnival so we don't even know how big the ROM is or what mapper it used.

>>5732340
I think it was 256k and used MMC3.

>>5732340
Supposedly Nintendo made it a policy to not use epoxy ROMs on US NES cartridge PCBs but NESCD shows that Super Mario/Duck Hunt did indeed use them. I guess the cost savings were that important.

>>5732349
I hear tell Duck Hunt was patched to be compatible with HDTVs.

Also if you're curious SMB/Duck Hunt uses what's called GNROM, which means the PRG and CHR can be banked in whole pieces. A few other games use it but it's pretty rare.

>that NES King's Quest 5
Terrible idea. Even Konami couldn't make that thing work.

>>5732365
That on top of huge NOA censoring.

>>5729967
But he doesn't, he's good with history since it's all available on wikipedia and forums, but doesn't know anything about the software and hardware he likes so much.
I mean, he's okay, he's doing well for himself and enjoying what he does, can't nobody blame him for that, but don't praise him for things he's not worthy of.

>>5730020
>>5730028
>>5730065
>>5730078
>>5730085
>>5730103
I sure fucking hope you guys have a RF interference generator in your room, otherwise it won't even be close to accurate even over RF, since RF today (after the shutdown of VHF/UHF aka RF analog TV) looks so much better since it's not picking up any interference from it anymore.

>>5732401
LGR is a monumental autist who built a shrine to his childhood.

>>5732163
If BB is 384k then it's actually bigger than Recca: Summer Carnival.

>>5732406
The RF on the Toshiba TV looks just like it did when I was young. It's actually always been pretty good on that set.

>>5724394
Please call me guys

>>5732413
He's making a living, can't blame a man for that.

I like the idea of this thread. Can you guys post more games please? I'm really curious.
Are there any places that specially deal with new games on old consoles where I can look stuff like that up?

>>5732413
Also he has the world's most punchable face.

>>5732023
>intentionally shit
All it needs is a kickstarter and it will be exactly like the turds hipsteranons are shilling ITT

>>5732748
Spectrum homebrew could be at least distributed on cassette tape and not an expensive-ass cartridge.

I tried to convince the Zniggy team to use multiload for a bigger game, they didn't want to do it.

>>5729763
>that one backseat artist who knows all about colour theory but doesn't make art himself

>>5732064
I don't know why Rare settled on that AOROM setup. There are other banking schemes that are so much easier to use.

>>5732825
Beats me, but they came up with it and used it in all their games though I guess having one banking scheme made it easier and simpler since they could probably recycle a lot of code in each game.

All of Rare's NES games save for Battletoads were forgettable, they were still on that low budget British computer shovelware mentality.

The smallest Famicom game was Galaxian, wasn't it?

>>5732852
Yeah only one with an 8k PRG ROM. Technically Space Invaders was smaller since it only had 4k of code but the ROM was 16k and left three quarters empty (or maybe they just mirrored the game, IDK).

>>5732858
The US release of Galaga used a 32k ROM rather than the 16k one of the original and the game is just duped in the second half. I guess by the time that came out 32k ROMs were cheap enough that they could afford to waste one on a 16k game.

>>5724394
So it's just Legacy of the Wizard?

>>5732982
And wait for it. They'll try to make an NROM RPG.

>>5733038
Judging by the OP screenshot the graphics seem too complex for an NROM game.

>>5724394
>throw a release party
>forget to actually release game

>>5733098
Millennial indie hipsters love to celebrate and congratulate themselves for not accomplishing anything. They celebrate diversity quotas rather than actual work. Why work when patreon can pay me for false promises.

>>5732803
>an expensive-ass cartridge
Did I suddenly go dyslexic? I could have swore they said NES not AES.

>>5733049
If you're doing scrolling screens like 90% of NES games, you can't switch tile sets. The status bar could of course use a different set since the CHR bank can be switched in mid-frame.

>>5727649
sickening character design

>>5733342
>you can't switch tile sets
>you can though of course
Psychologists have a word for this

>>5733098
There's this damage control article. Make of that what you will (it's still vaporware imo)
https://www.rom-game.fr/news/3539-Droit+de+reponse+-+Pour+en+finir+(vraiment)+avec+Paprium.html

>>5724403
They went out of their way to throw a black in there too.

>>5727649
>complains about "shitty tumbler art"
>posts "shitty tumbler art"
What did he mean by this?

>>5733448
He means the scrolling portion of the screen can't be switched. I agree he didn't phrase it very well. But what does psychiatry have to do with vidya?

>>5733468

>>5734274
Yeah yeah forced corporate diversity was a thing in the 90s. Your point?

>>5734274
>>5734283
It's weird and funny how triggered Americans get over black people.

>>5734274
That's literally a game by a huge ass corporation for advertisement. They literally sold food to poor/dumb minorities when educated people would never eat there.

>>5726534
If I was to hazard a guess, I'd say that the anon posted a cheat for a game, and he/she seems proud of the fact. Maybe the cheat isn't in any database, or something. Perhaps anon is just trying to annoy, as cheating is looked down upon by /vr/.

>>5734454
>when educated people would never eat there.

Which is why president frogman is obsessed with their shitty food lol

>>5734465
>>>/pol/
>>>/out/

>>5734476
Lol nice sage but sorry to remind you of that odious turd of a man.

>>5734272
The way he phrased it he might as well have said "I'm schizophrenic and so am I"

>>5734465
>can't stop thinking about a particular Trump photo
Anon...

>>5731856
You must be blind since both of those have far more going on screen than MM or BK. Namely the huge number of sprites in Kira Kira and the parallax scrolling in Blade Buster. The Japs are so good at their homebrew games they've managed to make a niche business out of them, Steins gate and Darius MD were both created by professionals for antequated hardware (despite not having a physical release).

>>5736208
>oh no you don't agree with me! YOU MUST BE BLIND!

I'm waiting for the trend of DOS games on floppy discs.

Why not just make a nes style game in C?
No slowdown. No sides of screen artifacts. No sprite limit.

>>5734320
yeah people that actually have to live in close proximity and deal with them on a regular basis don't like them much at all
shocking

>>5736598
Europeans view black people the way Americans view gypsies.

>>5736598
I live in one of the most multicultural cities on earth and meet black people from all over every day and they're overwhelmingly great. But America has really fucked over their poor populations hard, especially those descended from the slaves so it's not unsurprising that you have a skewed view. That's what you get for creating a racist shithole of a country lol.

>>5736567
Wait no more, Planet X3 is out now.

>>5736673
I actually really enjoyed the C64 version.

>>5736520
I was gonna type out an argument but you probably use lol or lmao to end your sentences, so this is all you're getting.
>>5736595
These are just exercises that programmers use to flex that they can program for an old console. Anyone can make an NES looking game for modern platforms, that's why everyone and their mother is making all these LoVe LeTtErS tO tHe NeS games. You don't even need to know programming to make these games, anyone can do it.

>>5736595
An NES game can be played on flashcarts or anything with an emulator.

>>5736635
what a load of shit
I lived right on the edge of the ghetto and got robbed twice. Literally a zoo.

>>5736595
Where's the challenge in that? Part of the challenge is getting your game vision to work within the limits of the hardware.

>>5737090
This, it's more about the challenge and experience. It's a bonus when retarded sois want to buy your game too.

>>5737090
Within reasonable limits. I still don't see anyone doing homebrew CGA PC games because why the fuck would you do that?

>>5737112
If you were doing retro PC games you'd just use VGA Mode 13.

>>5737090
IDK...it's just, from interviews with a lot of retro programmers, most of them other than David Crane didn't enjoy working with that hardware and were happy to move on to more powerful systems.

>>5737123
Normies gonna normie. I agree Dave Crane and his Atari 2600 lovefest was a little unusual, he found the C64 boring because "it's too easy".

>>5736673
>giving money to the 8-bit Cuck
Shig.

>>5737035
All ghettos are dangerous you idiot.

>>5726916
Because people have money like to collect things and put them on shelves who knew.

>>5724761
>>5724594
>>5724793
>>5724774
Why are the character designs always so overly cutesy?

>>5737507
>collectorfags
Intot he trash it goes.

>>5737415
yeah and all black areas are ghettos you idiot

>>5737090
The Atari 2600 has one of the biggest homebrew scenes of any retro platform, but then the games are so small that they don't exactly take long to make.

>>5737172
I bought both X2 and X3. (:

>>5737112
See >>5736673

>>5736673
>>5737112
That particular game IIRC has CGA and VGA support, EGA was skipped apparently because he said he hated trying to code for it.

>>5737760
CGA was the main focus, VGA was added later.

>>5736673
>>5737112
That particular game has CGA and VGA support if I recall, EGA was skipped apparently because he said it was a huge bitch to code for.

Also where the fuck did he get new 5.25" disks in this day and age?

>>5737760
>EGA was skipped apparently because he said he hated trying to code for it.
citation? he didn't do EGA because there wasn't a point if you already had CGA and VGA, it was about maximum compatibility with lowest effort
someone else already made a EGA port of the game

>>5737768
>Also where the fuck did he get new 5.25" disks in this day and age?
Probably the same place where I did. I got a dozen sealed boxes, NOS exists.

>>5737769
Didn't most commercially released games back in the day support all three and often Tandy and Hercules as well?

>>5737781
Usually they had pre-made graphics libraries for that shit so it's not like they had to code everything from scratch in assembly language.

>>5737768
Better question is, why not just sell it on Steam and if you want to play it on real hardware go and put it on an HxC.

>>5737790
Because swindling idiot collectorfags.

>>5737781
They usually used built in compatibility modes. Like Hercules was just CGA with a patch. Rarely they bothered to support everything. It was also only turning specific eras when several modes were available at the market at once that developers actually bothered to support several modes, usually they just picked a few that had the most users.
That's not the point though, he isn't a huge team of developers, he just wanted to make a playable game, specially a RTS one for as old as it goes for a platform, he already did C64, now he did PC.

>>5737790
why would I need to buy a HxC if I could just buy a boxed copy with a real floppy and plug it into my old shitbox?
got a better idea, why not just sell it on Steam with a DOSBox bundle, who care about real hardware haha

Rather than recreate one of the original mappers, it seems to me that developers would be better off creating a new "mapper". I mean they could easily package a $5 IC in the cart that could achieve significantly more than the NES mappers ever could... no doubt they could package something more powerful than the 6502 in the cart. I guess that means that the game could end up looking way different to the original games (I mean you could easily do FMV for example) so maybe it wouldn't be too authentic a result, but they're be free to limit themselves however they like.

>>5737861
>modern dev
>doing something actually creative or productive for the dev community

>>5737861
You could make a SNES game and stick a Pi in a cart and emulate a SNES on a NES.
Heck you could just do DOXBox the same way and deliver a Quake re-skin on the NES.

>>5737823
A lot of games (for example Maniac Mansion) just dump the CGA graphics data into the B000 segment when run in Hercules mode. EGA, Tandy, and VGA however all work totally different and the graphics code has to be unique for each.

>>5737890
Yup, the Hercules patch was just a memory patch, it didn't change anything else over CGA.

>>5737861
Many mappers were ad hoc standards--for example, AOROM was something Rare came up with and only their games used it. NOA officially only supported CNROM, UNROM, and AOROM next to their own discrete MMC series mappers.

>>5737898
Japanese games could have many strange mapper permutations.

http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=1549

Moero!! Pro Yakyuu better known as Bases Loaded. The US version was just MMC1 rather than this funny combo of TTLs. Famicom games create a big nuisance for emulator and flash cart people.

>>5737861
Looks like at least a couple of new homebrew mappers have been made (mapper 30/UNROM 512 and mapper 218)

http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=4029

Everdrive doesn't apparently support the speech synthesis chip in here.

>>5737910
The chip actually has its own onboard digitized samples.

https://www.academia.edu/11341405/Everdrive_N8_Compatibility_List_OS_V11

This list mentions the Jaleco JF-29 mapper as not suppored by the Everdrive although I don't know if it's outdated or how old the list is.

You mean the Everdrive doesn't support some random Famicom shovelware sports title? Aw, man.

>>5725496
They may not have nostalgia for it but they should get down on their knees and thank it for masking their ineptitude by limiting their ambition and their ability to fully realize their tacky vision.

>>5737890
Some games use the second page of Hercules memory for an extra video buffer--these weren't compatible with dual-header setups (color card and Hercules in the same machine).

>>5737983
As ZX Spectrum games prove, technical limitations were not a handicap on poor game design.

>>5736208
>Steins gate and Darius MD were both created by professionals for antequated hardware (despite not having a physical release
Oh they just had a ROM download and not a physical cartridge.

>>5730207
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/171899-is-anyone-even-doing-sega-mastersystem-homebrew-these-days/

I'd say the best answer is that you may as well just do Mega Drive homebrew. The one guy's whinefest that games >32k are impractical just sounds like a crybaby thing. Even if that's the case, the Master System still offers more than the Colecovision like he suggests, especially in having actual hardware scrolling.

>>5738530
The Zniggy project is a collab one and this is only a simple 48k single load Spectrum game.

>>5738530
Colecovision:

>16 colors
>32 monochrome sprites with 4 per line
>1k WRAM
>no hardware scrolling

Master System:

>64 colors w/32 on screen at once (16 sprite and 16 background)
>64 three color sprites with 8 per line
>8k WRAM
>smooth scrolling
>hardware tile flipping
>sound is otherwise same as CV but pitched lower so it's less annoying

Right. Even a 32k game would still be better and easier to pull off on the Master System.

>>5738569
The guy who made that almost ten year old AtariAge post was a retard who probably never looked at a SMS spec sheet.

>>5737172
Redline me on him, what did he do to draw ire?

>>5737768
VGA Mode 13 was a revolution in PC gaming for how easy it was to code for against all earlier video standards.

>>5739835
>t. 20 year old

>>5737861
I think the main restriction is that the entire image will be rendered as a background, which would only display 4 colors on the screen total. There was a similar concept known as the Retrovision, which was Game Boy hardware crammed into a cartridge and designed to interface with the NES, but the sound was output from the Retrovision device, not through the NES. I don't think you could easily interface the NES with whatever onboard hardware you have, which is why there aren't many efforts going towards it.

>>5739838
He's right though. Nice linear frame buffer while CGA/EGA/Tandy were a tangled mess and you'd really hate having to program those things.

>>5739864
That's the Australia-kun troll. Don't feed it.

>>5739864
But Hercules/CGA were "nice linear frame buffers" too.

>>5728226
>not the Nintendo one because nobody's yet managed to figure out how it works.
https://hackmii.com/2010/01/the-weird-and-wonderful-cic/

>>5739829
Succeed at doing what he enjoys.

>>5739889
Not really, no. Each half of the video memory contains alternating scanlines and CGA uses 2 bits per byte to designate each pixel and Hercules one. Tandy graphics are a real bitch since there's 4 bit color and four banks of scanlines instead of just two.

VGA mode 13 is 100% linear. Each byte represents one pixel. Simple as that.

>>5739835
>>5739987
It's mode 19 or at least mode 13h, there is no mode 13, smartypants.

Mode 13 is just an old shorthand phrase they used to use on Usenet. When you see it, you should be able to figure out it means the 320x200x256 mode.

EGA is planar, it's also fucking lousy to program. No wonder The 8-Bit Cuck didn't want to bother with it.

>>5724557
What game is that?

Everyone used Mode 13h or just 13h, nobody ever called it just "mode 13" since in reality it was mode 19

>>5740112
it's called "What Remains".

How come SNES homebrew is so unpopular/rare?

>>5740264
1. You have to learn not just one but two different CPU instruction sets (yes, the SCP700 has its own programming)
2. The graphics are harder to utilize properly due to the large color palette versus 8-bit machines
3. It's harder for homebrewers to fill up the minimum SNES ROM size (256k)
4. It's hard to deal with three layer parallax scrolling
5. Lack of decent 65816 assemblers you can run on a modern PC
6. Until quite recently, SNES emulators weren't that accurate and would let you do things that don't work on a real machine

>>5740283
>It's harder for homebrewers to fill up the minimum SNES ROM size (256k)
That's not as much of a problem as you think since the actual code portion of any game is about 25% of the total size, the rest being graphics, sound, and level data.

The SNES is a bitch to work on compared to the NES, for example you don't have the nice convenient CHR ROM, you have to copy your graphics data from the main ROM into video RAM in a slow-ass code loop. The sound chip also has its own RAM you have to copy audio data into.

>>5740297
LOLno it's not harder than the NES. Why would it be? The NES's architecture is janky as fuck. For example, you try and read the controller buttons compared to how it works on the SNES.

>>5740306
Man, even just getting a Hello World message to display on a SNES is a huge fucking headache. On most NES games the graphics data is in the CHR ROM and instantly available in video memory. The SNES has a much more conventional architecture where you store the graphics data in the main ROM and copy it into VRAM with a slow code loop. On top of that, the SNES SPPU has a lot more setup steps you have to do before it will even display anything at all.

There are loads of homebrew games for all different retro machines from the Atari 2600 onward and even 21st century ones like the DS and none of these are any more or less annoying to work with than the SNES is.

The SNES and 5th gen consoles during their commercial lifetime were very short on adequate documentation, nor was there any good way to test code on real hardware. The floppy-based cartridge copiers, parallel port devices, and mod chips they used in the 90s are quaint museum pieces now. Though even if SNES/5th gen homebrew was too difficult to pull off in the 90s, it doesn't explain why it still isn't.

The big issue with the SNES as I see it is the CPU. 65816 dev tools for modern OSes are lacking and it's not an easy or intuitive CPU to code for against the 68000, particularly in how register sizes are set. I'm actually scared by that 8/16-bit stuff on the 65816 and I can't imagine how programmers back in the day were able to put up with it. Granted you could just do all operations in 16-bit mode and not touch the 8-bit stuff, but the SNES has a lot of 8-bit I/O registers. Aside from being hard to program, it's also a terrible pain to disassemble 65816 code.

SNES games not infrequently used C rather than straight assembly language particularly the later RPGs.

Square seems to have made their own bytecode language for their games, which I assume they had large script files and a compiler for. Masaya built games entirely from portable macro code (it was a nightmare to hack, the unrolling was legendary)

The main issue is that the 65816 is just an absolute dog shit architecture for compiling C code on. You have exactly one register that you can add and subtract on. There's no hardware multiply/divide.

Any code produced by a compiler is going to be slow. You can definitely write your non-critical code sections with this slow code and probably be okay, but given the CPU is effectively ~2.68MHz, with a throughput of less than half of one MIPS, you're going to end up degrading your game the more you use C. It's not like a desktop app where you can just code a few hot functions in ASM and have great performance. Some of the best games bog down CPU despite being in pure assembler. Absolutely anything called at least once per frame would have hurt those games.

>>5740283
>(yes, the SCP700 has its own programming)
Should add that the SMP also has a terrible, terrible programming model. It's a naked copy of the 6502 instruction set, but with syntax that looks like the designers were on some kind off powerful hallucinogens. I would really be shocked if they didn't internally have a 6502-like mnemonic set for their CPU. I'd bet money that their public syntax was strictly a legal decision.

Of course the real fun in deviating from official syntax is that you'll never, ever get two people to agree to the same unofficial instruction set, so you end up with 15 variations.

>>5740297
It seems if people want to make a small/8-bit game they tend to want to do it on the NES and if they want to do something more ambitious they go for the Mega Drive maybe because they feel it's easier to code for?

>>5740354
SNES coding is ball-busting. There are so many weird/nonsensical things about the architecture particularly how sprites work and especially the way they're stored in the video RAM.

>inb4 autistic Castlevania IV memes
Konami were never particularly good at SNES programming and their arcade games of the period were mainly 68000-based so it makes sense they'd be more familiar with that.

As others have said I think the SNES is just a PITA that most homebrew coders don't want to deal with. The actual CPU isn't that slow contrary to the memes, but the architecture is snarled as fuck and a huge bottleneck.

>>5740330
>The SNES and 5th gen consoles during their commercial lifetime were very short on adequate documentation, nor was there any good way to test code on real hardware. The floppy-based cartridge copiers, parallel port devices, and mod chips they used in the 90s are quaint museum pieces now. Though even if SNES/5th gen homebrew was too difficult to pull off in the 90s, it doesn't explain why it still isn't.

Don't see why you'd want to do 5th gen homebrew anyway, it's basically just like low-poly PC gaming.

>>5740371
Sure not N64 homebrew unless you like MIPS coding. I don't think I've ever even seen any N64 homebrew anyway. Come to think of it, I don't know of any Gamecube homebrew either although there is some stuff for the Wii.

>>5740382
>>5740371
5th gen consoles were mostly programmed in C++ anyway, not asm.

>>5740365
>>5740354
The CPU alone makes the MD much easier to code for, especially in C. Also in general its graphics hardware is simpler and more intuitive.

>>5740365
I don't see how the SNES chipset is any weirder or more annoying than any of the 8-bit architectures like the C64, Atari machines, NES, or TMS9918-based machines.

>>5740419
They all have their own odd quirks, yes, but they're still far simpler than the SNES and with 8-bit systems you kind of expect it. The SNES is from a later generation when one would expect that convoluted architectures were a thing of the past.

Also in general, 8-bit games are simpler and not on the scale or complexity of SNES games. Most of the systems you mentioned were also home computers where anyone could code for them. In addition, there's less room for exploration or novelty on the 4th gen systems and not much you can do with them we didn't already see in commercially released titles.

And I don't think the Mega Drive is inherently more or less difficult to code for than the SNES. The learning curve for the SNES is higher, but once you figure everything out it evens out. Learning any console architecture is actually pretty insignificant compared to the time and effort needed to develop a game on a comparable level to the commercially released titles from the console's market lifespan. This is something many people don't grasp--it's not as easy to develop Chrono Trigger or Yoshi's Island as it looks and that it took a team of professional programmers/artists/musicians 1-2 years to make those games. And that in my opinion is what holds back SNES homebrew development.

>>5740431
The Zniggy project is easier to do as it goes because the standards of commercial Spectrum development were a _bit_ lower than what you had on the SNES.

>>5740431
I know the walking characters in Haunted: Halloween '85 (the player and the zombies) are the most algorithmically complex because they have to read the collision map four times (bottom center, left, and right, and head-height at leading edge), compared to everything else that reads it once (bottom center) or not at all.

>>5740436
Anyone who's ever programmed a game knows the player character is always the hardest part because he's the only one with full physics while NPCs only have to do some very limited actions like move back and forth in a loop.

What's funny is that I had gotten1943 from a local video game store, Game X Change, (don't know why I felt like sharing that) and I played it and it's a ton better about not slowing down than Gradius III which I also got, except that this one is on the SNES. That's what really vexes me.

Isn't the SNES's CPU supposed to be something like 4x faster than the one in the NES?

Now that I think about it, I think most people mistakenly identify object collision as speed-critical code, when it could actually be the BG collision that bogs the CPU down. I wonder if slopes have anything to do with it, because slopes seem to have been pretty rare in NES games. I can't think of many games other than SMB3 and Kirby that use them.

>>5740446
Slopes are a major programming headache which is why they were not used very much and well into the 16-bit era, it was typical for only the player character to navigate them while NPCs didn't.

>>5740450
I don't remember seeing any game that doesn't allow enemies to walk on sloped platforms. Maybe I just never noticed it before because nobody ever pointed it out to me.

>>5740453
>I don't remember seeing any game that doesn't allow enemies to walk on sloped platforms.
I wouldn't be surprised if they at least used a simplified form of slope handling for objects other than the player. I know that the Sonic games did this. Enemies are placed at the correct height on slopes but the angle doesn't affect them at all, it's as if they're always walking on straight ground. You can easily notice this if you use the debug mode to place enemies near loops or quarter pipes. They ascend insanely fast, because their horizontal movement isn't attenuated by the angle, and their Y coordinate is adjusted to match the height of the slope.
>Maybe I just never noticed it before because nobody ever pointed it out to me.
There are a lot of limitations games managed to hide from us pretty well. I'm pretty sure there are many cases where level design and object placement are carefully planned to avoid tricky situations.

One of my personal favorites is in TMNT: The Arcade Game on the NES where the programming is very carefully set up to avoid putting more than two enemies on the same line as your turtle and thus not go over the scanline limit.

Other ways SNES is more efficient...
>Separate processor to handle music, don't have to waste CPU cycles running a music engine
>tons more RAM, don't have to do things twice if you can store it in RAM for later
>much more efficient moving large chunks of data around
(DMA)
->larger sprites, don't have to waste cycles contructing metasprites or worry too much about going over the scanline limit

Downside is that people will expect your game to look like SMW, you can't get away with single screen black background stuff like you can on the NES.

I would agree that artwork and music/dealing with the SPC are the biggest challenges for doing something on the SNES. The standards for audio and visual quality on the SNES can be pretty high among players when compared to the top licensed games. Like the other guy said, NES games could run the gamut from single screen with black backgrounds to Kirby and Castlevania III while SMW was the launch title for the SNES and often seen as the baseline game for it.

>>5740480
Part of my hypothesis for this, if you'll recall, is the gap in asset complexity betweenthe NES and SNES. One review of Sydney Hunter took points off for underusing the S-PPU. Apparently it's not good enough to just have a NES game with more colors, you also need to utilize the SNES's more advanced features.

>>5740493
Why exactly do you need to have parallax/Mode 7 antics though? Some additional colors not good enough?

>>5740497
Easily explained. The TG-16 was sort of the intermediate system between the NES and MD/SNES capability-wise and it's only relevant in Japan. There's no major system in North America and Europe that occupied that intermediary space between the NES and 4th gen consoles.

So if you want to make a simpler 8-bit kind of game, the homebrew community will just end up putting it on the NES or Gameboy. Anything with actual 16-bit level graphics would go on the Genesis or SNES in which case people will expect it to do everything commercial games did and that ends up being more than most homebrewers can handle.

>>5740503
What do you mean? There's plenty of GBA homebrew and it's comparable to the SNES hardware-wise. Thing is, it's straightforward to code for while the SNES is not.

I doubt most homebrewers really do it for anything but fun/a hobby, not for money.

>>5740506
The homebrew scene for GBA produced exactly one commercial release to my knowledge: gbadev 2004Mbit Competition
>>5740508
Maybe so, but my point was more that you need paid professionals to make anything near Yoshi's Island or Chrono Trigger standards. One Cheetos-eating neckbeard in a basement can't do it.

>>5740514
All the same there are plenty of good GBA homebrews and they don't all need to be commercial AAA title standard. The SNES doesn't even have that.

1. C64 can do many of the same things the NES does and without a lot of the programming headaches like limited VBLANK, fuck-all RAM, postage stamp sprites, and each block of four tiles having to share colors.
2. If you fancy an intermediary between the NES and SNES, the Amiga is there for you and it has the god-level 68000 for a CPU
3. There's also retro DOS PCs.

>>5740529
>1. C64 can do many of the same things the NES does and without a lot of the programming headaches like limited VBLANK, fuck-all RAM, postage stamp sprites, and each block of four tiles having to share colors.

>Lego block pixels
>memory-mapped video that steals CPU cycles
>16 color graphics
>one button sticks
>three voice sound with no easy way to play samples
>no character banking
>and slooooooowwwwwwwww disk access
How the fuck's that better than the NES?

C64's blocky graphics and small color palette aren't an advantage over the NES at all. I do however agree that the larger sprites and unrestricted access to the video RAM are a plus. Though the VBLANK limitation on the NES isn't really as bad as you think unless you need to transfer unusually high amounts of CHR data like CHR animations on full backgrounds. The NES's tiny sprites are definitely a liability though.

>>5740536
>better
Why do you illiterate bitter fanboys always see "better" everywhere even when it was specifically stated "many of the same things" without the headache?? Which is true.
It's like anyone remotely even says something about your childhood console which doesn't directly translate to "the best" you explode like whiny 12 year olds...

>>5740536
Half of these arent hardware limitations, like one button sticks or slow disk access, which can both be circumvented via the parallel port or user port, not to mention you can play samples pretty easily, it's more to do with memory restrictions when it comes to longer samples.

Isn't the SMS more like the in-between console between the NES and 4th gen?

>>5740536
unironically mayhem in monsterland looks and sounds better than most anything the NES had

>>5740556
Not really, no. There's two completely different ways of playing SID samples for the two different models of SID, neither of which works on the other model, and it eats 50% of the CPU while playing NES samples on the PCM channel takes all of 2% CPU time.

>>5740558
>unironically mayhem in monsterland looks and sounds better than
And that's where the "better" part ends. It looks and sounds pretty nice but the actual gameplay is a very limited, shallow collectathon.

>>5740557
I should have clarified when I meant "there were no popular systems in North America which occupied the gap between the NES and SNES." The Master System was not popular in North America or even Japan, its main market was in PAL regions.

>>5740536
>Lego block pixels
Ok yeah, but you can also mix hi-res and multicolor tiles on screen.
>one button sticks
Multi-button sticks can be done on the C64 and you also have a keyboard.
>three voice sound
I give you this one although the SID can produce a wider range of sounds than the 2A03.
>no character banking
Maybe not but you can switch video banks on the fly. Otherwise when you load a game level on the C64 you're simply loading graphics data from disk instead of a banked ROM so it's a chalk-and-cheese comparison.
>16 color graphics
True but in 1982 most other machines on the market couldn't even manage that. Not the Apple II and its six lovely 70s purple/orange/blue artifact colors or the IBM PC and its pink and aqua graphics that cost $3000. The Atari 400/800 had 128 colors but it can't really display more than four of them on screen at once. Just having full color text was a huge deal at the time. As for the choice of colors on the C64, well, I don't think it's better or worse than any other 8-bit system including the NES's palette.

>>5740573
>>5740557
Not really, no. The Master System doesn't really add anything of substance over the NES except some more colors and WRAM. In all other categories, it's the same or worse (no hardware sprite flipping, shitty sound, having to copy graphics data from the ROM into VRAM in a slow code loop, etc).

>>5740594
I'd count the fixed VDP windows on the top and/or right in its favor also. Yes, you can use timed code or sprite 0 hit or an IRQ to fake a top or bottom fixed window, but not having to is better, and there's nothing like the status window on the side.

Agreed that the SMS's sound capabilities were pretty sad. The funny thing is I've actually heard some really nice music done on the TMS9919/SN76849, but no commercially-released games ever did anything with it other than basic bleeps and bloops.

Come on though, the C64 can do some really nice pixel art not in the least because it has a real bitmap mode while the NES does not.

>>5740602
That is pretty nice, although I believe a good NES artist could produce something approximating it.

>>5740602
>>5740606
Static screens aren't a good measuring stick because you wouldn't use them for in-game graphics and the C64's bitmap mode is especially impractical to use in a game.

Both the 2A01 and SID have certain things they're good at and other things they're not so good at, it depends on your tastes I guess. I personally prefer the 2A01's larger # of sound channels and easy sample playback, but the SID does have some brilliant music composed for it. And both were definitely a quantum leap above existing personal computer/console sound hardware in the early 80s.

>>5740594
It's a commonly repeated meme that the SMS is superior to the NES because it's 2-1/2 years newer so newer must mean better, right? Well, not in this case.

>CPU clocked at a higher speed--4Mhz vs 1.79Mhz, except oops it's a Z80 which means instructions that take up to 14 clock cycles
>more colors and complete freedom of color placement versus the annoying three colors per every four tiles limit on the NES--definitely a plus
>shit-tastic sound--a sound chip from 1979 with a slightly longer duty cycle to produce a lower pitch
>no sprite DMA
>port-based I/O
>you can access the video during the VBLANK, although slowly--kind of a plus

So summed up:

>shit sound
>no real advantage when it comes to CPU performance
>more limited graphics update capabilities
>8k WRAM versus 2k, that's a 400% increase
>cartridges were not as expensive to manufacture
>does have a built-in IRQ counter even if the way it works is slightly brain-damaged

I think overall the NES wins out especially when you factor in advanced mappers like MMC5 and the VRC series.

>>5740602
>>5740610
True, true, but quite a few C64 games do use bitmap mode for in-game graphics such as Way of the Exploding Fist and a number of other fighting games. Also The Law of the West uses hi-res bitmaps--compare the Famicom version for a laugh. Also C64 pixels being chunkier than NES ones isn't really true considering it has higher resolution to begin with (320x200 versus 256x224). Another thing is the C64s 16:10 aspect ratio means if you don't use the border area you can trim the borders and it still works on a 16:9/16:10 tv/monitor without warping. It also makes it easier to port modern games.

And as for multi-button sticks yes it was always possible and the C64GS came with a two button controller.

>>5740594
I agree, and the stupid vscroll lock is a big mistake.

>>5740645
>cartridges were not as expensive to manufacture
Sega actually cheated their way around this by using custom-made ROMs that incorporated the banking hardware directly onto the chip die. If they had to put the banking hardware on the PCB like NES games did...

>>5740480
The SPC700 really sucks to program not in the least because there's no interrupts.

>>5740653
You forgot where the C64 can do clean scrolling without artifact glitches.

>>5740662
You do realize the SPC-700 was designed by Kutaragi, and is a "Kutaragi Special" so being a pain to program was pretty much expected out of the gate.

>>5740665
Ok, but the NES is perfectly capable of clean scrolling as well. Try Alfred Chicken, Felix the Cat, Jurassic Park, etc. If SMB3 has scroll glitches, the blame was on Nintendo's programmers, not the hardware.

>>5740669
I though it was only with enhancement chips, MMC3 etc but some of those are NROM so I was wrong.

>>5740671
Jurassic Park is the only game of those that actually uses mapper (MMC3) features to hide scroll artifacting, the other techniques are possible with the basic NES hardware. There are a few other ways to do this without mapper assistance, though I can't think of any games that demonstrate them.

>>5740653
I forgot just how much the C64 underscans and how big the border area is. Still, wouldn't it have been nicer to have no border like on the NES?

>>5740675
C64 is a computer so the border was there for a reason, that being if you were trying to display a screen full of text (say a BASIC listing) it wouldn't be very nice to have the text going off the edge of the screen.

>>5740679
Yeah losing the side of the a screen and the bottom on a NES oh well (it's possibly even a feature).. even on the PS3 we still had a "safe area", but on a word processor, spreadsheet not acceptable.

>>5740682
Sure but it would have been nice to have no underscan. NES and most later consoles have an active scanline duty of 75% so there's essentially no border and the image will go off-screen. C64 and Apple II have a 60% active duty and they have fuckhuge borders. IBM CGA cards, Atari machines, and OCS Amiga have 70% active duty so they have a small border.

>>5740547
C64 uses RAM rather than ROM for storage so you can also do stuff like self-modifying code that isn't possible on consoles.

>>5740653
>Also C64 pixels being chunkier than NES ones isn't really true considering it has higher resolution to begin with (320x200 versus 256x224).
It's effectively halved to 160x200 for multicolor graphics, which is definitely lower than 256x224. You can mix in two-color regions and get back that extra resolution, but a lot of games don't.

>>5740645
the machine is pretty much just the SG-1000 (you know, the not-a-ColecoVision machine Sega originally created) with more RAM and (drastically) better video
that's it

people say it's better than the NES because the graphics are largely better
the machine is slow though, there's a bunch of SMS games that run at like 30fps
it inherits a lot of the weaknesses of the SG-1000, such as some of the retarded VDP design

>>5740601
there's a handful of games with nice SMS music, but I still dunno how Sega looked at it and said "yeah, this is okay" when they were designing the Mark III/SMS

>>5740480
if you're doing something modern on SNES, you can just write a tracker module and convert that to SPC, real easy stuff
have a routine in your code to upload that to the SPC memory and there you go
don't deal with it yourself

>>5740446
slopes are a pain to implement, but they're not slow
object collision ends up ballooning how many checks you need to do
it's especially bad if two groups of objects have to collide with another (the checks grow pretty badly -- say you've got 5 of object a and 5 of b -- 5*5=25 checks between object A on B)

>>5732810
multiload on that open, non-linear map would be awful

>>5740480
^This. Atari 2600 homebrew is easy as pudding--the games are tiny and making something comparable to the commercially released stuff from the early 80s is entirely doable by one person. ZX Spectrum homebrew like Zniggy is doable because the games are small and commercially released Spectrum stuff was mostly all made by amateurs anyway.

Even with NES homebrew, the early stuff from 1983-85 was crude and barely a step above Atari level. A game like Ice Climber or Door-Door can be made by one guy. You can't do Door-Door or Galaxian on the SNES though, that would just be laughable.

In SMW, Mario alone has 100 different frames of animation. Now think how many frames were needed for all the enemies/power-ups etc and then the background graphics.

>>5740724
Not every game has to be FF6. Also I'm just giving my perspective. I'd love to port Catastrophy to the SNES, but without a decent C compiler, I don't see that happening.

Having better tools won't help produce more SNES homebrew. Take it from someone who was active in the homebrew scene in the 90s when SNES games were still on the rack at Toys'R'Us. Even back then, the amount of SNES homebrew games was essentially fuck-all. I can't name more than about 5-10 total and demos were a lot more popular. All because a typical SNES-standard game is more than homebrewers can handle.

And while you can do ROM hacks of commercial titles fairly easily, that's still a long way from writing an entire game engine and designing the art assets for it.

>>5740732
>Not every game has to be FF6
No but SMW was still the launch title and widely seen as the baseline game. Therefore your homebrew game has to be at least as good as SMW. The minimum standard for commercial NES games was Popeye, Ice Climber, Galaxian, Door-Door or something. Quite a difference there.

I don't expect amateurs to produce FF6. Any SNES homebrew even Zniggy-tier stuff would still be something. Learning how to code for it is asking a huge amount out of people, as would be learning any unfamiliar architecture. And to those who scoff at that, no, you really don't have to be a great programmer to make a game. You don't even have to be a good programmer. There are quite a few games out there (successful commercial ones even) that manage to be fun to play despite the code being held together with chewing gum and Scotch tape.

It's mostly the sheer boring tedium of spending weeks writing line after line of 65816 assembly language to display a message on the screen or make Link wave his sword (his literal sword--please take your mind out of the gutter if you thought I meant something else) that puts people off.

Programming in C on a 65816 isn't very much fun. The Apple IIgs had C compilers, even some really good ones like ORCA/C, but they could only do so much and could never be as fast as pure asm.

>>5740756
I stand by what I said that a good C compiler is not why the SNES is short on homebrew. I was there in the 90s homebrew scene and nobody made games even back then. We had some nice dev tools that ran on the PC and Amiga, they're all museum pieces now because nobody ever updated them for newer OSes.

If want of a good C compiler is all that stops you, you were never really committed to it anyway. And assembly language is just a means to an end.

And you don't have to make SMW...actually people will expect you to make Dragon Quest 6. :^)

Maybe set some more realistic goals? For example the C64 and ZX Spectrum communities have competitions like the 4k game challenge (just how much of a game can you fit into 4k?) Then there's 8 and 16k challenges. These games are tiny and easily done by one person. Making a 2MB AAA game may be a little too much. Maybe set a base limit for SNES homebrew of, say, 32k?

>>5740764
To me I think the bigger issues are the lack of 65816 programming tools that can run on modern OSes and the SNES just being a PITA to learn, especially after you got used to the much simpler Mega Drive. The SNES sold a lot more units in its day than either the PC Engine or MD yet it has significantly less homebrew, and there's probably a reason for it.

Starting immediately with very low level and assembly is just too much for a lot of people, we don't want to spent 3 weeks just to understand how to display a simple "hello world" string on the screen.

>>5740771
If they don't want to spend 3 weeks for "hello world", then they probably won't ever spend the time to make a full game for the system. I spent probably well over 3 weeeks when I wanted to do a "hello world" on NES back when I started this activity in 2002 at age 13 without any knowledge of the English language back then.

While good C tools may be an inclusion factor for additional devs, I don't think language choice is the main problem here. It's assets and scope--people can and will expect a SNES game to do more than a comparable 8-bit one and that's just too much for the amateur to pull off.

The SNES is definitely not as difficult to work with as 8-bit machines--the CPU is better and you have a bigger memory space so can afford to be more wasteful. The 5A22 also has custom features not found in the stock 65816, but what good is it if all you're going to do is Atari-level stuff? You're probably doing it for the specifics of its visuals, sound and controller interface.

>>5740778
The fact that there's a lack of modern SNES dev tools is a big problem. As I said, we had a lot of them in the 90s that ran under DOS and Amiga OS but they're all ancient as fuck and nobody has made any updated replacements. I knew a lot of people who started out all eager to code for the SNES only to give up when confronted with the SPC700 and S-PPU. The SNES is a terribly convoluted architecture although I still don't think it's as hard to code for as the NES.

>>5740756
>>5740589
While we're on that, I want to just point out that the Apple II has surprisingly poor emulation, for example the IIc+ isn't even emulated. It wasn't very popular despite all the Apple PR bullshit about it. Too bad, I think the IIgs was the single best computer they ever made. And is there an Apple /// emulator? You know, just for novelty purposes? :^)

The SNES has several annoyances including the segmented memory space versus the Mega Drive's flat memory. This increases the chance of bugs in your code. It can be worked around but it's not that much fun.

Compare the NES where most of the time (unless you were the autists at Rare with their precious AOROM) you can switch only a portion of the PRG bank and leave the rest of it fixed in place.

There's several reasons why the SNES runs like a slug compared with the Mega Drive.

>>5740796
>The SNES has several annoyances including the segmented memory space
So like x86 code pre 32-bit, right?

>>5740797
Sort of.

>>5740778
I agree that programmer art is less acceptable on the SNES than it would be on 8-bit machines.

>>5737651
thank you for proving the point that merica is a social shithole

>>5740796
The NES has 30 total registers in the basic hardware, more of course for add-on peripherals/cartridge hardware and one of the most widely supported and coded for CPUs of all time. If you want to do SNES-style games, the GBA is honestly better since you can viably program it in C and the hardware/register map is more logical. And it's had a homebrew scene since the first copiers came out six months after its launch.

>>5740862
GBA has what's basically a cleaned up, enhanced S-PPU without a dedicated sound processor. It's vastly easier to program for.

>>5740862
Any game that's going to really push the SNES is moving into late Square RPG territory while the NES's hardware is limited as fuck and there's not too far you can go with it before you need a mapper.

The smallest commercially released SNES games were 256k. Most were at least 512k and the average was 1MB. That's a lot of game for one person to do while there were plenty of great NES games in 64k or less.

>>5740872
You could look at it the other way too. SNES could be easier to develop for in some respects compared to the NES. Less restrictions for your artists as you have more colors, more tiles, more sprites per line, much more storage, DMA transfers, huge amounts of RAM, etc.

>>5740872
>>5740431
>>5740514
>>5740732
>>5740752
Friendly reminder that jarpigs are animated storybooks, not video games. Thank you.

>>5740873
And GBA is even easier. Your point?

>>5740881
Sure, but the SNES has higher resolution graphics and better audio, also of course it's a retro console while the GBA isn't, at least by /vr/'s standard.

Nice thing about Gameboy homebrew is that you can put the ROM on a Flash cart and take it with you to test while you're on the bus

>>5740431
>And I don't think the Mega Drive is inherently more or less difficult to code for than the SNES
The Mega Drive's VDP is not as complex as the S-PPU, but trying to access it is Hell on wheels because you have to go through a bunch of convoluted setup processes due to all the legacy TMS9918/YM2602B video modes. I'd rather just use the SNES and ignore all the fancy goodies the MD didn't have anyway.

>>5740903
It's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be although omitting Master System backward compatibility probably would have made it a bit easier.

>>5740778
The Genesis would have 1/100 the homebrew it has without a C compiler. Writing for the SNES would not be hard in C comparing to Gen or GBA, it would be about the same difficulty.

I had very little trouble adjusting to the NES, Genesis and GBA, coming from the PC world. Script kiddies and Unitybabbies will always exist, but some of them will graduate to become real programmers eventually.

Yeah when it comes to the actual development process, whining begins: "There isn't a C compiler! There's no PNG or JPG file support! ..."

>>5740912
Lots of professional programmers are scared of assembly and think you're a god if you use it. You'd be surprised how common this attitude is.

Anyway, I'm imagining you guys drawing beautiful pixel art by simply punching in the bytes in a hex editor. No but seriously getting my drawings up on the screen is my biggest headache when it comes to SNES development so far, simply because I have found no reliable way to do it. All the tutorials use fossil file formats from 1995 that work with fossil programming tools from 1995 that only work on fossil PCs from 1995.

>>5724482
>literally only Zelda games going for it
I'd agree if not for Wario Land and much more importantly Metal Gear: Ghost Babel

>>5740917
Since the late 90s, Java has been the standard teaching tool for programming in high schools and colleges. No assembly language involved, and thus we've bred an entire generation of idiots who can't code anything but web pages.

>>5740920
Emphasis on teaching tool. You're not expected to do anything serious with Java. From Capcom's official programmer hiring requirements:

>2 - 6 years’ experience with C++ programming and debugging.
>Game console development and optimization experience is preferred.
>Bachelor's degree in computer science / related field, or equivalent experience.
>You have the ability to write structured and well documented code. With attention to detail.

And here's EA's requirements list:

>Post-Secondary education in Computer Science, Computer Systems, Computer Engineering, or equivalent training and professional experience.
>Strong expertise with C++ and experience in object-oriented design and implementation.
>Experience with C# and/or Lua
>Demonstrated knowledge of good software engineering practices.
>Understanding of memory management, multiple processor use, and runtime optimization.
>Excellent debugging skills and experience using tools to help debug.
>Strong ability to work with internal and externally developed code in a collaborative fashion.

Case in point. Java and Python aren't what serious professional software development uses.

>>5736673
I got a copy. It runs great on my PCjr, in Tandy mode no less. I guess he didn't program in that retarded Tandy check like most game devs did back in the day.

>>5740920
I dunno about you but my high school taught C++ and glad they did. Granted, I was the only kid in the class who was actually seriously into it and learned anything, but oh well.

>>5740928
>I guess he didn't program in that retarded Tandy check like most game devs did back in the day.
I know what you mean and there's actually two different machine ID checks. One of them is the BIOS ID byte at F000:FFFE. This is FDh for the PCjr. The Tandy 1000 just uses FEh, same ID byte as the XT so games would instead test for the Tandy copyright string in the BIOS ROM.

Jumpman is one game I know that does this. It checks F000:FFFE to see if it's running on a PCjr which means if you try to boot it on a Tandy, it will get an FEh instead and think it's on a regular PC so you can't use the PCjr sound/graphics modes, it will instead run in CGA/PC speaker mode.

>>5740724
>>In SMW, Mario alone has 100 different frames of animation. Now think how many frames were needed for all the enemies/power-ups etc and then the background graphics.
Not calling you a liar, but can you provide pics to show?

>>5740939
Jumpman wouldn't run on a Tandy anyway because in PCjr mode it does all its video writes to the first 128k of memory where the PCjr's video RAM is located. Unless you had an original Tandy 1000 with 128k, it will try to write over the 1000h segment and probably overwrite the game code and crash.

>>5740872
Right. A NES game up to 128k and MMC1 is entirely within the reach of 1-2 people. Remember that most NES games weren't Kirby's Adventure or LaGrange Point.

Whereas even the SNES launch titles like SMW and Mario Kart are large, complex productions that hobbyists couldn't do.

>>5740940
http://www.mariouniverse.com/sprites-snes-smw/

Would have take two seconds of Google searching.

>>5724403
How does it feel to be perpetually miserable?

>>5724741
There are actually a lot of tricks you can do, but they're not necessary (debug register tricks, full color dma, 128k mode tricks, etc).

>>5740297
Are you telling me the snes has no dma? Lol what

>>5740694
You can copy code to work ram and execute it from there in all the old consoles I know of

>>5740772
barrier to entry is a real barrier
if I'm getting stuff showing out the gate, I'm going to be a hell of a lot more motivated to keep going than if I'm spending ages on what seems like it should be a zero effort task
the rest of the work could remain just as hard, it's that initial hurdle that gets people

>>5740724
>This. Atari 2600 homebrew is easy as pudding
I'd say the availability of something as easy to use as Batari Basic really, really helped in this regard.
actually writing that shit out yourself to draw things on the Atari is a pain in the ass full of cycle counting

sure, you get like 26 bytes of RAM left over for the game, but like you said, Atari games are expected to be piss simple, so you don't need to keep track of too much stuff

>>5740926
>Emphasis on teaching tool. You're not expected to do anything serious with Java
outright bullshit
>Case in point. Java and Python aren't what serious professional software development uses.
neither language is used in gamedev, sure (also, C# is effectively just "Java, by Microsoft", there are massive language, implementation, and performance similarities, although C# is nicer than Java and has better tools)

but Java is extensively used professionally for enterprise systems all the time, inventory keeping systems and time punch systems and the lot
Python is heavily used in scientific computing (largely with the assistance of libraries written in C, but eh) and gets use in back-end a lot (shit, IIRC Google was looking into doing a compiler for Python to speed things up, can't remember if they went through or just ported the stuff to a different language manually)
people fucking write back-end shit in JavaScript of all the god damn languages because lol node.js (fuck these cunts)

the takeaway is that these are languages people use professionally all the time

>>5741686
I think what that anon was really getting at is that you don't get nearly as much RAM to play with since your program is in ROM.

>>5741725
> I think what that anon was really getting at is that you don't get nearly as much RAM to play with since your program is in ROM.

true, it's one reason why runtime code gen is tricky and not very common on them

> people fucking write back-end shit in JavaScript of all the god damn languages because lol node.js (fuck these cunts)

As someone who just got a job doing this and thought it would be awful, it's amazing how much of a difference typescript and having tons of tests + disciplined developers makes.

The vast majority of commercially-released Atari 2600 games were 4-8k. That's equivalent to a few pages of text.