/vr/ - Retro Games

It's great!

It's nifty but I hate that they can't shake the stink of unofficiality. It'd be very neat if Sega or Nintendo offered licensing like back in the day so the seal of quality could appear on the box and it could be listed on official game lists. Nintendo is probably out of the question but Sega has done wacky things before and might be willing to strike a deal like that.

>>8539359
Depends. It's definitely not ok when they do sprites like this.

It's kind of stupid imo. It's cool if they have a rom for a minimum donation or something that works on a flashcart but with how much some of these releases cost, it's clearly preying on mentally ill collectorfags.

>>8539389
To the game's credit, it certainly doesn't look like a typical NES game, at first I thought it was one of those 'what indie devs thing retro vidya were like' games.

>>8539397
It's a problem of numbers, yeah. Physical releases are a market of scale because cost-per-unit at manufacture doesn't really come down unless you order in the thousands. But for indie Genesis games you're never going to move that many so the price can get crazy.

NES homebrews kinda fail because 80% of them are NROM games that try to superficially recreate late period MMC3 stuff.

>>8539359
Westerners really shouldn't try to imitate JRPGs, it just doesn't work.

nobody cares about the poor SNES or makes anything for it, alas

>>8539435
The problem is they always try to imitate the wrong ones. They're always like "our favorite RPG is Earthbound so..."

The people who make these homebrews tend to have whacked out ideas of what made a lot of old RPGs good. Like I played pic related and while it does invoke a lot of SNES RPG vibes, the encounter rate is absolutely crazy.

>>8539462
I keep forgetting that exists and I need to buy it. Thanks for the reminder, Anonbro.

systems that don't get homebrew games (aka we dgaf)

>Apple II
>VIC-20
>Amstrad CPC
>Atari ST
>SNES
>Master System
>retro PCs
>PC Engine

>>8539475
I'm sure there are some Apple II homebrews and I know there are Master System ones.

>>8539452
We learned the only thing it does better than Mega Drive is having some more colors.

>>8539475
>PC Engine
I bought Jessie-chan's game

i like them

i spotted this guy in the Itch catalog the other day who's making homebrew for the VZ200, and yes that's MY first time hearing of the VZ200 too. seems to be basically a Great Value brand Mattel Aquarius as far as i can tell.
https://waulok.itch.io/

are we gonna have this thread again

>>8539509
CUTE

>>8539413
I'd like to see more NROM games that emulate early period games.

I made a genesis game, it was alright. Wish I had time to give it a full go.

i have a half-finished nes project i should get back to someday

>>8539849
And FUNNY...

>>8539359
feels a bit pretentious and ungenuine

>>8539853
This one is but it's made by Japanese guys.

>>8540620
BLAZING RANGERS
TO THE BRAND NEW SKY WE DI-- wait

>>8539892
Is this the Sea Chase guy? 'Cause if it is...

>>8540628
no, I posted some wip gifs of my platformer engine a while back and the neighborhood autists (you know the ones) ran me off

>>8539462
>They're always like "our favorite RPG is Earthbound so..."
What is it about Earthbound that attracted so many degenerate hipsters?

>>8540630
what went wrong with your engine?

The good ones are good, but the bad ones are not as good

>>8539389
the bg graphics are ok, but to hell with those sprites

>>8539853
Also I'd like some 4 megabit Mega Drive games that emulate early period ones instead you just get le 64 megabits biggest game evar nonsense.

>>8539452
The SNES is like the only major retro system that is nearly ignored by homebrewfags.

>>8539509
>weebshit
>on PCE
this is going to turn into a porno, isn't it?

>>8540664
I don’t think it’s like that

>>8539509
nice tights

>>8539359
This one looks really promising, I just hope he'll spend some time animating the world a bit more.
I wanna see that fire flickering, i wanna see some of the grass moving, the water needs to ripple. Stuff like that.

Great looking game, the only thing that worries me is that its apparently 11 years old already. Dev's been working on this for a looooong time.

pretty cool, imo

>>8540920
fucking tiny

>>8540936
it’s in the name

>>8540920
meh

>>8539475
There's no Amiga homebrews (that I know of) just demos.

>>8539821
This looks like peak SOVL, thanks for sharing.

>>8539821
It's the same off-the-self Motorola VDU that the TRS-80 CoCo uses.

>>8539843
Go outside and play.

>>8540628
what happened to him anyway?

This one for dreamcast was really cool

I like them as long as I can pirate them

Haha, remember those threads with massive collections of commercial homebrews? That would be wacky and zany if someone posted another link with newer releases, haha.

>>8541213
It has to be every once in a while, anon. No one want loose-tongued redditors fucking everything up.

>>8540010
Cῷnny ῳῷῲὼὼ

>>8540634
It's a "hidden gem" that everyone knows about, mainly due to Smash. Everyone knows who Ness is but hipsters have to go the mile and pretend they're huge Earthbound fans, huger than you.

>>8540634
it makes me sad cause id love to make a EB inspired game and play more games inspired by it, but all the "EarthBound-likes" that come out all seem to completely miss the point of the original games charm and seems more like they watched some eCeleb talk about the game and made a game based on that description instead.

>>8540920
one of the best commercially sold homebrews. fuck the haters, plays great.

>>8540634
When the marketing said the game stinks, they felt that.

>>8541019
dread is a recent one
still being improved and has mapping tools that people use to create maps

I really like this one.

>>8541213
Just look in the archive. I wanted a couple $10 homebrews that were included in a mega and now I have hundreds of homebrews I will never bother to sort through.

>>8543508
But someone else will, when you pass it on.

>>8543232
>people try and make games based on games they haven't even played themselves
the thing about making fan games or games that are inspired by other works is that you can't forget the most important part, which is you really have to be a fan.
this shit happens depressingly often with "fan" translations too, where people don't even play, let alone clear, the games they go to translate, and the quality suffers for it.

>>8539452
The SNES is no fun to program for.

Wouldn't it be technically possible to make special chips for NES and SNES that allow to dramatically increased memory and storage?

>>8543646
You could, but that defeats the point.

>>8543657
why though? It's still a game you run in your unmodified console

>>8539359
Waste of time and gimmicky as fuck.

>>8539462
Or maybe they just like games you don't? Or did that thought never cross your pea sized brain?

>>8543658
Because then you're just playing games on the chip instead. No reason to even bother with the console since basically anything you can buy today is way more powerful.

>>8543665
The point is you are making a game that can run on the original hardware. Its neat. Its obviously only a niche group that would be interested to begin with.

>>8539359
death sentence for any serious company

>>8543679
>The point is you are making a game that can run on the original hardware.
It wouldn't even be doing that any more, really.

>>8543508
I have. Been a minute since people have posted new ones, though.

>>8543235
Sup MicroMages programmer.

Life with Louie (1994) would have made for a neat adventure game for Windows95, complete with icon set and system sounds and some wallpapers.

>>8545081
or more likely some ghastly Acclaim SNES shovelware

>>8539389
The background graphics aren't bad, the sprites though...

>>8540680
10/10
would abduct

>>8539475
The Intellivision has a few.

>>8545081
oh crap, I posted this in the wrong thread.

>>8540920
>proceeds to release 3 great indie games
>but they're all short single level games and there's no level editors/importers/exporters
like getting a great handjob, only to have the hand pulled away right before you blast

>>8545165
that's what happens when you insist on NROM

>>8541213
search archive for "New Games for Old Systems v3.0.zip" it's over a year old, but covers a lot of shit

>>8545173
it’s what happens when you overscope on pretty stuff and underscope on game progression
see Nuts & Milk for a better balanced nrom game

yeah Micro Mages is meh

>>8543662
NTA but good job completely missing the point anon. Amazing how the ones frothing over opportunities to jump on insulting intelligence are often times retards themselves.

It doesn't matter what games someone likes. What does matter is being able to admit your favorite games have flaws and recognizing their archaic design choices so you can putting those elements in your own projects.

>>8543662
NTA but good job completely missing the point anon. Amazing how the ones frothing over opportunities to jump on insulting intelligence are often times retards themselves.

It doesn't matter what games someone likes. What does matter is being able to admit your favorite games have flaws and recognizing their archaic design choices so you can avoid putting those elements in your own projects.

They remind me of what I feel about stop motion. The very fact that somebody is working in that mediums means they probably have a lot of passion and that will show in the finished product. But if you just used normal modern techniques the end result probably would have been better.

>>8545329
I have absolutely no idea what this anon is trying to say.

>>8539475
nobody does N64 stuff actually nobody even knows how half the microcodes work

I liked the demo of this.

>>8543646
The NES MMCs do that already. Commercial games added an additional 8K of work RAM in addition to the 2K system RAM, and MMC5 can have ROM data as large as 2 megabytes - the largest commercial NES game is only half that. You can also add extra sound channels to the Famicom, but there is absolutely nothing that can be done to improve processing power, graphical quality, or number of sprites on screen. That will be your hard limit.

>>8546614
>but there is absolutely nothing that can be done to improve processing power, graphical quality,
MMC5 adds more video RAM so tiles can be more colorful; instead of 4 colors per 16x16 metatile it's 4 colors per group of two tiles.

>>8540680
What are some other Cunnyvania games?

>>8545846
I'm guessing he means that the barriers to entry for making (and the general effort required to make) games on old consoles are higher than, say, making something for modern PCs in Unity, so the people willing to battle with that in the first place are probably more likely to truly care about the game they're making. That said, people with the skill and dedication to battle with those limitations probably could've made a better overall product had they made use of easier tools with less restrictions.

Not really a counterpoint, but I would say that some of these modern games designed for old hardware are only talked about because they're modern games for old hardware - take the same concepts and general design and use them to make something in Unity for the Steam store, and it might just got lost in the sea of other such modern indie titles.

>>8546665
>it might just got lost in the sea of other such modern indie titles
That, and if you do it right you make carts with your game on them.

>>8546630
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. But even so, the video capabilities are the hard limiting factor of the NES and not much can be done to lift them. By comparison the SNES had a slow fucking CPU so the solution would just be to stick a more powerful CPU on the cart.

>>8545176
Not finding this anywhere I search

>>8539389
Interestingly, this game is a huge 512kb game, possibly using MMC3 and I hear DPCM drums, which aren't common for homebrews. I will agree on the sprites, if only because the girls graphics are hard to see against the gray on even a quality CRT via A/V, I can't imagine what it'd be like on a generic CRT with RF. Part of the reason why Micro Mages uses black backgrounds, far easier to see the tiny graphics moving around.

>>8548315
The game uses one of those UNROM-512 boards you can get from Ali Express, it may not necessarily fill all that space. Also yeah the sprites would look totally illegible on a typical 80s consumer TV so no commercial NES game would have done that.

>>8539359
I've always wanted to make an SNES game but I have literally 0 coding experience

>>8548419
the SNES is comparative crap to program which is why nobody really makes any homebrew for it

>>8548419
Just hack SMW, LttP, or SM. The hacking tools for those are so advanced that you could make entirely new games without knowing how to code.

>>8548018
ORLY??
>>/vr/thread/S7403760#p7405208

>>8548686
Yeah, I had put the entire file name into the archive search but it didn't come up for me. I probably did something dumb. Thanks for the help anon.

it's incredibly based and goes to show that technology is driven by consumerism, not artistic innovation.

>>8539359
As far as I'm aware, most of these always ends up feeling like homebrew games unfortunately
>>8539378
It's pointless. You're basically advocating for them to start policing again 30 years old console and basically pay to have their game checked. Why the hell would anyone do that
What would be great however, is an on demand game printing thing that could exist, then I can see them jumping on "certifying" old games

>>8549489
Yeah, there are complications. They'd have to do an internal QA unless they're willing to trust that the game isn't fundamentally broken in some way and just offer the branding. Then again, Sega's been known to do that. They've put their name on a bunch of Genesis clones over the years that are pretty crap.

>>8545176
I think I still have this file around here. Didn't mess much with it, but I enjoyed the desplash hacks within it, thank God!

the Atari 2600 is an insanely limited machine. it has 128 bytes of RAM no video buffer and can only access 4k ROM at once. although bank switched games up to 32k exist what's really happening is subdividing the game into several separate 4k programs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoC8sZaCc4o

for example Dig Dug is 16k. the title screen has its own 4k bank and the other three are used for the different levels (per colors of the dirt). this game also used a custom Atari memory mapper called SARA that provided an additional 256 bytes RAM bringing the total RAM available to 384 bytes.

Activision had a short-lived banking scheme called SCABS which they only used in Decathlon and Robot Tank. Basically it intercepted JSR instructions and auto-switched banks, effectively allowing the CPU to "see" 32k of ROM instead of 4k, and it saved you the CPU cycles and space taken up by trampoline code to tie the different ROM banks together.

>>8540658
>>8539452
>>8543625
It still going.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eUOlPBxZIls

>>8550284
wasn't that how NES banking works? you can JSR to any place in the ROM?

>>8550289
no. NES coding all uses trampoline jumps and writing to the registers in the mapper to select a bank. usually you have the code bank (where your core game engine is) at $C000-$FFFF and $8000-$BFFF has the level data/music/level-specific code which is swapped in and out as needed. in most cases you switch to the music bank during the vertical blank, play a note, and then switch the object code back in. level data is only switched in when the level is first started and the game needs to read it to set everything up. in-game it's just going to be cycling between the object and music bank.

>>8550337
As well as a graphics bank if your game uses CHR RAM.

>>8545081
Loved that show as a kid. RIP Louie Anderson.

the Gameboy and Master System work the same way except there's always a graphics bank

I think it'd be cool if I could make a game for PS1 and then port it to PC, that way I'd be forced to optimize it as best as possible

In addition, DPCM samples cannot be banked, they must be in the same bank as the music player code. This was a bit of an issue for mappers that switch the whole 32k PRG bank at once.

The Atari 8-bits unfortunately were cursed with a lot of lazy Apple II ports because it was extremely easy to copypaste Apple II games onto them due to the hi-res Mode 8 graphics. In some cases they didn't even bother using the P/M sprites but just did soft sprites by XOR-ing bitmaps around.

>>8550428
If publishers can take shortcuts they will. The Amstrad CPC was also blighted by shitty Spectrum conversions and the Amiga with shitty Atari ST conversions.

>>8548419
>>8548446
Alisha’s Adventure

>>8550428
he's probably typing in some godawful type in BASIC game that crashes after 4 hours spent entering it because he made one typo in line 463

>>8548370
UNROM is still leagues better than NROM, with CHR RAM I can see it being a cheaper MMC3. That being said this game sucks, all you do is talk to people and there's no real lose state, effectively forcing you to brute force your way to the end. They should've at least made it so that you can game over, once you learn what you have to do you can quickly get back to where you were.