This is awesome! Tooling is often an underappreciated aspect of development. Better tooling allows for higher quality output at lower effort, and the tooling today for developing against older platforms would cause developers past to drool.
If you're curious about making NES games, there's literally never been a better time to start than today. Unless you count tomorrow...
My favourite example of this effect is the large expansion to Morrowind that is Tamriel Rebuilt. Their quality standards in the last few releases have been so high, the base game wouldn't pass them anymore. Yet their release tempo is increasing. Much of this is due to big effort by its loving developers, but some of it also comes down to improved tooling that just didn't exist a couple of decades ago.
There's a similar story around the old PDP computers. People with modern computers as tooling have managed to coax old PDP computers into doing things they always could, but which it was insurmountable to get them to do without the modern tooling.
I guess what I want to say by this diversion is this: if you don't know what project to take on in your spare time, develop tooling for an old platform you like. You'll enable others to make things we couldn't even dream of before.
Whoa... I didn't even know these existed. This is linked from that page and is a pretty cool example of what it takes to make these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM. It's cool to see the Nintendo games are still being developed! I was 8yo when the NES came out and my mom saved up all her waitress money and bought me one that Christmas.
I love the NES — probably my favorite console! I still enjoy playing the original games today on occasion.
I have a modest (curated) collection of about 60 games, but most are what I would consider some of the best titles for the system: Dragon Warrior 1-4, Mega Man 1-6, SMB 1-3, both Zeldas, Castlevania 1-3, Final Fantasy, Destiny of an Emperor, Guardian Legend, Faxanadu, Duck Tales — just to name a few of my favorites.
Just the other day I was thinking to myself that I should look to see what homebrew/modern third titles are out there an worth playing.
Back in the 90's, buying such a cartridge was a big decision, since a single one would cost the allowance for several months. And with no Internet and YouTube to run a search for "Haunted Haloween 85 NES", the only criteria for evaluating such a game in the physical flea market was the poster on the cartridge. Which, unlike the OPs which at least seem to pose a resemblance to the actual game, it had almost nothing to do with how the game will look.
Consequently I almost never got the good games and was utter disappointed after trying them. Fortunately there were neighbors who also bought and we exchanged cartridges, and so I found the best game I ever remember playing on such a console, Mighty Final Fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoUPvwCcUo8
If you're curious about making NES games, there's literally never been a better time to start than today. Unless you count tomorrow...
My favourite example of this effect is the large expansion to Morrowind that is Tamriel Rebuilt. Their quality standards in the last few releases have been so high, the base game wouldn't pass them anymore. Yet their release tempo is increasing. Much of this is due to big effort by its loving developers, but some of it also comes down to improved tooling that just didn't exist a couple of decades ago.
There's a similar story around the old PDP computers. People with modern computers as tooling have managed to coax old PDP computers into doing things they always could, but which it was insurmountable to get them to do without the modern tooling.
I guess what I want to say by this diversion is this: if you don't know what project to take on in your spare time, develop tooling for an old platform you like. You'll enable others to make things we couldn't even dream of before.
I love the NES — probably my favorite console! I still enjoy playing the original games today on occasion.
I have a modest (curated) collection of about 60 games, but most are what I would consider some of the best titles for the system: Dragon Warrior 1-4, Mega Man 1-6, SMB 1-3, both Zeldas, Castlevania 1-3, Final Fantasy, Destiny of an Emperor, Guardian Legend, Faxanadu, Duck Tales — just to name a few of my favorites.
Just the other day I was thinking to myself that I should look to see what homebrew/modern third titles are out there an worth playing.
So I’d say this post was actually perfect timing!
Little Sisyphus https://youtu.be/to0rkV_SbMA
Böbl https://youtu.be/xBfvMA3tz9k
Back in the 90's, NES clones were all the rage in Eastern Europe:
With ludicrous names like "Gold Leopard King" https://www.reddit.com/r/crappyoffbrands/comments/1ekwzx5/go...
Or mimicking a Sega Genesis package and console look, this is the one that was most popular in Romania and I had one too : https://gadget.ro/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/terminator2.jpg
There's still a ton of old cartridges for it on sale on the flea market: https://www.olx.ro/d/oferta/jocuri-clona-nes-dischete-casete...
Back in the 90's, buying such a cartridge was a big decision, since a single one would cost the allowance for several months. And with no Internet and YouTube to run a search for "Haunted Haloween 85 NES", the only criteria for evaluating such a game in the physical flea market was the poster on the cartridge. Which, unlike the OPs which at least seem to pose a resemblance to the actual game, it had almost nothing to do with how the game will look.
Consequently I almost never got the good games and was utter disappointed after trying them. Fortunately there were neighbors who also bought and we exchanged cartridges, and so I found the best game I ever remember playing on such a console, Mighty Final Fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoUPvwCcUo8