Growing up in the era of the Nintendo Entertainment System, I always wanted to create my own NES game. I scribbled ideas in notebooks, mapped out levels on graph paper and spent countless hours composing my own MIDI-based soundtracks to games that didn’t exist. These ideas were lost to time until 2018, until I watched Joe Granato’s documentary, The New 8-bit Heroes, about his quest to create the game of his childhood dreams. Now, with the successfully funded Kickstarter for his NESMaker software, the project may help to simplify the creation of homebrew NES games. Joe isn’t the first one to do this, however, as homebrew has a long and storied history. Today’s Tedium seeks to explore this corner of NES history and the creation of NES games over 20 years after the end of the system’s commercial life.
I did the same thing! I’d play games like doom and design some maps for it, but I wanted to build my own games. I designed maps and game mechanics on paper and somehow I enjoyed it even though the games weren’t real, haha. I did make several demos to test ideas, but my skill and the existing technology were limited at the time.
These days I’d actually have the skills to build the games I envisioned, but I’m too busy with work and family to pursue my old passions. Anybody here make games?
Not yet. First I gotta finish my own-built oldskool computer
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Since my first exposure to computer in mid to late 80s, one of my dream was to build my own game. But now I got pretty much all (at least) the basic information on game development for back then, I feel too tired just with my day job (mostly web development)
Even though I have made some simple 2d game engine with lua scriping and all except physics, I never had chance to create a game. i stopped any personal project since in the middle of developing my own 3d software renderer….
It’s not a “real” game, but I coded a “Game of life” for the Apple II about one year ago.
The Apple II was the very first computer I handled when I was a child, so you can say that there was a bit of nostalgia in this endeavor. But the real reason was that I wanted to increase my knowledge of the machine. And what better way than to code something on it?
Anyway I opened the source code and I documented my “discoveries” on my blog. One article in particular appears to stir some interest. It deals about the colorful “hires” graphic mode. The way it is achieved is quite hard to grasp, so I guess I explained it in a way that is easier to understand than other available sources.
So, at the very least, creating new games on old computers is a great way to bring more “modern” eyes on these machines and document them!
As a retro-computing enthusiast, I really enjoy reading new technical articles about those piece of history!
The source: https://github.com/Pixinn/gameoflife-appleii
The article about HIRES: https://www.xtof.info/blog/?p=768
So I just got an extra 48K for my Tandy Model 200. It has the full 72K now – woo hoo! I also got a cassette drive and some tapes for saving the programs. I’m going to be firing up my Tandy Basic and see what kind of fun I can have. I actually got a game published in 1985 in the Tandy Portable 100 magazine. Maybe I’ll try to recreate something like that.