[HN Gopher] Nathan Tolbert pushes the limitations of new games o...
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Nathan Tolbert pushes the limitations of new games on old consoles
Author : masterofsome
Score : 37 points
Date : 2024-04-15 20:47 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smilepolitely.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smilepolitely.com)
| stevenwoo wrote:
| That was a fun article, surprised there is a market for new games
| on emulators (or really old consoles from my reading).
| jsheard wrote:
| It's not a huge market, in practical terms it makes more sense
| for retro-inspired games to use a modern engine with self-
| imposed constraints rather than targeting an actual retro
| platform, but some developers want to go that extra mile.
| Another example would be Goodboy Galaxy, an original GBA game
| which had a very successful Kickstarter and can be bought as a
| real working GBA cartridge if you want.
|
| https://www.goodboygalaxy.com
| gauauu wrote:
| Nathan Tolbert here (the developer in the article).
|
| It's true that it's not a huge market, but it's an
| interesting one. First, most of us involved are making these
| games because the old platforms themselves are what's
| interesting, so a modern engine just isn't any fun. So we're
| not remotely in tune with what's practical.
|
| But beyond that, the community of players and buyers in this
| community is very engaged and supportive, which makes it very
| different from other indie dev. Indie games for a lot of
| other platforms have a long tail... if you get noticed,
| you'll make good money. If not, you'll make almost nothing
| and it will be crickets. In NES development, you're
| guaranteed to have a number of people that are engaging with
| you and supporting your work. It's still rare to make enough
| money to really make it a well-paying job, but it's a lot of
| fun as a money-making hobby.
| jsheard wrote:
| Yeah I certainly get the appeal, it's analogous to the way
| people are still making new FPS games using the actual Doom
| or Quake engines rather than something modern set up to
| imitate them. Though that also brings its own practical
| problems when trying to ship a commercial product, so
| you've really got to be in it for the love of the old
| school.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| The Gameboy and GBA have seen a surprising number of new
| games in recent years. And I don't mean stuff created in GB
| Studio (which is itself really awesome), but actual games
| written from scratch in C or assembly. They seem to be quite
| a popular couple of platforms to develop on even today.
|
| Personally, I tend to look out more the indie Mega Drive
| releases but I really love the fact that people are still
| developing for these platforms.
| jsheard wrote:
| It's not a game but I'll take any opportunity to plug
| Overdrive 2 for the Mega Drive:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWVmPtr9O0g
|
| That system has no business producing any kind of 3D
| graphics but they did it anyway.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Yeah seen that before. It's definitely impressive but
| it's worth noting that there are a few 3D games for the
| Mega Drive. Albeit games like Virtua Racing did have
| additional chips in the cartridge (I have a boxed copy of
| that cart sat behind me).
|
| The Master System had stereoscopic 3D games too. As did
| the Famicom. I have both of their respective 3D addons
| too. Missile Defence in 3D is pretty cool. Hard to
| believe it's 30+ year old tech.
| doobiedowner wrote:
| I see "pre-order" and "shipping winter '23"... :(
| VS1999 wrote:
| I was surprised to see kickstarter at 21k USD to produce new
| NES cartridges. That system is older than most people living in
| the US.
| theogravity wrote:
| There's the NESMaker community that creates NES games using a
| toolkit:
|
| https://www.thenew8bitheroes.com/
|
| Games that may be created with it (the NESMaker site links to it,
| but it's not clear if all games were made with it or not):
|
| https://theretroverse.com/play/
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