IGW Games

modern code, retro games

By

A (Finished) NES Game!

Those who follow me on social media or elsewhere may already know, however I recently released a brand new game for the NES. (Yes, the Nintendo Entertainment System from the 1980s) It is free to play online, and also an entrant into the 2016 NESDev Coding Competition.

It’s a typical sidescroller, with a very obvious nod to the game Eversion. (Which is fantastic, and worth trying if you’ve never played!) You play as a duck, who was tragically removed from his own timeline, and needs to find his way home.

If you like retro gaming at all, give it a try! Games in the competition will also (eventually) be available on a multicart, playable on a real NES, too! Source code will be on Github once I have a little time to document some of the messier stuff. I’m hoping this will be a helpful reference to future NES developers.

Having just finished, I’ve also taken some time to reflect on how the game went, so for those who want to know more, click the full post.

Read More

By

More NES game!

Quick update on the NES game. It’s still in very heavy development. I’ve branched off a first pre-alpha release of it – mainly because I plan on making major changes to the graphics as well as a switch to chr-ram in the next couple of days.

New features since last time:

  • A third (mostly empty… it has one screen) map representing a town
  • New text engine – there are two distinct entities you can talk to right now. (One is a sign. Find the other!)
  • The sword does something now.
  • There are two other weapons, one of which you can find in a new short dungeon (Both need some serious polish)
  • Saving/loading games
  • Two types of monster, which may drop one of two kinds of item.

I’ve set up the NES game page to let you load both this version and the latest, and also added download links for anyone who wants to try it in a better emulator.

Enjoy!

By

NES Game!

So, I don’t post here too often, but I am working on something pretty interesting that I thought I should highlight. I’m writing an NES game from scratch in 6502 assembly.

The results are available on the NES Game page on the site. The page includes an emulator that runs the latest build of the game. I update fairly frequently, but right now it has:

  • Two supported maps with around a dozen developed screens.
  • A main character with collision detection.
  • A health system, and a way to die
  • Money that you can pick up
  • Music and sound effects!
  • A Sword that does nothing.

Not a very good description, but the idea is to build a solid adventure game engine, then develop a full-fledged NES game on top of it.

If you’re interested, feel free to reach out in the comments. As long as you aren’t advertising medications for certain body parts, I’ll be sure to get back to you!