As you guys know I’m always on the lookout for cool homebrew games and ports/demakes for retro consoles and recently I’ve come a across a few more excellent ones.
Firstly is A Pig Quest for the Commodore 64 that uses some clever colour cycling tricks to force more colours than you normally can into the gameplay area resulting in it looking better than most c64 games. It’s cool environment effects are equally impressive with detailed moving backgrounds, leaves falling, rain, lightning and monsters that change more due to some animation compression tricks too. It’s full of so much crazy stuff they’re apparently having problems putting together the physical cart for real Commodore 64s lol!
Second is another new game in the making called Wild Wood that’s also pushing the Commodore 64 to it’s limits with colour tricks and extra layers of parallax scrolling resulting on a lot of background movement! The artwork is truly incredible and the game just looks utterly amazing for a c64 game.
I always loved playing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beat ’em up Konami games in arcades and on consoles back in the 90s. Being a SEGA kid I got to play TMNT The Hyperstone Heist the most and always wanted a sequel but was disappointed with TMNT Tournament Fighters. So a few years ago I couldn’t believe it when I came across a cool TMNT romhack mod for the popular classic beat ’em up Streets of Rage 2 for SEGA Genesis/Megadrive called TMNT of Rage Remix by eskayelle which replaced all 4 characters with Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo & Donatello along with a few other things. However now a few years on inspired modders Savok & PPI Akiko have gone above & beyond and created an even bigger total conversion romhack for SoR2 called Shredder’s Re-Revenge that uses assets from the recent awesome TMNT Shredder’s Revenge game (ironically made by the creators of Streets of Rage 4!) on Steam & modern consoles. Because Shredder’s Revenge was deliberately retro with pixelated art its sprites and animations were able to be converted over to the Genesis palette and inserted into SoR2 resulting in this mod looking quite amazing. So naturally the 4 Turtles are back better than ever, but now all enemies have been replaced too and the huge boss fight sprites for Krang, Bebop & Rocksteady in particular are most impressive, plus not only that but they’ve even changed the story cutscenes and found a way to extend SoR2’s character roster past the original 4 up to 7 playable characters allowing them to also insert April, Casey & Splinter into the game too! Feels like the true TMNT Hyperstone Heist sequel we never got! Just amazing!
Found some more awesome indie and homebrew retro console games out there or in the making! Love seeing fans pushing these old consoles to their limits and making games and ports we could only dream of as kids.
Firstly GASEGA68k who I’ve posted about before due to his amazing SuperFX chip like games/demos on a regular SEGA Genesis/Megadrive (eg Wolfenstein, F-Zero, Mario Kart) has released new videos showing just how far his Starfox conversion has come along. Just amazing to think this is on a regular un-modded MD and he reckons he’s got some more tricks up his sleeve to gain back more FPS too!
New video of current status of Starfox demo for Sega Genesis/MD.
The scramble intro sound and the music during gameplay are streaming sample rate at 12khz (2 to 1 compresion adpcm type, the same format I used on wolf3d) playing with the z80. #starfox, #SegaGenesis, #Megadrivepic.twitter.com/iIL7T2CSLz
Next comes a very cool looking Wonder Boy like game for the Nintendo Gameboy called Tales of Monsterland that is clearly WB3 inspired with its cool monster changes. They’ve even done a nice physical collectors boxset version!
Then comes some truly awesome projects going on at the moment for the SEGA Master System. Firstly a fellow named xfixium is working on a port of the brilliant Arcade version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! When you compare this to the official original NES port of the game the difference is remarkable!
A few years ago I posted about my nostalgic love for my very first console in the 1980s, a second hand Intellivision with about 50 games, and also how now days all these decades later there’s been some truly amazing homebrew releases and ports of famous games from other consoles such as Defender of the Crown, Castlevania, Price of Persia, Final Fantasy, and Wonder Boy. You can check out that old post about them HERE !
I also mentioned in that post my excitement for the up and coming Intellivision Amico console however after waiting all these years things are not sounding too good and even if the console does somehow survive it sounds like it wouldn’t have run original classic Intellivision games anyway so a lot of the old fanbase has lost interest. However the good news is thankfully Elektronite (creators of many new and awesome Intellivision games) and fans have been busy working towards making their own new Intellivision console using FPGA tech. The equally awesome news and the main reason I’m making this new post is that sure enough the super talented creators I mentioned in my previous post, in particular a fellow named Skywaffle has been busy over the last few years creating even more amazing playable Intellivision demos and complete conversions of famous games we all know and love that you’d never expect to see on the old 70s console lol! I just had to show you guys these as the Mario one below is just unbelievable!!! Hope he does Sonic, Alex Kidd or Wonder Boy in Monster Land at some point too haha!
Wow!! The world (and Nintendo’s lawyers lol) went bonkers a few years ago when Super Mario Bros was successfully ported to the Commodore 64 and was actually fast & looked good (I’ll put a link & video below if you missed all the fuss). Well now it’s Sonic’s turn as Sonic The Hedgehog 1 from the SEGA Master System has been ported to C64 and it looks & sounds really good! I love seeing people in the homebrew scene pushing the limits of old consoles like this.
Wow! This super talented creator named GASEGA68k has managed to get Super Nintendo SNES like Mode 7 3D scrolling graphics like effects on a SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive with no extra chips. Naturally he used the effect to create a F-Zero like game. Of course to get this working on a Mega Drive he had to the lower the resolution a bit but wow..
It just amazes me when fans achieve things like this on retro consoles that professionals thought were impossible back in the day. Here’s another one of his Genesis mode 7 demos. This time its a retro Sonic Team Racing game (basically Mario Kart but with Sonic) that SEGA should have made back in the day.
The talented creator behind these videos is also the same guy that made the popular Wolfenstein 3D SEGA Genesis Mega Drive game from a few years ago. Another utterly amazing technical achievement considering no extra chips were used and is just running on default hardware.
Just saw this on my retro twitter feed and couldn’t believe what I was looking at lol!
This guy has made a 3D deathmatch homebrew game for the SEGA Saturn with freaky lighting and reflection effects that would have you thinking it was a Dreamcast game not a Saturn one lol!
I also love how he’s done a version of Unreal Tournament’s good old facing worlds map (he shows it at the 26:20ish mark in the video), my mates and I used to love playing that.
I miss my old Intellivision. I was originally sent this late 1970s console in the late 1980s by my absent father. By that time most people were rocking Commodore 64s, Nintendos and Sega Master Systems so the Intellivision was already looking pretty darn dated but we had no money so it was going to be a while before I could get one of those consoles so I fully embraced the gift I was given. The Intellivision came with the voice addon and a HUGE box of games. There must have easily been 50 of them! Favourites definitely included B-17 Bomber, Tron Deadly Discs, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, White Water, Dracula, River Run, Skiing, Baseball, and Truckin. I always tried to figure out Utopia but my copy was missing the manual which is such a shame as it could have been my first addictive strategy game experience. There were so many others in the collection I’ve forgotten or I just couldn’t figure out due to missing manuals like Sub Hunt and Ice Trek etc..
In the decades since I’ve seen there were some pretty awesome games sadly not in the collection I was given such as the awesome looking Tower of Doom RPG, Thunder Castle, Swords and Serpents, Pole Position, River Raid, Dreadnought Factor, Chip Shot Super Pro Golf (gorgeous graphics), Auto Racing, the Dungeons & Dragons sequels, and who know how many more I missed lol.
Recently the Intellivision company (which came back from the dead) dug out one of their old archived commercials. Watching it is like opening a time capsule!
The company has been very active lately since as most people know now there’s a new Intellivision console on the way now called the Amico which will contain many of the popular classic Intellivision games, along with modern remakes of some of them and hopefully some of the amazing indie games out there. As like with many retro gaming consoles these days there a healthy indie homebrew Intellivision gaming scene creating some AMAZING games that looked WAY better than any of the original games due to absolutely pushing the console to its limits. Some are conversions of popular 80s games on other rival consoles like the Atari, C64, and even the Amiga which have to be seen to be believed. Here are some of the ones have have blown me away! EDIT: I’ve added project thread links for each of them where you’ll find downloads (not always in the first post) or store links. EDIT2: A few years on there’s been some even more amazing ports like friggin Super Mario, Megaman & Shadow of the Beast! I cover them in a new post HERE !
This is great news! Bitmap Books those awesome guys behind the amazing video game art books for Nintendo, SEGA, C64 & Amiga etc have teamed up with the guys behind the excellent CRPG Book – A Guide to Computer Role Playing Games that I posted about earlier this year.
I’ve actually already printed out my own copy and have been slowly reading it over the last month (it’s huge!) and it has introduced me to so many great classic RPGs I didn’t know about. You’ll find all the favourites in there such as Elder Scrolls, Might & Magic, Final Fantasy, Quest for Glory and Starflight just to name a mere few. I absolutely love how it covers what the best version is to get (eg between PC, C64, Amiga, Sega & Nintendo etc) and what the best fan mods are for many of the games.
I also recently ordered Bitmap’s other products such as the NES, SNES, Master System and Art of Point & Click Adventure books. What’s arrived so far has blown me away. I love the 3D lenticular slipcase covers! (eg turn the book and Mario will jump & coins will spin). So I think I’m going to have to get this new book too haha. Fingers crossed they do a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) book soon too as thats my real retro console love!
Wow! This is an amazing project I recently discovered thanks to Retro Gamer magazine. This clever fellow has created a way to play good old Light Gun games like Duck Hunt, Virtua Cop, Terminator 2 and House of the Dead just to name a few!
Hopefully his system can be mass produced so I’ll can use one with my Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) and Menacer Gun!
UPDATE 24/10/2022: Seen a few people viewing this so thought I’d mention that if you don’t care about getting an old light gun working then there’s some great new options now days like the Sinden LCD Lightgun here: https://sindenlightgun.com/
As you guys know I’m always on the lookout for cool homebrew games and ports/demakes for retro consoles and recently I’ve come a across a few more excellent ones.
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