THERE'S NONO LIMIT -
INTERVIEW WITH PCNONO GAMES
When did the PCNONO games start?
We could say that we have been related to video games all our lives. Since I (Nono) at 6 years old and my brother (Copy) at 13 years old wrote the Basic code that came in video game magazines on our ZX Spectrum. But already in more serious mode, we could say from 2015, when we started making games for PC and Android until 2019 that we returned to the Retro world with our first game Dead Zone for ZX Spectrum
How many people are in the group and what do they do?
The base group is 2, my brother "Copy" and I "Nono" but collaborators always join each of our games to complete the team. I (Nono) usually design the game, programming, sound and sometimes music. My brother (Copy) is in charge of creating levels, graphics and testing Then the collaborators who join depend on the demand of the game, but lately, you tend to be the most frequent. Sergio the Pope helps us with the most advanced code. Errazking with the graphics. Ozar with illustrations. And many others like Ariel, and Mr Rancio for other titles. The Testers tend to change a lot and we try to make them of different profiles. A very good gamer, a more normal player, and someone quite basic as a player.
Why did you choose ZX Spectrum to create games?
We started with PC and Android, but we always wanted to make a game for the ZX Spectrum. In 2019, we decided to do it and we liked it so much that we had such a good acceptance from the public that we decided to continue and today we have 8 titles.
What development tools do you use?
We use a little of everything. But mainly, for ZX Spectrum we use Jonathan Caudwell’s AGD Native together with our partner Sergio the Pope's La Perilla, and then we use some more like Tiled, Game Maker, etc, but it depends on the game and the needs.
How do you produce physical versions of your games to sell?
Well, even the penultimate Zooming Secretary title was made by ourselves. The truth is that he has a lot of work. But for this latest Tiny Crate game, we have shared work with a company that manufactures "Stereo Style" Cassettes.
What have been your favourite games so far?
It's hard to choose one, each of our games has something special, at least for us. But if I have to choose one, at least for my CODE 112 and this last TINY CRATE have very good mechanics.
Your new title is for the Game Boy. What inspired you?
Well, it's hard to explain. But maybe it's because it was our second video game machine after the ZX Spectrum and because we also wanted to do something new and different retro, with more colours and so on. Our goal is to have it finished by June of this year at the latest. So you must be attentive to our social networks or our website https://www.pcnono.es hehehe ;)
How easy was it to make the jump from Spectrum to Game Boy?
Well, it hasn't been very difficult. Thanks to the Makers, the base of the programming is practically the same. Perhaps we have noticed more change in the management of colours and their different palettes. But summarizing, we could say that it hasn't been difficult, you have to keep in mind that the Zx Spectrum is a very limited machine, if you learn to create games for Spectrum, you can create games for any other system. I always recommend it as a study method.
What new tools are you using for Game Boy development?
Well, we use Game Boy Studio for programming and for everything else, graphics, screen design, etc. we continue with the same work system.
Are you looking for more games to publish?
We do have more ideas and projects in the drawer to develop, and not only for ZX Spectrum and Game Boy, but we also want to develop for other systems. But we have to be patient and go one by one. Because he has a lot of work. Of course, as long as they are Retro games, we would like to be able to release them in physical format and thus contribute so that this format also remains alive.
Eviva España!
Our favourite PCNoNo Spectrum games - purchase digitally at https://pcnonogames.itch.io/
ADVENTURES CONTINUE
Inspired by Adventures of Lolo (NES), this block-pushing puzzler entered ZXDev 2021 and features a brilliant rendition of Daft Punk’s Around The World.
ZOOMING SECRETARY
A clever demake of the Russian Mega Drive homebrew title also for ZXDev 2021, rush around the office answering phones and dodging dodgy managers…
TINY CRATE
With the first few levels acting as a tutorial, this action puzzler sees you throwing crates to climb around and escape the building site.
PAINTBALL 2048
Two players must capture the flag and fight off invading forces in this Robotron-style game. A solo player must survive against hordes of enemies.
TRASHMAN CRISIS TIME
Drawing on the Malcolm Evans classic Trashman, Andrés the rubbish collector must earn extra money to survive during the economic crisis.
NEWS BYTES
AMIGA: The deadline for AmiGameJam “Sword & Sorcery” has been put back to the 1st of August. https://bit.ly/amigamejam
ATARI 2600: No programming knowledge is needed for Haroldo-OKs VCS Game Maker, using Batari Basic and Javascript to create a working ROM. https://bit.ly/vcs-gamemaker
C64: AGPX and Phobos created the platformer News Stand. https://bit.ly/newsstand-c64
GAME BOY COLOR: Incube8 Games opened the physical pre-orders for its new title Dango Dash, a platform game where you take on a clan of ninjas. This game will be reviewed in issue 249, with 2021: Moon Escape reviewed in issue 248. https://bit.ly/dangodash
MASTER SYSTEM: Louis the Sega Nerd released the driving game Monaco Master, with a Game Gear version also available, as his entry into the SMS Power 2023 Competition. https://bit.ly/monacomaster
MSX2: Côté Gamers opened physical pre-orders for S.A.K – Stab And Kill, the excellent Green Beret clone. https://bit.ly/sak-preorder
PICO-8: Paul Hammond’s new conversion is Irem arcade classic Moon Patrol - https://bit.ly/moonpatrol-pico8
VIC-20: Huffelduff’s latest is Murderlize All Humans! Featuring sampled speech and Berzerk-like gameplay, it requires 16K memory expansion. https://bit.ly/murderlize-vic20
ZX81: Bukster Games released BattleZXone, a clever recreation of the classic Atari arcade game Battlezone. The game also supports the Chroma add-on for colour. https://bit.ly/battlezxone
ZX SPECTRUM: Sloanysoft’s latest, Janky Joe in Retro Hell, pays tribute to classic games – an updated Feedback Edition responded to player feedback and made several tweaks to the gameplay. https://bit.ly/jankyjoe
PuttyCAD and 100TinSoldiers launched Baby-Man vs Man-Baby (single-screen crosshair shooter) and Baby-Man vs Nappy Bird (Flappy Bird style) at https://puttycad.itch.io
VARIOUS: Retro Programmer Inside hosted the Retro Snake Game Jam, attracting thirteen entries on multiple formats - https://bit.ly/retro-snake-jam
Champion Coder - Team Sword
(Nathan Tolbert – Gauauu, Jordan Davis – Raftronaut)
From: America
Website: https://bit.ly/storiedsword-nes
Format: NES
Previous game: Super Homebrew War (NES)
Working on: The Storied Sword (NES)
After meeting at the Midwest Gaming Classic, Nathan and Jordan joined forces.
How did you start collaborating on a game?
Nathan: Jordan and I met at the Midwest Gaming Classic convention a few years prior. During a lull in development of one of my other NES game projects (Halcyon), I decided I wanted to try making an twitchy action game. As I don't do graphics, I was interested in finding an artist. I had seen that Jordan was engaging in a lot of newer game projects, and I was hoping to find someone that had time and enthusiasm for the project, so I reached out to Jordan to see if he was interested. Luckily he was, so from there, we were able to refine the vision of the game a bit, and get to work!
Jordan: Yeah! Nathan was the very first NES developer I met in person at Midwest Gaming Classic in Milwaukee. I recognized his work on Halcyon right away because I had been following a blog by Frankengraphics, the artist on the project. I was just getting interested in NES homebrew and had a lot of unfocused enthusiasm. I was hoping to join a project as a music composer, but noticed there was a much bigger demand for pixel artists, so I decided to shift my focus into graphics and spent some time working on my style, which got the attention of Nathan and led to this project. I am also doing the sound design on the game, so focusing on visual art helped open up opportunities for me to create game music.
What games have inspired you?
Nathan: I really tend to be fairly derivative in my game designs, making games that are inspired by some of my favourites from my childhood. In this case, we took direct inspiration from the NES games Ninja Gaiden and Batman. The goal was to capture the fast-paced frustrating challenge of Ninja Gaiden, but with some of the elements of Batman mixed in (particularly some of the wall-jump physics and specific enemy mechanics).
Combined with that, we wanted to have a bit of a fairy-tale/storybook theme, and we took a lot of cues from a particular movie that may be obvious once you see the characters and first boss fight :-)
Jordan: Haha, yeah, we wore our influences on our sleeve there. The movie in question is an homage to other swashbuckling high adventure serials like Zorro and the Phantom, so we made an homage of an homage with our game and leaned into the aesthetic. I’ve been binging classic swashbuckling and high fantasy films looking for inspiration for the artwork, Erol Flynn’s Robin Hood, 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, and Jack the Giant Killer have been playing on repeat as I have been working on the visuals. The end result is a fun mish mash of influences.
Besides the games Nathan mentioned above (NInja Gaiden, and Batman), I would say that the Castlevania and Megaman series have been particularly helpful in figuring out the most effective ways to draw castles in NES games. I am a big fan of the music and visual style of Simon’s Quest, and the castles featured in the later Megaman games like KnightMan’s castle in MM6.
Funny, one of the biggest influences on me getting into NES development was Halcyon, the game Nathan is developing with Frankengraphics. I’ll be the first in line once that gets released!
What tools and development environment are you using?
Nathan: I write all the code by hand in assembly and C, (using the Vim text editor), using git to track our progress as we go. I'll let Jordan comment about what he uses for graphics and sound. We use the Tiled map editor to then build our level layouts. Then there's a build script (based around Makefiles and python scripts) that converts all the input data into a NES-specific format that works well for our game engine, and creates the final ROM.
Jordan: For all my graphics I use a fork of NES Screen Tool (NESST) written by Frankengraphics called NEXXT. It’s a slightly more user-friendly version of the tool that I started using years ago to tinker with graphics. I draw the tiles in 8x8 chunks and assemble them as 16x16 metatiles in Tiled. Additionally, I build all my metasprites in the NEXXT metasprite editor. It’s really granular for moving NES sprites around within a metasprite. I really like it.
For music I use Famitracker, which was the standard NES music tracker program when I first started. Once I got comfortable with that, I never looked back. This project incorporates DPCM audio for the drum samples, which I chopped up in Audacity and imported via Famitracker's WAV importer, after a lot of trial and error. I wanted the music to have that classic Konami-style sound with heavy percussion.
What are the unique features of the game?
Nathan: In some ways, our goal was less to be unique, and more to offer a solid and fun challenge that hearkens back to old challenging games. That said, we do have a few things that are different. Jordan had an idea early on to make our enemies more interesting: instead of them all being faceless clones of each other, we have a number of different heads that are applied to the enemies. So each average grunt enemy will look different from the one before them. No more clones!
We also eschewed the traditional limited lives and game-over cycle. For games like this, the player just wants to keep trying until they succeed, so we just let the player infinitely try again from the beginning of the level.
Beyond that, most of our features are about trying to refine the core gameplay pacing to be challenging but fair, twitchy but playable. The game features two playable characters, so balancing the game for both characters' abilities has been a fun part of the development process.
Jordan: Yeah, we were hoping to fill a gap in the homebrew landscape for this type of action platformer, so we’ve been concerned with iterating on what makes games like this good and adding our own sensibilities to it. Nathan has such a solid grasp of game mechanics which allows me to focus on bringing contextual stuff to the table, so we can build a total package together. In a lot of ways, our game carries a lot of features that would be familiar to fans of the NES library but done so in a combination that should feel unique to players. Plus we’re the only NES game to feature a tambourine in the sample channel, so there is that.
Are you planning a physical cartridge?
Nathan: Absolutely. We'll almost definitely release both a game ROM for emulators and a cartridge. Currently, we're targeting the GTROM and UNROM mappers, which are common mappers for modern homebrew games.
Jordan: The cartridge release is the main goal as fans of the console. I’m hoping to put some care into the physical packaging in order to reinforce our storybook theme. One of the hidden joys I discovered when releasing my first NES game was putting together the instruction manual. There is a lot of work that goes into it, but when it’s done well it adds so much more to the tactile experience of owning an NES game in a box.
How long have you been developing it, and do you have a release date?
Nathan: We began development in mid-2021. We don't have a release date set, but we're hoping that it will be finished later this calendar year. At this point, a majority of the game is finished, with 4 of the 6 worlds mostly complete. But the final boss fight make take us some effort!
Jordan: We have some really terrific testers helping us iron out our designs, that process has been great for tuning up what we have built thus far. We’re both really motivated to finish the game, but we want to take the time to ensure that we’re creating a balanced challenge for the player and do it right. Nathan mentioned that the final boss could take us some time, which is something we’re accounting for. We want our final boss encounter to be something special, alongside some of the creative boss fights in our influences. We’ve been deferring from committing to any boss mechanics until we get there, so we can evaluate and balance the challenge off of what came before it. It’s a fun process, each boss fight we develop has been more exciting to me than the last, so we hope to carry that momentum through to the finish line.
@nathantolbert on Twitter, Gauauu elsewhere – Nathan Tolbert
@0000jordan on Twitter and Raftronaut elsewhere - Jordan Davis
Databurst
Bruxólico
Format: ZX Spectrum
Credits: Amaweks
Price: $10 digital download (includes PDF book & audio files), free demo available
[Score] 85%
Maria Renard’s Revenge
Format: Amiga 1200/CD32 with 1Mb Fast RAM, Amiga500 Mini
Credits: Z-Team
Price: Name your own price
[Score] 86%
Renegade Reloaded
Format: Amstrad CPC (128K required)
Credits: Geco and ToTo
Price: Free download
[Score] 88%
Processing
The stakes are high in Matt Bennion’s Mega Drive dungeon crawler Crypt of Dracula.
What is your development setup, and the major tools used?
For coding, I use Visual Studio Code together with the Sega Genesis Development Kit (SGDK) by Stephane Dallongeville.
For graphics, it’s a mix between GIMP and Aseprite. Mega Drive graphics work in TileMaps and Tiles stored in VRAM as a result I’m always looking for ways to optimise VRAM usage. I wrote a custom Python script to analyse our graphics recently and it has enabled us to see how many unique tiles each graphic has and see if there are any stray pixels that can be cleaned up to save space.
Music is composed using DefleMask which creates VGM files. These are optimised by the SGDK and converted to XGM format. The XGM format is still relatively large and tends to be the thing that takes the most cart space in SGDK-based games. The good news is Stephane is working on XGM2 which should hopefully improve this. For sound effects, I generally record the monster sounds myself in Audacity, ha-ha! Others come from sound packs purchased for commercial use. As with music I’m finding PCM sound effects can be expensive on cart space.
I've several revisions of the Mega Drive for testing. I use a Mega EverDrive Pro to test. Every new build I create I upload via the cart's handy USB connection.
What games have inspired Crypt of Dracula?
Weirdly the game started as a simple port of the ZX Spectrum game Tomb of Dracula which I played a lot as a kid during primary school. The game has evolved since then, although I've managed to retain the same creepy vibe, I got from it as a kid! The games engine takes inspiration from Shining in the Darkness and other RPGs of the 16-bit era, along with first-person shooter Doom (note the bobbing hand, face looking around). Some of the game's puzzle mechanics take inspiration from RPGs and Chip's Challenge. Castlevania and Resident Evil are definitely an inspiration too.
Are you planning a physical release?
Indeed, I’d love to get a physical release sorted. We’re still some distance from getting there but my heart is set on it. I’m self-funding most of the work myself now. These things take time unfortunately.
Are you working with anyone else?
I’m mainly working with Daniel "108 Stars" Horváth ( Pier Solar ) who drawing the in-game graphics. Anders "Zable" Tegengren ( Pier Solar ) is providing us with music and a few years back Luis Martins ( Paprium ) did the title screen and cutscenes.
What other titles do you have in development?
I have two other games which are not at the same stage of development as Crypt. Chords, which is my tribute to Hideo Kojima’s Snatcher, I’m really looking forward to exploring its development post CoD but it’s going to require far more work and funding to reach its potential. I’m hoping at some point my YouTube channel will hit ad revenue to buffer some of this.
