Homebrew Extra Retro Gamer 277
- andrewrfisher
- 6 minutes ago
- 24 min read
This issue’s column was well underway when I went away for a break with my younger brother in Essex, and ended up in hospital for 18 days, requiring two operations. Back home and slowly recovering, I can still guide you through amazing Dreamcast developments, our Champion Coder’s programming books for older consoles, a great NES Roguelike, and three terrific game reviews. The homebrew scene appears to be in good health right now.
Note: I did actually work on part of this issue from my hospital bed!
QUICK LINKS
DREAMCAST DESIRES
Interview with Dreamcast developer Falco Girgis
When did you first get involved in Dreamcast homebrew?
I actually started when I was 13. A friend of my grandfather told me he'd give me this game console called a "Sega Dreamcast," which had just recently been discontinued, if I mowed his lawn. I obviously did it as someone who grew up collecting retro games, but I was perfectly happy with my brand new PS2 and didn't really think much of the DC... UNTIL I STARTED PLAYING IT.
I will never forget wondering why Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 looked just as good as anything on PS2 at the time, or why Resident Evil Code: Veronica looked better on DC than my brand new PS2. Then, in addition to the great gameplay and graphics, DC had so much else going for it, such as the VMU for playing little handheld companion games or the VGA box, which gave it by far the best video quality of the entire 6th generation of consoles... I fell in love with the little white box immediately.
My newfound love for the DC ultimately wound up leading me to DCEmulation.org, where I discovered that there was an entire community of crazy hackers and engineers who were able to develop custom games, emulators, and other software for this platform that I loved. They were able to do so without requiring any console modifications whatsoever. You have to keep in mind that this was a time before app stores or Xbox Live Arcade or indie marketplaces-there was simply no easy way for an independent developer to target a mainstream console or anything that wasn't a PC, and yet here was this DC platform that could play burned games out-of-the-box. It literally blew my mind. I knew immediately that I had to be a part of it and was willing to do anything to learn how to code for the console.
I used to ride my bike to the library to check out C and C++ programming books, then I'd use them as references while trying to learn to code from the KallistiOS examples. Finally, when I'd inevitably get stuck, there was an entire community of DC developers who helped me out without judging me for being young or inexperienced or asking (really) stupid questions... These people literally made me the developer I am today, kickstarted my career in engineering, and left me forever grateful for their willingness to teach me... That gratitude for the community's willingness to share knowledge is something that has stuck with me to this day, as I am always trying to live up to that standard when mentoring newcomers to the community or scene.
How did development on the KallistiOS SDK start, and what were its main aims?
KallistiOS was started by an incredibly talented engineer, Megan Potter, back around 2001, towards the end of the DC's commercial lifespan. KOS was originally a project she had started for PC, based upon a book called "Advanced 386 Programming." Around this time period, Megan was introduced to the Sega Dreamcast through playing Soul Calibur with a friend and was immediately impressed with the platform and its power. Since it could boot burned CDRs without modification, why not get her OWN code running on the thing?
Around this time, Megan teamed up with a developer named "Tursi" and began work on what would later become "libdream," KOS's precursor. Libdream was simply a collection of disjoint drivers for manipulating various aspects of the DC's hardware. It wasn't until a little while later that Megan toyed around with the idea of writing a real embedded operating system with an actual kernel for the DC, which is how KOS as we know it today was born.
Megan made it explicitly known at the time that the primary goal of KallistiOS was to "fill every need for hobbyists that was filled by Katana for official developers," which is how KOS came to be more than just an operating system--it's an entire homebrew SDK--complete with toolchains, examples, documentation, tools, and more.
What would you say are the best features of KallistiOS?
This is such a fun question for me as an engineer, as I do think KOS has a few areas where it especially shines. There are probably two primary strengths of KOS that I think make it incredibly approachable and easy to work with for developers. The first area is its standard library support while the second is its functioning as a complete mini operating system and kernel.
Something KOS has done well that has always stood out to me as a developer who has targeted many other devices is its standard library support. We work extremely hard to ensure that almost every aspect of the C and C++ standard libraries, up to C23 and C++23, is present and does "the right thing" by default. This means that even newbies doing their first "Hello World" applications and learning to use printf() can expect their code to "just work" on the Dreamcast as intended without needing any platform-specific knowledge or code changes. This also means that when porting games, anything that uses standard C or C++ code relying on the standard libraries will also "just work" typically. Contrast this to Android's NDK, where you can't even do a printf() from native C code and see the output in a terminal, and I can honestly say that KOS is a more C and C++ standards-compliant and developer-friendly environment!
Our other big strength is that we function as a full embedded operating system with a preemptive thread scheduler, virtual file system, and POSIX-compliant APIs. These again, make it that much easier to target the DC with existing codebases. Our threading game is quite strong and supports all of the advanced and modern low-level pthread features. We also work extremely hard to add POSIX-compliant APIs around our kernel, so that code written to target Linux-like environments also "just works" under KOS.
Finally, I think our virtual filesystem may just be our single best feature. It provides uniform filesystem abstractions which work with standard C and POSIX file I/O APIs. This means you can use standard C calls to access the following: CD-ROMs, SD cards, IDE drives, ROM disks, temporary RAM storage, VMUs, and even remote PCs over the network! Most of us actually stream our assets from our PCs during development before eventually swapping to CD-ROM accesses before release. This is as easy as issuing a top-level chdir() command to swap from loading assets from "/pc/" to /cd/."
Much of your work is in optimisation and back-end changes, how difficult can that be?
Oh, it can be quite difficult. On the optimisation side, it's a very slow-going process. Typically, it starts with finding some bottlenecking C code, then importing it into Compiler Explorer so that I can optimise and fine-tune the code and view its generated disassembly in real-time. Unfortunately, though, there are many aspects of the DC's SH4 CPU which our GCC compiler has no knowledge of, which means we must drop to pure SH4 ASM to leverage such features. Examples of this are our vector/matrix instructions or the floating-point back-bank of registers... and hand coding things in SH4 ASM is much slower than doing the equivalent in C.
Back-end KOS changes are also quite difficult, as there's just so much going on that powers a video game on a console as complex as the DC, not to mention the fact that we offer a full OS as well. We are truly blessed to have an extraordinarily talented team of developers contributing to KOS, though. Everyone has their own little niche or area where they specialise, so we typically know who to delegate tasks to or who needs to review what when a big back-end bug arises, or an improvement needs to be implemented.
What would you say have been the biggest changes in Dreamcast homebrew recently?
There have been a lot of visible changes in terms of what people are seeing get produced from within the community, but in my humble opinion, everything can be traced back to one driving factor: KallistiOS finally reaching maturity as a development kit and both making it easier for newbies to approach the platform as well as allowing for veterans to take better advantage of its hardware.
There was a time, just a few years back, when KOS was more-or-less a dead legacy project; however, many of us "kids" who grew up working with it, coding for DC, have finally come of age and have become skilled engineers who are now able to give back and contribute... I really think this "rebirth" of KOS is what has really been the fuel behind the recent growth and increased output from the DC homebrew scene.
What projects have impressed you personally?
Oh, man. I'm impressed by so many DC projects... Obviously, there's the raw technical achievement of getting Grand Theft Auto 3 and VC ported to the Dreamcast, which was literally a miracle. It was a miracle that the original code was of high enough quality to even run on a Dreamcast. It was a miracle that the team that decompiled the codebase did such a good job and faithfully reproduced the original game. Then it was a miracle that so many A-rank rockstar DC developers were able to join forces and get it all ported and running on DC. It was one of the highlights of my engineering career.
Then I'm a total fanboy of everything jnmartin does. We were a big team working on GTA, while he's a solo developer putting out some of the highest quality content on the platform, all by himself. I'm also a huge fan of all of the high-profile ports coming to the Dreamcast, such as SonicFreak94's work on Sonic Mania, MaximQuad's work on the Xash3D engine and Counterstrike, and MrNeo's work on Mario 64. I'm also loving seeing the development of many of the original games we have coming out for DC, such as Meese's Minecraft-style game, Orc Face Games' upcoming original, "Harlequest," or dRxL's work on "dRxLaX."
Then rounding out the community, we have Ian Michael as the rock star of all things relating to retro emulation on the console, along with a bunch of impressive work on back-end infrastructure such as engines and frameworks, including Kazade's work on the famous "Simulant" engine and our OpenGL back-end, GLdc; Lerabot's work on the Lua-based "antiruins" engine; or GPFTroy's work on bringing us SDL2 and SDL3.
Oh, and I almost forgot our mad scientists! We have pcercuei, who is working on "Bloom," a new PS1 emulator, and DC-SWAT, with the "DreamShell", a full operating system including a desktop environment for DC!
With these conversions, how much of the assets from the original game are carried over - in terms of map data, graphics, 3D models, and so on?
So for every port, the assets are all there in some form or fashion, but they are handled differently depending on the demands of the given port. Many ports preconvert assets such as textures and audio into DC-friendly formats during the build process. GTA 3/VC and Mario Kart 64 work like this, with GTA specifically downscaling textures to 1/2 resolution before applying VQ compression to them as well.
But then there are ports which actually load the exact same assets as the Steam versions of the game, such as with Sonic Mania, and they convert and process the assets into DC-friendly formats online while the game is loading.
What is the future for KallistiOS?
The future is looking really bright for KOS. We have big plans for both the Sega Dreamcast and beyond!
On the Dreamcast side, we have big plans to create easy-to-use APIs for exposing some of the DC's most advanced hardware features in terms of graphical capabilities and even allowing for developers to use the mysterious and elusive DSP for audio processing. We also have a lot of performance and optimization work we want to do on APIs such as GLdc, which are incredibly important for ports and cross-platform development... also I'd personally like to sit down and tackle dynamic library loading for C++-based code, which is something we really need to support extremely well for complex projects that need to fit everything into just 16MB of RAM!
Then, beyond that, we have darc working on porting KOS to the Nintendo Gamecube and are hoping to expand our kernel to support other 6th-gen consoles in the future, such as the PS2.
Is there a dream project or conversion you would like to work on?
To be honest with you, my wildest dreams in terms of what we'd see on DC have been so far surpassed with some of these crazy ports and all of the epic infrastructure we're getting... So while I have a little list of things I'd personally love to see come to the DC, the majority of them require a complete decompilation before we can do our thing.
Since we already had to do a custom Renderware back-end for the GTA3 and VC ports, I'd love to see other PS2-era RW-based games get decompiled, such as Sonic Heroes or Tony Hawk's Underground, since we could reuse our implementation and will already have the hardest part of the port done, battle-tested, and ready-to-go.
From the N64 side, jnmartin and I are huge Wave Race 64 fans. I'm also a Diddy Kong Racing fanboy, and I believe that game has either been fully decompiled or is about to be fully decompiled. Oh, then a good friend of ours from the N64 community, who happens to be a big DC fan, is the guy behind the Starfox 64 decomp. Would love to work with him one day to bring that bad boy over as well!
With the N64 ports, how easy is it to adapt the controls to the Dreamcast controller?
Most of the time, it's easier than you'd think, because the N64 really didn't do a whole lot with the C-pad for most games... But inevitably, something always arises where we're missing a button or two. We've always been able to work around such situations by either mapping it to the dpad or doing some sort of button combination so far.
Plus, there's an interesting tidbit about the Dreamcast's controller... From day 1, the Maple controller protocol spec from Sega has included support for MANY more buttons, including dual analogue sticks. Despite the fact that such DC peripherals were never released officially during its commercial lifespan, you can now buy 3rd party controller adapters that allow you to connect Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox, PC, and many more controller types to the Dreamcast. KallistiOS automatically supports the extra buttons and analogues from such controllers out-of-the box. One example of such an adapter is the "BlueRetro" adapter you can get for quite cheap from Amazon these days. It's what I use for testing.
Will Doom64 feature all the levels from the N64 version, or will it take maps/data from other versions?
Jnmartin has worked tirelessly to ensure that not only is every map from the N64 original present, but also the additional scenarios and episodes that were added to the Steam and Switch rereleases can also be imported into the Dreamcast version as well! Between the fancy new lighting and bump mapping effects, 60FPS framerate, mouse + keyboard support, dual analogue stick support, rumble and VMU support, and so on... I truly think Doom 64 DC deserves the title of being the "definitive" way to experience the game.
Can the Dreamcast handle the four-player split-screen mode of Mario Kart 64?
It sure can! Funnily enough, the most taxing configuration is actually 2-player GP mode on the Dreamcast. Why? Because all 8 racers are present, but unlike in 4 player mode, the background music is also still present, which we are essentially synthesising and mixing in software on the Dreamcast's SH4 CPU, while the N64 offloaded that to the RSP. It's almost like we're running a graphics and audio emulation layer for Mario Kart 64 DC.
Will speedrunning tricks and glitches work on the port of Super Mario 64?
As far as I am aware, they should work. The only things that appear to not be 100% with the original are minor graphical and audio glitches that the community has been slowly addressing as a group over the last few months. Oh, plus Esppiral has set off on a quest to enhance Mario 64 for the Dreamcast with higher polygon models and Mario Galaxy's lighting effects.
Are the developers concerned about Nintendo or Rockstar taking legal action against the ports?
While I was working on GTA3, and we were very first blowing up in the media and getting serious press coverage, there was a time when I'd wake up every morning to check my email first thing to see if I got a cease-and-desist letter from Rockstar or Take 2... because their attorney's are very very vigilant about protecting what they view as threats to their IP.
We knew this as a team going into GTA3, and we accepted the risks. But I also think we managed to mitigate them and convince Take 2 that we weren't a threat... Because we NEVER distribute binary images, and instead, we offer instructions on how to convert (hopefully legally purchased) copies of GTA3 for PC or Steam into a bootable Dreamcast image. We never once supported piracy or not paying for the game... as a matter of fact, I actually had to buy the PC version of the game to even work on the team, haha.
Now, in terms of Nintendo, we are not worried for one reason: it seems that they have opted to not take action against decompilation projects for the N64, such as Mario 64 or Mario Kart 64. Whether this is because they have no legal basis to come after us or not, I do not know, but I am convinced that were they to view such projects as a threat, they'd be going after the PC ports of these games LONG before we'd get any trouble on the Sega Dreamcast... fingers crossed, knock on wood!
Does Wipeout add anything exclusive to this port?
It adds a few things, yes. There's a menu where you can unlock all of the content, there's at least one VMU icon, it runs at a fantastically high frame-rate compared to other consoles, and my personal favourite.... jnmartin put a giant Sonic Adventure 2 billboard into one of the tracks as a background texture! Haha.
Do the GTA games include the voice acting and cutscenes?
Absolutely! Everything is 100% there, other than the little startup opening intro with the credits and logo. The prerendered one. This really isn't due to any technical reasons; we just never really got around to adding an MPEG decoder to the DC version and reencoding that video to get it working... but it's on the to-do list!
But everything else, every little in-game cutscene, is fully there and fully voice-acted!
As a huge fan of Vice City, does it include all the lighting and weather effects?
YES!!! Somehow, we managed to pull it all off graphically on the Dreamcast and managed to keep all of VC's dynamic weather, such as rain and fog. Not only that, but yes, all of the enhanced dynamic lighting is fully present and looks absolutely fantastic. To be honest with you, from day 1, the lighting was the thing that scared me the most... but we got those lighting equations so optimised for the DC's SH4 that we can calculate lighting contributions for 4 lights at a time in parallel!
Probably my absolute favourite part of VC is that it includes enhanced graphical features over the PS2 version, such as widescreen and anti-aliasing, in addition to our crisp and native 480p video output. Yes, our FPS can still drop to below where the PS2 is typically at under heavy load, but man, graphically, the Dreamcast REALLY holds its own!
Will the Counterstrike port be able to include online play?
Absolutely! I've personally played MANY online CS matches against developer, maximquad, testing on physical hardware during development... KallistiOS makes supporting all of that online connectivity and networking (whether it be via broadband/ethernet adapter or built-in modem) quite easy by abstracting all of the low-level driver stuff behind standard networking APIs. For the most part, you can write network socket code on the DC with KOS just like you would on a PC!
These links require genuine ROMs/CD images to build the Dreamcast version:
Build GTA 3 and Vice City for Dreamcast: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/147aAqNQHhl-VJI2S5jkSUp7M1bVcy4UO
Build Doom64 for Dreamcast:
Build Super Mario 64 for Dreamcast: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1WtQ6xyXHqNNhn5Yx74Aa8uY5Fjnnv4PF
Build StarFox 64 for Dreamcast:
NEWS BYTES
3DO: Retro Love Letter converted the classic Tempest 2000. bit.ly/tempest-3do
Amiga: Out Run: Amiga Edition by Reassembler68K is a superb, optimised port of the arcade game, requiring at least a 68030 processor and the arcade ROM files. bit.ly/outrun-amiga030
Amstrad: Galastrad, the Galaga-style shmup, is now available in cartridge format for the GX4000/Plus machines. bit.ly/galastrad-gx4000
BBC Micro: Omnitris is Alec Barker’s Model B version of the often-overlooked Tetris sequel, Welltris. bit.ly/omnitris-bbc
C64: Psytronik have published Musketeer, inspired by games including Bruce Lee and Zorro. https://bit.ly/musketeer-c64 for the download and psytronik.bigcartel.com/ for physical versions (tape, disk, cartridge).
ColecoVision: ArugulaZ has created a sequel to Solar Fox, Solar Fox 2: Space Evaders. Digital download is currently $5, with a physical Collector Vision cartridge to follow. Beta versions for MSX and SG-1000 are also available via bit.ly/solarfox2
Master System: Badcomputer0 released the alpha demo of his impressive forthcoming vertical shmup, Razing Core. bit.ly/razingcore-demo
Mega Drive: Z Team released Rick Dangerous DX at bit.ly/rickd-megadrive
MSX2: Paxanga Software’s 2010 cartridge version of Pengo is now free to download at bit.ly/pengo-msx2
ZX Spectrum: Fifteen great entries took part in this year’s YRGB competition. Check out the incredible 3D platformer Cubix by Gogin and more at yrgb.org
Various: Arlasoft recreated the rare 1979 arcade game Dracula Hunter for Windows, Mac & Linux. Play online at bit.ly/dracula-hunter
CHAMPION CODER - Óscar Toledo Gutiérrez
From: Mexico City, Mexico.
Website: nanochess.org
Format: ColecoVision, Intellivision, MSX, Sega Master System, Atari 2600
Previous games: Akalabeth, The Lost Kingdom, Thunder Soldier, Pumpkin Bakery
Working on: Pumpkin Taxi (Intellivision)
Chess fan Oscar has written books on programming old consoles and his own games.
What sparked your interest in writing new games for older hardware?
I was a small kid when the 1984 home computer crash happened. A lot of the surplus computers and game consoles were suddenly available in Mexico, and I could see the Commodore 64 in the supermarket, a friend had the Atari 400, another had an Apple IIe, the neighbour had an Intellivision, and later, around the 90s saw my first NES and some Atari 2600. Also, my father developed homebrew computers, so there was a lot of tech, magazines, and books around me. Every month, we went to our local Sanborns store to buy computer magazines. This is where I got Compute! magazines showing the current games, and Mi Computer (a translation of the Home Computer Course by Orbis Publishing), from where I got a lot of admiration for the ZX Spectrum (later got mine, and recently a new The Spectrum)
Fast-forward to 2010, I got notice of the MSXdev contest, and I thought I could make a good retro game. I had lots of experience with the Z80 processor and the video processor used in the MSX. So I went to code Zombie Near for the contest, I got 2nd place, and people liked it a lot. This encouraged me to write more games, so I followed with Princess Quest (2012), Mecha-8 (2013) and Mecha-9 (2015).
I also started studying more platforms, and I found more based on the Z80 and TMS9928 video processor, like the ColecoVision and Sega SG1000. A quick search later, I found CollectorVision was looking for ColecoVision games to publish, so I started doing ports of my games, and then suddenly, I discovered I enjoyed doing new games for older hardware.
What inspired you to write your series of programming books?
I started working on Intellivision around 2012. I coded Space Raid and Princess Quest in CP1610 assembler language. However, I found the assembler code very difficult to debug, hard to read, and prone to mistakes. Princess Quest, in particular, was a coding ordeal; it took almost a year, my laptop crashed in the process, and I almost lost the complete code.
In the process, I saw posts in the Intellivision forum of AtariAge asking almost always the same questions: What's the cartridge header? How should I read controllers? How do I display sprites on the screen? Where are the bitmaps located?
After delivering Princess Quest, I was sure a better way of developing games could be devised, so around October 2013, I secretly started coding a BASIC compiler for Intellivision. Just a core BASIC language, some tailor-made statements for displaying graphics, and sprites. And I announced it as IntyBASIC v0.1 at the start of 2014. It hides the Intellivision complexity while greatly simplifying the game development.
It got a lot of interest, many suggestions for improving it, and IntyBASIC advanced very fast to v0.7, and it commenced a wave of new games for the Intellivision, some with an incredible high-quality.
Many people asked me about the language syntax (even though IntyBASIC came with a text manual), so I considered that a book about using IntyBASIC was needed. When the book "Programming Games for Intellivision" came out, IntyBASIC was in version 1.2 (the current one is 1.5.1). The book introduces the IntyBASIC syntax and uses it progressively to introduce basic yet useful examples, a game of ball (couldn't use the Pong name for obvious reasons), a breakout-style game, a platform game named Monkey Moon, a small shooter, and an endless scrolling game, and of course, the manual of IntyBASIC is nicely arranged.
The success of the book inspired me to write a sequel: "Advanced Game Programming for Intellivision", where I show how to convert music sheets, pictures, and including a more advanced shooter game, a clone of Oh Mummy! and a pseudo-3D RPG.
Around the same time, I wrote "Programming Boot Sector Games" to cover 8086 assembly language, and people still write me letters telling me how they were able to code their own games after reading my book. It feels good that people learn, in particular, something as complicated as assembly language.
Later in 2024, I developed CVBasic, and I released the book "Programming Games for ColecoVision" almost at the same time. This new compiler also got a lot of interest, as it targets 11 platforms based on Z80, along with Creativision (6502), TI-99/4A (TMS9900), and Sega Master System. Your game basically can be compiled almost unchanged for 13 platforms; the fourteenth (Sega Master System) has a somewhat different video processor that requires a few changes.
What tools do you use to develop your own games?
For many years I worked with the bare tools to develop software, at some point in 1993 when I was working with Inmos transputers I wrote my own text editors (in fact I made recently an ISA board to play again with transputers!) but more recently I use only EDIT (the one coming with MS-DOS 5), TextEdit on my Mac (now it is so buggy!), and XCode for developing IntyBASIC, CVBasic and its tools.
For Z80 platforms, I used tniASM v0.44 as it is available freely, and I used PC, and later VirtualBox. However, when I developed gasm80 for CVBasic, my Mac M1 couldn't run VirtualBox properly, so I now use gasm80 natively along with TMSColor and CVBasic for developing games directly on my Mac.
CVBasic comes with TMSColor (to convert BMP/PNG files to a usable format in assembler or CVBasic code), and IntyBASIC comes with IntyColor (for the same purpose of image conversion). All utilities are available in distro form, and with source code on my git.
What makes the Intellivision an interesting system to develop for?
The fact that it is a 16-bit processor (a first for gaming consoles) means you can forget about the most common arithmetic limitations when doing calculations. Also, the orthogonal architecture removes the burden of locating something in a certain register. On the other hand, having a small memory (yet not so small) makes it a challenge to fit a game.
Some years ago came a new cartridge board (JLP) that allowed full 8K words of 16-bit RAM, so now we see more complicated games like RPGs. I did Akalabeth for Intellivision using this extra memory and overcame the graphic limitations to show a bitmap screen in the dungeons, overlapping monsters just like the Apple II did.
Do you prefer converting an old game or creating a new one?
Although I love recreating old games because of the thrill of running it on a console where it never ran (and testing my technical abilities) I also feel a kind of need of expressing my ideas for a new game, this is where my Pumpkin games enter (and some random ColecoVision games) to test new game machinery, ideas, or just a goofy idea. Currently, I'm doing Pumpkin Taxi, a game where you deliver packages around the city.
I've done some April Fools’ jokes, like a soccer game where your only objective is running, avoiding cola cans, or another where you defend your last 10 Intellivision cartridges in a Tower Attack-style game.
Sometimes I've been lucky, for example, when I made Miner 2049er for Intellivision, an almost impossible game because of the pixel-like nature of its levels and the lack of bitmap memory in the Intellivision. It is a fully licensed game. The original designer, Curtis Mikolyski, sent me 11 new levels to implement, and I was terrified that maybe I wasn't capable enough to code all of it, but it turned out it was an amazing experience.
What would be your advice for someone wanting to program their first game?
My first advice for someone wanting to program their first game is "Please never start by coding the title screen!" Instead, code the minimum core that encloses the spirit of your game and build from it.
It is important that newcomers don't try starting a big game; the complexity of the project typically makes it stall. Instead, when you do something small, the excitement of watching it working makes you improve the game very fast.
Is there a game or project you would love to create for these older consoles?
A genre of game I haven’t yet dominated is the RPGs. I would like to create a full world original RPG, complete with underlying history, bosses, and one or two hidden surprises.
Is there someone you would like to work with?
I would love working with Kevin Edwards and porting some of his NES games to the Sega Master System. Or maybe working with David Crane and Garry Kitchen, making a ColecoVision version of their Circus Convoy game. I'm long overdue in making a game based on the graphics of my good friend Toni Galvez.
Tell us some more about Pumpkin Taxi
Following on the tradition of my Pumpkin games (2023 was Pumpkin Castle, 2024 was Pumpkin Bakery), this is a small game where Pumpkin Smith drives through the city catching packages and delivering them, everything under the clock, and worst, your cellphone navigator doesn't work! So you need to look for the package dropped in the streets.
In advanced levels, the time becomes shorter, and there are animals on the street blocking the way, including cats, dogs, crazy frogs, dinosaurs, and birds.
I really enjoy doing these types of games as I can show a lot of creativity based on pumpkins, and I really love people having fun with them.
The game will be released freely as a ROM download around September or October in the Intellivision section of the AtariAge Forums, and for people not having Flash cartridges, all three games will be published in physical form as Pumpkin Trilogy 2 from Homebrew, Inc.
BONUS CONTENT: TRANSPUTERS
I forgot to tell. Around 1992, when I was age 14, my father developed a transputer board add-on for one of his homebrew computers, and I designed a Pascal compiler for transputers in 1993, and later in 1995/1996 a C compiler and operating system, pretty basic at the start, but later more professional. Inmos was my favourite company for a while.
Recently, I decided to release my software as open-source (thirty years is a lot of time!), and I wrote a transputer emulator in C language, and later another emulator in JavaScript, so it is runnable on a web browser for non-technical people.
However, I was kind of fixated about running my software again on original hardware, so last April, 2025, I bought two TRAM (Transputer Modules) from eBay, and I built a wired ISA card. Just a month ago, I developed a PCB while learning KiCAD 9. I'm close to releasing it for general usage (it is compatible with the original Inmos B004 board), but I just want to iron out a few bugs so people don't need to wire anything.
This is my transputer emulator in JavaScript https://nanochess.org/transputer_emulator.html.
And my trilogy of articles about my work with transputers:
My Pascal compiler for transputers
Porting Small-C to transputer
My full K&R C compiler and operating system
My first Z80-based game, written when I was age 9:
And my first "good-looking" game, written when I was age 11:
Link to the AtariAge forum to download Pumpkin Taxi for Intellivision:
DATABURST - REVIEWS
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Format: ZX Next
Credits: Fusion Retro Games (publisher), Dave Clarke (design, code), Simon Butler (graphics), Paul Hesso (music)
Price: Standard Edition (DVD case) £25, Deluxe Edition with collectables (signed postcard, manual, soundtrack CD) £45
The Fusion Retro Vault has been compromised, and the battery-powered Retrobot must retrieve the missing relics. We are firmly in classic Spectrum platform action with modern twists (including a mode with unlimited lives). …this is exactly the game Next fans needed. Fast reflexes and logical thinking will get you through, and the 50 screens (with the later sewers and industrial areas adding graphical variety) are a big challenge. A debut designer’s masterpiece, supported by a talented team, highlighting what the Next can do.
[Score] 90% - Retro Gamer Sizzler
D*Fuzed
[Info]
Format: Game Boy / Game Boy Color
Credits: Incube8 Games (publisher & co-developers), Asobi.Tech (design & development)
Price: Digital Edition $9.99, Standard Edition $49.99, Collector’s Edition $69.99
Deef, the bomb-disposal robot, must save his friends. This passion project from Quang was completed with Incube8’s help. Voice acting adds to the evolving plot, and the gameplay is very moreish. The standalone Danger Room mode works well. A very cute and enjoyable portable logic game.
[Score] 87%
ROGUEish
[Info]
Format: C64 (NTSC & PAL compatible)
Credits: Syntax Error Software (Paul Nicholls design & code, Nordischsound music), K&A Software (cassette version publisher)
Price: Name your own price download, physical cassette TBC
Inspired by Porklike (PICO-8) and using 1-bit art assets, your adventurer climbs a tower of increasingly difficult floors. With increasing numbers of stronger opponents, there is a good challenge once the Rogue-like gameplay grabs you.
[Score] 83%
PROCESSING - RELIC DUNGEON (NES)
Interview with developer Libra Bits:
What games inspired Relic Dungeon?
The main inspiration I drew from the 'Ancient Cave' of Lufia 2 - Rise of the Sinistrals for the SNES.
It's a game mode where the player tries to beat a randomly generated Dungeon of 100 floors, like in Relic Dungeon. The controls of the hero are classic ARPG-like, with the main inspiration coming from the a original The Legend of Zelda for the NES.
There are more influences of some of my favourite games, like Terranigma, Secret of Mana (or Mana series in general) and Final Fantasy.
What tools are being used to develop the game?
I used NESFab (by Pubby) for programming the game. It has become a very stable programming language for making NES games, including a great community with ongoing work/updates.
For the graphics, I just use Paint.net.
Music and sound effects have been created with FamiTracker.
In addition, I wrote some of my own tools in C# for creating room layouts and some data conversion/compression.
Are you planning a physical release as well as a digital download?
I would like to offer physical cartridges as well.
There will be the possibility to directly order cartridges from me on demand, unless a publisher would like to do it in larger numbers.
When is the game due to be finished and released?
The game (Version 1.0) has already been released on July 11th.
Since I received lots of constructive criticism and suggestions on how to further improve the game, I am now working on Version 1.1. which will be released soon as well.
NOTE: The game has been finished, and Libra Bits is also working on a spin-off title, Relic Dungeon 3D for Windows.
Relic Dungeon for NES ($8.00 digital download) at:
Retro Gamer issue 277 was published on 25th September 2025.
This blog was published on 16th January 2026.
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