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GBA Homebrew Game Contenders Released

Posted by simoniker on from the long-live-the-homebrew-scene dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The entries to GBADev.org's yearly Gameboy Advance development competition have been released - it's always nice to see what the amateur GBA developers can churn out. Over $1100 in cash and about the same amount in other prizes are up for grabs!" There's some pictures from the 24 games and 5 demos available (scroll down), and highlights include hex-based puzzle game, Matrix Advance, the 2D top-down racer, Critical Velocity, and 9Wires' great-looking isometric 3D adventure, Space Twins.

23 comments

  1. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto by Dancin_Santa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Gameboy has certainly come a long way from Tetris!

    Things like this impress me way more than "Increase your Linux boot speed by 2 inches guaranteed!". It's no big deal to squeeze some spare cycles out of a sloppy system like x86 Linux. It's very cool, OTOH, to squeeze all the juice out of a limited platform like the GB.

    1. Re:We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto by Noah+Adler · · Score: 1
      It's no big deal to squeeze some spare cycles out of a sloppy system like x86 Linux. It's very cool, OTOH, to squeeze all the juice out of a limited platform like the GB.

      Is an x86 Linux system unlimited? Is it inherently sloppy? Why wouldn't it be cool to squeeze all the juice out of an 'unlimited' platform like x86 Linux?

      I did some hobby GBA dev back in the day, and I agree, it is quite nice what's going on with this system. But that doesn't lessen any accomplishments on x86. 'Squeezing all the juice out' of a platform is always a good thing, and this can apply to modern desktop systems as well as GBA.

    2. Re:We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto by Dancin_Santa · · Score: 1

      It's like squeezing juice from an orange vs. squeezing blood from a stone.

      Sure you'll run out of juice from the orange eventually and then you'll have a nice glass of orange juice as well. But to squeeze even a drop of blood from a stone, that's magic.

    3. Re:We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      No kidding. I just picked up a (very sleek) Gameboy SP (in onyx black, of course) after seeing Advance Wars 2 and Final Fantasy Tactics on a friend's system.

      These two are amazingly good for a portable system and would have even done well as Playstation 1 games.

    4. Re:We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you would absolutely love the demoscene then...
      how nice of a demo can you fit in 4k of code? :)

    5. Re:We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe you're not aware that "gookey" is too close to a racially derogatory term.

  2. A lot less than $1100 by edwdig · · Score: 2, Informative

    The site says $108.16, not $1100.

    1. Re:A lot less than $1100 by simoniker · · Score: 3, Informative

      The competition part of the site is kinda scarce on info, but I think the public-donated prize is 100-plus dollars, and there's official prizes of a lot more - I found the following information in the July archives to back up the submitter:

      "And as you probably know, we have 1000$usd in cash prizes as well. How this will be divided is not yet clear."

    2. Re:A lot less than $1100 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      108.16$ was donated by paypal and the visitors will be able to vote on which entries should receive this money.
      There is also 1000$usd and about the same amount in prizes that the judges will vote on which entries will get.

    3. Re:A lot less than $1100 by pragma_x · · Score: 1

      Yikes, only $108.16? That's kind of like saying: "If you win, we'll buy two copies."

      Hardly an incentive.

  3. oops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wrong link. I actually meant:

    Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

    BIG difference. :)

  4. Me too by Black+Mage+Balthazar · · Score: 1

    Well as a hopeful game programmer I wish I had known about the contest. I grew up on Nintendo, although I never actually owned a GB, I played my fair share. Oh well. I'd do one in my project class now, but the Instructor said no games. boo hoo.

  5. Target Mainframe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    slip from www.ice-d.tk has released the game Target: Mainframe... You play the part of Linus Torvalds in an attempt to bring Linux to Microsoft. You've broken into the Microsoft headquarters and now all you have to do is find the mainframe computer and upload a worm which will install linux on and computer on the network. The mainframe however is hidden, Find it and help Linus complete his mission!

    1. Re:Target Mainframe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      nicely done, I wish I could copy&paste like that!

  6. Hmmm... by Misanthropic+Lycanth · · Score: 1

    Did I see Population: Tire in the screenshots?

    --

    Physics: Making the universe open source.
  7. Re:Hmmm... get your eyers cheaked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You maybe thought you saw what you saw, but you should have been seeing AWEXOME CROSS 98!! which totaly kicks but dude!

    H*R Fanboy

  8. Re:Hmmm... get your eyers cheaked by Misanthropic+Lycanth · · Score: 1

    Yeah... I noticed that too. I guess it's "Population: Awexome".

    --

    Physics: Making the universe open source.
  9. Not much money.. by AceM2 · · Score: 1

    If you're a programmer that just does this as a hobby and want some pizza money, this is cool.. but.. Has anyone ever thought of the fact that the time spent on most of these games would get you a whole lot more money if you spent that time on a real job? ;P I'm all for these contests, but it'd be nice if big companies would sponser these things..

  10. Super Mario Bros 3 Superplay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.emptylogic.com/suprnova/torrents/299/sm b3.torrent Bittorrent file for an amazing video of Super Mario Bros 3. It's pretty sweet, I'm spreading the .torrent link everywhere that I can.