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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.

11 of 23 comments (clear)

  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.

  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 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. 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.

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

    Did I see Population: Tire in the screenshots?

    --

    Physics: Making the universe open source.
  5. 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.
  6. 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..