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Homebrew Game & Watch Games Make Debut

Posted by simoniker on from the highly-addictive dept.

Kojote writes "The latest PDRoms Coding Competition has just finished. The idea was to write a homebrew Game & Watch-style freeware game for handhelds or consoles, and there were a total of 24 freely downloadable submissions. In detail, there were 10 Game Boy Advance entries, 8 GP32 entries, 3 Gameboy Color entries, 1 Genesis/Megadrive entry and 1 Neo Geo Pocket Color entry. The winning entries were headed by Beer Belly Bill (GBA) by Metalvotze. If you don't have real hardware to test the entries, you can use emulators such as VisualBoy Advance (GBA/GBC) and GeePee32 (GP32). Have fun!"

69 comments

  1. Well by arieswind · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When it gets right down to it, games that are made are often better than some of the other games put out, even by some retail gaming companies. I've seen some damn impressive work on handhelds done by just someone or a gorup of people who program for fun in their spare time.. If only there was a way to get some of their works published on the actual carts..

    1. Re:Well by arieswind · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I meant that fan made games are better than some of the games that are out there made by actual companies, because I know a lot of people who would disregard a game solely because it wasnt made by a real company

    2. Re:Well by xanadu-xtroot.com · · Score: 0

      because I know a lot of people who would disregard a game solely because it wasnt made by a real company.

      Why?

      So they'd balk at teh latest id release and go DL something from "Jimz Game Tome" just because it wasn't from id?

      And before you say "no, that's not what I meant", that is what you said.

      --
      I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
      I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
    3. Re:Well by Anonymovs+Covvard · · Score: 2, Insightful

      because I know a lot of people who would disregard a game solely because it wasnt made by a real company.

      And before you say "no, that's not what I meant", that is what you said.

      No, that isn't what he said. He said wasn't made by a real company. So they would get the latest id release, and would balk at something from "Jimz Game Tome", because it wasn't made by a real company.

    4. Re:Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      By decreasing /.'s already low signal to noise ratio, you can force /.'s editors to come clean about their ethical lapses, and have a great time doing it!

      Genuine question: Are you mentally retarted?

    5. Re:Well by Deadguy2322 · · Score: 1

      Um,it's actually spelled retarDed. Sort of shot yourself in the foot there.

      --
      Check out my foes list to see who is so retarded that they can't use the signature line!!!
  2. Not to insult but... by b0r0din · · Score: 2, Interesting

    none of them look particularly interesting. Maybe the winner, but some of them look like those old Tiger handheld games.

    It's cool to see an interest in homebrew games, I guess I'm not all that impressed by what I saw. Maybe they play better, too.

    I'll hold off judgement until I try one out, though.

    1. Re:Not to insult but... by ralphart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the interesting thing here is NOT that the games may or may not be as good as a "commercial" release, so much as people are not content to be passive consumers of entertainment. I taught painting for years, and though not all of my students were great painters, at least they were willing to engage in a creative act. And so it is with homebrew games. I think it is great people are writing their own games, good, bad or indifferent.

    2. Re:Not to insult but... by mike260 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The point of homebrew games is that you can't compete on production-values, so you'd better compete on gameplay. Although there are, of course, exceptions.

    3. Re:Not to insult but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      none of them look particularly interesting. Maybe the winner, but some of them look like those old Tiger handheld games.

      Yes. That was the point of the contest. That's "game&watch" style. Check out the links.

    4. Re:Not to insult but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrong. That isn't the interesting thing. The interesting thing here is that they're making Game & Watch games on more advanced handhelds.

    5. Re:Not to insult but... by hattig · · Score: 3, Informative

      but some of them look like those old Tiger handheld games.

      That was the whole *point* of the competition! Hence the title of the article, Game & Watch Games ...

      I remember I used to have a Tomy caveman game ... you had to collect the eggs from the dinosaur without dying, avoiding the pterodactyls, lava, and the dinosaurs feiry breath.

      Hmmm ... maybe that wasn't a dinosaur.

    6. Re:Not to insult but... by SiW · · Score: 3, Informative

      Who the heck modded this up? The whole point of the contest wasn't to say "look at the best homebrew games we can make on the GBA/GP32/whatever" but to create a game with the same feel as an old Game & Watch game.

      If you want to find more technically impressive homegrown GBA games, check out http://www.gbadev.org/ periodically. They'll usually link to the biggest new games, and you can almost guarantee that the author will have posted some tests or early releases to the Demos section too. You'll see a lot of clones/ports of old games, but some of them are well executed, particularly the Barbarian and Nebulus ports.

    7. Re:Not to insult but... by badasscat · · Score: 1

      I think the interesting thing here is NOT that the games may or may not be as good as a "commercial" release, so much as people are not content to be passive consumers of entertainment. I taught painting for years, and though not all of my students were great painters, at least they were willing to engage in a creative act. And so it is with homebrew games. I think it is great people are writing their own games, good, bad or indifferent.

      Well, not to sound like I'm in favor of stifling creativity or anything, but I don't. We have a real problem with the signal to noise ratio in the video game industry already; I don't really see what the point is in making it worse just so people who aren't particularly creative can feel like they are.

      I am not saying that nobody who doesn't work for a game company should write games. I'm saying whether or not you believe games are "art", there's no disputing that they are a creative media, and making them requires more than just technical chops, and more than just a high concept (in this case, the dubious concept of producing games for obsolete systems). If someone is truly creative, the system will naturally encourage them and they will be successful. If someone is not creative, they really need to be told that so they don't continue wasting their (and our) time.

      There is this assumption on /., which I attribute to the general libertarian/anti-authority viewpoint that generally gets expressed here, that commercial game publishers and developers do not know what they're doing, and that the true creativity lies "out there" somewhere, undiscovered. Well, in most cases, that's not true. The industry right now definitely has its share of problems, but there's no lack of creative people working in the industry, and the best generally do rise to the top. It's just that many of them lose their idealism eventually working under strict corporate structures; they become order-takers. This is a real problem, but the solution is not to put even less creative people in their places, or to start accepting mediocrity from the outside as a substitute. The solution is to fix the problem within the commercial industry itself, and to encourage the creativity that's already there to come out more often than it does now.

      Ever since technology became accessible to so many, there's been this idea that it would open up this vast untapped creativity throughout the world - we'd have countless new filmmakers, music-makers, game makers. Well, my feeling is (as someone who's worked in various creative industries) that the most creative people are already working in their respective industries, and that the signal/noise ratio for those sitting at home with a camcorder or a mixing program or a game machine emulator and a scripting language will be even lower than it is for those in the professional industries. Not higher, as has been the conventional wisdom to this point (and seems to still be, on this site).

      In other words, if these guys were really any good, they'd probably already have jobs in the industry. I know that's not a popular view around here, but then most of the people on this site have never worked in the game industry (or the film industry, or whatever), so they don't really know the quality of the people in that industry.

    8. Re:Not to insult but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      or perhaps they choose to make a better living doing something else and meanwhile create games to fulfill the urge to create something.

  3. Interessting name by nick-less · · Score: 1

    I guess you didn't realize what "Metalfotze" means in german... ;-)

    1. Re:Interessting name by platypibri · · Score: 3, Funny

      We need a new mod catagory. "Icky." Although on /. the debate is open as to if that's plus or minus 1.

      --
      Yeah, I guess I'm funny like that.
    2. Re:Interessting name by RJack-45 · · Score: 1

      While in Paris, I met a German guy who taught me the term "mundfotze"... Do many people use this word? I think it's hilarious.

    3. Re:Interessting name by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes it is commonly used, altough not by the gucci wearing fraction of germans... mostly by drunken punks... :)

  4. screenshot doesnt work by lucas+teh+geek · · Score: 3, Informative

    need to copy the url and paste it into a new window. i guess they dont like external referals

    --
    TIAEAE!
  5. BitTorrent by gspr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here is a torrent of the 24 submissions in a single zip file (as downloadable from http://www.pdroms.de/pdrc2_5-submissions.php), just in case the site goes to a warmer place.

    1. Re:BitTorrent by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      "File Not Found"

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  6. VBA by mboverload · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I found Visual Boy Advance a year ago and have been using it ever since. It does foliters so you can make games kinda look like they were meant for the computer and the resizing works very well. I love how you can press space and it willl speed the game up 1000%. Very useful in walking around Poke-Land and in battles.

    Anyway, VBA is the pwnage and I encorage anyone to get it.

  7. Also not to insult but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    do you even know what Game & Watch is?

  8. Woot! for Tetris and Snake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll


    that's all we need are more rip-offs of those games, yeah this competition must be oozing creativity *cough* if people have to resort to cloning those games again

    is this really the future of gaming ? have we run out of new gaming ideas already ? i guess the future is not going to be so bright after all

    here's looking forward to the next 100 years of video games

    1. Re:Woot! for Tetris and Snake by BigRedPimp · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The whole point of the compo was to see who can make a good Game & Watch-styled game and not who can make the Next Best Thing(tm). Its all about seeing what you can do with what limitations are thrown at you. Developers have been doing that for a long time.

      Let he who cast the first flame try to accomplish better with said limitations.

    2. Re:Woot! for Tetris and Snake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're kidding right? This isn't about "the future of gaming." These guys aren't trying to rock the world with an amazing new 3D FPS. This is hobbyists seeing what they can do with antiquated technology. And maybe recapturing a little of their youth-- it's fun to tinker with the development restrictions they were constrained by on the systems we grew up with, be it Atari 2600, NES or Commodore 64.

      If the sight of these games don't remind you of being ten years old, playing an LCD game in the back of the classroom until the teacher inevitably spots you and takes it away, then this project really has nothing to do with you. Move along.

  9. To Insult You... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    none of them look particularly interesting. Maybe the winner, but some of them look like those old Tiger handheld games

    You are an idiot! Didn't you read the supplied links? Game&Watch designs are supposed to look EXACTLY like that. I think the authors in this contest did an incredible job simulating these fun old diversions.

  10. Mod Parent Insightful! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He RTFA...

  11. Porting to GBA by cat_jesus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It would probably be a big boon to linux if we could port some linux games over to the GBA. I'm thinking games like frozen bubble would catch on like wildfire.

    Not only that but porting games like tux racer and armagtron to the Xbox or PS2 could help get some higher visibility for linux as well.

    1. Re:Porting to GBA by lemody · · Score: 1

      mm yep but 'frozen bubble' is a port of 'puzzle bobble' which has been years available for the gba.

      --


      class he-man extends man!
    2. Re:Porting to GBA by hiroshi912681 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Funny thing is, the public domain clone of "Bust a Move" is better than the commercial releases. It's uses the same sprites and puzzles of the original Neo Geo arcade version. I don't know why the commercial releases insist on using such small bubbles... you can't see them!

    3. Re:Porting to GBA by Zen+Punk · · Score: 0

      Why port games from Linux to the X-Box when the X-Box already runs Linux?

      --
      Sleep is futile.
    4. Re:Porting to GBA by mzo · · Score: 1

      I saw an arcade of Tux Racer at the santa cruz boardwalk 2 weeks ago. Certainly made me double-take.

  12. Anyone want to enter competitions like this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How come Slashdot only ever has the results of programming competitions. Would be nice to hear about them in time to actually enter.

  13. Missing contender by armando_wall · · Score: 1

    There was this guy who promised to compete with his entry "Duke Nukem Forever Doomed", but he was taken away by black-suited guys.

  14. Game and WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since when is 'Game&Watch' part of the popular lexicon? What sense of 'game' and what sense of 'watch' are meant to be implied here? Both verbs? Both nouns? It can't possibly be the noun sense of the word 'game'; the website's author makes no attempt to include checkers, chess or freeze tag, all of which are clearly games. If I walk up to a random person on the street and say "Hey, wanna play a game?" that person would probably not expect me to hand them a Nintendo Gameboy.

    Okay, so they mean 'Game' as in the verb. What about 'Watch', then? Is that supposed to be a verb too? It can't be, all of the personal entertainment devices featured seem to have displays three inches across. Professional baseball is a game that a bunch of people can watch, and soccer is a game that a bunch of people can watch. I hardly think my friends are going to bring beer and chips over to my place on Monday night to watch "ESPN Monday Night Gameboy" on the widescreen TV. So that settles it: 'Game' is a verb and 'Watch' must be a noun.

    Oh, I get it! "Play this Game and win a Watch" or perhaps "Congratulations, you are the 1,000,000th visitor to this website, click here to play for a Rolex!" That must be what they mean. So where's my Rolex?

    1. Re:Game and WHAT? by Stormwatch · · Score: 1

      "Game & Watch" how Nintendo called their old portable games. It's just engrish, man, chill.

      --
      Circumcision is child abuse.
    2. Re:Game and WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a game, and it's a watch. A pocket rather than wrist watch, but a watch all the same. The games had clocks and alarms on them.

      Show some respect for your elders, kid. Without these things there would be no Game Boys or Mario Brothers. And the games themselves were a hell of a lot better than anything else out there in 1980-- such as those Mattel sports games, the crappy Tiger knockoffs, even early Atari 2600. I had a few of them as a kid and they were pretty damn addicting. Nothing better to annoy your parents on long car rides.

    3. Re:Game and WHAT? by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      It's a system that plays a game and functions as a watch, so where's the problem?

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  15. Hebrew Games? by JThundley · · Score: 1

    Did anyone else read the title as "Hebrew Games..."?

    1. Re:Hebrew Games? by shadowcabbit · · Score: 1

      Did anyone else read the title as "Hebrew Games..."?

      Oy vey, of course not! That would be meshuga.

      (And sorry to any Jews out there... I was raised Catholic, so my Hebrew may not be kosher.)

      --
      "Why Subscribe?" Good question...
    2. Re:Hebrew Games? by Deadguy2322 · · Score: 1

      Why not? Hebrew games would probably be at least as unintentionally humorous as stuff like 'Spiritual Warfare'. They might even be funnier.

      --
      Check out my foes list to see who is so retarded that they can't use the signature line!!!
    3. Re:Hebrew Games? by shadowcabbit · · Score: 1

      I was responding to the "misread" question. I too would be interested in seeing religious games from different cultures besides hyperfundamental Christianity. Though, to be honest, I just don't see it happening any time soon.

      --
      "Why Subscribe?" Good question...
    4. Re:Hebrew Games? by pommiekiwifruit · · Score: 1
      Hmm, a special variant of "Burger Time", where you have to keep the meals Kosher. Don't mix the meat and dairy! Beware of the roaming shrimp!

      Elevator action, where the lifts stop on every floor instead of waiting for a button. (Or is that how it works anyway?)

      Settlers, where you extend the region under your control with Eruv posts joined by thin wires in the air (but are blocked by water)... When moving outside the controlled area the screen blurs (since you cannot wear spectacles).

      Sound easy enough to make...

  16. Why is it "consoles-only" though? by ro_coyote · · Score: 1

    The whole point of the compo was to see who can make a good Game & Watch-styled game and not who can make the Next Best Thing(tm). Its all about seeing what you can do with what limitations are thrown at you. Developers have been doing that for a long time.


    It's just too bad that this contest only allowed submitions that ran only on a given list of strictly video game-based consoles, as opposed to allowing one to actually submit a game that was designed to run on a computer... especially as I myself, despite knowing how to program, have never programmed for a game console before.

    I mean, not to say that it's wrong for others to have submitted games that ran only on given consoles, that's perfectly fine, but what's the point of making the contest "consoles only" when the vast majority of people who end up playing them (including the judges themselves) will be using emulators to do so anyway? I could've made a really nice old-style LCD game in Macromedia Flash that would not only have a nice visual touch as it took advantage of vector graphics (no pixels), but it could've run just fine on any Windows, Linux, Macintosh system without a problem. Heck, even if it ran solely on only one or two of the three systems I just mentioned... I think this contest would've received a lot more submitions.

    Either way, I guess I'm not bothered by it much, but it looks like it would've been a little fun to take part in. Maybe next time.

    1. Re:Why is it "consoles-only" though? by BigRedPimp · · Score: 1

      On consoles, you're limited to what the console is capable of whereas on a normal PC, you have much more leg room (always a better gfx card/cpu/mind control unit/etc).

      In a way, PCs having that much power is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you have people who are more than willing to push the limits of low-end machines and also have their product work beautifully on high-end with the result being a great piece of art. On the other, with all the different ways you can do things on a PC, (some, not all) coders do get lazy and take the cheap way out with the result being a bloated piece of sh**.

      Yet on consoles, you have to make up for what you don't have with hardware trickery and crazy optimization techniques. Take for instance the original Game Boy. Here you have a Z80-like machine that is capable of great things in a rom size of 32k (granted you don't use bank switching or anything).

      Getting back on track, I know Game & Watch-style games aren't really anything to scoff at but it would be a simple task doing that kind of game on a PC. The whole point of the compo is "make a great game based on what limitations we give you and in all, have fun doing it".

    2. Re:Why is it "consoles-only" though? by ro_coyote · · Score: 1

      Very true that a PC could indeed be easier to develop for (granted it has decent-enough hardware), whereas with a console you're forced to work with whatever you're given. But... in the case of this contest, the restrictions are more for the actual design and presentation of the game... restrictions like not being able to have animation within the game, overlapping sprites, and that only two colors (including black and white) can be displayed in the foreground at a time. Those are just rules to follow when creating the game... you can follow simple rules like that on any console or system, really... even on a good ol' Atari 2600 or Colecovision (as ugly as it may turn out).

      The technical aspects of the contest I believe though, aside from the specifications of each of the different platforms to pick from (their CPU, graphical capabilities, etc.), are completely thrown out the window when it comes to the final size of your program, as the contest states in their rules that the final game can be as large in size as you like... allowing one on just about any console (especially with as powerful and capable the Sega Dreamcast is, a platform which can be used) to use as much bad, unoptimized, bloated code as they wish without hindering the performance of a simple LCD mock game.

      It certainly doesn't sound much like a programming contest, as much as it does a contest of putting together an original classic-style LCD game that strives to look and play as much as a real LCD game would, but it certainly holds a lot of design challenges in itself in order to make it happen.

  17. Specifically by tepples · · Score: 2

    If you want to find more technically impressive homegrown GBA games, check out http://www.gbadev.org/ periodically.

    Specifically, <plug>check out Tetanus On Drugs.</plug>

  18. GBC limitations by tepples · · Score: 1

    the public domain clone

    "PD" in the term "PD ROMs" doesn't always mean "public domain" in the sense of an abandoned copyright. It means only freely redistributable over electronic mediums. For instance, a GPL'd game such as Tetanus On Drugs is marked as (PD) in the GoodGBA list, but people who distribute the binaries without also distributing source code are Breaking The Law(tm).

    ...of "Bust a Move" is better than the commercial releases. It's uses the same sprites and puzzles of the original Neo Geo arcade version.

    Isn't that copyright infringement? Aren't Taito's original sprites and maps copyrighted as graphic or audiovisual works?

    I don't know why the commercial releases insist on using such small bubbles

    Probably because the Game Boy Color's tile engine was a bit restricting; the choice was between 8x8 and 16x16, and eleven rows of 16x16 wouldn't fit on a 144-pixel-tall screen. The GBA, on the other hand, allows for easy 12x12 using hblank sprite multiplexing, and everything fits nicely.

  19. DDR for GBA? by tepples · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Anybody want to see a GBA version of Dance Dance Revolution, Dance With Intensity, StepMania, or Pydance? Reply if you want me to continue working on what I have so far.

  20. Because console programming is no longer hard by tepples · · Score: 1

    especially as I myself, despite knowing how to program, have never programmed for a game console before.

    Programming on the Game Boy Advance feels like programming on a PC running DOS. You ought to try it sometime.

    I could've made a really nice old-style LCD game in Macromedia Flash that would not only have a nice visual touch as it took advantage of vector graphics (no pixels), but it could've run just fine on any Windows, Linux, Macintosh system without a problem.

    What handheld devices run SWF? A $190 GBA plus a flash card will run GBA and NES homebrew games.

    Anyway, one major point of PDROMS contests and other homebrew development efforts is to prove to console makers that there exist legitimate uses of, say, GBA flash cards other than for playing unlawful copies of proprietary video games. For example, if you have a flash card and my GSM Player, you can turn your GBA into a pocket music player.

  21. Why I'm not employed yet by tepples · · Score: 1

    if these guys were really any good, they'd probably already have jobs in the industry.

    I live in northeast Indiana and have a B.Sc. in computer science. However, I have no relatives in any locality where any major video game development firm who has noticed me on gbadev.org has an office, and my family isn't too fond of my possibly moving out of state for my first paying job. How does one search for video game industry jobs in a particular geographic location? Or should I flip burgers in order to gain experience in living independently from relatives?

  22. What is a "real company"? by tepples · · Score: 1

    Define "real company". Does it mean any corporation? If so, how much does it cost to incorporate?