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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!"

5 of 69 comments (clear)

  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. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.