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Classic Games (Games) Programming Entertainment Games IT Technology

Homebrew Game & Watch Games Make Debut 69

Posted by simoniker 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!"
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Homebrew Game & Watch Games Make Debut More

Homebrew Game & Watch Games Make Debut

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  • Well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arieswind ( 789699 ) * on Saturday July 10, 2004 @01:19PM (#9661524) Homepage
    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..

  • Not to insult but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by b0r0din ( 304712 )
    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.

    • Re:Not to insult but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ralphart ( 70342 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @01:26PM (#9661552)
      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.
      • 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 anyth

        • 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 ex

    • 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 [pompom.org.uk].

    • Re:Not to insult but... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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.

    • Re:Not to insult but... (Score:4, Informative)

      by hattig ( 47930 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @01:51PM (#9661667) Journal
      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.

    • Re:Not to insult but... (Score:4, Informative)

      by SiW ( 10570 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @03:34PM (#9662264) Homepage
      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.
  • I guess you didn't realize what "Metalfotze" means in german... ;-)

  • screenshot doesnt work (Score:3, Informative)

    by lucas teh geek ( 714343 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @01:21PM (#9661532)
    need to copy the url and paste it into a new window. i guess they dont like external referals

  • BitTorrent (Score:5, Informative)

    by gspr ( 602968 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @01:22PM (#9661535)
    Here is a torrent of the 24 submissions [dyndns.org] 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.

  • VBA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mboverload ( 657893 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @01:28PM (#9661566) Journal
    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.

  • Porting to GBA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cat_jesus ( 525334 ) on Saturday July 10, 2004 @02:46PM (#9661978)
    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.
    • mm yep but 'frozen bubble' is a port of 'puzzle bobble' which has been years available for the gba.
      • 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!

        • 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 [pineight.com] 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 a

    • DDR for GBA? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      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 [jk0.org].

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

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

  • Did anyone else read the title as "Hebrew Games..."?
    • 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 not? Hebrew games would probably be at least as unintentionally humorous as stuff like 'Spiritual Warfare'. They might even be funnier.
        • 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.
    • 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 m

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