The (S)NES classic editions have demonstrated the clear appeal of these older platforms.
I think Nintendo/Sega/etc could rake in a lot of cash if they designed new games for these old systems. I would love to see a new Super Mario World-esque game that operated within the confines of the classic SNES.
I'm not sure what would be earned for developing such a game verses developing one on a modern system that looks like it could have been from that era. It would likely cost less to develop and would be easier for the average consumer to use. I've played a number of 16-bit games since that time, and some manage to pull of a similar feeling.
That's true, although I guess there is some sort of value for people using "authentic" stuff instead of emulators, etc (even though the SNES classic likely runs on an emulator, it still feels more like the old device).
Primarily, I am interested in seeing another effective 2D Mario with the same charm and style as the SNES games - I do not care so much if it is running on a modern system. :)
> (even though the SNES classic likely runs on an emulator, it still feels more like the old device).
Yep, the NES and SNES classic things run an emulator on a little ARM computer. It's possible to replace the games with other games, or to copy the emulator off and get it working on something like a Raspberry Pi.
Have you ever tried out a "rom hack"? People often alter ROMs code to make entirely new worlds/levels. Pair them with something like an ever drive and you get to play them on the real hardware.
Just a word of caution for anyone looking to buy rom hack cartridges, many rom hacks were never intended to be put on cartridges and the original rom hack developers do not support nor benefit from doing so. It's also possible the rom hack on the cartridge isn't the final version.
I am not sure I understand, so I will defer to you.
My understanding was that independent game authors were writing games and making cartridges for these games which they then sold.
If I am understanding you correctly, somewhere in this chain is copyright infringement? Are people buying a cartridge, extracting the content, and loading it into new cartridges?
Is the market large enough to support that much effort and expense?
Or are people finding roms, perhaps intended for use with emulators, and loading those onto physical cartridges and selling them without renumeration or permission?
If so, is the market large enough for that to go unnoticed? My understanding was a successful new game might sell a few thousand cartridges and great success was in the 10,000 units sold area.
Being so small a market, and requiring the investment to even make the cartridges, it'd seem easier to spot this (from the IP owner's perspective) and seek preventative legal responses.
Sort of related: I know this requires some specialized equipment to make new cartridges, but do you know if they sell blank cartridges that can just be loaded with games? I am aware that some cartridges had custom chips on them and didn't confirm to any standard, like Zelda cartridges that contained memory and a chip for saving game states.
I am guessing, hopefully, that you know more about this stuff than I do.
> Or are people finding roms, perhaps intended for use with emulators, and loading those onto physical cartridges and selling them without renumeration or permission?
I think they're talking about this case (based on the wording "rom hack cartridges"). Someone takes an original game ROM and modifies it in some way (translation, level mods, whatever). Someone else takes the modified code, burns it onto actual hardware, and sells the result.
> Sort of related: I know this requires some specialized equipment to make new cartridges, but do you know if they sell blank cartridges that can just be loaded with games?
The usual method that I know is to remove the ROM chips from a donor cartridge (a working game), and replace them with chips flashed with customized data. The donor cart would need to provide the same custom chips/memory mappers/whatever that the game code expects to be present.
Ah! That explains the method, at least. I'm a bit surprised that the market is large enough to support the effort and expense. My limited exposure suggests that it isn't a very large market and I'd been led to believe that it wasn't very profitable.
Though, I suppose it becomes more profitable if you're not paying to develop the game or for the rights to distribute the game.
I wonder if there's technically a possibility for, and a market large enough, for generic cartridges - perhaps several kinds that had different standardized hardware in them.
I don't know much about market size, but I know that some developers are working on physical releases of new games for old consoles. Written from scratch, with new IP.
It says that the NES game Star Versus has sold about 300 copies since its release (in 2014, I think). So, there's an idea of the market, I suppose. I haven't found much in the way of information about its development, so far. There was a forum post that mentioned that it seems to use a new, undocumented memory mapper chip, which implies that the developer produced their own, rather than use the "donor" method that I suggested earlier.
>My understanding was that independent game authors were writing games and making cartridges for these games which they then sold.
In most the cases I'm familiar with, the official release is only a patch file. You have to patch the original game with the patch file yourself. Often a third party will patch the file and host it themselves, making only add revenue. In some cases, a fourth party will take the patched file (either creating their own or taking one from the third party), and put it in a cartridge which they then sell of a significant sum of money (compared to the third party who is only getting the add revenue from you using their site).
In general, the people actually making the patch aren't making any money off it because of the increased risk of being shut down by whomever holds the original IP.
>Is the market large enough to support that much effort and expense?
I think the market for custom cartridges is mostly driven by people who buy cartridges and load their own roms onto it for their own use. Only a few do the extra work of trying to load roms and sale them.
Then again, certain games can go for $50 or more on ebay for a used cartridge. If you can fake the cartridge good enough, you might be able to make decent money selling these.
>it'd seem easier to spot this (from the IP owner's perspective) and seek preventative legal responses.
It's probably hard to track down because of the independent nature of those doing it. It's like the $50-$100 dollar craigslist ads for people offering to mod your SNES classic and add a bunch of roms to it (once you have everything set up, it is less than 15 minutes, and $50 tax free dollars is pretty good income for them amount of time).
>but do you know if they sell blank cartridges that can just be loaded with games?
That's my understanding of how most of this works, but that may be wrong. I personally don't do cartridges since my old systems are more finicky than using an emulator.
>I am guessing, hopefully, that you know more about this stuff than I do.
I only deal in the software side and don't do anything to make money. I'll help friends set up emulators on their PC, or help them with a retro-pi/SNES classic mods, but always for free. The extent of my knowledge of the hardware cartridges is based on posts by the rom hack creators disavowing any relationship with the hard copies. Though as another poster pointed out, I have seen a few people attempting to release hardware copies of new games. Mostly I just deal with unofficial English translations of JRPGs.
I once tried to create a legitimate ROM for the Gameboy Advance but it was obviously pretty involved. For those interested, plenty of resources such as: http://www.loirak.com/gameboy/gbatutor.php
Yeah - GBA homebrew is hard. Mostly because it's a modern processor (it's an ARM7TDMI) with some really nutty RAM and graphical limitations. But any 8-bit or most 16-bit systems (except the Genesis, which is something of a kludge) are pretty straightforward.
I do streaming charity events on occasion and an idea I've had is collaboratively writing an NES game over the course of a weekend, on-camera.
What? GBA is clearly easier than NES. Just set up a single tile layer in mode 0, and you got what's practically a NES with more colors, sprites and a much more powerful CPU that you can program in C++ if you like.
Sure, if you sit in mode 0 it's pretty simple. But if you're writing code for the GBA, you're probably gonna want to do stuff with the GBA's feature set, yeah? The bitmap modes, affine sprites and layers, sound, etc. get a little bit complicated. It's all stuff you can learn, don't get me wrong, and it's not like it's not so weird that knowledge you'd acquire from using other systems isn't applicable--but I find that there's a lot more that I had to have in my head when playing around with it than the NES (or systems I lean towards more, like the C64). It's a great platform to mess around with, but it is more complex. But if you're not going to use that complexity, for homebrew--I dunno, I'd just go grab a NES emulator.
GNU C++ had gremlins for the GBA last time I was writing homebrew for it, so I can't speak to that. I kinda enjoy writing assembly when messing around with this stuff, though, so, eh. For anything else, I love me some (Modern!) C++, but it kind of feels like I should be writing assembly for that stuff, it's more fun to me.
Do me a favor and chew on something for a sec, though: what does your "What?" do except add a hostile and combative edge to the conversation? Maybe don't do that. Thanks.
The NES is a much simpler system. Granted, it's a simpler system that you're programming in a less-convenient language, but I think that which one is "easier" depends on what you're used to.
Most 8-bit systems perform poorly with C compilers so you are looking at writing in ASM. Additionally, there are all kinds of messy things like "mappers" on NES and GB to handle bank switching of the severely limited address space.
GBA lets you use C without bank switching. I'd say it is far easier than the older generations.
If you want to write C, that's an absolutely fair cop. I would much rather write assembly for this stuff--as I mentioned in a sibling, it sorta feels right?--so that wasn't something I was thinking about. Rather, the profusion of features that are kinda tricky (mentioned in that sibling) along with the ARM/Thumb mess.
I think Nintendo/Sega/etc could rake in a lot of cash if they designed new games for these old systems. I would love to see a new Super Mario World-esque game that operated within the confines of the classic SNES.