http://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-43001916/new-sega-mega-drive-game-made-on-90s-kit
What are you waiting for, Nintendo to make one?

I thought I would share this fun little project not just because it is neat but because he was one of my main coworkers when I lived in the UK.  The place where he is doing the interview is the National Videogame Arcade where I played Super Smash Bros. for Wii U every Wednesday, so watching this brings back memories.  Now I want to move back!

He had mentioned this project a few times but I had never seen anything until now.  It looks fun not just to play but to make.  It really makes me wish I could have worked on some very retro games.  I mean, it looks like a pain in the ass, but the fun kind of pain in the ass that feels very rewarding at the end, especially to have it on a real cartridge.

Who else would like to see more of this kind of thing?  Or even be part of this kind of thing?


L. Spiro

Retro games are awesome because they have a lot of content in them but some of the new games are cool too.

Some examples would be Sonic Mania - has a lot of shine and is fun. I also like Mario Maker as well because there are a lot of puzzle levels.

I ventured into programming the Megadrive( using C ), but turned to ZX Spectrum programming instead, using Z88DK.  The Megadrive has seen some nifty games over the last few years - most notable is Watermelon's Pier Solar - which is bloody incredible - and an upcoming Streets-of-Rage style beat-em-up.

I think using the Megacd dev kit is hardcore as it comes, but developing for older machines demands a lot of programming skill, and what we take for granted today was a holy grail for programmers back in the day.  Assembly is very hard to learn - let alone use efficiently - and Matt seems to have done that very well.

Being able to use C helps a lot when developing for classic machines.

I've recently done a little bit of programming on the SEGA Genesis myself, and it's definitely an interesting experience. It's possible to do a lot of really interesting graphical effects even by cleverly abusing the video hardware. I've managed to make a little raycasting demo including (one) texture, and when I get the time I really want to turn it into a full game.

Some of the most technically impressive things I've seen are in The Adventures of Batman and Robin, Toy Story, and Hard Drivin. I don't have links but they most impressive scenes are pretty easy to find on Youtube.

On 3/5/2018 at 4:06 PM, Anri said:

I think using the Megacd dev kit is hardcore as it comes, but developing for older machines demands a lot of programming skill, and what we take for granted today was a holy grail for programmers back in the day. 

I've been mildly interested in the SEGA CD myself, but I can attest that it seems so needlessly difficult compared to the basic console that I've never seriously looked into it. I also feel like the extra processing power is "cheating" a bit in terms of making 3D (or 3D-ish) graphics so it's not really a huge draw for me anyway. The only "retro" console I can think of that might be even more difficult is the SEGA Saturn, which seems utterly incomprehensible to me.

And yeah, it's super interesting to compare developing on this to using modern hardware. On one hand, the lack of dynamic memory allocation, the inability to draw directly to the screen, limited color palates, etc. are not things we need to worry about about when programming on modern hardware. On the other hand, the separation between the general purpose CPU and more specialized but faster video hardware doesn't really feel fundamentally different from how things work now, even if the specifics are very far apart.

On 3/5/2018 at 4:06 PM, Anri said:

Being able to use C helps a lot when developing for classic machines.

Yes, this is very much true. There's a really nice library that I've used called SGDK. In addition to the functionality it provides, it happens to be written almost entirely in C as well, so it's not hard to modify and makes a good reference as well.

19 hours ago, cowsarenotevil said:

 

Yes, this is very much true. There's a really nice library that I've used called SGDK. In addition to the functionality it provides, it happens to be written almost entirely in C as well, so it's not hard to modify and makes a good reference as well.

Yes, SGDK was the one I was using.  I was initially attempting to learn Assembly for the 68K but it was hard going to get an assembly set up let alone produce anything the megadrive could run.  With SGDK I managed to at least muck around with the layers - loads of red dot sprites, and some text and input from the controller.

Have you seen the Wolfenstein port?