Being an indie game developer can be tough, so it's no surprise that few wish to add to their difficulties by developing homebrew software for legacy hardware. Sure, almost every other week, we hear of some dudes making a new Dreamcast shmup, but now and then, we hear about a new Atari 2600 or NES project. I still want to grab myself a copy of Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril and tear the f*ck out of it one of these days.
Here is another team, Gradual Games, with a fresh NES homebrew straight from the coffee pot. It's called Nomolos: Storming the Catsle (that isn't a typo), and it's a blend of Castlevania, Super Mario Bros., Ghosts'n Goblins, and quite possibly a bit of Cheetahmen. From the trailer, gameplay consists of dashin from left to right through waves of enemies while swinging a short sword. It looks easy, but hands-on previews insist that it is hard as balls.
I'm not totally sold on the game just yet from what little I've seen; I'm definitely not sold on the music. Still, I respect the challenge of mucking about in NES Assembly, and I would like to give the finished game a spin.
Tony Ponce (aka megaStryke) is a culturally confused, Canadian-born Puerto Rican who grew up in Japan and South Florida ... yet can only speak English. He specializes in writing features and maintaining an immaculate goatee. Likes: Any and all things related to Mega Man, Contra, Castlevania, 2D, PB&J sandwiches, applesauce, and candy corn.
Meet the rest of the team
Funnily enough, the graphics are reminiscent of one of those old Wisdom Tree bible games. Thankfully, the gameplay looks amazing, unlike said bible games.
This game looks like a game I would have rented back in the day. One of those games that captures your imagination with the box art but ends up ruining your weekend. Thats a hard feeling to recreate.
Loving it. The way the industry is morphing into a pay-to-play DRM fest, I can see a resurgence of 8-bit gaming taking off as a sort of anti-establishment, indie underground reaction.
This looks exceedingly unfun to play. Indie devs make plenty of _good_ challenging games these days, I don't know why you would want to go back to this.
Oh wow. Whoever thought it was a good idea to use 8 bit Baroque music may just need to reexamine that decision. I would happily compose them a soundtrack for that game just so I could play the thing with the sound on.
It's very impressive to make a game for the NES. I got a copy of Battle Kid. I support this kind of stuff. But the people who knows how to program on NES should get the help of artists to create the graphics, animation, music, story, game design...
While I applaud making it an actual NES project instead of using retro art in a modern PC game, I can't get behind anything else about this, aside maybe from the music.
My biggest issue is just how bad the levels look - not only is the background art pretty terrible, but the layout is confusing and lacks any kind of flow. There is no distinction between the background elements and things you can interact or collide with, like every good game should have.
Overall - this feels very much in spirit of Cheetahmen.
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Contest:
8:00 AM on 01.28.2012 | 
nomolos - solomon
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Catsle - Cat Castle
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....or not.
OT: Love that music.
...too late, it already is.
My biggest issue is just how bad the levels look - not only is the background art pretty terrible, but the layout is confusing and lacks any kind of flow. There is no distinction between the background elements and things you can interact or collide with, like every good game should have.
Overall - this feels very much in spirit of Cheetahmen.