29 replies to this topic

[EricBall]

I'm curious; what other consoles & portables have homebrews?  The AtariAge store sells 2600 & 5200 homebrews, and I know about the Vectrex, and it looks like there is even a NUON homebrew!

[Snider-man]

Hmmm...good question. Steering away from anything remotely resembling a computer, I know of:

- John Dondzilla's "Amok" - an Odyssey2 Berzerk game
- Several Colecovision games (Space Fortress, Ms. Space Fury, Bejeweled, and a ton of others)
- A few Sega CD games saw release. They weren't really "homebrews" so much as discovered games that were cleaned up and released.
- I know of a few Gameboy and Virtual Boy homebrews that haven't been released yet.
- Songbird Productions is constantly releasing Atari Lynx homebrews.

There are definately more systems and games too. Anyone want to take the ball and run with it? I'm at work right now, so I don't have time to dig up links for all I've mentioned...

[Happy_Dude]

Dreamcast has some wicked homebrews and hacks and homebrew ports

I love playing Doom on my D.C and you can even use you're own
level wads and change the graphics (but only if you have a coders cable
burning c.d's gets expensive after a few hundered mods and failed burns )

[raindog]

The Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance all have a ton of homebrews, just never actually released in cart form as far as I know.  You can't release a homebrew GBx cart without either fashioning it to take an existing GBx cart piggyback style, or breaking Nintendo's copyright (as the unit itself checks for the presence of the Nintendo logo in the ROM image.)

Rob

[EricBall]

Yeah, I've found homebrews for a bunch of systems, but don't know whether they are useable outside of an emulator.  I'm not sure what to make of that.  Are you really programming for the console in that case, or just for a kind of function library?

It seems that in order to create a homebrew game or demo you need an SDK (documentation, libraries, assembler/compiler, other tools) and either an emulator or a way to run the game/demo on an actual console (EEPROM & CD burners, RAM carts, etc).  But the critical item is the SDK, in particular the documentation.

[Cybergoth]

Hi Eric!

EricBall said:

Yeah, I've found homebrews for a bunch of systems, but don't know whether they are useable outside of an emulator.  I'm not sure what to make of that.  Are you really programming for the console in that case, or just for a kind of function library?

It seems that in order to create a homebrew game or demo you need an SDK (documentation, libraries, assembler/compiler, other tools) and either an emulator or a way to run the game/demo on an actual console (EEPROM & CD burners, RAM carts, etc).  But the critical item is the SDK, in particular the documentation.

For the Colecovision, go here:

http://www.geocities...o/framesen.html

Greetings,
     Manuel

[Snider-man]

Odyssey2 "Amok"
Colecovision Star Fortress
Colecovision Space Invasion
Colecovision Ms. Space Fury (review - game not available anymore on cart)
Colecovision goodness from Dan Bienvenu - Dacman, BUST-in Out, Bejeweled, and other stuff in the works
Atari Lynx and Jaguar goodies from Songbird Productions - Jag: Skyhammer, Protector, Soccer Kid - Lynx: Championship Rally, Cybervirus, Hyperdrome, Lexus, Ponx, Remnant

And there's a buuuuuunch more out there....

[calamari]

Don't forget Kevtris, the first Colecovision homebrew game

calamari

[sku_u]

I was told by an Astrocade expert that there's a Bally Astrocade homebrew in the works and a few older ones.

[raindog]

EricBall said:

Yeah, I've found homebrews for a bunch of systems, but don't know whether they are useable outside of an emulator.  I'm not sure what to make of that.  Are you really programming for the console in that case, or just for a kind of function library?

Well, the GBC and GBA (and probably the GB as well) all have flash cartridges available, though unfortunately since the interface to the PC also acts as a dumper Nintendo has done their best to make it difficult to obtain one.  (I suspect they would do so even if the dumper functionality weren't there.)  So they're at least as valid as the Atari games that only play on the Cuttle or Supercharger.  I bet there are even more GBx flash carts out there than Superchargers despite N's efforts.

Someone else mentioned Astrocade homebrews - as far as I can remember, people wrote and released  Astrocade homebrews back in the day using the cassette tape intended for saving BASIC programs.  I assume the games weren't all written in BASIC.

Rob

[CPUWIZ]

raindog said:

EricBall said:

Yeah, I've found homebrews for a bunch of systems, but don't know whether they are useable outside of an emulator.  I'm not sure what to make of that.  Are you really programming for the console in that case, or just for a kind of function library?

Well, the GBC and GBA (and probably the GB as well) all have flash cartridges available, though unfortunately since the interface to the PC also acts as a dumper Nintendo has done their best to make it difficult to obtain one.  (I suspect they would do so even if the dumper functionality weren't there.)  So they're at least as valid as the Atari games that only play on the Cuttle or Supercharger.  I bet there are even more GBx flash carts out there than Superchargers despite N's efforts.

Not so difficult to get.  

http://www.easybuy20...ries/index.html

[raindog]

Look again, everything's on "back order" meaning they don't have any and don't know when they'll get any!  There are lots of online stores like that out there (at least EB2K tells you.)  They were in the same state when last I looked in November.  

But that new USB "XG Flash 128" they have on preorder looks pretty sweet if anyone ever writes Linux drivers for it   And if it ever really becomes available - the "Flash Advance USB Xtreme" came and went kinda quick last year.

Rob

[CPUWIZ]

You just have to look for it a little harder, in fact I just sold mine because I don't use my GBA that often.

http://www.gamegizmo...catID=13&pID=30

[Cupcakus]

I have a GBA flash cartridge, and I have played many homebrews on real hardware...

There is also a PSX homebrew scene... In fact... sony actually released homebrew PSX consoles for a short while... with dev kits for like $179 I think.... They were black... I forgot the name of them.... Started with a Y I think.

Just about every console has a homebrew scene :-) Except the channel F :-) Which I intend to look into in a while :-)

[CPUWIZ]

It is called the Yaroze.  

[Cupcakus]

CPUWIZ said:

It is called the Yaroze.  

That sounds right :-) When I found out about them, I tried to pick one up in a hurry :-) But to no avail... they were all gone.  They had some limitations I think too?  Like less memory? Or they couldn't play FMV?

[Jetboot Jack]

Yaroze code and data had to fit in the system's RAM - no multiple code modules or data loaded from disc as in a normal PSX game....

sTeVE

[CPUWIZ]

Yup and the transfer connection uses a serial cable which is dog slow.

[MegaManFan]

Snider-man said:

Colecovision goodness from Dan Bienvenu - Dacman, BUST-in Out, Bejeweled, and other stuff in the works

And there's a buuuuuunch more out there....

I want the Bejeweled soooo bad, but I don't see how to order a cart on his site!  Anyone know?

[raindog]

Well, I just ordered a GBA Flash Advance Linker Extreme (parallel and USB connections) from gamegizmo as well as a "Game Wallet" (unfortunately named if you want to google for it) which allows you to store more games on standard SmartMedia cards and transfer them onto the Flash Advance cartridges.  So with any luck I'll be messing with GBA homebrewing soon.... hope this stuff still works on the GBA SP because I'll have one of those as soon as it's out in the US

Hmmmm, I wonder if playbin/makewav would be portable to the GBA....

Rob

[Cupcakus]

I did GBA homebrewing for a while before I came to Atari... I actually wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark for the GBA...  The hardest part is getting someone to send you a copy of the dev manual... It is (or used to be) *very* hard to come by.

[raindog]

well, I learned what I know about 2600 programming without any sort of official documentation, so I figured I'd stick with what's available at http://www.gbadev.org and similar sites.  There seem to be any number of helper libraries people have written for the thing and documents describing the hardware and various API's.  No one even mentions the official manual that I can see.  Am I going to find out I need it?

Rob

[MegaManFan]

MegaManFan said:

Snider-man said:

Colecovision goodness from Dan Bienvenu - Dacman, BUST-in Out, Bejeweled, and other stuff in the works

And there's a buuuuuunch more out there....

I want the Bejeweled soooo bad, but I don't see how to order a cart on his site!  Anyone know?

Still wondering..

[Cupcakus]

raindog said:

well, I learned what I know about 2600 programming without any sort of official documentation, so I figured I'd stick with what's available at http://www.gbadev.org and similar sites.  There seem to be any number of helper libraries people have written for the thing and documents describing the hardware and various API's.  No one even mentions the official manual that I can see.  Am I going to find out I need it?

Rob

Yes and devrs.com as well has great resourses now... When I started the official docs was the only way to go... but that may be different now.

[Christopher Tumber]

raindog said:

well, I learned what I know about 2600 programming without any sort of official documentation, so I figured I'd stick with what's available at http://www.gbadev.org and similar sites.  There seem to be any number of helper libraries people have written for the thing and documents describing the hardware and various API's.  No one even mentions the official manual that I can see.  Am I going to find out I need it?

No.

I've written some GBA stuff (including an unreleased port of my Vectrex game, Zap). It's a really straightforeward* system to write for (Hell, almost everyone codes in C).

IMHO, successfull projects on the GBA depend a lot more on game design than technical ability though with the added emphasis on graphics and sound inherant in modern consoles.


Chris...

*Like any other console if you want to push the system's performance specs then of course it gets tough, but for "day to day" coding it's a pretty simple to work with.