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The Lost NES Version Of SimCity Has Been Discovered

The Lost NES Version Of SimCity Has Been Discovered

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In 1991 Nintendo announced they were partnering with SimCity creator Will Wright to release the first console version of his PC hit SimCity. Two versions of the game would be made available, one for NES and the other for SNES, with graphics being the only difference between them. 1991 rolled on, and sure enough, there was a SimCity for Super NES shortly after its launch…but the NES version never turned up. It’s still unknown to this day why Nintendo cancelled the NES version of SimCity. But it was close enough to completion that fans figured a playable version must be out there somewhere. It took until 2017 to track down — that was the year a former Nintendo worker stopped by a Seattle game store to pawn off some of his old prototypes. SimCity for NES was among them. The game made its world premiere at the 2017 Portland Retro Gaming Expo. Two prototypes had fallen into the collector’s hands and were both auctioned off. One of the buyers got

Micro Mages, Nebs ‘N Debs: New Games For The NES

Micro Mages, Nebs ‘N Debs: New Games For The NES

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With NESMaker currently in beta early access form (open as of August 8, $36), the once arcane task of crafting new games for the Nintendo Entertainment System will soon become much easier. These two projects currently being funded on Kickstarter, however, began before there was any such thing as software assistance. The folks behind Dullahan Software coded up Nebs ‘N Debs completely from scratch, using the raw 6502 Assembly code — quite the formidable task. In this game you play as Debs, an astronaut searching for a way off a distant planet. Nebs happens to be the squid-thing that attaches itself to Debs’s head. He’s both a curse and a blessing: he can help Debs gather the crystals she needs to synthesize fuel. Two years in the making, Nebs ‘n Debs contains 12 unique levels, a run-jump-dash gameplay mechanic, and a hard mode (they emphasize “HAAAAAAARD”) that can be unlocked after beating the game once. it will be released digitally, but since this is a Kickstarter campaign, you can also

This Is A Super NES Game, Running On An NES

This Is A Super NES Game, Running On An NES

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Hacker Tom Murphy has pulled off the unthinkable: he’s gotten Super Mario World, a Super NES game, to run on an NES console — a real one. How’d he pull it off? Did he cheat? …..Yeah, kinda — but it still took significant effort to get to the point where he could cheat. The NES is very limited graphically: it can render 64 colors, but it can only put 13 of them on one screen at a time, and only three colors are allowed in every 16×16 block of graphics. Murphy figured out a way to feed data into the NES so that a different color palette is allowed every eight pixels — but that still wasn’t enough. All the graphical data for an NES game is stored in a cartridge chip called the Picture Processing Unit, or PPU. Murphy created a custom circuit board and replaced the PPU with a soldered-on Raspberry Pi. The Pi computes the data — in this case an emulated Super Mario World — and

Mega Man 2 And Mega Man X Are Being Rereleased — On Cartridge

Mega Man 2 And Mega Man X Are Being Rereleased — On Cartridge

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Later this month, Mega Man Legacy Collection will be released for Nintendo Switch, featuring all ten mainline games in the Blue Bomber’s history. After that, in July, Mega Man X Legacy Collection will come out for all major consoles. You could collect Mega Man history that way, or you could go for the gusto… Capcom announced today they’re reprinting two of the most important games in the Mega Man series, Mega Man 2 for NES and Mega Man X for SNES, in the cartridge formats they originally came in. They’re not just for display (though a lot of collectors are going to treat them that way)….if you pop these into a working NES or SNES, the games will run. You might remember something similar being done last year with Street Fighter II — another Capcom property. The majority of the 8,500 copies produced of each game will have a white shell, but a thousand of them will come in a 90s-chic, see-through blue shell. You can’t control whether you get

The NES Maker Campaign Enters Its Home Stretch

The NES Maker Campaign Enters Its Home Stretch

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One of the coolest Kickstarter products we’ve ever seen is for NES Maker, a PC software development kit that will allow anyone to build their own 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System games from nothing. NES Maker uses GUI menus and graphics editors instead of code, and yet it’s surprisingly robust in options and features even at this early stage. “Early” being in terms of introduction to the general public. NES Maker’s creators started building the game creator years ago, out of necessity while coding Mystic Searches, their homebrew NES game. You may have noticed most indie NES titles happen to be hacks of popular games. This is because the NES only understands Assembly language, a primitive and cumbersome way to program. Most coding today is done with plain English words, but Assembly requires an involved knowledge of the very ones and zeroes the game is made up of. Not many people have the patience for it, especially when no job today requires it. Now the campaign is entering its final five

Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 Confirmed Via Rating Site

Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 Confirmed Via Rating Site

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It looks like the Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 will be releasing at some point in the near future, as the bundle has been rated for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in South Korea. The ratings board entry reveals that this collection will include Mega Man 7 through 10, ensuring that all of the classic titles from the series are available on the latest consoles. The moves isn’t that much of a surprise considering that Capcom  have already released an earlier collection of the first six Mega Man games last year to moderate success. The timing also fits as developer Digital Eclipse has just finished work on the Disney Afternoon Collection.

NES Classic Discontinued Due To Lack Of Resources At Nintendo

NES Classic Discontinued Due To Lack Of Resources At Nintendo

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When Nintendo recently announced that they were discontinuing the NES Classic, many within the industry where confused. After all, the console had been a huge success, selling out almost instantly and moving some 2.3 million units worldwide. The $59.99 system, which had 30 classic NES games built into it, had become so sought after that many were willing to spend hundreds of dollars to get their hands on it on selling sites such as eBay. While the cancellation of the console surprised media and players alike, it turns out that Nintendo simply don’t have the required manpower and parts to focus on multiple hardware projects at the same time. “From our perspective, it’s important to recognize where our future is and the key areas that we need to drive,” said Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo of America, in an interview with Time Magazine. “We’ve got a lot going on right now and we don’t have unlimited resources.” “We had originally planned for this to be a product for last holiday. We

Surprise — There’s About To Be A Double Dragon IV

Surprise — There’s About To Be A Double Dragon IV

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One of the most popular games of the NES era was the trilogy of brawlers known as Double Dragon. Billy and Jimmy bashed heads through three games, got their own merchandise line, and even received their own lousy syndicated cartoon. Strangely, unlike just about every other franchise that made it big on Nintendo’s first system, the series never continued on any further console (unless you count that one crossover with the Battletoads). Now it’s almost 2017, and guess what finally showed up: Double Dragon IV. And it’s like nothing ever changed…but that’s a good thing. At this point, seeing the Dragons rendered in 3D running through fully realized environments would feel like sacrilege. Arc System Works (the creators of the new sequel) knew this and went the Mega Man 9 route, skewing as close to the look and feel of the previous three games as possible. And it releases very soon! This trailer is the first mention of the project publicly, and it confirms Double Dragon IV will be out

New Trailer, New Details About The Mini-NES

New Trailer, New Details About The Mini-NES

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Hot on the heels of the Mini-Famicom comes more details regarding its US counterpart, the Mini-NES. It looks like it’ll be more than just a glorified ROM dump; though you still can’t add new games to the bite-sized system, you’ll be able to store up to four save points at once for each title it does have. The manuals are included too — in a way. By scanning a QR code displayed on the screen, you’ll be able to load a digital replica on your smartphone. The Mini-NES can display NES games in three modes: 4:3 (the original), CRT Filter (which adds scan lines for that nostalgic effect), and Pixel Perfect, which renders every pixel as a perfect square. See them in action in Nintendo’s new Mini-NES trailer, released today….. So how could they mess this up? They have ways….US Gamer was allowed to test out the device, and they found two unrevealed problems: one, to switch games or reload save states, you have to hit a button on the

Nesbox Lets You Play Classic Nintendo Games On Xbox One

Nesbox Lets You Play Classic Nintendo Games On Xbox One

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A developer has created an emulator for the Xbox One that allows users to play classic Nintendo games through the Edge browser. Nesbox works using ROMs uploaded via OneDrive to play files from the NES, SNES, Genesis, GameBoy, and GameBoy Advance. To get the emulator to work, players simply have to use the Edge browser to navigate to https://nesbox.itch.io/x1 and then give permission for the site to access files from your OneDrive account. From there, the emulator can be run in full screen and fully supports the use of the Xbox One controller and save states. While the vast majority of titles appear to work without any major issues, there are some problems with GameBoy Advance games in particular, alongside a number of more taxing SNES titles. Fortunately, the developer has already confirmed that he is working on upgrading the emulator and adding features such as uploading saves to OneDrive and remapping controls. Nesbox originally launched on the Xbox One as an app earlier in the month but was swiftly

Time Twist: The NES’s Most Outrageous Game

Time Twist: The NES’s Most Outrageous Game

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Hardcore Gaming 101 made a pretty interesting discovery over the weekend. Nintendo’s censorship policies during the NES years were incredibly strict; nothing controversial could be mentioned, which included any form or hint at religion or politics. The ban extended to historical figures like Hitler, who had his name changed in the localized version of Bionic Commando (but his head still exploded). There is an exception, however. For some reason, a Japanese-exclusive command-based adventure game (think Maniac Mansion) was released for the Famicom Disk System in 1991 that broke every single rule Nintendo had laid down for itself. The rules were far stricter in the US and Europe, of course, but in this case, the game seems to go out of its way to use every forbidden topic it can. Time Twist is about a boy who lives in Tokyo in the far-flung future of four years after the game’s release (1995). While in a museum, he hears of some incantation that’s supposed to make any girl fall in love with

Are We Looking At Satoru Iwata’s First Nintendo Game?

Are We Looking At Satoru Iwata’s First Nintendo Game?

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Arcade preservationist Frank Cifaldi recently acquired a number of prototype NES ROM boards from an eBay seller. One particular board contained what may be one of the best finds of his career: an early version of NES Joust. Cifaldi explains why: I have just acquired and preserved an incredible piece of video game history. It will take a few tweets to explain: These are boards for the Famicom. I don’t know if the BOARDS are authentic, but the rewritable EPROMs are def. old. These were kinda fishy looking but I picked them up anyway. They are: Hyper Olympic, Stargate (Defender II), Soccer, and Joust. I dumped the ROMs. All but Soccer are definitely earlier-than-retail code. Here are some clear differences in Joust. Joust has an interesting history. It was programmed by Satoru Iwata in 1983, as part of a Nintendo/Atari deal that never happened. Nintendo did not release it in 1983/1984 as planned, but HAL eventually self-published in 1987…years later. Joust was the first thing Satoru Iwata, the eventual president

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