I just released a preview of my game (about 40-50% complete) for everyone to try out:

Be careful to grab the hiatwrd0.nes file and not the advertised junk:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/dt6...

Its a metroidvania type game with 6 bosses so far and about 50 boards/levels.  If you like Strider/Rygar/Metroid  you probaly will like it.

First person to post screenshots of the defeat of each of the 6 bosses gets to be a beta tester for future versions!

You might remember I posted a video of it about a month ago

Tell me what you think, and feel free to post some screenshots!

As far as emulators go, I recommend Nestopia for this game for the NTSC filters. Even better run on an actual NTSC NES with a powerpak, or MMC3 TKROM devcart.

So far my only complaints are 1. Nicer Characters. 2. Scroll artifacts. 3. Tons of garbage on the screen on bootup that has no reason to be there. Game is okay, I think it needs a lot of work, but is at least getting off the ground, good job so far.

you know, you can make a video of it, could help you as an advertisement

sweet game so far!! is there any way to make her arm animations bend while shes running? it looks like your going for that dragon ball z style running look but she ends up looking like a rape victim with a broken back

I'm really hoping people play through the game to see and explore all the different levels and fight the different bosses.

I really want this on a cart. I hope you're planning a legit release.

@Tim: I've been meaning to rework the main character animations. It should be possible to move the arms as she runs, granted, larger characters = less frames for animations.

@SamSpade: I've been ensuring it works on an actual NES as I've been developing. The game is MMC3 so it wont be easy to make custom carts though.

MMC3? Isn't that one of the easiest to find mappers ever? MMC5 is the one that's really tricky to track down, plus it has the extra 3 sound channels that do nothing on a stock NES, and the lack of support for 4-way mirroring.

From the video it does look promising indeed

@Luigi: For MMC3 findign a donor cart and doign the transplant isn't too bad.  There is a bit of soldering involved though.  But, if you want to manufacture new carts, there isn't an MMC3 replacement chip/board thats readily available that I know of.  Thats the hard part.

LOL!
Yeah, the animation is a bit stiff. Maybe you could make her around the same height as the main character from Shatterhand or something and try to emulate the smoothness of the animation. 

One thing I should say is that I did everything myself except for the music playback routines, which is Famitone. I can definitely find another musician (one willing to work within the Famitone contraints), but finding an animator that will understand the bank switching constraints, or a level designer that would be able to use my tools and the techincal issues or # metatiles vs size of levels... thats really difficult. Also, I'd rather do everything myself... because its fun.. and have things take a bit longer.

The way I work usually is to make a first pass on everything, (music/artwork/etc.) so that I have everything I need to see the game in action. The general strategy is to make everything reasonable (at least average by NES game standards) After getting everything in place, I'll start taking a second pass, improving the worst aspects first. Most of what you see is a first pass.

That said, I'm sort of hitting myself since the very first level is not as good as the rest of the levels. Its a bit rough, and there are some sections where I put the thin slope tiles that the character can fall through, that I probably will change. So I can see why I'm getting the comments I am getting.

I'm really hoping at least some people play the game through so I can get some more commentary on the levels further into the game, and the boss battle. I'm curious to see how people find the difficulty level of the game, and different abilities like the wall jump, the dash, and the different weapons.

Currently I'd say the game is about the size and depth of Rygar.

The technical level of this game is quite high, I'm actually impressed. I never thought I'd see pseudo 2-plane parallax on the NES at all, so this is a neat start. It needs some more polish, obviously, and some of the tones in the music are quite droning, specifically the title screen. This might be due to the 2-plane parallax, but some tiles in the background seem to be flickering, and kinda detracts from the overall appeal. They might be part of the architecture, or you forgot about them, but there are some green and pink tiles scattered about the "main" background, the one you do all the movement on, and looks rather abstract and nondescript.

This was tested on FCEUX 2.1.5.

No pause?

Played it for a few mins and beat the first boss and got the gun. Very cool game! Can't wait to get more time to play it.

@Luigi: Thanks. As for the flickering, if you have a chance try playing on Nestopia with the NTSC filter or a NES on a CRT. The NTSC filtering smooths things out quite a bit, and adds an odd depth to the graphics. Also there are color attribute bugs where some tiles can be the wrong color now and then.. If you can scroll them offscrene and back on and they change color, thats probably what it is. It probably a day of debugging to fix that that I keep putting off . The music is still needs some polish, and I might add some effect capability to Famitone to implement more of the famitracker effects.

@Mog: I am so happy someone is making some progress and beating the bosses. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on fighting Treg and the wall jump ability. I think the pause will take the form of the pull down "config" screen (think zelda 1) once I implement it.

Well, the only problem i see is the gigantic main character. A lot of people probably like but i just hate games with large characters.

Great job doing this though. It´s really cool.

It saves right? How does that work in the game, or is that something thats not completed yet? I tried saving on the powerpak, and it didn't seem like saving was enabled.

Looks like it's going to be pretty sweet when you get it finished. If you decide to do a cartridge run, i'd buy a copy for sure.

Looks neat... but I really wish people would use the "Metroidvania" moniker correctly. That term only applies to actual Castlevania games that play like Metroid.

Any other game with those features (open maps, weapon build-ups, etc) would be a Metroid-like, unless it's literally a Castlevania clone that plays like Metroid

Sorry, pet peeve of mine. I cringe every time I hear Sivak refer to Battle Kid as "Metroidvania", as well.

BK = Megamantroid.

I suspect "open world platformer" is probably more accurate

Great game, I enjoyed it a lot despite the fact that it needs more polish. My only major complaint is that it's sometimes hard to determine where you can and can not walk. So, please either make the platforms more distinctive or at least give the player some holy water to throw down.

@Mog: Save/Password is not implemented yet unfortunately, but in an emulator you can save state. I'm still really hoping someone plays through the game so I can get some commentary on the bosses further in.

There is some question as to whether or not I'll be able to continue working on this project, or I'll have to shelf it indefinitely due to time issues/ work. If enough people are interested in playing the game through I'll be more inclined to put more time into it.

Well I beat 6 bosses. Got 5 new abilities from them and one boss told me I was fighting dirty and said to find her for a rematch. I think I got to the banshee before I should have. I had to go back and find the base in the jungle area after killing it.