(Article continued from NintendoAGE.com frontpage)
Let it be stated that a homebrew is, in concept, far different than a repro (reproduction cartridge). Some homebrew games are burnt into chips on existing cartridges. Many of the rom-only games available can be played on your home system this way. It should be mentioned that all of the Sudoku cartridges currently in circulation are by the strictest definition, repros. So what is the difference? The release itself, for one...the fact that Al Bailey has hit the pavement and the boards to solicit his new game, a product of his own labor. In Al's words: "Obviously its a game but to me what makes it collectable is: limited production and wide-spread availability. I'm trying to make it available at cost at a number of different meets." So far Sudoku has been sold at a Toronto convention, with Ohio (CCAG, May 26) and Las Vegas (CGE, July 28) likely being the last two stops on its introductory tour.
Adding to the value and collectibility, the materials he's used inside the cartridge and the custom box, manual and sleeve, as well as his label (including holographic copy-protection; each copy's hologram is individually numbered and reads "Sudoku 2007 ##/100) all contribute to the totality of the release. A purchase of the first-run of Sudoku is much more than the purchase of the ROM, which is available freely and advertised by Al himself. Whether for profit or not, a homebrew release has a certain physical as well as an intrinsic quality that is far different than reprogramming one of your old yard sale finds and printing a label off from the internet. Anyone with the right equipment can repro a Stadium Events...but it would be worthless.
"For the Toronto show which was on April 29th, I had only made 30 grey carts and 5 gold ones.", says Al Bailey of his new game, "Since then, I havent made any more carts. I will, I just dont look forward to how much time and work it takes." He has plans and materials to create 100 cartridges total: numbers 1-10 will be gold-painted copies to be awarded exclusively as prizes and gifts, and the last 90 grey ones to be sold to the public. The offering price is currently $25 USD/$30 CDN apiece, which according to the creator only barely covers costs. While inexpensive compared to brand-new NES games back in the 80's and 90's, Al says convention-goers have expressed surprise at the price point. "The most common quote would have been, 'I thought you weren't planning on making any money from this,'" Al reflects. "I tried to keep it cheap but I also wanted things to be good quality and desireable to collectors. I tried to save money by buying everything up front (EPROMs, boxes etc.. are cheaper when bough in lots of 100). According to my spreadsheet where I've tracked all my expenses, if I dont get hit by a truck and do succeed in making all 100 carts, they will have cost me $24.00 CDN each to make, meaning I'll need to sell them at at least $26.50 [CDN] each (since the gold are not for sale) just to break even. ($23 if I dont count the cost of equipment). I suspect that my expenses will increase as I need to ship games to shows like Vegas...Also, I still have some more parts that havent come in yet, so I will likely have to pay taxes and duties on them."
Al is admittedly more interested in the possibility of a second version that would be produced in larger quantities much more easily and less time-intensively than his first offering, for which each individual cartridge has taken him nearly an hour of his own time to fabricate. The new version would be a true unlicensed game, with innovations such as a custom PCB, lockout-bypass chip, and a new cartridge casing. Improvements to the game itself would include include such innovations as music, bugfixes and different, improved puzzles (expanding on the original 99 in the first "numbered" Sudoku release). With very recent advances by the NES development community, Al believes a second wide-release is "definitely close to reality."
With the potential for a new "true unlicensed" game release only just now on the horizon, one might ask the question why NES homebrew cartridges have been so few and far-between thusfar? It seems the Atari 2600 benefits from a wealth of active programmers and homebrewers; why less so for the NES? Part of the problem has been the lockout chip. Even with a custom PCB (printed circuit board) that would be compatible with the NES, the lockout chip inside most systems would just keep resetting the game. Using donor carts with the CIC (the key to the lock) solves the problem, but then there's the issue of accumulating a large enough pool of donor carts that are compatible with your programming - there are in the neighborhood of 200 program memory mappers all with different ways of handling the way games function on the NES. Very recently, the code to the "key" chip has been reverse engineered, meaning it can be programmed onto a custom chip and installed to a circuit board - at additional cost to the manufacturer of the potential homebrew, of course.
By now you're getting the idea that it's an immensely complicated proposition, made moreso by the lack of any known surviving NES development kits or tools beyond that which the folks at NESdev have gathered and created themselves. Programming is done in 6502 assembly language, which is one step away from raw machine code...no cushy C++ or java libraries to exploit. All of that said, this isn't enough to discourage the hardiest and most intrepid of souls. Currently other programmers have homebrew games in various stages of development, and while many are content to keep their releases ROM-only, at least one - Strangulation Games - has set their eyes on a cart release as evidenced by their infamous 2002 release "schedule" featuring four cartridges with custom labels. The future of homebrew releases is unsure to say the least, but now that the Garage Cart is no longer the unique example of what could be in store for the NES, hopefully we'll see some more talented and enterprising programmers step forward with their offerings in-hand.
Thanks to Al Bailey for his generous and detailed information about Sudoku. Thanks also to the various forum sources: Atariage.com, NESWorld.com and DigitPress.com. This article may not, in portion or in its entirety, be copied, rehosted or quoted without the consent of the author, Dan Langevin (Dangevin@[NOSPAMREMOVE]verizon.net). Information in this article is correct to the knowledge of the author as of 5/17/07.
NintendoAGE users please feel free to discuss this article in this thread!
-------------------------
Proud replier of post #1000 in the infamous Joel thread 
The regular numbered one will do me fine 
