Guys so NES homebrews are definately taking off, is the SNES that hard to program for?

Figured someone could do some nice homebrew platformers, nothing horribly elaborate like Pier Solar or anything but some fun platform games?

Do you guys think it will start to take off or not really?

Just curious as to your guy's thoughts as to why we haven't seen anything other than Frog Feast?

Don't forget 16-bit Xmas 2011.

Probably too difficult and more time consuming? I'm not a home brewer so I'm just guessing here. It would be cool to see more Snes homebrew stuff though.

Here you go, follow these instructions and maybe you can make your own. http://www.portabledev.com/wiki/d...

I have no idea how to program but just a quick glance over this and I was thinking I may have a chance.

Not TOO difficult, just more difficult. I've been looking at it, it's just a whole bigger everything. Video, sound, and not much else honestly. The separate sound processor needing programmed in its own language makes it a huge turn off to me. Others might not want to go from 8 NES vidoe registers to the SNES's 64, that's a huge step too. Plus, emulation is still shaky and while it's known well enough to start programming for, you may encounter some weird bugs.

There are actually a bunch of SNES homebrew titles, they just aren't talked about much. There are very few homebrew games on SNES carts. There were only two official homebrew release titles on SNES cart form which 16-bit XMAS 2011 was one of them.

SNES has a lot of love but NES is easier to program and is more popular. The great news is that there are a TON of english translations and hacks for SNES. I have about 100 SNES repros (all unique and different) just to give you an idea. SNES repros are also much more difficult (and expensive) to make then NES repros.

I hope that helps.

People expect homebrew games the level of commercial games, which is much harder to do on SNES. That also explains why there are FAR more Atari homebrews than NES.

does atari have more titles because it's just dots chasing dots ?

or other dots on lines, less complex ?

The lines and dots are 2 second jobs, the explosion sound effects on the other hand require over 9000 lines of code. True story.

Actually, I've looked at A2600 programming and it is actually very, very difficult. Harder than NES even.

It doesn't help that 90% of SNES development tools are made exclusively for SMW ROM hacking.

Look up batari basic its actually very, very easy.

Any advice for someone looking to get into nes or snes homebrew? I saw the dev wiki link above but I figure you'd be the guy to ask since you know the consoles so well.

Start with NES. Even if you want to do SNES later you will find more help with the NES, more complete documentation, and better emulators with debuggers. Then much of the NES architecture knowledge can be used for SNES. Start at Week 0 and go until you finish your game: http://www.nintendoage.com/forum/...

Thanks man, I'll check that out.

Well it is pretty difficult to make games THAT crappy and unplayable,but Atari pulled it off. Kudos to them. =P

Content quality and quantity requirements are higher than for the NES, the hardware is more complex than NES and Genesis together, tools are underdeveloped or not exists. I doubt it'll ever take off, at lest on the scale of 2600 or NES.

Well, it wasn't too long ago that homebrew on the NES was non-exsitant. It's really been in the last couple years that we've begun to get bigger more involved NES games.

The snes is a bigger project to code for, but as people learn the system and develop tools for it, I'm sure we'll see a few more.

I think Nes homebrew is still in it's infancy. We're just now getting a decent pool of programmers who can create good games, and we're starting to see some good, more involved homebrews.

Give it some time.

I usually am wrong, but didn't SNES homebrew technically kick of before NES? Like I remember some odd games for the SNES around '94, one of the oldest being a humorously stupid and gross game called "Rape Games".

Those were probably pirates/hacks of already existing games.

There was demoscene on the SNES in mid-1990, with cartridge magazines (kinda like diskzines), even. I doubt there was NES homebrew scene at the time, other than pirate developers.

Well, you got N-Warp daisakusen.

yes, you did, but it wasn't commercially released on cart.

right now only Frog Feast and 16-bit xmas were commercially released.

I'd love to make a SNES homebrew game eventually. However, the sheer complexity of creating graphics and music for it would be dramatically more time consuming than creating an NES title. I would easily give myself 8 to 10 years to complete a decent SNES title, at the pace I'm able to balance homebrew dev with the rest of life. I'm in homebrew for the long haul so if vintage gaming is still a buzzing scene by then I'll probably take the plunge.

I see only one way to get more SNES homebrews in current situation, which is 'one author - one game', i.e. when one person makes everything, from graphics to code - special design decisions that will reduce amount of content to be produced while (probably) increasing amount of work on the code.

For example, an abstract shooter game where green boxes fights red circles by shooting blue triangles - SNES has advantage over NES that is could allow to have many of these objects on screen, with various visual effects like transparency and zooming circles for large explosion (via the window mask). Or something without scrolling and much limitations on the background graphics, like mentioned N-Warp Daisakusen (just static pictures, no object-background collision even) - Christmas Craze uses that approach as well.

Another idea that will work for very few games is to take stylistic choice of not having real color neither details in the graphics, using silhouettes only. A very good example is the Limbo game, there were few others as well.