Hey y'all, so I've been playing Shovel Knight for about a week and it's absolutely phenomenal - I wrapped up NG+ on Wii U last night and am looking forward to getting my 3DS copy from Kickstarter tomorrow so I can start all over. In any case, I'm cramming to finish my review for invisiblegamer.net (embargo is up at 9am EST tomorrow), and in an effort to find out about the tech differences between the game and what an actual Famicom could accomplish, I discovered this excellent blog post from Yacht Club Games' David D'Angelo and wanted to share with you all.
Hope everyone's looking forward to the game... it really is one of the best "NES" (said in quotes, don't kill me, I have multiple Famicoms!) games I've ever played and these guys deserve all the success we can give them.
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidDAngelo/20140625/219383/Breaking_the_NES_for_Shovel_Knight.php
how much is the game? i had not realized it already came out! :D
One of the few indie 8bit games which is actually good. Hope they can keep up with it if it succeeds.
Really enjoying this read. I'm also making a NES style game with the same approach, so as you might imagine I fully agree with their approach but with a subtle difference - I believe that giving players the choice over something like sprite flickering is preferential.
Thing is, where do you draw the line? Do you also add in real-time tech drawing on part of the screen? I'm all for nostalgiac genuinity, but if you play something like Guadia Quest it's definitely got optimal subtleties over the DQ games on Famicom.
When developing a new game, you can have the best of both worlds - the nostalgia with the modern comforts, they're not (and shouldn't be considered as) mutually exclusive.