What Atari 7800 Homebrew are you Excited for?

[7800 Pro Gamer]

The Atari 7800 homebrew scene is exploding with activity.  There are lots of exciting ports and new developers getting involved on a weekly basis it seems. Being dedicated to my childhood console and wanting to speed awareness of it as a collectors piece, I've checked out more new games than most I would think.

With that, I'm excited for a couple games that most don't seem to be aware about or care about. So I'll start the discussion here with those. Starting with... 

Tile Smashers - Peter Meyer is hot off an excellent port of Venture and I'm really anticipating his multi tier Breakout clone. You can see early WIP builds via his YouTube channel. This reminds me of a multi tier pinball machine and I hope it's as much fun as it looks!

Monster Maze aka

 It's Dark Out There, Bring a Torch - Think Pac Man with limited visibility in the mazes. It has a nice spooky aesthetic and you start with spiders and bats chasing you. Once you clear the maze and pick everything up, then you have to find a key to unlock a door to move on, all the while being chased by stronger witches and mummies. This game combined Pac-Man and haunted house to great effect and deserves more attention. Check it out on AtariAge forums under the above name. 

Dragons Havoc - Other games on Atariage forums have tens of thousands of views, but somehow this totally unique and brilliant original game has less than 1000. Criminal!  Beautiful sprites and parallax scrolling topped off with the great rage mechanic that demands accuracy with your shots. A large demo is available and this guy deserves more eyes on his game!

and finally...

Mario Bros Arcade - It's hard to find information on this one and I think we all know why. Nintendo will shut them down faster than you can say mama mia!  But ZeroPage HomeBrew showed this game off late last year in a stream that's on YouTube, and this promises to be a nearly arcade perfect port like Donkey Kong PK is. It may be tricky to get a hold of once it's released, so be sure to try to stay updated and don't delay to pick yours up whenever it's available!

 

And those are the HomeBrew I'm excited for that seems to be getting no attention. Of course theirs others but let's talk about what's being worked on and what's exciting to all of us!  I just wanted to shine a light on this games but we can talk about any new ones.  Thanks guys!

[Sabertooth]

I have Knight Guy in Low Res World: Castle Days on pre-order from Atari Age. I've decided not to play the digital version but it looks great!

 

[CrossBow]

Knight Guy is excellent! I was a tester for it some I'm very familiar with that one! 

I'm most excited to see everyone's reactions once E.X.O. finally gets released! The game is essentially done already but it requires the Pokey/Hokey solution and the current HOKEY apparently doesn't play well with the game causing the delay there.

I'm also pretty excited for that new Mario Bros port! It looks great!

The new Keystone Kapers port is really fun as well and I'm curious to see what Lewis's next project is that he has been hinting to us testers about hehe.

 

[7800 Pro Gamer]

I haven't played much of the knight guy game, I'm saving it for when it finally comes. But I am very excited for that one. There's so many being worked on right now, keystone kapers looks and plays great.  Attack of the PETSCII Robots could be interesting, the demo for Ghouls and Ghosts was very promising!  Of course the new Popeye game is supposed to be coming in April I've heard and that's another big one. 

Theres just so many it's finally paying off to be a 7800 kid, too bad most of us are over 40 now. 

[DegasElite]

I would like to see a Crystal Castles: Arcade for Atari 7800. It would have to be closer to the arcade port than the XE version is. I have always like playing Crystal Castles. The Atari Jaguar was going to have a sequel called Return to Crystal Castles. It was never released. That would have been amazing as a 64-bit release.

Getting back to the Crystal Castles port, it would probably need a POKEY chip. I think the arcade used the POKEY for sound. But, this is just wishful thinking. I would like to see what it could look like and if it would ever be done. Just a thought, anyway. I am sure it has been thought about before. :O)

[7800 Pro Gamer]

1 hour ago, DegasElite said:

The Atari Jaguar was going to have a sequel called Return to Crystal Castles. It was never released. That would have been amazing as a 64-bit release.

I never knew that. Was any work done on it?  Dactyl Joust was another I heard about before that looked good but very early it got cancelled

[7800 Pro Gamer]

Not to derail this topic but Atari should've leaned into nostalgia to carve out a niche for the jaguar. The VCS came out in 1977 and a lot of the original owners were grown up with disposable incomes. If they saw a commercial for Tempest 2000, Breakout 2000, Missile Command 3D and the rest they might've bit on it. Then add games like return to Crystal castles and Dactyl Joust and you have the first nostalgia bait console. Then do battlezone, asteroids, space invaders and more updated for a new generation. Idk if it would've worked but I think it would've been better than leaning into the whole do the math thing and the 64 bit thing.  But it's all hindsight I guess

[DegasElite]

41 minutes ago, Silver Back said:

Dactyl Joust was another I heard about before that looked good but very early it got cancelled

I have heard of Dactyl Joust. It did look pretty good.

[CrossBow]

Wasn't Dactyl Joust designed for use exclusively with the VR setup?

While classic games redone or sequels on the Jag would have been cool. It would not have been what was needed at that time. The Jag was trying with ports like Doom for instance, but it needed those 3rd party licenses for known arcade games that were popular in the day like an actual Mortal Kombat port instead of the clones the Jag received. But my guess is that too much money was needed to secure such licenses and Atari likely figured that games that were of the same genre would be good enough and cost much less since nothing needed to be licensed. But that is only my guess.

I was heavy into PC game during the Jag's lifespan as well, so even with arcade ports and arcade sequels that would have been exclusive, I would not have noticed because I wasn't even playing console games in the 90s by then. For me that ship had mostly sailed once I got a decent PC and started to deck it out with the latest audio and video card upgrades of the era.

Granted I wasn't likely their target audience back then, but I do think that ports of current popular arcade games would have been a better choice for the Jag or perhaps even ports of some arcade style PC games that were popular might have been good since the Jag even with the CD would have been cheaper than a PC build back then and likely interested those gamers wanting to play the PC arcade style games and adventures without the PC price tag to match.

 

[7800 Pro Gamer]

Missile Command 3D was built specifically for Jag VR too but it works well without it. I'm sure Dactyl Joust would've been something similar.

At the time yes having the most up to date arcade ports would've been a viable way but would anybody buy a new system for mortal Kombat when they could just buy the SNES or Genesis versions?  I don't think they could've ever hope to compete with Sega or Nintendo so they either need cutting edge 3D that looked and played well, or great pixel art, or a niche that they could survive on is my thought. 

But it's all conjecture and I doubt carving a niche, especially one that wouldn't truly exist for a long time was viable either,ni just would've liked to seen them go that route

[TrekMD]

I'm eagerly waiting for Knight Guy but I do have a soft spot for Dragon's Descent give my predilection for anything with dragons!

[Video 61]

On 3/17/2022 at 8:21 AM, Silver Back said:

The Atari 7800 homebrew scene is exploding with activity.  There are lots of exciting ports and new developers getting involved on a weekly basis it seems. Being dedicated to my childhood console and wanting to speed awareness of it as a collectors piece, I've checked out more new games than most I would think.

With that, I'm excited for a couple games that most don't seem to be aware about or care about. So I'll start the discussion here with those. Starting with... 

Tile Smashers - Peter Meyer is hot off an excellent port of Venture and I'm really anticipating his multi tier Breakout clone. You can see early WIP builds via his YouTube channel. This reminds me of a multi tier pinball machine and I hope it's as much fun as it looks!

Monster Maze aka

 It's Dark Out There, Bring a Torch - Think Pac Man with limited visibility in the mazes. It has a nice spooky aesthetic and you start with spiders and bats chasing you. Once you clear the maze and pick everything up, then you have to find a key to unlock a door to move on, all the while being chased by stronger witches and mummies. This game combined Pac-Man and haunted house to great effect and deserves more attention. Check it out on AtariAge forums under the above name. 

Dragons Havoc - Other games on Atariage forums have tens of thousands of views, but somehow this totally unique and brilliant original game has less than 1000. Criminal!  Beautiful sprites and parallax scrolling topped off with the great rage mechanic that demands accuracy with your shots. A large demo is available and this guy deserves more eyes on his game!

and finally...

Mario Bros Arcade - It's hard to find information on this one and I think we all know why. Nintendo will shut them down faster than you can say mama mia!  But ZeroPage HomeBrew showed this game off late last year in a stream that's on YouTube, and this promises to be a nearly arcade perfect port like Donkey Kong PK is. It may be tricky to get a hold of once it's released, so be sure to try to stay updated and don't delay to pick yours up whenever it's available!

 

And those are the HomeBrew I'm excited for that seems to be getting no attention. Of course theirs others but let's talk about what's being worked on and what's exciting to all of us!  I just wanted to shine a light on this games but we can talk about any new ones.  Thanks guys!

hi silver back.

 

i designed and named tile smashers decades ago. i could never get atari, let alone anyone else to recognize how good a fit it would be for their 8-bit platforms. peter and two others in my group have helped my dream come true.

 

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

[7800 Pro Gamer]

1 hour ago, Video 61 said:

hi silver back.

 

i designed and named tile smashers decades ago. i could never get atari, let alone anyone else to recognize how good a fit it would be for their 8-bit platforms. peter and two others in my group have helped my dream come true.

 

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

It looks awesome and I can't wait to play it on my 7800. To anybody who may be interested and Lance can correct me if I'm wrong but there is a 5200 version already. I don't own a 5200 so I'll wait patiently. 

Just another update while I'm posting, you can play Krull over at the other popular Atari forum but only on the browser 7800 emulator I guess. I'm gonna ask if he can provide a file for concerto and dragonfly owners. 

[CrossBow]

16 hours ago, Silver Back said:

Just another update while I'm posting, you can play Krull over at the other popular Atari forum but only on the browser 7800 emulator I guess. I'm gonna ask if he can provide a file for concerto and dragonfly owners. 

It is possible to essentially extract the rom being used in JS7800 for use with emulators and such. Been a bit since I figured out how to do this but I know it can be done. It was how I was originally playing the updated Popeye binaries when they were getting released with my Mateos flash cart before I got the Dragonfly.

 

[Video 61]

On 3/18/2022 at 5:24 PM, Silver Back said:

It looks awesome and I can't wait to play it on my 7800. To anybody who may be interested and Lance can correct me if I'm wrong but there is a 5200 version already. I don't own a 5200 so I'll wait patiently. 

Just another update while I'm posting, you can play Krull over at the other popular Atari forum but only on the browser 7800 emulator I guess. I'm gonna ask if he can provide a file for concerto and dragonfly owners. 

hi silver back,

there is indeed a 5200 version, as well as a A-8 version. i am working on even more for future releases.

 

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

 

[7800 Pro Gamer]

Speaking of homebrew the journey of snail 2 the new world was announced on Facebook via the 7800 homebrew group last night. Right now the only way to obtain a copy is to message FrankoDragon on atariage and it runs 35 before shipping.  Also in the comment section it was asked if the first journey of snail was going to be available and I guess a limited special release is coming soon. Don't miss out once these sell they don't usually make more. 

[Funkmaster V]

EXO

This is a game that if it was released near the launch of the system, it would have turned some heads. I feel like the 7800 needed a super butch game to compete with Metroid and Castlevania, and this would have sold a few systems.