Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 229: Retrotainment on Creating Modern NES Games

Episode Date: June 28, 2019

Tim Hartman and Greg Caldwell from Retrotainment talk to Jeremy Parish about the art and science of creating brand-new NES games such as Full Quiet.

This week in Retronauts, we make some 8-bit sausage. Everyone is Jeremy Parrish again with another Retronauts. you know my name, my voice, my podcast, etc. But do you know these guys? Guys, who are you? Introduce yourselves. Hi, I'm Greg from RetroTermint Games. And my name's Tim Hartman. All right.

Greg, do you have a last name? Caldwell. Okay, there we do have a last name. That's great. Yeah, so Retro-Tainment is here at Portland Retro Gaming Expo with us. And you guys are showing off a couple of your new NES games as opposed to old NES games. There's lots of people selling old and ES games on the show floor. Lots and lots.

But there's a few people selling newer titles. Most of them are like, hey, it's Super Mario Brothers, but with Bouset. Whereas you guys have taken a more, I think, creative approach, like actually, you know, going to the trouble of creating new games. So tell us a little bit about retortainment and kind of how you got to this point and, you know, what you're showing off here at Portland. Yeah. So, right, we build our games from the ground up completely from scratch, all new code, all new assets. And we're part of a great NES homebrew community that continues to grow and continues to make more, better, better games, different games. Everybody takes a unique approach to it.

Like you said, some people just want to go in and hack up old games and rearrange graphics or whatever. And then other people are more into building it from scratch, and that's the approach that we took. Yeah, there aren't a lot of people who are doing the, like, ground-up kind of approach. I talked to some guys from Megacat earlier this year. Yeah, yeah, they kind of, yeah, they do something along the same lines. But I feel like their style is very different than yours. They're more focused around, like, two-player competitive gaming and, like, super high difficulty gaming. Whereas I don't get the impression your games are quite that tuned to be, like, punch you in the nuts hard.

Yeah, they're challenging for sure. They're definitely an NES game, but not like, not complete, not like Holy Diver or something. Right, exactly. Right, right. But, yeah, we got into this a couple years ago, and we made our first game, Haunted Halloween 85, and this was where we released it at. We made 30 copies of it, and we weren't sure if that was going to be it. We'd make 30 copies of a game and come out here, and nobody would care at all, and that we'd be done. But we got good feedback from it, and we, we got good feedback from it, and we were.

We went home from here with a positive attitude about it, and we said, well, let's just roll right into the sequel. So we released the sequel to that, and that's the game we just released on Xbox for, you know, people who, unfortunately not everybody has an NES still, so we reach out to a broader audience by releasing on other platforms. But yeah, the other thing that we're working on this weekend is the full quiet demo, which is the new game that's currently in development, and anybody that can come on out and give us feedback on it, we'd love to hear it.

So you only made 30 copies of Haunted Halloween 85? Did you end up doing another press run or anything? Well, initially. Yeah, initially we did because we weren't sure how everything was going to go. You know, we created a game. We weren't sure we could finish it, bring it to market. And we were able to do so. And then after getting rid of those initial first 30 copies, we thought,

we should probably make a few more. Yeah. And we started doing that, and we started promoting it and advertising it. And it kind of caught fire in a way, I guess if you could call it that. And we started shipping them out all over the, the world and then we were able to get the game greenlit on steam back when the green light process was still in play and yeah and then just from there we thought we need to make a sequel people have asked and we had a lot more thoughts and ideas and things that we could not fit into

85 that we wanted to get into 86 which was the sequel yeah yeah for those who aren't familiar with your games tell us a little bit about haunted Halloween 85 and 86 like what kind of games are they And what do you do? Yeah, so it's like platforming and beat them up mixed together. They're, like we said, the difficulty's there. There's some pretty steep difficulty spikes throughout the game once you get into it. But we feel like it's accessible. You can just jump right in and start playing and have fun.

But yeah, it's, it's, they're just kind of platforming, beat them up games. And we have a little bit of story to them. The kids from Possum Hollow, the town is, the town becomes haunted on Halloween night. And Donnie and Tammy have to save the town. by beating the crap out of all the haunts. And it's based in how, you know, around Halloween. So, you know, for me, that's, that's my Christmas. So, you know, when you're creating something that you already love the environment, it's easy to do.

You know, and we put a lot of our personal childhood and history into the game, whether it's streets or malls or stores. So we take things from the real world and bring them into the 8-bit world as challenging as that is. Yeah, we're not like, we're not game designers by trade or anything like that. So we've kind of just been learning all of this on the fly. And it's like he said for 85, we weren't every step of the way. It was like, will this work? Can we do this? We literally got the parts for the cartridges the day we were getting on the plane to fly out here.

We were assembling them in the hotel room the night before the show. So it's just kind of been, it's been a whirlwind. And we've just been kind of figuring everything out as we go. Right. We definitely learn every step of the way. Even coming here, we learn new things all the time. And we're trying to, you know, innovate. what we're doing to make it not only easier on us,

but better for the people that buy the games. So you guys said you're not game designers by trade. Had you had much experience with programming before you did this? Or what tools did you use to create the game? Zero experience. There's a forum on Nintendo Age called Nerdy Nights. That's where I think most people get started learning 6502 assembly language. And that's what we started digging into and kind of getting our feet wet.

And how do you make graphics? Okay, you know, let's learn how to make graphics. Let's learn how to make sound. Right, using Famitracker, which is something I always wanted to play around with. And we were musicians for a long time. So that kind of helped, you know, going on bands, getting in a van and going to different parts of the country and just trying to, you know, make people love you, you know. And we got so like Tim would dig in, we just kind of divide and conquer, right? Tim dug into the music, learned to do Famine Tracker, started making some music, some sound effects and stuff.

I started learning how to draw sprites, like what are the restrictions for that. and then along the way we met really great people that we were able to team up with and that's what really accelerated everything. Damien, our programmer, he's the 6502 wizard, Zach, who I believe you've met before. He does the background art and Thomas who does the music. So we've just kind of broken it up into pieces and been able to assemble a great team and work with, you know, we're fortunate to work with great people. So it sounds like you guys went from zero to a,

a pretty decently sized operation with several people involved. What prompted you to say, hey, we've never made video games, we've never programmed, let's make an NES game. Let's make a video game for a platform that's dead and release it as a physical product. Like, that's a, I feel like that's a big kind of leap. So I'm curious, like, what's the, what's in between there from zero to, you know, to full release? That's a great question. Good question.

For us, there's really nothing in between there. It was going from zero to 100 instantly, right? So, like, there was no, hey, let's try, let's try learning to make a PC game. Let's start small on something. It was just like, we want to make an NES game. That's it. End of story. We had other people offer to work with us to make PC games or, you know, retro style games or whatever.

But we were like, no, if it's not, we're not releasing it on cartridge. We don't want to do it. That was the key. The goal was to get it on to the plastic. Yeah. At all costs. Right, right. You know, we set out and we did it.

You know, you asked, like, we're retro fiends. you know, I'm crazy about that stuff. I grew up collecting, buying, and selling, you know, trading. And, you know, the past, the 80s, it's in my wheelhouse. You know, I was born in 78, so I kind of got the best of that era growing up. And, you know, growing up playing the Nintendo or having a Sega Master System or an Atari, you know, that's something we just grew up with. And to be able to bring that back to life, what we thought was a dead form or, you know, a dead platform, it wasn't.

And, yeah, it's just been a lot of fun. Yeah, the best part about it, it's the community of people. That's what we found online, that they're, oh, you know, there's a bunch of people doing this. Like, this is great. This is something that is a reality. And we've been fortunate to meet these people and work with them and just get to hang out with them and talk shop. And, you know, that's what's so great about this is just how awesome the community is and how it continues to grow. Yeah, but, you know, back to my sort of original question, like, what was the point at which you realize, oh, like, it's possible to make an ES game.

Like, what made you kind of, uh, sort of draw that kind of, uh, sort of draw that kind of connection basically to say like, oh, we love to play these. Oh, we could also make our own and put it out on a cartridge. Like, had you been following the home brew scene much or doing much with the emulation? We had talked about making an NES game, something we wanted to do. We didn't know it was a reality. It was just a pipe dream. Like, I'll imagine if we could do this. You know, it's got to be possible, but we don't know how to code or anything. So we'll never. And then we stumbled upon Nintendo Age. And that was the game changer. Because we realized what was there, the repository of information. and all the people that are very helpful. And like chip tunes, you know, I'd listen to a lot of chip tunes, chiptune artists, covers, and that kind of led us in a direction that people are still creating music because I always wanted to create that type of music.

And we, you know, through that, it just let us down a path to certain shows into nerdy nights that just said, wow, we could do this. We just have to put in a massive amount of time. Yeah, we went to Magfest several years ago, just to see what it was all about. And that was mostly to hear a lot of the chip tunes that were there. So, yeah, that's a good point.

That was probably what initiated our interest in this sort of thing. And then just by looking for more of that kind of stuff, we stumbled on a Nintendo age. Yeah, like when I was younger, I used to drive around to Nintendo songs on CD. I would put them in my CD player or tape player, and everybody thought I was weird. But then I found out there's a thing called chip tunes, and people are still creating this style of music. It's a genre. and I was happy to find it. Yeah, playing around with something like the chip maestro, if you're familiar with that.

Is that the Game Boy device? It's the NES one, right? It's the hook a MIDI keyboard up to it and play it. Like, that blew our minds, right? That something like that was out there and could be utilized to literally play the chip, the sound chip of the NES. That was just something that we had. Without emulation, completely authentic, tapping into the sound chip. Never thought it was possible.

Everybody makes retro style sounds. But this thing. actually gave you the authentic sound. Yeah. So, yeah, definitely that makes good sense. The music led us to the game making, for sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So now that you've become sort of tapped into the homebrew community, are there any, you know, other people's homebrew games that you look at and think, like, man, those are amazing. I wish we could do something on those level. Or, like, you know, personal heroes to you or anything like that. I think that one of the big people is Kevin Hanley, Kayhan Games, because he's been doing it for so long and made so many different kinds of games

and he was kind of one of the people we looked too early on like yeah this guy's got it he knows what he's doing he finishes projects you know he doesn't a lot of people will start things and dabble and that's cool if you just want to get your feet wet but he's like I'm going to go at it and I'm going to make a game start to finish largely on his own

but with of course the support of the community so early on he was definitely one of the people that we kind of looked up to and then we got to meet him and find out these cool dude And so for sure, for me, that was one of the main people. Right. Well, his game, The Incident, is, in my opinion, one of the best. Yeah, very good game. Homebrews you can play. It's a puzzle game. It's massive. It's 120 levels.

There's a lot of time and effort into it. And along with the narrative and the story, it's just, it's a deep game. It's pretty cool. Yeah. And if you can deal with excruciating puzzle games, I highly recommend it. But, yeah, like Joey Parcell, Mamblers, who does chip tunes and has been doing it for years and years and years. You listen to some of his old tunes that never even made it to games or cartridges, and they're just amazing. And they're finally starting to make some of their, to find the light now on some of these smaller independent releases that he's allowing people to use their tunes on. Yeah. And now if you look at some of the, some of the kickstaters that have just come out, like Debs and Debs and Micromages and stuff, you can see this groundswell.

And, well, directly to the question you're talking about, we just played Micro Majors last night. and it is awesome. And there's so many things in there that they do that we're like, yeah, that's inspirational to see people doing something that good. And of course, they're making a 40K game, which is insane. So we think we're being efficient. Insane in the sense of like that's a tiny amount of like you. Like ours is 512.

Yeah, which to most people, they think that's insanely small. And then to us, we think that 40K is insanely small to pull off a fantastic game. It looks good. It plays good. It's so smooth. So that's definitely one of the ones that. we look to. Yeah, I saw that in action on the floor. I didn't get to play it, but it's worth your time. The movement and like the wall jumping and everything is really impressive.

I didn't realize it was such a tiny cartridge. It is so smooth. And a super bad puncher was one of the things they worked on prior to that. And again, that's super smooth. So I can't leave that one out. One of the things it gets me in video game development is the physics. And that game has fantastic physics. So for sure, that's one of the things that was inspirational. So that's something that's been important for you guys is to really nail the physics and the feel of the game. Right, especially in the combat, making it smooth, making sure when people pick up the controller and they run through our tutorial, they get it, you know, and it feels good. They feel good about killing that zombie or knocking its head off. You know, that's half the battle if it feels good.

Right. Then if it looks good, then hopefully you have a winner. Another guy I wanted to say, Bo, Holland, Soul Goose, he does a game called Spookatron, which is awesome. It's an arcade-style shooter. Twin stick. Twin stick, and it's very rad. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, there's just a lot of things that, that we see out there, little things here and there that people are doing.

Nebs and Debs is another game that looks to be great. Um, we haven't got to play it yet, but, uh, that looks like it's going to be a fantastic game. There's just a lot of different things you see here and there throughout the community. Uh, someone named Franken Graphics does a lot of cool stuff on nestev.com. Uh, she puts up things that she's working on and it all looks fantastic. So I feel like the community definitely draws from each other. You know, we obviously look to the past to say like, okay, that looks fantastic, you know, but that's Konami doing it. How can we do it, you know, in the modern era?

Right. So looking back at the NES era, you know, you guys were big followers of the system, what games did you most gravitate toward? And what would have been your inspirations for the things you've been creating? Wizards and Warriors, I love that game. I love that series, Double Dragon. we played baseball stars for more than any video game ever for us yeah we would make up our own leagues and have tournaments and stuff yeah that was that was a I'm not really much of a sports person but the the depth available in baseball stars and the way you could play your creation save your own

progress and everything yeah yeah you're absolutely right it grabbed all people not just sports guys yeah it was just so it was so well made and yeah you could be wacky with your names Right, right. Like he's, he learned, like, he knows the right exact metrics to put in for the guy in order to have him bunt so that he can get on every time. Yeah, you learn to play the game, you know, you learn the little nuances of it. We wanted to kill him as a kid because we didn't understand. Yeah.

But yeah, other than that, you know, for me, Metroid was huge. The first time you're dropped into this insane world and you just got to figure out what the hell you're doing. RIGAR was a big game for me growing up And I feel like Rigar is one that doesn't get the credit that it really deserves I don't think people really got it as like when it was new because it was so Much more expansive than something like Mario and now people are like oh that's so primitive There was never really a time where people I think appreciated what Rigar actually did So it's cool it's always cool to hear people who you know

Understand and respect the game Yeah, that soundtrack is awesome It's fantastic right And doing side-scrolling and top-down for parts of it, you know, it's a very, very well-made game. But you're absolutely right. When I say, like, people ask me what influenced me, and I say RIGAR, and they're like, oh, that's a great game, you know. But nobody really brings it up as one of the, like, top NES games.

Yeah, no, I feel like that's one of the sort of landmark games that quickly got forgotten. Yeah. I mean, it came out with a bunch of other games around the same time. I'm currently, you know, documenting 1987 in the NES. And so, like, it was in between, you know, Castlevania and Metroid and Zelda and a few other games, Section Z. Like, it just kind of got lost. It's a shame. Yeah.

I only saw it. So neither of us had an NES growing up until much later. And we talk about that. That might be part of why we're obsessed with it now because we wanted it as kids. But like when the NES came out, I finally got an Atari. He got a master system. God bless my dad. He went to buy Nintendo and some guy talked him into a master system.

Which is cool, and I respect that. But the problem is, when you're growing up in the 80s and nobody has the master's system, you can't trade games. And nobody rented those games. So I was stuck playing Reggie Jackson baseball, double dragon, thank God, and pro wrestling. Yeah. So it was more like my neighbors than introduced me to games. And one of them happened to have RIGAR, and I would just sit there and watch him play for hours and hours and I was like, this is an amazing game. Yeah.

We would find places to go, you know, after school, to be able to play because we didn't. haven't have them. Yeah, like, okay, who's got a Nintendo? Where can we go? You know, today. Where can we have baseball stars for me? Because I didn't have the game, but I knew somebody had the game. Yeah. Yeah, and then Super TechMobile for me is another one that's just like, regular TechMobile or super,

but off the charts, good for me personally. But I guess when you're growing up, a lot of it is two-player, right? So that's why Baseball Stars was so big. Super TechMobile was so big because it's like, there's nothing better than beating your friend.

Yeah, I think that's definitely one of those things that really gave extra life to games. Like I recently was tweeting about how terrible Icari Warriors on NES is. And some people were like, yeah, but other people said, you know, I love that game because there weren't any of their co-op games at the time and I would play that for hours with my brother and once you know the cheat code to continue which is the only way to get past like the second screen of the game

then it's just you know two two kids spending hours blowing stuff up together which is there's a certain appeal to that it's hard to argue with that even if it's totally janky it's still like hey you're killing stuff with your brother or sister or a friend there's that bond there and you learn to get around the jankiness of it right And eventually that just becomes part of the charm for some people. So, yeah, that makes perfect sense.

So tell me a little bit about the other game that you're working on, quiet. Oh, full quiet. Full quiet. Yeah. So it's more of an open world mystery adventure kind of game. So we're really trying to build this out as a fully realized 3D world, but where you only ever see it from 2D side-scrolling platforming angle. So it's a pretty tall task.

But from the feedback that we're getting here and the feedback, feedback that we got at Pax West, it's reading properly. So that was really important to us. Like, how do people navigate a sort of open world like this? Is it more about the cardinal direction that they're going? Is it about looking at the map all the time or are they looking for more local cues? And from what we've gathered, it's the local cues that mean more than anything to people. Which we did not anticipate at all.

Right. So now we're going back through our backgrounds and making sure we put in markers at significant places along the way so the people can navigate more east. I mean, yeah, even looking back to Metroid, like the way they colored different rooms, you know, like one would be yellow, one would be red. Right. So even though they had the same graphics, you still knew, like, I'm in this long room and it's got this kind of rock, but these rocks are gold instead of blue, so I know where I am. Yeah, like the two long vertical shafts. One's blue and one's gold, and that's all you need, right, to know. So those are the things that we're kind of picking up on and now we go back in and sort of add. Sprinkle those things in here and there to try to help people with what we think is would be the biggest barrier to getting into the game.

Would be navigating a 3D world in 2D all, you know, all the time. We're also getting analysis on the field. Yeah, the general field, the physics, the shooting mechanic. There's no, there's no bullets, like on-screen bullets that you see. Like, Mega Man, you shoot three bullets at a time or whatever. So it's instant bullets, right, which is more of a hit scan. HES doesn't do hit scan. No.

I've never seen an NES game with that. Well, it does now. Okay. Right, there you go. Well, actually, it's not that the platform didn't. It's just no one on the platform ever bothered to try. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this was actually something that Damien, our programmer,

was really excited to tackle because we kind of had discussed it early on. We weren't sure if we were going to be able to pull it off, if it would read or whatnot to the player. But, again, the feedback that we've been getting from these events, it's all been really positive. So that's like we can breathe a huge sigh relief on that. Are you looking much to the NES Friday of the 3rd? for this game because that also kind of did like a side-scrolling horror open world

not necessarily that well but that's another one that was like super ambitious and I think I think you know people who really got into it at the time and kind of learned its quirks really developed a lot of respect for it and have really fond memories of it it was definitely a messy game with a lot of problems but you know the developers I think that was Atlas were really like they really wanted to do something different with that game as opposed to just like walk left and punch stuff yeah right i think they did i mean they definitely pulled off a unique experience on the nes it definitely gets bashed a good bit um but you know that that happens when you try something new right i still can't figure out where the hell i'm going on

there so even to this day i i'll go back and play it um but i still it's like you look at the map every three seconds to try to figure out where the hell you are in the game so it's kind of an example of what not to do for you. I guess it's a cult classic. You've got to pay attention to it, but, you know, I don't know if we're drawing any elements from that. Yeah, it's funny that you bring that up because we probably should be. Yeah, we probably should be playing that game.

But we never really talk about that as far as like inspiration for what we're doing. But now that when you lay it out simply like that, yeah, okay, right, it's kind of creepy, right? It's in the woods. It has like, you guys are making Halloween games? I mean, I guess Halloween and Friday the 13th or two different franchises. But you get what I'm saying. Well, Full Quiet isn't part of the Halloween series. That's totally separate.

Right, right, right. But I get, which is still creepy. Yeah, yeah. You've got the, you know, your Christmas spirit of the day. Of course. Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, so now that you mentioned that, we will definitely go back and play.

That's great advice. We can do that tonight. That's what I'm here for. Take a look at that. But, yes, mostly for Full Quiet, we're trying not to make it like something we've seen. You know, we're just trying to think of it as its own sort of self-contained. thing. I know that's impossible to do. You're always drawn influences from different places, but we're not thinking like, okay, we need to do mechanic A. Let's go find a game that does it

well and try to emulate that. It's just kind of like, let's try to figure this out, just piece by piece, on our own. Yeah, and that's great. I mean, it's always good to be able to look back and see, you know, what happened back in the day. What did people try to do? What did they fail to do? But it's also good to just say, let's try this thing and see what happens. So it sounds like an interesting and ambitious game. And that's another 512 game. Yeah, we'd rather try and fail than not try, I guess is what it comes down to. Yeah, if it's a bust, we can at least say, well, we learn from it.

And there's definitely a lot of things we can take to the next game, then, we've learned from this experience. We kickstarted it. We had over 500 backers. It's still on backer kit for pre-order, which people can get the limited edition. and Silver Shell, and people continue to pre-order it, and we're very thankful and humbled. And we just hope that the work we continue to show off, you know, continues to be as well received as it has been. And people are into the puzzle.

You know, we've showed one puzzle thus far that's mid-game, and it's, I love the puzzle. I can play it all day. Yeah, so it's not just all about shooting and killing things, right? It's not like contra where we just run through the whole thing and kill everything. You've got to figure out what you're doing. And there are some puzzle elements to it. So, again, finding the right balance, like that's something that we've never done before, making a game like this and balancing it out. It was probably easier with just a platforming beat them up.

I mean, I guess I say that it was easier. Maybe it was because we made the original game and then the sequel, so we already kind of had a feel for the general game. But, yeah, that's just stuff we're working through. And again, that's why we look to the community to give us feedback and come to these events to see what's, working and what's not. All right. Well, I know you guys need to get over to the show floor and do your stuff today. You're showing these games on the floor, right?

Yes, correct. Yeah, I'll have to try to make it over there if I'm on the floor today and check them out. Yeah, please do. But, yeah, to wrap up, why don't you guys tell everyone where we can find you individually and also your projects online? Well, you can find everything out about us at Retro-Taymentgames.com. And right there, you can see a little bit about the company, the products that we offer, the games that we've made.

and all the links to our social media. We're on Facebook, Facebook.com slash RetroTermic Games. At Retroatement HQ on Twitter. Instagram is RetroTermic Games. And I do all the social media, so I'm on there all the time. So anybody listening that wants to ask questions or have any trouble finding us, just please reach out to me. We're in tons of groups, Facebook groups. The retro groups are really good to us.

We're very thankful for people putting up with our ads and, you know, posting about our games and such but it's like Greg said it's a great community and that's how you can find us and we're in Isle 5 today at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. Yeah, 532. 532. Booth 532.

Okay. And when do you anticipate full quiet being out? Is that for this year, next year? So initially we were thinking like fall of this year and it was largely contingent on how things went this weekend. So we're still going to shoot for that. It might push

into early 2019, but it's more about everybody that we've talked to says the same thing. Just finish, please finish the game. Don't cut it off just to hit some arbitrary date or something like that. So we're very thankful that people, you know, allow us that grace period of like when you say you're going to launch and then, okay, you get a little bit of extra time to polish things. So late this year, early next year, that's the game's too important to rush. And the feedback that we're getting, even I was talking to two girls yesterday that knew nothing about retro gaming in terms of like home brew is actually being made and they thought it was

the best thing they ever played which was really cool and they were like you know is this the whole game can we buy it now and we're like no this is just an excerpt and they thought you know so they took on my name and number and you know so it's it's really nice to get new people to play the game and for us to finish it is very important yeah not just rush it all right well good luck on that and hope it turns out well. Thank you so much. Thanks for having it on myself. Yeah. Thanks for taking the time from the show. So

we can't thank you enough. Yeah, enjoy the rest of your show. Thanks for coming on the podcast and I probably will see you next year. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks so much. Yeah. Thank you.