It's been 40 years since the NES was released in North America. And a whopping 50 years for the CPU which powered it: the MOS 6502. It launched at $25 in 1975, orders of magnitude cheaper than its competitors and became of the most successful microprocessors of all time. #NESdev

ICYMI: the Video Game History Foundation just acquired a giant lot of mystery development ROMs from Japan (NES/MSX, from Taito?), and we're going to digitize and dissect them live on stream next Thursday, June 4th at 1pm PDT: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nFA...

Browsing for secrets in a haunted library 📚👻 #gamedev #pixelart #indiegame

BIG NEWS! Thanks to the amazing support for #EchoesOfTheUnread on #Kickstarter, we're now aiming for amazing stretch goals! Our target is $25K for #Steam, and $30K for #NintendoSwitch! 📖✨ Help us achieve these goals with Rhapsody: bit.ly/MCSEUKSSM Read the full update: bit.ly/MCSEOTUKSU1

Fully funded in 24 hours?!?! Thank you to everyone who's supported the game. I'm overwhelmed with emotion. bit.ly/MCSEUKSSM

Official Gameplay Trailer for Echoes of the Unread www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2qB... Coming to Kickstarter May 19th!

🚨 ANNOUNCEMENT We are thrilled to launch Homebrew Factory, our new platform that allows gamers to purchase homebrew games and helps creators bring their games to life! ➡️ Store: www.homebrew-factory.com ➡️ Factory: creator.homebrew-factory.com

Play as Rhapsody and escape the library that holds a magical mystery about the shelves that came to life! 📖✨ Follow #EchoesOfTheUnread on Kickstarter: bit.ly/MCSEUKSSM

Did you know that MMC5 also has a feature called vertical split where it can switch tilemaps mid-line? Turns out it's possible to make SNES-style shaped windows out of this by changing split position each line! #nesdev

What are these goofy looking creatures? Puppets! When I was younger I was in a puppet troupe, performing skits that featured aliens, kind of like the Muppets. I wanted to honor them in my game, as one of the performers sadly passed away from cancer a few years ago.

The topic of the first playable female protagonist isn't as cut-and-dried as folks might like to think. There are many flavors of first, which trips people up. Who was the first on arcade, computer, home console? In the US, Japan, Europe? I'll try to unravel it for you here in a thread. 🧵

Project Reid, the upcoming game from @lavenstar-games.bsky.social, looks incredibly promising, a survival platformer for the FC/NES! 😍👍☕️ #NES #homebrew #nesdev #NESmaker #indiegames #gamedev #ファミコン #同人ゲーム

Nine years ago, I made a Super Mario Bros. ROM hack as a gift for my sister's birthday. It featured the two of us running to get coffee at the end of each level. #nes #mario #family

If you were stuck in a library overnight what would you do?

Trapped in a library of living books? Sounds like an adventure! 📖✨ Join Rhapsody on her journey through #EchoesOfTheUnread. Sing, explore, and conquer unique worlds inspired by different genres. Follow on #Kickstarter: bit.ly/MCSEUKSSM

Since I'm mostly in bug fix mode on my other game, I thought I'd mess around in #Godot for a bit. #indiegame #gamedev #screenshotsaturday

Just a reminder that your local library has more than just books! Many also have dvds, cds, video games, game systems, internet hot spots, streaming services, ebooks, audio books, park passes, museum passes, and so so much more! Maybe it's time for a visit!

This is wizardry I say! Nice work on the screen splits.

GB Studio has come to the NES! You can build games for the NES, using the world-class toolset found in GB Studio! #gbstudio #gameboy #nesdev github.com/michel-iwani...

Game design wisdom: show the lock before the key. You don't want to rob players of an "AHA!" moment. #gamedev #gamedesign #leveldesign

I should have let the bats sleep. #nes #screenshotsaturday

NES dev trick: Need to show a banner but you can't rely on scroll position? Use sprite zero! Draw the banner on both nametables, put the first sprite under the top left of the banner, and then loop to scroll the correct amount when it's hit. #nesdev

Overworld map (work in progress, it misses some animations right now) for my upcoming game Anna: The Magic of Words for NES and Famicom. #NESdev #indienes #indiedev #eastpixel #anna

CC65 tip: Group identical assignments to optimize output. // WASTE BYTES var1 = 55; var2 = 12; var3 = 55; // Does an additional LDA #55 // SAVE BYTES var1 = 55; var3 = 55; // LDA #55 is removed var2 = 12; The optimizer will remove the extra LDA instructions automatically. #C #CC65

Tomb Raider 1 had some breathtaking moments. The framing of the Sphinx's head as you climb this wall is just 😙🤌 . The devs knew what they were doing. #tombraider #ps1 #retrogaming

Every #GameDesign choice needs a purpose first. Without a goal set it's impossible to know if that decision will go in the right direction or not. So keep that in mind when receiving (or giving) feedback. Many people will try to talk you out of those choices without knowing your objective. #GameDev

Since a lot of gamedevs are coming across to Bluesky, here's a reminder that my sound effect tool ChipTone is good! And free! And runs right in the browser! sfbgames.itch.io/chiptone

I made a scrolling grid floor intro in 3 KiB of NES code. ROM: forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.ph... Source code: github.com/pinobatch/li... #nesdev #ScreenshotSaturday #4kIntro

Want to make NES games with CC65 and CMake? Check out my platformer template on GitHub! This is the backbone of my game, Echoes of the Unread. Some assembly required. https://buff.ly/3AR401k

Hi Bluesky, meet my game. Courier is a cyberpunk adventure game originally designed for the NES. Upgrade your gear by taking on jobs from seedy employers and hack your way through the world to get all the info you need to take on the evil Ankh Industries and save the city. #nesdev #gamedev #Indie

I tend to play games years after release. Anyone else enjoy being late to the party?

New Aseprite v1.3.10 and v1.3.11-beta1 released today! Including bug fixes and new features! 🐣 You can find the beta version on Steam. We're going to pre-publish new features there and move them to the stable version once they're beta tested for a couple of weeks:

Did you know that SkateCat, the NES game from SJ Games (my teenager) is also available on Nintendo Switch! 🐾 #NintendoSwitch #NES #homebrew #nesdev #NESmaker #indiegames #gamedev #ファミコン #同人ゲーム #自作ゲーム

Here's a fun podcast on the origins of game related words.

FCEUX has saved me so many headaches hunting for bugs. The Lua scripting is invaluable! Here's what my debug view looks like. #nes #fceux #debug

Currently working (slowly) on an NES game inspired by Paperboy about the Green Bay UFO Museum. A record store of considerable cultural impact in my hometown. Still collecting my thoughts before the heavy lifting but a record store simulator feels potentially hilarious 🥸 #nesdev

Our 4 megabit #NES cartridge is nearly full! Our programmer is heroically squeezing in space for the final code and gfx. Seeking more #indiegame and #homebrew starter packs to join! @gamemistress.bsky.social @rikoclon.bsky.social @pearacidicgames.com @bigevilboss.bsky.social @adam16bit.bsky.social

CC65 tip: Put ++ and - - BEFORE a variable when you can. It converts to the 6502 INC instruction. ++player_health; // BETTER player_health++; // WORSE #C #nesdev #retrodev

The Donut compression codec is incredible to crunch CHR data and load it into CHR RAM. For my demo I was using RLE but switching to Donut saved over 15KB! HUGE thanks to JRoatch. #nesdev #donut https://buff.ly/3AH9vj6

Did you know that two sprites are enough to create rotating objects on the NES? #NESdev #MicroMages

The tiles in my game all have properties associated with them. Doors are for exiting to a new level, drink is for restoring health, and front moves the player behind the tile layer (priority bit). There is also a liquid type not shown here. #nes #gamedev #tileset

Every level in EotU uses a set of "megatiles". So each screen is only 56 bytes (8x7). It makes scrolling and collision lookups quick to calculate. But because there is a unique set for every level it has a special compression format to unpack on level load. #homebrew #nesdev

Echoes of the Unread is a 128KB MMC1 ROM. The same size and mapper as the original Metroid and Zelda, including SRAM for saves. However, because of dialogue and several unique tilesets, it’s around 80% the total area of those games. How does it all fit? Follow for more. #nes #rom #zelda #metroid

Developing on the #NES is a lot of lookup tables and global variables. Who needs the stack when you can repeatedly clobber a few temporary variables? 😸 #nesdev #programming

I love finding hidden areas and secrets in video games. What are some of your favorites? #gaming #secrets

I use #Tiled for all my levels. It lets me add modifiers to the tileset and maps. I've also added notes so I know what mechanics apply to certain areas. #gamedev

It's been 20 years? I remember playing HL1 deathmatch in my college dorm and making levels in Hammer. It doesn't seem possible Half-Life 2 is this old. https://buff.ly/4ewTjie #halflife #HL2 #anniversary

Added rain recently to the romance book. Even the house interiors show it raining outside. At some point the skies clear, but you'll have to figure that out by playing the game early next year.

Favorite games/series (in no particular order): 🔫Metroid 🗡️Zelda 🍄Mario 🐒Donkey Kong 🧟Resident Evil 🐜Hollow Knight 🪃Spelunky 🐲Dark Souls 🗺️Uncharted 🧗‍♂️Tomb Raider 🤜Yakuza 🌊Bioshock 🏹Skyrim 🥩Don't Starve 🧍Persona ⚔️Final Fantasy 🏙️Civilization 🚀Outer Wilds 🌞The Witness 👹Doom/Quake

Hey Bluesky! My name is Matt, and I'm a budding game dev. I've spent the last few years working on a silly little game for the NES called Echoes of the Unread. It's nearly complete and I'm working on prototypes for my next game. I hope to share more and connect with other devs and gamers here.