Very Arcade, fast and fun and the graphics and sound fit very well, I liked the weapons fire power upgade, I thought that was a nice touch, good game, just need to mention that on PC the keys are the cursor keys for the D pad and the z and x keys are the A/B keys and the enter key is the Start button.

@whizbang Ah right, thanks for pointing that out. I need to update the page later, made this while sleep-deprived :P

Very nice game but I suck at it, lol. Couldn't kill the baddies near the barell without losing health. Was that made using NESmaker? Loved the audio and pixel art + nice job on working within NES constraints.

100% assembly! Doubt you could acheive this on NESmaker :P

_Really_ impressive! I'm envious of your talent. How did you achieve the parallax scrolling effect? Was that all done with sprite 0 hits?

@john-gabriel The scrolling is an absolute mess and almost broke the game several times :joy:

The clouds are done with 9 sprites behind them and using a side-effect of the sprite overflow flag to acheive stable timing. Sprite zero is used on the status bar for the scrolling and palette swap, but in order to save at least *some* runtime I used a DPCM trick to generate an IRQ that happens down the screen, then use the sprite zero hit to stabilise sync down there (And even with some concessions there is moderate slowdown if you get the Spread powerup :P )

Oh my god, just found your profile. To make NES games for jams - you must be a complete madman. Huge respect.

I'm in awe. NES games are difficult to make. I know 6502 ASM, and I have yet to make anything even resembling a game with it. You consistently make NES games every Ludum Dare, and it's inspiring. I recorded myself playing this (On an actual NES) to provide maximum feedback. Great job all around.

Edit: I just gotta know, how did you get the cloud parallax going on NROM-128? I'm absolutely stunned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0hpnVopjGM

@100th-coin Wow! Thanks for making a whole video about this! Glad you've enjoyed it :P
I wish you luck sifting through the source code since you mentioned that... It's not commented at all except for old excerpts from my base/template project :joy:

I'm speechless. Not surprised though. Your games are one of the best each LD, and I am always excited to play them.

This game is straight up full release title for NES. Well polished, well executed. Gameplay itself is so much fun, even though it's just one screen. It's very hard (as NES games should be!), but hard in a fun way. Music and graphics are on spot, that's for sure.

Seriously, this is no LD entry, this is a goddamn Nintendo game!

As a mostly PC player (I never had a Nintendo or any other console), I've found the game a bit too hard & fast-paced, taking quite a lot of time to figure out what is even happening on the screen, yet alone what to do with that :D Also I have no idea what "AB keys" or a "D-pad" are; I think something like "move with arrows, jump with Z and shoot with X" would be a better description for folks like me :)

Loved the visuals and sounds, the game has a really cool oldschool feel.

@lisyarus Ah good point, updated the controls description on itch to make it easier to understand :)

Its quite impressive to see an actual NES game here, the graphics are quite charming, but I felt the difficulty a bit high for me, and I got a bit confused at first, but still it's quite fun.

Oh man, this looks amazing! And you did it for the Compo? How!?

This is really impressive! I did not managed to make more than 900 (hard game!) but graphics and audio are really like form the PRO. Entirely written in assembler for real console? I like that. Good job! ;-)

@paveldlouhy Oh wow, and I thought it was too easy hahaha. Have you tried shooting diagonally? (From what I've seen personally people surprisingly didn't figure out you could aim, should've added more design elements there). Either way thanks for the feedback, appreciate it (Gosh I wish I could have someone playtest during the Jam :joy:)

@vectrex28 Thank you for reply. Diagonally? Will try. BTW, I would love to be able to redefine keys. With current controls I often jump instead of shooting, and vice versa. Also, this kind of game is ideal for playing with joystick. ;-)

@paveldlouhy If you download the source code there is an emulator included. You should be able to redefine keys and use a joystick with that build :)

Wow! Really great game! Both the art & music are spot on! I wish there was a way to play with a controller. Incredible entry.

@chum-chum You can download the ROM and play it in an emulator - most of those support controllers. I recommend MESEN and I've actually included a build of it in the source code :D:D:D

The pixel art is awesome and astonishing!!!! But I have to agree with @lisyarus regarding the accessibility and sound/music. I had no idea what to do and also needed to turn off the music because it was very harsh. After googling what NES games are I guess you made a straight hit on it and it fits very well. (just not what I have ever played or like to play)

It got nostalgic :3 Great job, it look like old games. This sounds effects, music it so retro. I have fun with this game. I am suck on it, but it was nice to come back to childhood :D Pixel art graphic is insane great <3 It is so unique game. Great job :)

I absolutely love the art style and the music here. Excellent job on both. The controls are also very responsive. I had a lot of difficulty taking care of the enemies on the left side of the screen but other than that it was very fun!

Nice. I often go for NES-style stuff but making an ACTUAL NES game is a lot crazier. Pretty hard but fair and the visuals are amazing. It took me way too long to figure out that you could shoot upwards or diagonally though. Also some more audiovisual feedback on hitting the boss would be nice, since I was unsure if I was even damaging him at first.

@firespike33 I actually had a much stronger flash in the background when hitting the boss at first, but it ended up being potentially seizure-inducing so I had to tone it down

Just as hard as a real NES game as well :) Also you made this in assembly!? How many lines of code did it take?

Great job. This graphic is one of the best.

kind of gives me gameboy type vibes, and I def dig the music. Well done and props on NES rom.

@snesgaard 4124 lines in the main file :)

Playing during lunch time, got 33800 points :) (will try on my actual NES later)

I love how you make your graphics seem more "3D" and "metallic". And I gotta check the scrolling stuff someday, I've yet to play with scroll splits without using a mapper IRQ.

The only reason I'm not more impressed is because by now I'm already used to being impressed by your entries :-)

Sooo cool!! Well done!

@wendel-scardua I think this might be the highest score I've seen yet :D

Super impressed by all of this, really well done!

Just to echo what everyone else said, super impressive, great game!

Neat!! Looks great and the game is NES tough too!

Looks great and fun to play.Good job.


here's a pic of my really tight win, like everyone else said, working under nes restrictions AND using asm pretty much dwarfs any complaints.

i found the best strategy to be hanging out on top of the ladder and mostly shooting diagonally down, even if the ladder itself wasn't a fan of the idea; i wish it was a little easier to use ONLY when i intended to, like maybe only climbing down it on button press rather than happening so long as the button is held? (idk) - it makes it a little difficult to take advantage of the down-diagonal shooting.

i really like some of the small touches, like showing the planes passing in the background before coming into the foreground for the attack - love that kind of stuff.

i had a good time and was pretty surprised to see a boss; one of the very few NES games i'll ever manage to beat.

Woah, this is super cool, you don't see a NES submission every day. The game itself is super fun and really well done, NES or not. There's really not much to criticize it, I love it and I already played it a couple of times.

I have one question: if I wanted to start developing a game for NES, where would I start? Got any recommendations for a good starting point?

@sodoj When I started out, there only was the Nerdy Nights to go off of. These tutos were barebones but got the job done. Nowadays there are more resources available. The best way would probably be to look around for NES assembly tutorials on your favourite search engine.
Another great resource is NesDev.org - They have a wiki, forums, and a discord, so that place would also be a sure bet.
Thanks for the feedback by the way, really appeciate it :D

this is phenomenal! the core gameplay loop is so simple but everything about it from the level design, enemies, movement & shooting is so polished and works directly in its service. and the presentation is delightful. amazing work!

Great work, impressive for the amount of time it was done in. (4124 lines in two days is brutal when you take into account actually having to stop and...you know...think, my entry only topped 2500 this year and I was SPENT afterwards, granted it was also in C not asm so the lines are a bit longer) I couldn't get very far in as it just seems you can't move quickly enough to cover both sides but it's still pretty solid