I didn’t know what to expect when I loaded Jim Power into my NES. My jaw dropped when I saw that intro cutscene. For a brief moment, I was that ’80s kid again, coming home from the rental store with Ninja Gaiden in hand, inserting it in the NES, being blown away by its cinematic…
Pascal Belisle
Homebrew review: Basse Def Adventures
Basse Def is an 8 bits adaptation of a comic book by JibĂ© (Jean-Baptiste Pollien) about two geeks getting sucked into a video game. It is a classic platformer, greatly influenced by Mega Man with a bit of Super Mario thrown in. I haven’t read the comics, so there are probably jokes and insides I…
CC65 memory optimization tips
The main engine for my arkanoidvania game is done. I’m now working on adding stuff. This is where the fun part begins, or so I thought! One day the compiler threw this error at me: “BANK1 overflows memory area ‘PRG1’ by 1byte.” Wait! What? Which byte should I delete? So I went on a journey…
Homebrew Review: Micro Mages
Micro Mages is certainly a flagship title in the NES homebrew library. It ran one of the most successful Kickstarter campaign for a homebrew game, received a lot of praises and is still very actual. So, is the game worth all the craze?
Homebrew Review: Witch n’ Wiz
Thanks to the holidays, I took some time to play some homebrew games. And high on the list was Witch n’ Wiz by Matt Hughson. I was waiting for my Limited Run collector’s edition to come in. And it came. And I played. And it was a blast!
A small update
I thought I’d share a little update. I finished the core engine back in November, and began the level creation phase. I will make as many levels as there is memory available. I’m too lazy to do the math and see how many precious bytes I still have left, but even then, each level vary…
Homebrew Review: Rollie
Rollie is a typical 8-bit platformer with a fun bouncy ball mechanic. It was designed to fit the early NES cartridge limit of 40 kilo bytes, so it feels like an early NES title, with all its pros and cons. The game concept is great in theory, but is lacking a bit in execution, probably…
Dev Update!
I worked a lot on the code lately so I didn’t have any visual update to post. However, I just finish the power-up system! A thing that would have take 2 hours to make in a modern game engine, took 20 hours!!! I had to manage memory issue, global variable madness and MMC3 banking extravaganza!…
New album release!
Here is the latest release for my project The Toadz. Although the project is on hold while I’m working on my NES game, I had a bunch of unpublished tracks I wanted to get out there for your dear listeners. This is a compilation album of the music I published monthly on my Patreon in…
The Toadz – My Synthphonic Music Project
The Toadz is a fictional band I created. I wanted to tell stories through my music. For each track, I write a little story taking place in the fantasy world of Arpegy. The tales are often linked, creating a bigger story with each release. I am heavily inspired by fantasy literature, video game soundtrack and…