Oh, kickass. I would not have said this was possible at such fine resolution.
Remember that it doesn't have to be the final version of this game, to be a game. Without AI you can still do time trials. Without more tracks you can still go forward or backward. It might take more than six days to cram the rest of Mario Kart onto the NES... but what's already here includes the parts that make it a magic trick.
Mindbleach, thanks for the great suggestion. I tested out variable tile speeds today and I think a time trial is the way to go to make it a proper game. Plus I can focus on focus on polishing the core driving mechanics, like collision/sliding. After staring at the "graphics" part for so long working on game mechanics will be a relief :)
Without more tracks you can still go forward or backward
I never thought about reflecting or reversing the track lookup table. That should be straightforward to try!
Engineer-art solutions: not good, but fast.
Plus it's very freeing to have a shippable version in-hand, so everything up to the last minute is just tweaking. Always be shipping. My project currently has stick figure enemies, half a level, and the bare minimum title screen. But there will be no panicked efforts to solve technical problems in the final hour... this time.
Ooh, you posted the demo. Oh that is rock-solid. I knew this could be done at the tile level, but would not have bet on this look working at all. And it's double-buffered. You can't just be scrunching a nametable. I need a better emulator just to figure out what I'm looking at. That is witchcraft.
