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Bought this in the bundle. Like it a lot - like Shadowrun! But the hacking minigame sucks. It's way, WAY too hard. Obscenely so. Turning every encounter in a 20 minute pain-fest as you try to get through it. Someone said running it on a CRT helps. I was doing that from the start. I cannot even imagine how it must feel with the lag inherent to newer HD screens. Probably impossible. In fact I wondered if this had been programmed for 50Hz PAL systems, which run slower, because the speed and timing needed for the hacking minigame is insane. I'm running it on a 60Hz NTSC-U toaster NES. I love the game, hate the hacking. Could we not have an option for easier hacking? Honestly, I'd have enjoyed a minesweeper clone like in SNES Shadowrun. Or at the very least have this be more forgiving. Or at least get easier when you upgrade. I've done... Two of them now. And I am dreading if there's a 3rd harder one. Might switch from an actual NES to an emulator and cheat my way through. Any chance future updates might have a toggle for easier hacking?

EDIT:

LOL, just looked up a longplay, and I see there's a gauntlet of hacking minigames ahead, especially at the end. Sorry, but I'm bailing on this now. The hacking minigame is absolute crap, and I'm not suffering through any more of it. Two was ENOUGH! I absolutely hate it. I'll just watch the longplay and pretend I'm playing it.

No Jappa, the nice thing is putting in hours of labour to gift the world with this piece of nearly lost media. Find a comfortable pace and good luck.

Thank you for the link. Well, I recently bought a reproduction of this for CDi. Box, manual, printed disc, because an original disc costs way too much. But I would rather play your version than the original, because of the improvements. I'm not kidding - when you finish this, I promise I will buy a few of your albums as way of saying thanks for your efforts. I'd love it if Nintendo would license the fruits of your labours, in order to distribute it more widely, but I know the company doesn't work like that. But I honestly would drop real life coin on this. I'm not going to pay £1500 for an original CD. I owned it 20 years ago, sold it, and will never own it again. So this digital version is very exciting for me.

All very good points - especially as you're mainly just one person. The important thing is reaching a finalised version containing the content from the base game itself. And having completed it, I know how much work you have ahead. Especially weird stuff like items and NPCs that I could never find the use for. There's a lot of stuff / rooms / screens, and lots of enemies which are only damaged by specific weapons.

Anyway, you have my moral support. Honestly I'd pay some money for the final version, but that throws up legal dangers with Nintendo. The original game sells for between £600 and £1500 on eBay now. So your project is important in more ways than one.

Have fun with it. I'll keep an eye on the page. :D

OK, new comment after playing the demo. I absolutely LOVE it. You are, honestly, doing great work for preservation here. I finished this on real hardware years ago, and have recently been replaying it on real hardware along with emulating it using tinycdi, a fork of MAME. That doesn't run so well, since if you get Game Over the game crashes, so you need to load the inventory, quick save, and then quick load if you die, otherwise you need a hard reboot of the emulator.

Anyway...

Playing this was a wonderful experience. The screen transitions are so much faster! They are painfully slow on real hardware.

The transparency of objects showing characters and enemies behind them - YES! Genius idea. Absolutely fantastic.

The drop rate of items is perfect. You do not need a x2 option or anything. The reason I said this last time is because I had been playing the Game Boy demake, which had very poor drop rates. Replaying this on real hardware alongside your demo reminded me that you've got it spot on.

It's so fast and fluid. Maybe even too good! I find killing enemies who drop stuff, because it all flows so smoothly I end up collecting the item by touch it with my sword as soon as it's dropped. Meaning only sometimes do I actually see a rupee on the ground.

If I had any wishes for it... I wish we had access to the high resolution photos of the little dioramas they made. So instead of the 640x480 background images, you could use the original in high definition. Or maybe a fan could recreate each scene, based on the original? LOL - maybe for a future patch.

Honestly, you're doing a great job and I have no requests or suggestions. Please carry on as you see fit, and I hope you are able to finish it.

Is this a feasible idea though: that if fans were to either get hold of the developer's original photos, or were to recreate the dioramas in HD, you've be able to drop them in as part of a remixed mode? Playing the original on a CRT TV helped a lot - it fixed a lot of low res problems. Of course few people have a CRT, so this needs to be for use on HD devices, like laptops. But I'm tempted to hook my laptop up via HDMI to my downscaler, which outputs to my CRT TV, to see how it looks. I use it for films that have no HD uploads, but I think it might be a fun experiment for this.

This is a historically important game, which few people have access to. And you are making it available, and with much needed improvements, like fast screen transitions.

So again I thank you.

I will stop my playthroughs on real hardware and emulators, and instead wait for you to finish this. I look forward to testing future versions.

Good luck.

Do you have a schedule or ETA?

You are doing fantastic work! Please, carry on as you see fit. This is YOUR project, That is fascinating regarding the data extraction. I'm not kidding - I love reading about this stuff. May the rest of development continue smoothly. Be sure to ping the Time Extension team via email or social media, and they'll run a big news story once finished. They might even ask me to cover it, since I'm a big CDi fan.

So I managed to get TE to run a news story on this!

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/01/the-zelda-adventure-nintendo-would-ra...

Also, I like your ideas - however, since it is still early, I'd like to make a suggestion.

I am most excited for the Remaster mode, since I have completed the original, on original hardware, twice now.

But since there are so many choices of things you can change, for the Remaster mode, can you include a list of selectable options? So you can choose which QOL and which extra content you want? So before you start a new game there is a list.
New Item Uses: Yes / No
Attacking NPCs: Yes/No
Extra Dialogue: Yes/No
Drop Rate Slider: x0.5 ---------- x3

Etc. Etc.

Obviously this is your game. So you must do what you see fit. So this is just a suggestion for the Remaster mode. For example, one thing I'd like to see, is more enemies dropping rupees. I recall playing the game and often enemies would drop nothing, and it took ages to grind by killing them over and over. Maybe a toggle to increase the drop rate? Or a slider bar?

Question: Are you decompiling the code, or are playing the game and making the content based on observations, for example seeing how many times an enemy needs to be hit? Either way, it sounds like a lot of work!

Good luck!

Also! I assume you know about the secret skateboarding character you can find in the woods on the far West of the map? The weird easter egg? You stand for a while and he rides out of the woods saying stuff, then vanishes again.

I have spent my life trying to document and champion the CDi - including interviewing Dale DeSharone, who made the side-scrolling Zelda games (WoG and FoE). The side-scrolling games have already received really fantastic remasters for Windows.

I finished this a long time ago on the CDi, and have been emulating it with some difficulty, so I am so happy to see a remaster for it too. 

Someone is also working on a Hotel Mario remaster. So if you are able to finish this, then all the Nintendo CDi games will be available on Windows!

You are doing fantastic work, and I hope you are able to finish this. I look forward to trying the demo and the QOL improvements. 

What sort of cut content are you adding back in? When I finished this I found a ton of useless items that had no use, and then I read interviews with the testers which said that during the QA phase, they had to cut large sections of gameplay to remove bugs. It was such a messy development.

Good luck - may your quest to remaster this goes smoothly.

Does it work with the RHEA optical disc emu?

Fascinating! I'm down the rabbit hole now. Many thanks for the info.

What overlay are you using?

I'm just pleased to be chatting with a fellow SC fan. :D

I've enjoyed the first SC, on all the platforms (mainly Mega Drive; but the C64 version is kinda interesting too). 

I love SC2, have finished it many times. Often with different tactics. For example, did you know you can farm the Slylandro probes using the Thraddash?The Earth cruiser is pretty good for pummeling the Thrads. Do it enough and they choose to follow you due to your strength. And a Thrad can obliterate a probe using it's thruster fire - the probes just plow right intothe flame. Only in 1P mode or on easy difficulty in Super Melee mode. On the higher difficulties it will avoid this, tell me that the 1P game has the difficulty on lowest.

I finished SC3 twice. I downloaded it from Home of the Underdogs, and my dial up internet cut out so had to download it twice. But I played it eventually. It was... OK? The map was confusing. The melee somehow worse. The ships unbalanced. But I liked the claymation puppets and I liked the voice acting. The planet management was... Tolerable? 

Did you play the recent sequel? I didn't like it. 

As you say: SC2 was a special unique thing, and I don't think you can really reiterate on that formula. It was lightning in a bottle. The environment which they worked in was unique. They weren't getting paid, for the last 6 months it was pure crunch with no money to get it finished. They poured real human blood and soul into it. They suffered for it. 

On a side note, I later go into Master of Orion due to my love of SC2. I needed more space games with interesting aliens. The first MoO ended up being a lifelong favourite game. The sequel not so much, though I know some people prefer MoO2 over the first.

It's a 4X strategy game, so a different genre to SC2. But have you tried it?

Cheers - that's awesome to know.

How authentic does it feel to what you remember? (I never played the original.)

Greetings fellow SCII enthusiast! I'm glad this caught your attention. I absolutely love SCII, and have played through it multiple times. More than 10, easily. Each time doing things a little differently. Selling humans to the Druuge was fun. 

Anyway, thank you for your interest. I'm not sure how playable this game is now. I've gone back to it, years after finishing it, and it's extremely unbalanced. Like, horrendously bad. There's no balancing at all! I thought I was being super clever with so many different little things, for example hiding stats unless your science or whatever was high enough - the bit about spies was kinda broken. The game is basically either stupidly hard and unintuitive, or ridiculously easy (science is way too powerful). And if you do too well, the game punishes you with surprise catastrophes! And if you do super badly, it surprises you with bonus events to help you. This was my attempt at "balancing" it.

The resource management came from watching Battlestar Galactica, but given that I love SCII, I had to use that scenario. Lots of fun. 

It's nice to read that you also loved the game so much you were writing your own follow-up scenarios. Super cool. Did you ever play Star Control 3? I finished it twice, but I didn't like it much. And then I played the newer recent Star Control game, but I didn't like it at all! It just didn't land right. 

The original creators are working on a true sequel, with a different name but the same races. Are you following that? I forget the name they use. Free Stars? By Pistol Shrimp Games.

Thank you! If you check the TE comments you'll see someone else is also working now on a Javascript version for web pages, which features mouse support. Plus, we now have an almost complete set of scratched cards, so now have the data of where symbols were positioned. At some point I will update this page to reflect all this.

Hello. I received your message, but sadly I do not have time - I am starting a new job soon. But thank you for asking me. :)

There was an old text based game I played years ago, in QBasic I think, where you bought and sold drugs - it was fun. A sort of text adventure take on capitalism. This reminds me of that game - which is great! :D The fruit theme also makes it a bit more safe for work! ^_^

Thank you for the feedback!

What was your high score?

Already played and voted, and commented on one.

Thank you very much for your kind words!

Only 22 (twenty two) for your high-score though? That sounds... Not right. You should easily be getting a score over 100.  My highest is 253.

Perhaps adjust your speed - you should be able to manoeuvre around the white shots from the gonad cannon. If they shots are moving too fast for you to dodge, try reducing the game speed with the plus and minus buttons. :)

Nice - love the graphics. It's beautiful. Though I do miss sound. You can find royalty free music online quite easily, and most BASIC dialects allow some basic beep or speaker sounds.

Thank you! I used Google Translate to synthesise the voice. I typed English text into the German text box, and a German woman's voice attempted to phonetically read the English.

Thanks! The multiplier increases score. So if you collect one Fallopian Pod your score multiplier is x9. Meaning you get nine times the points you normally get. This decreases with time. So if you play quickly, and minimise the distance you travel, you will get a much higher score.

OK, i had some trouble adjusting the speed for different computers, so be sure to use the -/+ keys on the title screen to adjust the speed to your liking.

My entry is submitted, FRUIT OF THE WOMB.

Thank you! It's now about 80%. I just need to polish it up, add the audio, and I might even be able to hand it in tonight.

The rules say:

1. Illegal media resources are not allowed.  (Media resources mean sounds, sprites, music themes, etc.)

Does this include royalty free music? Kevin Mcleod has a lot of free music on his site, free for anyone to use, with credits. A lot of the old Xbox Indie games used his music.

My game is about 65% done and I need a music track, so I'd like to use one from his site, crediting him.

Is this allowed? He's quite happy for people to use his stuff. But I wasn't sure if the games we make HAVE to only include our own created materials. Because I suck at making music myself. :(

I have not actually written a line of code yet. I hope to do so soon. I basically know what the game is, just need to create the framework.

I've never done a jam. Looking forward to this. I'm going to be using QBasic via DOSBox, for the base game, and then QB64 to polish it up and add fun stuff like audio, music, etc. Oh, and to compile it for modern Windows.

Hi. No one has replied to your topic. I was planning to make my music by singing into my microphone and having my game load and loop an MP3. I'm not very good with sound production.

I normally do this last of all.

But, if I can get my game finished during the jam, you wanna chuck some audio in at the end? I'll probably just need sound files I can load and loop.

You can see the game as a WIP and decide what you want to do audio wise.

I'm just doing this for fun.

Sorry, that was a typo. I meant to say: "I hope this is useful".

I was in a hurry.

Thank you for the Game Jam invite!

I am quite tempted. If I have time I will try. So, I sign up, and then when the jam starts you select the themes, and I pick a theme? And then we have how long to program our game?

I have never been in a game jam, so I do kinda like the sound of this.

Good luck with your jam!

This is a good question! But maybe a little long to explain.

I use QB64 because my first language was QBasic which I taught myself at school. If you check my profile, you will find a blog link where I describe learning it.

http://blog.hardcoregaming101.net/2010/03/games-ive-made.html

I tried to learn other languages, including Dark Basic, but none were as easy as QBasic. And QB64 is basically QBasic but for modern systems.

I tried Game Maker, as a drag and drop system, but I couldn't even get a text box to show up. It was laborious, cumbersome, slow, and not intuitive.

QBasic and QB64 are very easy to get quick results. If you want to test an idea very quickly, you can just write a few lines and immediately see the result.

After about half an hour of trying to use Game Maker nothing was happening, and I got fed up.

I am not a professional game maker. I do this for fun. So I need to see immediate results to keep myself entertained.

I normally program in QBasic using DOSbox, then compile it using QB64, since QBasic for DOS is actually faster to see results than QB64.

Hope this is useless.

Basically: it's fast and easy, and I'm lazy and just doing this for fun.

Godspeed, BL. Godspeed!

I finished Oaxaca and Panama a while ago, but I like seeing these updates, because it feels like... Viewing a great piece of architecture that though finished, is renovated, extended, repainted, touched up, redecorated, and so on, through the seasons, so that it matures with the world surrounding it. Like viewing a protected Colonial building, which has had modern plumbing installed.

But I must ask... When will it truly be finished? Can it be finished? Do you even want it to be finished? Is there perhaps joys in using your brush to refresh the lines, so that the paint never dries, but appears permanently wet?

Is there a risk of tweaking too much?

This is the affect the game has had on me. Months later it continues to occupy my headspace.

Go Brian!

I bought this on XBLIG. Fantastic game. Feels very ZX Spectrum like, very British.