Port "Sigi - A Fart for Melusina" to the NES using NESmaker / Revenue share

zapposh

New member
Hi everyone,

I run pixel.games, a two man indie dev studio based in Luxembourg. We're ex-2nd gen Ubisoft and worked on titles like Rayman 2, Tonic Trouble, F1 Racing Simulation...
As the name suggests, we make 2D pixel art games, mostly platformers and arcade adventures, often re-imagined versions of older classics from our childhood. 

Here is Sigi, a lighthearted platformer we released on consoles that we think could potentially be ported to the NES using NESmaker: https://www.redartgames.com/playstation-4/81-sigi-a-fart-for-melusina-3770011615643.html
It mixes around gameplay elements from Super Mario, Donkey Kong Country and Ghosts n' Goblins. There are thousands of videos on youtube if you want to see more.

In a nutshell, here's the scope:
- 1 main menu
- 1 overworld map
- 16 scrolling levels, about 10 screens each in size, each with a bonus level about 1-3 screens in size
- 4 boss fights
- 4 background tilesets
- about a dozen enemies
- about half a dozen hazards
- 5 weapons- player mechanics: running, jumping, shooting (no climbing, wall sliding or swimming etc)
- very little AI besides the bosses, and even they have limited AI
- a couple of achievements and variables to keep track of, like number of coins collected / enemies killed / secrets found...

We would deliver all the assets, pre-adapted to the system limitations, and game design guidance and testing.
The goal would be to get as close as possible to the original, and provide a wonderful gaming experience. In other words, this is a massive amount of work to get it right and should not be underestimated.

We have dabbled in NESmaker on and off, and this idea has been on the back-burner for some time, but we currently have 3 other games in production for the upcoming consoles in Q4 and cannot find the time to port Sigi ourselves.

If anyone here knows NESmaker inside out, is passionate about making games and would be interested in porting the game to the NES on a revenue share basis (we would like to release a physical edition for the start of the holiday season), we would be happy to discuss the idea with you and see if we can take things further if it's feasible and worth the effort.

Any further questions? Feel free to ask.
Many thanks and stay safe.


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dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
Intéressant...
The issue I see currently with a NESmaker game would be that left and right scrolling are kinda glitchy. Don't know how it will be in the next version.
Also on some screens, you have a lot of monsters and objects. It will definitely not being possible on NES (without sprite clipping, huge slowdowns,...)
Your game looks very fun! I would like seeing a NES version of it, on cartridge (I would buy it, for sure).
But, for a Xmas release, it's a lot of work to do.
 

zapposh

New member
Merci for the feedback about the scrolling.
For the number of sprites we would adapt to the limitations and go for qualitative intercepts, like a single enemy at the end of a difficult jump, instead of pure enemy numbers as a challenge.
We did something similar for the PS Vita version, but without enough thought so it was pretty butchered in the end as we ran out of time.
 

dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
I watched a playthrough video on youtube... it' very fun (DKC is my fav game on SNES, those parts are very cool on your game ;))
Some of gameplay elements would require custom code, as it doesn't exist currently in NESmaker, many of them are doable. You just need a good coder.
Yeah, I think a lot of things of the original game would have to be simplified or skipped to fit a NES (NESmaker) game.

Ah, si j'avais pas été surchargé en ce moment... c'est un projet qui m'aurait intéressé ;)
 

zapposh

New member
Thanks Dale for your kind comments. We'll see what comes out of it.
Dommage pour cette fois-ci mais, there will surely be other porting opportunities of upcoming games in the (not too distant) future. ;-)
 

zapposh

New member
The first asset adaptations came out surprisingly well, in some cases very close to the source images.
We'll probably put this on Kickstarter to gauge interest and produce a limited run.
 
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