Famicom World

https://twitter.com/ls_create/status/1288137312623144960

Somebody's creating a top-down racing game for the Famicom with some really impressive effects. As well as some impressive 8-bit T&A.

The Twitter account has some additional videos of the game as well. Hopefully the project will proceed and we'll eventually get something playable out of it. Hell, I'd pay money for a physical release.

Thanks to cuilanA for bringing this to my attention.

That's darn impressive, both technically and aesthetically! I usually say the genre generally works better in 3D than 2D, but this looks like it could be very fun.


Just hoping that it won't be released on one of those destructive cartridges that fails to convert between 3.3 V and 5 V.

Quote from: P on July 28, 2020, 01:29:16 pmI usually say the genre generally works better in 3D than 2D

It tends to, yeah. Which is a big bummer to me personally, since racing is probably my favorite genre, but Famicom is my favorite console, and other than very few actually good racers on the system, there's just no bringing these two loves together. This could be at least something to bridge the gap.

I've occasionally toyed with the idea of making a Neo Drift Out -type of game, but that'd require learning some serious FC programming.

I've also been toying with ideas of a 2D racing game in the style of Neo Drift Out. It's not a beginner project for sure. Something single-screen, like Sprint 2 or Super Off-Road, would be easier to start out with, but I would really like some better car physics with drifting possibilities.
That would need two types of friction: one wheel-friction when the car runs in the direction of the steering, and one boat-like friction when the wheels looses their grip due to various conditions, and the steering has no effect.

I wonder if it's some kind of trick or the real "bitplane rotating" magic happening here, just like in Mode 7.
Nevertheless, awesome and impressing!

You mean like some kind of mode 7 hardware in the cartridge? Judging by the low resolution and small screen I think he is faking a pseudo-bitmap mode by redefining the pattern tables in CHR-RAM as needed, possibly with help of raster effects. The vertically split screen is also evidence of that, since there is no way to split the screen vertically and use hardware scrolling.

As long as the pseudo-bitmapped display is no larger than the pattern table, it should be possible to address every pixel on that display (colours are still limited though, thus "pseudo"). But there must also be enough time to update the whole bitmap display every frame, or maybe every second frame or something. The intro with the race queen and the goal sequence seems to pseudo-bitmap the whole screen, but they are also played at a low frame rate and plays a fixed film clip.

The cars and parts of the time and speed displays seems to be made of sprites. You can see that the "km/h" briefly disappears when a car is horizontally aligned to it due to the 8 sprites/scanline limit being reached.

Quote from: P on July 29, 2020, 04:39:03 amI've also been toying with ideas of a 2D racing game in the style of Neo Drift Out. It's not a beginner project for sure. Something single-screen, like Sprint 2 or Super Off-Road, would be easier to start out with, but I would really like some better car physics with drifting possibilities.

I wonder if the R.C. Pro-Am games could be used as a base for a rom-hack version of a Neo Drift Out-esque racer? The engine seems solid enough (it's by Rare, after all), so if it would be possible to make the maps longer point-to-point affairs and tweak the physics to be a bit more drifty, that'd be pretty close to what I'm envisioning. Of course removing the combat elements, oil slicks and such would also be needed...

Or maybe Eliminator Boat Duel, come to think of it?

I'm personally not good with ROM hacks, and thinks it's easier to code everything from scratch, but if I had disassembled code of those games I could maybe learn some tricks how they do various things.

So, P, maybe they used the same trick/method as in Bad Apple demo?

Quote from: MWK on August 02, 2020, 02:05:59 pmSo, P, maybe they used the same trick/method as in Bad Apple demo?

That's what the effects reminded me of, as well.

Yeah, not that I know how Bad Apple works, but I would guess at least the intro uses some similar method to playback full screen animation. Bad Apple is black and white, so colour is not a problem there.

Okay, so I managed to get my hands on the game, and I've been playing it for a bit.

There are 8 courses, and you race through the first four of them in "Skill Level 1" gameplay mode, and the second four in "Skill Level 2" gameplay mode. The aim is finish three laps before the time runs out, and while there are AI cars on the course, the game doesn't track placement at all, they're just moving obstacles. The last gameplay mode is Practice Mode, and it allows you to choose any of the eight courses and race three laps on it without the time limits and AI cars. It also doubles as a time attack mode, but the best times aren't saved, the cartridge doesn't have a battery.

The AI cars are the real challenge. The courses can get very narrow and hitting the other vehicles brings yours to a stop. And the time limits aren't very forgiving, so even just a few mistakes can spell doom to your race. There's no continues either, if you time out it's Game Over and you have to start the whole four-race set from the beginning. But the whole thing takes like 10 minutes, so it doesn't take long before you're back for another go at it.

The game's mechanics are simple. It's just A to accelerate and B to brake, there's no gear shifting (even just between low/high like in F1 Race) or anything else that I can discern. There are no car settings to tweak either. It's really the game's visuals that make it stand out, and though the graphics look simple at a glance, the game does things that I'm not sure if any game released during the system's original lifespan does. The framerate is on the lower end, but it's still perfectly playable. The music is of high quality as well, very good tunes.

The cutscenes, that happen after every race (though not in practice mode), with the race queen further show off the technical prowess and they also work as a reward for the player. I'm not sure if dev has shown all the cutscenes in his Twitter account, but some of them do get very...bouncy. The game has more T&A than the rest of the console's library combined, probably more than all 8-bit systems' libraries combined. And I'm sure there's a final cutscene after beating the fourth race - maybe Skill Level 2 even has a unique one? I'll do my best to finish them both so I can record the footage. So far I haven't even managed to beat Skill Level 1, my best was getting to the last lap of the last course and timing out while just coming out of the last corner.

It's a fun game with simple mechanics, but the audiovisual elements certainly make it punch above its weight.

I was almost expecting a very short demo, but it sounds like it's a neat little game, simple gameplay-wise but technically and artistically impressive. Hope I can get to play it someday.

So framerate is slow, I guess it's using 2 or more frames to update the screen during the game as well. The blocky graphics also makes me think it uses entire single-colored BG tiles as large meta pixels, or maybe a meta pixel system with 4x4-pixel blocks or something.

I don't think any commercial games used these type of techniques much at all, but that's mostly because the Famicom have smooth hardware scrolling and good sprite hardware. Some other computers and consoles that lacks sprites and/or scroll had to use this type of technique to animate the screen at all, but still they seldom scroll as smoothly as F-Theta does as they often just move the entire BG tiles one square each scroll step.

Compare MSX and Famicom versions of Zanac, PC-88 and MSX versions of Xanadu vs Faxanadu, MSX and Famicom versions of Romancia and Drasle Family among many other examples. These games on systems without hardware scroll (MSX2 lacks vertical hardware scroll) have a small screen with large surrounding status bar areas to make the part of the screen that needs to be updated every frame smaller. The Famicom on the other hand is limited to one status bar (or more with some mappers or a special trick) either above or below the screen as it needs to split the screen update horizontally to avoid the status bar from also scrolling with the rest of the screen.

I managed to beat Skill Level 1, after an extended play session and having to start from scratch a few times. Beat it just by a hair, I literally had one second left on the clock. Though the game does that thing where, after the time runs out, you car still rolls forward for a while, allowing you to just edge over the finish line. That's always cool.

There indeed is a final cutscene after finishing the last race, and it has the expected amount of cheesecake in it. Full video of Skill Level 1 here! (https://youtu.be/axsaC04jc98) Sorry for the age-restriction, but apparently Youtube is strict about this sort of thing nowadays, and I don't want to risk getting my channel banned, even though I don't actually monetize it. Just don't wanna risk losing all the vids I've uploaded over the last decade and a half because Youtube takes offense to pixel boobs.

I also discovered this tweet (https://twitter.com/ls_create/status/1431973593781391360) from the developer. Two of the pics relate to F-Theta, and one to his other game. Since I don't know any Japanese, I had to use Google Translate on my phone. Based on that horribly mangled translation, so take this with a huge grain of salt, there's a way to preview one of the animations, and there's a way to increase the time on the clock by 5 seconds. Maybe one of our Japanese-fluent members can shed some more light on this?

And now to start working on Skill Level 2...

QuoteThough the game does that thing where, after the time runs out, you car still rolls forward for a while, allowing you to just edge over the finish line. That's always cool.

That's a neat touch. I like this thing in this type of game. :)


Nice find on Twitter! I'll give it a quick translation:

He first says what type of board he uses (I guess it's the same for both his games):
Mapper 2 (either UNROM or UOROM), 256 kB PRG-ROM, CHR-RAM (as is expected with this type of graphic effects), vertical mirroring. He says that the silkscreen mirroring indication on the board shows the reverse mirroring from the one used (so it says H instead of V). But that's no different from official cartridge boards by Nintendo (it's actually the homebrew/emulator scene that got the mirroring thing backwards for some reason, so "vertical mirroring" is what Nintendo calls "H-scroll").

He then goes on saying that kazzo is able to both read and write to the ROM, so if you are using kazzo to dump the cartridge, be careful not to overwrite it. I guess the cartridge is using flash-ROM (which is a rewritable type of ROM). This also means the game has the means for saving data in an unused spot of the flash, but I guess it doesn't.

So it doesn't sounds like he minds if people dumps the ROM. Hopefully the ROM will show up some time. He also said that he will keep producing the cartridges until 2022 though.

He says you can also reprogram it with a ROM you made yourself if you like, using like a flashcartridge (but you are limited to 256 kB UNROM games of course) but you will have to resolder the mirroring jumper if you need to change the mirroring (or solder a slide switch so it can be changed back more easily).


Now to the secrets. It's those pictures in his tweet and two for F-theta and the other is for the other game he made "Utakata Synopsis;".

For the first F-Theta secret it says that before the Stage 4 demo starts you should hold a certain button pressed and you will see something you are not supposed to see (!). This also works with the last demo at the ending.
The first screenshot shows when you should start holding the button. But it says that you have to discover which button yourself. On the second picture, the red text says something like "Just what what kind of changes will happen when you do this? You got to find out!" ...intriguing!

Now to the second F-Theta secret. It simply says that you can gain 5 seconds by pausing the game and entering a certain command. The number of times you can use this trick depends on how many tracks you have completed, so it might not really be a cheat. I'm not sure if it's the number of times per game or the number of times per track.
It says you have to figure out the command yourself again.

I guess you could try the Konami command (AKA the Konami code)?

Thanks for the help!

Quote from: P on November 03, 2021, 05:18:36 pmFor the first F-Theta secret it says that before the Stage 4 demo starts you should hold a certain button pressed and you will see something you are not supposed to see (!). This also works with the last demo at the ending.
The first screenshot shows when you should start holding the button. But it says that you have to discover which button yourself. On the second picture, the red text says something like "Just what what kind of changes will happen when you do this? You got to find out!" ...intriguing!

That screenshot is just before the race queen's bra snaps. Based on that, the hidden thing might be a nip slip, or it could be some joke, like she slaps the viewer or something. I'll try to figure it out today.

QuoteNow to the second F-Theta secret. It simply says that you can gain 5 seconds by pausing the game and entering a certain command. The number of times you can use this trick depends on how many tracks you have completed, so it might not really be a cheat. I'm not sure if it's the number of times per game or the number of times per track.
It says you have to figure out the command yourself again.

I guess you could try the Konami command (AKA the Konami code)?

Hmm. I'd still personally consider that a cheat, but a pretty cool thing anyway. I wonder if the remaining time has to be at 1 second for the code to work (like in that picture), or can it be done whenever?

QuoteSo it doesn't sounds like he minds if people dumps the ROM. Hopefully the ROM will show up some time. He also said that he will keep producing the cartridges until 2022 though.

Well that's neat, to both things. Hopefully he'll also make the cartridges more easily available for international purchasing. Columbus Circle uses Play-Asia to sell their products, I wonder why other JPN homebrew devs don't? Well, I guess Columbus Circle is just big enough that they can deal with Play-Asia, and it's not as easy for a single person who made a game in their spare time.

Quote from: Ghegs on November 03, 2021, 11:51:43 pm

Quote from: P on November 03, 2021, 05:18:36 pmFor the first F-Theta secret it says that before the Stage 4 demo starts you should hold a certain button pressed and you will see something you are not supposed to see (!). This also works with the last demo at the ending.
The first screenshot shows when you should start holding the button. But it says that you have to discover which button yourself. On the second picture, the red text says something like "Just what what kind of changes will happen when you do this? You got to find out!" ...intriguing!

That screenshot is just before the race queen's bra snaps. Based on that, the hidden thing might be a nip slip, or it could be some joke, like she slaps the viewer or something. I'll try to figure it out today.

I managed to uncover the secret on the first go, and even beat Skill Level 1 again. Hold down Select there, and instead of the race queen just barely managing to cover herself up when her bra snaps, she's a bit late and she's shown totally topless for a few frames. Too hot for Youtube! (https://ghegs.com/Files/F-ThetaSecret.gif)

"This also works with the last demo at the ending.", does that mean there's something hidden in the ending animation? I couldn't find anything, but maybe I just hit the button at the wrong moment.

I'm not 100% sure but my understanding was that being close to goal but having too little time to make it was an example of a situation when the trick is useful rather than a requirement for the trick to work. The text says nothing about 1 second left, it just says that there is no time. It also says that you should calculate when it's the most effective to use it (since use is limited) so that sounds to me even more like it can be used at any point in a race.

Good job finding the easteregg, I was also half expecting that it was a joke and that you would get a slap or something. Thanks for sharing it, this will come in handy for uh, studying the graphics engine!

Sorry my bad! I just noticed that I translated this part incorrectly: "This also works with the last demo at the ending." but it should have been something like: "This is the same for the last demo of the ending for skill level 2 as well."

Beat Skill Level 2 as well just now. The animations are the same in both, so nothing new to report there.

So I guess the only thing left to discover is the hidden code for time extension. I did try the Konami code but that didn't seem to be it.

I do wonder about the implications of that animation Easter egg, though. The animation has a "fork" where if you hold the button down at a specific moment it goes into path B instead of going the normal path A. Admittedly the difference is really small, only a couple of animation frames before it returns to the normal path. I wonder if this could be expanded, so you if you hold this button at a specific moment, you get one animation, but if you hold that button you get a completely different one.

Basically, could this animation engine be used to create a Dragon's Lair -like quick time event -game?

Quote from: Ghegs on November 05, 2021, 12:44:59 pmBeat Skill Level 2 as well just now. The animations are the same in both, so nothing new to report there.

I see, it wasn't entirely clear in the original text if it would show a new clip or not.

Quote from: Ghegs on November 05, 2021, 12:44:59 pmSo I guess the only thing left to discover is the hidden code for time extension. I did try the Konami code but that didn't seem to be it.

In that case I bet it's a much simpler code, since it's something players are supposed to discover themselves. Just one or two buttons or something. But on the other hand if you haven't discovered it yet it might not be that simple, hmm...

Quote from: Ghegs on November 05, 2021, 12:44:59 pmI do wonder about the implications of that animation Easter egg, though. The animation has a "fork" where if you hold the button down at a specific moment it goes into path B instead of going the normal path A. Admittedly the difference is really small, only a couple of animation frames before it returns to the normal path. I wonder if this could be expanded, so you if you hold this button at a specific moment, you get one animation, but if you hold that button you get a completely different one.

I have no clue, but you can experiment a bit and see if you find something.

Quote from: Ghegs on November 05, 2021, 12:44:59 pmBasically, could this animation engine be used to create a Dragon's Lair -like quick time event -game?

Technically yes of course. But then again there is a reason why those FMV games were always on CD or laserdisc systems. Long animations will take up a lot of space, so the game might have to be quite short. Data can be compressed and nowadays larger ROM chips are generally cheaper and more readily available than the smaller ROM chips used in most Famicom games, but it would be hard to compete with a 600 MB CD-ROM. Sampled speech is fully possible on a stock Famicom as you probably know, but it takes up a lot of ROM space despite being of so poor quality.
If we had something like the MSU-1 for the Famicom, where data is streamed from an SD-card, anything would be possible using the Famicom's powerful expansion audio and video capabilities from the cartridge side.

Quote from: P on November 05, 2021, 05:36:38 pm

Quote from: Ghegs on November 05, 2021, 12:44:59 pmI do wonder about the implications of that animation Easter egg, though. The animation has a "fork" where if you hold the button down at a specific moment it goes into path B instead of going the normal path A. Admittedly the difference is really small, only a couple of animation frames before it returns to the normal path. I wonder if this could be expanded, so you if you hold this button at a specific moment, you get one animation, but if you hold that button you get a completely different one.

I have no clue, but you can experiment a bit and see if you find something.

Ah, I meant if the concept could be expanded generally in other Famicom games, not in F-Theta in particular.

Thanks for the answer, I guess the size is the most restricting factor, then. And I just now remembered that Game Boy Color got a port of the arcade Dragon's Lair, rather than a platformer remake like most home consoles of the era.

Not that I'd be particularly interested in playing Dragon's Lair, but the idea of the game being ported and seeing all the "Some crazy person ported a LaserDisc game to NES" articles and videos online is amusing to me, like what happened when DOOM (sorta-kinda-not really but the console is involved a bit in there) got "ported" to NES.

Ah I see, I don't see any reason it shouldn't be possible.

Yeah that DOOM "port" is probably using the expansion video capabilities of the Famicom/NES. It's because video memory is stored on the cartridge instead of inside the console like on Game Boy, SFC and most other systems, so you can basically put a modern computer in a cartridge and stream it's video output via the Famicom PPU. The Famicom mostly just displays the picture, the muscle is all in the cartridge hardware. This kind of thing is not possible on the GB or SFC since video memory is internal.

Likewise, expansion audio allows you to stream CD-quality audio if you want and have some way of storing all the data on the cartridge. This is possible on the GB and the SFC, but the NES needs to be modded as you probably know.

So that's what I meant by anything is possible with the right cartridge hardware. It's very amusing as a proof of concept but most people also think it's kind of cheating as the Famicom isn't really doing much. The F-Theta way of doing it is far more interesting I think, although resolution and framerate is very limited.
Similar techniques can do things like raycasting (https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?p=195448#p195448). There's a cool MSX1 fangame called Tales of Popolon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9HiZfxoLmk) that uses this technique. It's impressive, but the MSX1 does have a pseudo-bitmap mode already while the Famicom/NES don't.

New tweet reveals (https://twitter.com/ls_create/status/1595802723965812736) that there's a US release of F-Theta in the works.

I wonder if they'll keep the nipple flash code.

That's good news! And in the comments to that post he also says that they are separately planning a European version. I hope it will be with the PAL hardware differences in mind.

Unless whatever distributor they have has any complaints, I spontaneously wouldn't think they would do any kind of censoring, but who knows.

NES version is suddenly available here (https://neodolphinoproductions.bigcartel.com/product/f-theta)

According to a (Google Translated) tweet from the dev, "...the only difference from the Japanese version is the era of the copyright on the title screen" so that's good.

That webpage is in Sweden. Is that the PAL version perhaps?

Not sure what you mean? The site is in English, Neodolphino Productions seems to be based in Pennsylvania, and the host bigcartel.com is in US/Canada.

Quote from: P on February 01, 2023, 04:31:04 pmThat webpage is in Sweden. Is that the PAL version perhaps?

You mean based in Sweden? ??? Or do you mean it's in Swedish? Here's how it looks on my end:
You cannot see attachments on this board.


Has anyone bought from Neodolphino before? Is the quality good? Are the other games currently available worth checking out?

The IP was reported to be Swedish, but that is just the location of the server for the webpage, so it might not mean anything.

Quote from: Jedi Master Baiter on February 01, 2023, 11:34:15 pmAre the other games currently available worth checking out?

I have Haradius Zero (which isn't available on the site, but is the prequel to Haratyler and Haraforce) and it's not terribly interesting. Technically it's fine - looks decent enough, runs fast, no flickering, etc. but the gameplay is lacking. The same enemies and patterns keep repeating too often. Looking at some videos of Haratyler and Haraforce, this doesn't seem to have changed all that much. But maybe somebody who has played them properly can chip in.

UXO: Unexploded Ordnance is literally just Minesweeper. And nothing wrong with Minesweeper, but $30 (+ shipping) for Minesweeper is kind of a tall order.