Over at Retrocollect (via AtariAge), 1985alternativo’s new homebrew MegaDrive game Antarex has been announced. It’s going to be a good old-fashioned shoot’em up, and, judging from the quality of their previous 16-bit homebrew Oh Mummy, it’s probably not going to disappoint.
Something else worth mentioning is an initiative to update the graphics of the old GameBoy game Super Mario Land. If you have a GameBoy flashcart (which you should), then this project provides a really interesting insight into the intersection between game aesthetics and programming.
The limitations of the GameBoy’s hardware architecture means that visuals have to be programmed in specific ways in order to achieve hardware resource-efficient outcomes. One interesting such instance is the distinction that the GameBoy hardware makes between ‘character’ sprites and ‘background’ tiles. This conceptual (and physical) distinction between screen visuals was a common one back in the 8-bit and 16-bit era, when background tiles were used to mock up big characters.