Whoa... I didn't even know these existed. This is linked from that page and is a pretty cool example of what it takes to make these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM. It's cool to see the Nintendo games are still being developed! I was 8yo when the NES came out and my mom saved up all her waitress money and bought me one that Christmas.
Basically all 8- and 16-bit consoles, as well as some later ones (such as the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and more recently the N64), have very active homebrew scenes at this point. There are even no-code options for some platforms [1] that have proven to be remarkably popular, to the point even McDonald's promotional game "Grimace's Birthday" was made in GB Studio and released in emulated form. The ease of manufacturing new PCBs and cartridges using modern parts has also led to a market for physical commercial homebrew releases, both through publishers and directly from developers.
Unfortunately, like many other hobby programming niches, most homebrew communities are currently dealing with the recent influx of low-effort vibe coded games that completely defeat the point of learning to work and be creative with limited hardware. Some started adopting strict no-AI stances, which is refreshing to see when seemingly every other community is going the other way; so far my own released work (mainly on the original PlayStation) is completely free of LLM contributions and I'd like to keep it that way for as long as I can.
I've wanted to get into NES homebrewing for years but found it difficult to get started. Eventually I vibe-coded a language specifically designed to build NES games, but then fell down the rabbithole of designing that language and the compiler, instead of building games. Typical.
I was able to produce a few (very) "low effort vibe-coded games that completely defeat the point of learning to work and be creative with limited hardware", but along the way I was still able to learn how to build a compiler to be creative with limited hardware for me. And that was fun.
I'll never make anything 1/1000th as impressive as the games passionate hobbyists have made over the years, and I don't think we're even building the same thing, conceptually. For me, vibe-coding the game (and the language, and the compiler) is the game itself.
My favorite thing to come out of it is https://imjasonh.github.io/playground/nes-player/?rom=subway which is a RCR clone set on the NYC subway, complete with realistic routes, schedules and transfers. There's no "point" to it really, just go from place to place punching dudes.
But that's the thing: the things made with genAI are mostly interesting to the prompter only. Everyone is making custom one-off software that has one developer and an install base of one.
I took a glance at your game and Kunio fighting endless Kunio clones looks boring to me. I guess the realistic NYC subway angle might be interesting but it's not obviously an interesting game mechanic.
Vibe all you want, but don't expect others to be as enthusiastic of your own vibe as you are yourself.
Unfortunately, like many other hobby programming niches, most homebrew communities are currently dealing with the recent influx of low-effort vibe coded games that completely defeat the point of learning to work and be creative with limited hardware. Some started adopting strict no-AI stances, which is refreshing to see when seemingly every other community is going the other way; so far my own released work (mainly on the original PlayStation) is completely free of LLM contributions and I'd like to keep it that way for as long as I can.
[1] https://www.gbstudio.dev
I was able to produce a few (very) "low effort vibe-coded games that completely defeat the point of learning to work and be creative with limited hardware", but along the way I was still able to learn how to build a compiler to be creative with limited hardware for me. And that was fun.
I'll never make anything 1/1000th as impressive as the games passionate hobbyists have made over the years, and I don't think we're even building the same thing, conceptually. For me, vibe-coding the game (and the language, and the compiler) is the game itself.
https://github.com/imjasonh/playground/blob/main/nescript/RE...
My favorite thing to come out of it is https://imjasonh.github.io/playground/nes-player/?rom=subway which is a RCR clone set on the NYC subway, complete with realistic routes, schedules and transfers. There's no "point" to it really, just go from place to place punching dudes.
I took a glance at your game and Kunio fighting endless Kunio clones looks boring to me. I guess the realistic NYC subway angle might be interesting but it's not obviously an interesting game mechanic.
Vibe all you want, but don't expect others to be as enthusiastic of your own vibe as you are yourself.