/vr/ - Retro Games

I have no idea what you just said I was looking at the pic.

Yeah. Pic is the cover to an adult Simon game.

>You are the world's best lover
Finally a game that's literally about me.

I don't know what this is but I'm confident saying it will not run on any existing Game & Watch hardware.

>>5067416
It's a ROM/screen replacement for "Mickey & Donald" in MAME so to the extent that MAME accurately emulates that hardware, it should run on the existing unit.

Just like any other emulator based homebrew there would probably be timing tweaks to port it to the real thing, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything crazy going on with either game.

>>5067270
i've gotta see this is action on an lcd

>>5067270
>Has any homebrewer managed to make a dedicated LCD handheld?
Yes. I'm "homebrewer" and I developed a number of LCD games for companies in the late 80s to early 90s. I did most of the work at home. More recently I've actually made my own simple mono LCDs at home.

>>5068395

Do you mean you’ve actually made the displays at home or just did the layouts? I would be super interested in home manufacturing of custom LCD displays (or even an expensive service that will produce them in sub 10k quantities).

Assuming you’re American, I guess you were targeting the TMS1000? Is that still being made or did you target something else for your recent work?

>>5068541
I made the displays. I'd designed msks before and now that coated glass and liquid crystal are readily available it's not that hard.
I'm American but worked for Japanese and Taiwan companies. We usually used parts with a built in LCD driver.

>>5068913

I know you can get ITO coated glass, liquid crystal, and polarizers pretty easily now but how do you actually tranfer the mask? Everything I've read in terms of homebrew ITO just mentions scraping off the coating. Doesn't the LCD "twist" effect need precision spacing between the pieces (industrially this is done with glass beads I think)?

Forgive me if the questions are intrusive. I want to respect your wizardly presence.

>>5067270
>Has any homebrewer managed to make a dedicated LCD handheld

Considering that those type of LCDs are manufactured specific to a single game, no? I mean, no homebrewer is going to invest tens of thousands into a custom display for a limited release. I'm not even sure what you mean by homebrew in this case, homebrew generally refers to a game running on what's generally considered "closed" hardware (in the case of most retro consoles, it's closed in that the documentation isn't legally publicly available). Those LCD games are just running on microcontrollers, not even the same one, usually just whatever met their requirements and was cheapest at the time of manufacture.

>>5069557
> Those LCD games are just running on microcontrollers, not even the same one, usually just whatever met their requirements and was cheapest at the time of manufacture.

That's more in the modern era. Almost all of the classic 80's-90's ones use either the TMS1000 (Tiger) or a family of microcontrollers from Sharp (Nintendo). That hardware was common enough that even if it was closed (it wasn't), we'd still have the details. The OP project was targeting one of those vintage Sharps.

If custom LCD's cost 10-20k (and up thread seems to indicate they might be cheaper) it'd still be an interesting case for begstarter.

EEVblog has a series of tutorials where he claims you can outsource the manufacturing for sub 100 bucks.

This is a cool thread topic. LCD games are cool.

>>5069242
>scraping
>you will immediately cease and desist from using hackaday for anything more technical than making avocado toast.
Mask it and etch it like it was a PCB. It's literally a glass PCB. In the good old bad old days we used microbeads. The glass today is so flat/precise/whatever that you don't need them. I used them my first few tries and got shit results because they got stuck everywhere. Today the leftover coating is enough.

>>5073043
> How to do ambitious and stupid thing.

This actually sounds doable. This advice may have ruined the next year or so if my life. Many thanks!

>>5072860
LCD games are great and the ones that get really innovative with their mechanics or graphics really blow me away. It's sad there's so many clones of like 3 to 4 of the same mechanics because most people just assume it's all trash.

>>5074847

I agree. Nintendo's color "Panorama" and "Table Top" games in particular are absolutely gorgeous in person. They capture that same "glowing" feel as early black background single screen arcade games but coupled with print-like sharpness to all of the elements. Some of the "animation" is really good too with delays giving characters weight and very clever use of combining multiple elements or layering. Hell, look at the OP’s homebrews. The girl’s facial expressions are amazing.

And in terms of gameplay, it isn't like there's just Nintendo. Even Tiger, known for being absolute shit has produced a couple of gems. "Terminator" with it's gun-switching gameplay and one of the Robocop games (I think the first one?) come to mind.

I think that people both underappreciate how strong the straight-forward gameplay of titles like "Octopus" really is and at the same time forget that LCD's can deliver much more involved experiences like "Donkey Kong Jr." which is a "real" single screen platformer and a damn good one.

>>5074874
I feel like Epoch had a lot of great games too.

Basically any of the Boxing/Fighting games I think are fairly good, or at least innovative in some of their design. And some sidescrollers like Double Dragon and Symphony of the Night.

Nintendo's Zelda G&W and Popeye are really excellent.

Battletoads makes good use of the screen, Contra as well. Judge Dredd too.

3D maze games like Bandai's Cube Zone and Epoch's Lost in Space Big Maze and things like Gauntlet can be pretty amazing.

Makaijo build interesting things. There's also a Sonic maze game whose exact name I don't remember at the moment.


And then there's some great racing games, flying games. Top Gun, Cobra Psychogun. Rolling Thunder, Densha de Go.

Just a huge variety of stuff out there.

I've tried my hand at designing some of these myself. It's pretty interesting to get graphics to "fit." This one here is super over-designed and would be a nightmare to code for.

>>5075856

It probably is pushing it in terms of density, but only just. The backlit colour games could get away with quite a bit.

I’m intrigued. What’s the gameplay suppose to be like?

>>5076052
Oh, it's definitely pushing it. The gameplay is similar to Veritas (and if you're familiar with that, you'll see it immediately) with some extras that fit my personal style, like the boss stuff on top and giving it a more sci-fi theme.

This looks really interesting, but it's iOS only.

>>5074874
This Robocop?

>>5074874
Or this Robocop?

I wish I could find some better examples of the megaman screens.

>>5076081

I had never seen Veritas. This thread is a winner for that alone.

You're right, now I get your playfield (for example how the gems would come into play). What I wasn't understanding was that there was "scrolling" involved. Very nice!

>>5076145

This one. I like the "avoid and aim" pseudo-run-n-gun mechanic and the surprising boss variety.

>>5076138

Not just iOS only but (at least in my region) “removed from the App Store.” I assume it didn’t make the 32-64 bit transition. I realize their income is often front loaded but I wish devs would stop investing in closed platforms. There’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to give people money.

>>5076154
Veritas is deserving of all the money. I really wish more people did LCD games like this. Or the watchcraft thing but yeah-- if it's been removed from the app store ( >>5076242) then RIP.

>>5076159
Alright, I never played it only have the screen for it. I'll see about watching some videos to see how it plays.

>>5074798
It's doable. If not practical. If you had a few busted G&W it might even be that.

>>5076145

MAME supports it as TROBOCOP2 and there is an artpack with the same name. I’d highly recommend tracking down the artpack if you play any LCD games on MAME as the “ROMs” only contain the LCD elements and not the backgrounds in most cases. The Progetto snaps site seems to have most of them.

>>5067416
> I don't know what this is
no shit
> I don't know what this is but I'm confident saying it will not run on any existing Game & Watch hardware.
I'm confident saying that you don't know what you're talking about.

While the king for the majority of it’s life, thanks to it’s prominent role in the 83’ crash the 2600 ended on a sour note. That image has been rehabilitated by the Internet allowing the best titles to be rediscovered or in the case of those titles released during the quality glut to get a fair evaluation. At the same time, homebrew has shown what the machine can do closer to it’s limits.

LCD games are viewed poorly for much the same “mountain of trash” reasons as the 2600. I’m hoping with MAME’s handheld support growing, we’ll see a similar rediscovery happen with LCD games. I’d love to see this happen even if as a collector I’ll hate to see the inevitably resulting price increases.

Anyone know of any other games with heavy item usage? I’ve always found the adventure aspect of Nintendo’s Zelda Game & Watch particularly cool.

>>5077805

Mr. Game & Watch has his #LCDToo moment?

>>5076257
Hey, I had that top gun game.

>>5077805
Not sure what you mean by Heavy Item Usage. Maybe Symphony of the Night?

>>5077805
I'm not sure if there are any LCD games quite like Zelda G&W if only because it's got this map that you chose your path through. I'm hard pressed to think of another actual LCD game that runs on actual hardware that gives that depth of gameplay.

Has anyone played Dracula House or any game that shares the gameplay? I don't understand what's going on in this one at all.

>>5081626
I've played it. Not sure what else shares the same game play. Unless you just mean shit game play. In that case, yes I've played many.

>>5076784

>5067270
You would have to get a custom made LCD display. With Chinese manufacturing it is cheaper than it used to be, even with the 25% tariffs.

You could either design s new PCB from the ground up (this isn't super expensive anymore either), or gut existing games. Most of these LCD games don't use lots of tiny SMD parts like modern electronics so they are easier to hack up.

You likely wouldn't make much\any money but it's doable as a passion project, especially if you sold them as kits.

>>5076159
The Rocketeer uses the gameplay with different graphics.

>>5077805
I like Tiger's Gauntlet.

>>5082438
Robin Hood is the same gameplay I think.

>>5082862
Apparently I can't post svg files.