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[Holammer]

One year later and Pocky & Rocky: Reshrined comes to PC (previously on PS4 & Switch).
I tried it briefly with an emulator and have waited for it since. Do Ninja Warriors Once Again next!

Finally got around to try a new free [as in free beer] pixel art metroidvania called Bloody Hell. It's a surprisingly good top down shooter with bullet hell elements, essentially Enter the Gungeon without the randomly generated stages. It could have easily sold, but it's a school project developed by 3 Dutch students.

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

 

[Holammer]

Four Toaplan arcade games got PC releases. Truxton, Zero Wing, Out Zone & Twin Cobra. They are previously available on Switch & PS4




Also came across this new pixel art Metroidvania with a biomechanical theme. Developer is unknown to me, but I'll keep an eye at it.

 

[RAIDEN1]

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

This looks fun. Really liked the trailer. Never heard of the first game.

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

Pretty excited for this.

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

Never heard of The Last Spell until i saw this trailer today. Looks like a wild genre mix wrapped into a very challenging roguelite. This has me very intrigued.

Did anyone in here played it and has some impressions?

 

[Holammer]

Never heard of The Last Spell until i saw this trailer today. Looks like a wild genre mix wrapped into a very challenging roguelite. This has me very intrigued.

Did anyone in here played it and has some impressions?

Never tried it, not the kind of roguelike I usually enjoy. It was an Early Access game for almost two years and had its full release recently. 91% user score average on Steam, so it's prolly good.

Here's a game I have my eyes on, it was mentioned in the Hidden Gems thread and Maiden Voyage made a thread for it. It's still in Early Access, but it will have console versions eventually and a Switch version is under development according to the Twitter account.
Top-notch art and presentation.

Stumbled upon this Korean action platformer awhile ago. 2023 release and there's a demo for it.

Another interesting indie game I found on WhatsOnSteam, looks like some of the isometric platformers that used to be popular in the 80s, but with modern mechanics. Can't really nail down the palette and style, kinda looks like an MSX title?

 

[RAIDEN1]

Not sure if this has been posted up already:

 

[Ar¢tos]

Never heard of The Last Spell until i saw this trailer today. Looks like a wild genre mix wrapped into a very challenging roguelite. This has me very intrigued.

Did anyone in here played it and has some impressions?

Oh no... I should have never opened this thread...
Another game to add to my (extensive) backlog.
The animation looks great!

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

Oh no... I should have never opened this thread...
Another game to add to my (extensive) backlog.
The animation looks great!

It sure looks cool. Overwhelming, micromanagement, hard and satisfying are some keywords that appeared after some quick research.

I'm tempted to jump in...

 

[Holammer]

Found a dew fresh new game on WhatOnSteam, it looked so dumb & charming I had to try it.
Super Crane Bug is a puzzle game where a small bug operates a crane to lift and move blobs to form a match 3. Seems simple enough, but occasionally round blobs spawn, when they are matched the crane changes how it operates mechanically. This is Puyo Puyo with a bunch of twists.
IMO, the developer should make a 16-bit version with a story mode.

The interesting bit is that it's written in PICO-8, a virtual machine/game engine meant to resemble early 80's hardware. With deliberately low 128x128 resolution and 16 colors. There's even a demoscene for this virtual device.

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

Greatly enjoying my time with "The Last Spell". It's a lot to take in at first but the game does a good job of slowly getting you into it. There is so much to consider while playing but i can take all the time i want since there is no time limit for anything. You can also pause and quit the game anytime and come back later which makes it good to play in short bursts.

I feel like this game will be incredible once you unlocked all the aspects it has to offer. Can't wait to dive deeper!

 

[Holammer]

So this pixel art metroidvania is releasing right now on everything. PC, Switch and every flavor of Playstation & Xbox. Depending on platform available right now or in a few hours.
Looks pretty good, sloppy'ish pixel art but I think the PS1 style 3D world travel is charming as hell.

 

[Fuz]

Never heard of the first game.

It's actually quite good and tremendously addictive.

 

[Tomofdahook17]

Curious Expedition 1 is absolutely hilarious.

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

 

[Madserb2023]

I would love to see more games imitate the look of the Sega Saturn. 16bit/32 bit pixel art mixed with low poly 3D. Would love a Sonic Mania 2.

 

[Holammer]

Coming late 2023 for PC, PS, Xbox & Switch. Not as polished at Tribute's TMNT, but it looks great.

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

I put up a banner to do the thread a bit more justice. Nothing fancy... or more like... best i could do...

 

[Holammer]

Bat boy was kickstarter backed and developed by Osaka based indie dev Sonzai Games. It releases May 25'th for Xbox, PS, Switch & PC.
Looks like 8-bit NES style pixel art similar to Shovel Knight. Some gameplay similarities too.

Developer tries not to play platform favorites, but this tweet gave me a chuckle.






This one released last year and developed by Luxembourg bases Pixel Games. Grabbed it in the last Steam sale and it's GREAT.
High energy gameplay which requires a lot of training and memorization. It really feels like an actual forgotten 1983 arcade, similar to typical early 80's single screen arcade games like Popeye, Donkey Kong Jr & Mr Do.
Available for PC & Switch and at 4,99€ it's cheap even without a discount.

 

[Fuz]

This one released last year and developed by Luxembourg bases Pixel Games. Grabbed it in the last Steam sale and it's GREAT.
High energy gameplay which requires a lot of training and memorization. It really feels like an actual forgotten 1983 arcade, similar to typical early 80's single screen arcade games like Popeye, Donkey Kong Jr & Mr Do.
Available for PC & Switch and at 4,99€ it's cheap even without a discount.

Really like this one.

Speaking of "true to the old age" games, this one

is really good if you want a modern but faithful experience.

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

 

[Holammer]

Pixel Licker's Slayin 2 is a simple arcade game that's been available on Switch since 2020. Art is excellent and it's not the developers first rodeo, they also made Dead End City, a vertical shooter which similarly "authentic" graphics.

Puzzle Panic Island, an early access Match 3 puzzle game similar to Wario's Woods, but with platforming action.
It's clearly not as good looking as Slayin 2, the use of black outlines looks a bit bad, but I think it's a deliberate design choice as a homage to Bonk's Adventure. Give the blocks a black or very dark outline and the artwork won't clash as badly?

 

[Holammer]

Lone Fungus, a metroidvania just left Steam Early Access with full v1.0 release. It was Kickstarter funded and from what I can gather it's a one-man project by a Swedish developer. No indication of console versions.

Berserk Boy was planned for all the formats but they seem to have some unspecified problems atm. The Steam page for the game is inaccessible, but it should release on PC in 2023 with more formats to follow. Publisher woes?
Game looks like it takes some inspiration from the Megaman, Pulseman & Rocket Knight buffet.



Summitsphere is working on a ridiculously high energy platformer called Antonblast, taking a few cues from robbing Wario blind and it looks fk'n awesome. Coming to Switch & PC. They previously made a breakout style arcade platformer in the same universe called Antonball (also for PC & Switch) which is great and worth checking out.
Like Pizza Tower this looks like a hit in the making.

 

[Holammer]

You know how increasing resolution, adding anti-alising and other features is a thing in emulation? Usually that's for 32bit+ systems, but it turns out MESEN, an emulator for mostly early Nintendo systems comes with a feature where modders can draw new tiles and overlay them over NES games and visually transforming them into 16-32bit games. Especially if you combine them with slowdown/flicker fixes.

While I'm surprised over the amount of projects available, this is nothing new, I remember a similar [failed] project ca 1999-2000 that aimed to upgrade emulated arcade Ghost and Goblins with the same method.
Relevant to this thread IMO, someone make a dedicated thread for it.

 

[Holammer]

Recently I made a little thread mentioning how Akio, one of original pixel artists for R-Type & Metal Slug started a Twitter account. Turns out it's for a reason, they have now announced and teased a new game called Black Finger JET, a run & gun pixel art game made by Akio and other industry veterans. Like HIYA! The guy worked on a bunch of Irem games and the man behind Neo Turf Masters's music.

株式会社KOHACHI STUDIO

株式会社KOHACHI STUDIOは、ピクセルアートにこだわったゲーム開発を行う独立系スタジオです。

kohachistudio.com

---

Dormivegalia is apparently a word for being half-asleep, but in this context it's a pixelart Metroidvania and the first title developed by Italian/Sicily based Round Cartridge. In the wishlist it goes.

---

Hayaku! is another pixelart Metroidvania developed by Argentine based Indie dev Pizia Studios. Their previous output is a bunch of mobile garbage, but this almost looks like a genuine NES game with its conservative color use. Except there would have been one helluva MMC innit for widescreen output and parallax scrolling.

 

[SirTerry-T]

Recently I made a little thread mentioning how Akio, one of original pixel artists for R-Type & Metal Slug started a Twitter account. Turns out it's for a reason, they have now announced and teased a new game called Black Finger JET, a run & gun pixel art game made by Akio and other industry veterans. Like HIYA! The guy worked on a bunch of Irem games and the man behind Neo Turf Masters's music.

株式会社KOHACHI STUDIO

株式会社KOHACHI STUDIOは、ピクセルアートにこだわったゲーム開発を行う独立系スタジオです。

kohachistudio.com

---

Dormivegalia is apparently a word for being half-asleep, but in this context it's a pixelart Metroidvania and the first title developed by Italian/Sicily based Round Cartridge. In the wishlist it goes.

---

Hayaku! is another pixelart Metroidvania developed by Argentine based Indie dev Pizia Studios. Their previous output is a bunch of mobile garbage, but this almost looks like a genuine NES game with its conservative color use. Except there would have been one helluva MMC innit for widescreen output and parallax scrolling.

Oooo Black Finger Jet has my attention! That teaser trailer riffing on the Cowboy Bebop and Gunsmith Cats style opening credits is a good move too.

 

[Holammer]

Back in the days Capcom released a collection of the three first Megaman games for the Megadrive known as Mega Man: The Wily Wars, it was only available as a SEGA channel download in America for Genesis. Now a group of homebrew enthusiasts have ported Megaman 4-5-6 and the rom is free to download. Play it with an emulator or actual hardware.

Mega Man: The Sequel Wars - Episode Red by Sequel Wars

A 16-bit homebrew remake of Mega Man 4 for the Sega Genesis

woodfrog.itch.io

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Shinobi non Grata was just released and it's developed by Japanese indie Studio PICO. Available on PC. Afaik there will be physical PS4 & Switch copies sold by Limited Run Games and it's unclear if there's a digital copy for sale. It looks and plays like Irem's Ninja Spirits with a simpler NES or PC Engine style palette.

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The early 80's style arcade trend continues with Murtop, an amalgamation of Dig Dug & Bomberman for PC & Switch. With the exception of the music it seems to be a mostly one-man effort by a Spanish dev. You play an asshole rabbit robbing a bunch of nearsighted mogura style moles off their carrots, dropping rocks and pooping bombs to dispatch them. I played it and it's fine, bit on the difficult side and the bomb mechanic is a tad unintuitive as they spawn on the tile behind the player.

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Wall World's been out for a month but I recently found it. It's a rogue-lite tower defense/mining game taking place on a vertical wall sci-fi setting where the player needs to find cracks in wall and dig for resources, find technologies to upgrade and currency to upgrade your spider tank between runs.
Aside from the cardinal sin of mixing pixel sizes, I think it's pretty good with some neat artistic flourishes and it distracted me off TotK & Noita for 16hours.

 

[Fuz]

Too many... I want to play them all.

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

Jesus christ, I wanna play every single one of these games on this page. I feel overwhelmed

Pixel art? Hands down my favorite art style. Some areas of Blasphemous are some of the most beautiful game locations I've seen in the past few years.

 

[Fuz]

Shinobi non Grata was just released and it's developed by Japanese indie Studio PICO. Available on PC. Afaik there will be physical PS4 & Switch copies sold by Limited Run Games and it's unclear if there's a digital copy for sale. It looks and plays like Irem's Ninja Spirits with a simpler NES or PC Engine style palette.

---

This is a shameless ripoff of Ninja Spirit, btw. But it's ok because it's a game I love. Hard as fuck toh.

 

[Holammer]

Tiny Thor, a new game in the Eurojank platformer tradition was just released for PC and Switch. Developer Asylum Square's been working on it for three years. What makes it interesting are the devs involved, like Chris Hülsbeck, a legendary musician that's been active in the industry since the 8-bit days and Henk Nieborg, an artist with 30 years experience. Nieborg worked on the pixel art for the Shantae games and that alone makes him cool in my book.
Except for a smudge more colour and parallax effects, it really looks like an Amiga game.

 

[Fuz]

Tiny Thor is out

Tiny Thor

Tiny Thor features 16-bit graphics and gameplay centered around using Mjölnir, leading o

www.gog.com

Art is by Henk Nieborg, a veteran of Amiga games, and it shows. Looks absoltely fantastic, great overall Amiga vibe in its art direction - and even the (pleasant) music has an "Amiga vibe".
Played just a little with my friend, feels like a really solid platform. Seems quite hard too. Pet peeve: a few of the controls I don't really like (down for jumping down platforms and 2 buttons for aim and throw). No big deal toh.

EDIT: D'oh! Late.

Tiny Thor, a new game in the Eurojank platformer tradition was just released for PC and Switch. Developer Asylum Square's been working on it for three years. What makes it interesting are the devs involved, like Chris Hülsbeck, a legendary musician that's been active in the industry since the 8-bit days and Henk Nieborg, an artist with 30 years experience. Nieborg worked on the pixel art for the Shantae games and that alone makes him cool in my book.
Except for a smudge more colour and parallax effects, it really looks like an Amiga game.

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

Been playing Steel Assault lately and i'm having a lot of fun with it. Harkens back to those old school arcade classics. The game does a good job of slowly introducing you to its challenging design through multiple difficulty settings. It slowly strips away checkpoints and adds more attack patterns to the bosses the higher you get. And it gets devastatingly difficult if you dare to play the game in arcade mode. Incredible smooth game.

Sadly it still crashes on PS5 regularly and i wasn't able to finish it in said mode because of this. Tried to reach out to the developer over twitter but no reaction or patches as of yet.

Edit: Game got patched! All good now.

 

[Holammer]

New Metroidvania with randomly generated elements by INTI CREATES, coming this November to all the systems.

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

 

[Holammer]

First released for Switch and PS back in 2019, NatsumeAtari's remake of Ninja Warriors Again will finally come to PC. It'll launch with a *most* generous 10% discount.

---

Ravva by Brazil based Galope Studios got a sequel (PC for now) and from what I can tell, with UI improvements and new stages. First game (Cyclops Curse) is a decent Platformer Shooter available for PC, PS4 & Switch.

---

Devil's Dive appears to be a solo dev project and a decent looking Action Roguelike, clearly similar to and inspired by Downwell, but with a touch more color.

 

[Holammer]

Tengo Project is working on a remake of a Natsume NES game called Yami no Shigotonin Kage in Japan, Shadow of the Ninja is America and Blue Shadow for Europe & Australia. Personally I remember it as Blue Shadow and it was a pretty slick action platformer for its time.
There's no gameplay in the video, but some shots from cutscenes/intro are shown after the 2 minute mark.

James Rolfe talked about it just a month ago. Without his AVGN persona.

 

[cireza]

Blue Shadow

Played it on NES when I was a kid. Awesome game !

 

[FeralEcho]

Momodora Reverie Under the Moonlight is an amazing metroidvania game albeit a short one but with amazing pixel art.

And if you want a modern Contra game with amazing pixel art look no further than Blazing Chrome.

Two amazing largely unknown gems. Play them if you like awesome Pixel Art.

 

[Hudo]

Can I just say that I, for some reason that I can't figure out, love, LOVE the design of the player "helicopter" in NMK's Thunder Dragon?


I know that there are better (and more beautiful) Shmups out there. But damn, man. That design somehow does something to me.

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

And if you want a modern Contra game with amazing pixel art look no further than Blazing Chrome.

Love this game so much! Epic boss fights!

 

[Con_Z_ǝdʇ]

I'm about halfway through Gravity Circuit and greatly enjoying my time. Haven't found any time to play this week so i hope i can play through this weekend.

 

[Holammer]

Gamebiz.jp had an article on Tengo Project's upcoming Kage/Shadow of the Ninja/Blue Shadow, but it might have been published prematurely and is now removed. I don't see anything about it on Twitter or elsewhere. Thankfully Niche Gamer pulled images and wrote an article about it.
It's going to be shown at TGS this September and will release on Xbox, Switch, PC & Playstation. Like the original, character design is handled by Dynamic Productions, a company famous in anime circles.
Tbh, it looks like an entirely new game and it's the first Tengo game to use alpha effects.

KAGE Shadow of the Ninja remake announced for PC and consoles

Publisher Natsume Atari and developer Tengo Project have announced KAGE Shadow of the Ninja for PC and consoles. The previously teased remake is coming to Windows PC (via Steam), Xbox Series X|S…

nichegamer.com

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Found this odd looking Roguelite/Precision platformer (what is even happening in-game?) A PC only title developed by NAO/Nao Shibata, an experienced Japanese developer flying solo. It goes in the wishlist, but user reviews are mixed and it seems to be marred by high difficultly, one negative review says "Shame the level designer is a sadist".
NAO is on Twitter and posts regularly in English. Worth checking out if you want to see how the sausage is made.

 

[Holammer]

Shadow of the Ninja got its official reveal and is slated for spring 2024 on all the formats and it's a full remake or reimagining with new selectable extra weapons, new enemies.
Amusingly they Tengo site calls the genre 'Super Realism Ninja Action'.

---

TEAM Black Hat Robot's Red Titans seems to borrow a lot from classics like 1942, Scramble Spirits and maybe a bit too much from Aero Fighters? The power ups look suspiciously similar. It's on PC with console versions coming later.

 

[mild sriracha]

I really want to see another high quality pixel art game that is attempting to reach the level of KOF 12 and KOF 13.

Personally I don't like the look of 3D graphics in recently made SNK games. I would argue they look generic & arbitrary compared to tekken or street fighter. The characters have this visual feel of a fan-made 3D game that I cannot quite explain.

 

[Holammer]

Here is an upcoming platformer taking inspiration from Megaman and a bunch of other 8-bit era Capcom games. Devs have worked hard to replicate the sound, look and feel of the NES, going so far to not have any parallax scrolling where it would have been easy or inviting to use 'em. Lots stages, secrets and unlockable characters, it looks like a winner IMO. Coming soon on PC with no word on console versions.

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Another 'coming soon' Action Platformer starring a Team Chaotix reject in a slightly more 16-bit style. The graphics in the old YT video are kinda naff, right? Like a pretty decent SMS game. Turns out the developers are redoing the art and it looks much better. Newer tweets reveal even more polish.

 

[cireza]

Personally I don't like the look of 3D graphics in recently made SNK games.

They look as bland as it gets. KoF 12/13 were amazing. Happy KoF XIII has been BC on Xbox for all this time, I play it every once in a while.

Very happy to see that Shadow of the Ninja is coming to Xbox as well. That's a first for the studio.

 

[cartman414]

Gonna have to check out more of this thread.

I was thinking of making a thread about 2d sprite creation and how it's been years since the last pure sprite pushing hardware AFAIK.

Here's the most recent example I know of, the Cave CV-1000:

A Last Gasp of 2D: The Cave CV1000

Two-dimensional video game hardware is often considered a solved problem. Things like hardware sprites and tilemaps are basically gone; everything is done in...

nicole.express

Would it be possible for a pure 2d environment/graphics HW booster to exist now, and would it be capable of, with today's fab tech, anything that today's 3d focused tech couldn't brute force?