Alterego Finds #002: The Past Keeps Playing
Alterego Finds #002: The Past Keeps Playing
New adventures for old machines, unexpected ports, and projects that keep the past in play.
The retro workbench is unusually busy. This issue brings together homebrew games, unlikely ports, practical tools and hardware projects, with a few stops in the archives along the way. From cooperative Amiga adventures to new experiments on classic consoles, there is plenty here to play, explore and tinker with.
Alterego Finds #002 · 14 October 2026
⚔️ Moonstone adds friends to the list of things a dragon must worry about
Release spotlight · Amiga 0.2.0
Cooperation is easier once somebody untangles the cable.
Moonstone ACE 0.2.0 brings cooperative adventuring to the rebuilt Amiga version of A Hard Days Knight. Up to four players can travel, fight and gather treasure together, locally or over a network. Competitive play is also supported, with a lobby, direct connections and a relay option described by the project.
The practical details matter: this release targets an A1200 configuration with AGA, a 68020 and Kickstart 3.x, and needs the three original game disks. The Windows version is still in development. It is an enticing excuse to revisit a wonderfully unpleasant fantasy world with friends. At least this time, somebody else can explain why the dragon was a good idea.
🎧 The Zune HD finds something louder than a playlist
Homebrew port
The music player has taken a very unexpected encore.
Microsoft’s Zune HD has acquired an unlikely new job: running Super Mario 64. The sm64-zune project ports sm64ex to the music player, with sound, touch controls and saving. Its developer describes performance as mostly full speed, which is a useful qualification to keep attached to the claim.
This is a build-it-yourself adventure. You need your own supported USA game ROM, a Zune HD and a Linux computer with Docker; the repository does not provide a ready-made game containing Nintendo’s assets. Firmware 4.5 is the tested version. The reward is a delightfully unnecessary collision between two pieces of hardware history. Your old music player has apparently been practising its triple jump.
Super Mario 64 for Zune HD on GitHub
🪖 Cannon Fodder’s mouse-controlled chaos goes on holiday
From the workbench · Inspired by a classic
The mouse is in command. Morale remains uncertain.
There is still something appealing about an action game that lets a mouse do the commanding. Zombie Resort, documented by Strukt Studios, is one example of a retro shooter taking inspiration from Cannon Fodder. The developer’s diary describes work in Godot and C#, alongside the challenge of turning appealing movement and effects into a satisfying game.
That makes this a workbench visit, rather than a promise of a finished release. The interesting question is how much personality can survive the journey from fond memory to new design. A familiar control idea can be a starting point; the game around it still needs to earn its place. Preferably before the zombies reach reception.
Zombie Resort developer diary on itch.io
💬 Character.AI enters a sale process, with its future unresolved
Company announcement · 12 October 2026
The conversation continues while the paperwork piles up.
Character.AI has announced a voluntary Chapter 11 process to pursue a court-supervised sale. In its 12 October update, the company says the platform remains operational and subscriptions continue, with billing unchanged for now. It expects the sale process to finish in late November or early December 2026.
The unresolved part is substantial: the company says the platform will be wound down if no proposal emerges that supports continued operation. Users can export their data through the app or website. This is therefore a confirmed business development with an uncertain outcome, rather than an immediate shutdown announcement. For anyone who has built up a personal collection of chats, keeping a copy is a sensible practical step.
Character.AI’s official announcement
🧩 A father’s DOS puzzle finds a new home on Game Boy
Homebrew release · 5 October 2026
Some family heirlooms come with an undo button.
DIAM comes with a particularly good reason to preserve a small game. Creator ArturDuleba says the original was written by their father in Pascal for DOS at the age of fifteen. The new version brings that family project to the Game Boy, using the creator’s own GB Maker tool.
The result is a short, nine-level puzzle game, available to try in the browser or download as a Game Boy ROM. It is a modest-sized release with a story much larger than its file. A personal project does not need to have been famous to deserve another life, and a good puzzle does not need a modern machine to remain a good puzzle. Some family heirlooms just happen to have a cartridge version.
DIAM by ArturDuleba on itch.io
🔍 Decompilation turns old games into a very large detective story
How it works · Reverse engineering
The missing instruction was hiding in plain sight.
A compiled game does not come with its original source neatly tucked inside. Decompilation involves reconstructing higher-level code from machine instructions, then checking what that reconstruction actually does. In a matching project, a particularly demanding target is to make the compiler produce the same machine code as the original.
The collaborative decomp.me workspace gives developers a place to experiment with small pieces of code and compare the resulting assembly. That makes the process easier to inspect and discuss, although it does not turn an entire game into a one-click recovery job. Think of a detective story in which every witness speaks assembly and the crucial clue may be the compiler’s choice of register.
🔮 CyberMage wakes up with a new set of controls
Project spotlight
Thirty years later, the controls get a second opinion.
CyberMage: Darklight Re-Awakening gives Origin’s 1995 shooter a new host written in Rust. The project runs the original program through an x86 interpreter while progressively replacing functions with native Rust implementations, checked against the original behaviour.
The current documentation describes modern keyboard-and-mouse controls, Xbox controller support and wider display options. You still need your own v1.01F game assets; an import process accepts a compatible disc image or installation folder. That is a useful route back to a game whose mixture of shooting and strange powers deserves to be explored without first negotiating every old control convention. The forehead gem can stay. The awkward input arrangements get another look.
CyberMage: Darklight Re-Awakening on GitHub
🏴☠️ Monkey Island discovers the terror of a loose brick
Fan proposal · LEGO Ideas
The most feared weapon in the Caribbean: one loose brick.
Builder Pester78 has proposed a Monkey Island diorama through LEGO Ideas, celebrating the first two adventures with a double-sided arrangement of familiar places and characters. The design includes the tavern, Stan’s corner, the Voodoo Lady and the Giant Monkey Head, with Guybrush and company joining the miniature scenery.
It is a fan proposal, not an announced LEGO product. The attraction is the way these locations can become a little physical theatre for the games’ absurd logic. A model you can turn around is an especially appropriate home for a world that rewards poking at everything. Somewhere, a pirate is already trying to combine a rubber chicken with the instruction booklet.
Monkey Island proposal on LEGO Ideas
🎵 An Atari composer with two voices and plenty of ambition
Creative tool spotlight
Two voices. An entire orchestra of ambition.
YAJA 2600 Composer offers a modern piano-roll and sequencer approach to music for the Atari 2600. It works with the TIA chip’s limitations, including its two sound channels and the unusual pitches available from different tones. The creator built it for the game Nebulords before sharing it with other developers.
Exports include batari Basic code and WAV audio, making it useful both for game work and for hearing what those constraints can produce. A familiar editing interface does not remove the hardware’s character; it gives you a clearer way to work with it. Two voices may sound restrictive, but a memorable tune has never required an entire orchestra. The conductor might disagree.
🗝️ Solomon’s Key gets a fresh coat of magic
ROM-hack spotlight
The dungeon has been redecorated. The puzzles have not softened.
The Master System version of Solomon’s Key has a set of improvement hacks from Mini-Revver, including a graphics overhaul. The project page describes redrawn and recoloured sprites, revised items and zodiac symbols, a refined palette, additional animation work and changes to the HUD and ending.
It is a focused way to revisit a familiar puzzle game: more care in how the pieces look, while the rooms can still demand care in how you use them. The arcade version informs part of the visual direction, but this remains work on the Master System game. Dana has apparently found time to redecorate between creating blocks, avoiding enemies and wondering why the key is never conveniently nearby.
Solomon’s Key improvement hacks by Mini-Revver
💌 The NES still receives love letters
Homebrew spotlight · Platform games
A love letter with a cartridge connector.
The idea of writing a love letter to eight-bit platform games has a particularly tangible form when the result is built for the NES itself. Matt Hughson’s Super Sunny World is one documented example, with eight worlds, secrets, power-ups and boss encounters described on its project page.
The appeal is not simply to resemble an old game in a screenshot. It is to build something whose movement, levels and surprises can hold attention on the hardware that inspired it. Nostalgia may get a player to pick up the controller; the next jump still has to feel right.
📚 Teaching a new PC how an old PC behaved
How it works · PC emulation
No shortcuts. The manual is watching.
Building a PC emulator means deciding which details of the original machine actually matter. MartyPC is a useful documented example: its focus on early IBM PC hardware includes careful CPU and device behaviour, with tools that expose what is happening inside the emulated system.
That is a more interesting challenge than simply making an old program appear on screen. Software can depend on timing and hardware quirks as well as the instructions listed in a manual. The old PC may look simple beside a modern machine, but it has had decades to accumulate ways of being unexpectedly particular.
🚀 AmiGalaga brings another insect problem to the A500
Amiga port spotlight
The insects have discovered another machine to invade.
AmiGalaga recreates Galaga for a stock PAL Amiga 500 with OCS and 512 KB of chip RAM, using 68000 assembly and Amiga-specific rendering. The developer describes arcade-speed play on a 50 Hz display, with capture, rescue, dual fighters, challenging stages and saved high scores.
There are useful limits to know: the repository requires your own compatible arcade ROM set for building, NTSC is unsupported, and the documented testing is in emulation rather than on real hardware. Heavier optional settings can occasionally repeat a frame. Those details make the achievement more interesting, not less: this is careful work inside a small machine’s boundaries. The aliens have simply found another place to queue up.
🗺️ Moraff’s dungeons find a more comfortable front door
Upcoming remaster · Listed as coming soon
The dungeon is familiar. The dustbin is still hostile.
Moraff’s Dungeons revisits the grid-based, first-person dungeon crawling of Moraff’s Dungeons of the Unforgiven. Its Steam description presents a remaster with a modern interface, optional elements from Moraff’s World and balance adjustments.
For anyone who remembers the series, the attraction is a familiar kind of exploration presented in a form intended to be easier to approach. The Steam page currently lists the game as coming soon. What needs no launch date is the old temptation to inspect one more corridor. It is rarely just one more corridor, and the inventory knows it.
🐕 Fetch ’83 gives the Atari a proper bark
Technical demo · 30 September 2026
Fetch the cartridge. Leave the industry crash buried.
Fetch ’83 is a small Atari 2600 game with a very specific technical trick: a digitally sampled dog bark plays while the picture remains on screen. Developer Newbroo Games squeezed the experiment into a 4 KB cartridge, using one TIA channel as a four-bit digital-to-analogue output.
The game itself is deliberately modest: aim, throw the ball, let the dog retrieve it and work towards 50 points. The developer presents it as a proof of concept for larger work, and notes that the PAL build was tested in Stella rather than on a PAL console. The important performance is the dog’s. After decades of electronic bleeps, it has finally negotiated a speaking part.
Fetch ’83 developer announcement at AtariAge
🟨 A yellow screen is where the investigation starts
Workbench notes · Amiga diagnosis
Yellow is a clue, not a diagnosis.
An Amiga that greets you with a yellow screen is giving you a symptom, not a complete parts list. A useful investigation records the exact machine, board revision, ROM and recent changes before deciding which component deserves the blame.
DiagROM is a purpose-built diagnostic ROM project for the Amiga, with tests intended to help investigate hardware problems. It offers a more structured route than swapping parts on the strength of one colour alone. This is general diagnostic context, not a diagnosis of a particular A500 or a claim that every Kickstart labelled “2.05” is interchangeable. The machine may be old, but it still deserves better than a repair strategy based entirely on vibes.
🛠️ New tools keep opening the NES workshop
Development tool spotlight
Build the engine. Then remember to build the game.
Making a game for the NES still leaves plenty of room for new tools. NESFab is a programming language and compiler designed for that work, providing an alternative to writing everything directly in assembly. Its documentation and examples make it a useful starting point for exploring the subject.
A language and compiler are not the same thing as a complete drag-and-drop game engine, and the hardware’s constraints do not disappear when the syntax improves. They do, however, change how a developer can approach the job. The next cartridge still begins with someone deciding to build something.
🏁 Turbo reaches 45, without lifting off
From the archives · 1981–2026
Forty-five years later, the steering wheel still starts arguments.
Sega’s Turbo, released in 1981, reaches its 45th anniversary in 2026. The racing game belongs to an era when an arcade cabinet’s wheel and pedals could make the promise of driving feel especially immediate, long before a home console could casually reproduce the whole spectacle.
An anniversary is a good excuse to look at the game on its own terms. Its road, traffic and changing scenery turn the simple instruction to keep moving into a test of attention. The cabinet may be a museum piece now, but the urge to lean into a corner has not become any more dignified.
Turbo at the Museum of the Game
🚁 Comanche’s hills were hiding in plain sight
Technical reading · 29 September 2026
Those hills have been hiding in the files all along.
Gustavo Pezzi’s investigation into Comanche: Maximum Overkill takes a satisfying route from mysterious game files to readable terrain maps. The article explains how the game’s height and colour data can be decoded, including the discovery that its map files use a modified PCX structure.
The result is a practical lesson in reverse engineering: inspect the bytes, form a hypothesis and test it with a small program. You do not need to turn every finding into a full remake for the work to be valuable. Sometimes understanding where a landscape came from is its own reward. Those rolling hills looked magical in 1992; learning how they were stored does not make them any less clever.
Gustavo Pezzi’s Comanche investigation at Pikuma
🧰 Tyche gives PowerPC a new desktop workbench
Hardware announcement · 26 September 2026
A new board arrives with some very modern luggage.
ACube Systems and Power Progress Community have announced Powerboard Tyche, a Micro ATX motherboard built around NXP’s 64-bit T2080 processor. The published specification includes four dual-threaded cores, DDR3/DDR3L ECC memory support, NVMe connections and PCI Express expansion.
The announcement describes support for 64-bit Linux, including Debian and Fienix. It should not be read as a promise that every Amiga operating system already runs on it, or as evidence that retail stock is immediately available; the announcement also points to supporting prototype production. The interesting part is the continued effort to give Power Architecture enthusiasts a practical desktop platform. Apparently the hardware club has not finished rearranging its workbench.
🍄 A Super FX experiment gives Mario another unlikely address
Prototype spotlight
The cartridge has been asked to think outside its dimensions.
A Super FX-based SNES experiment from Game of Tobi explores how far a Super Mario 64-inspired world can be pushed on much earlier hardware. It is the sort of project that makes an old cartridge connector look like an invitation to negotiate with the laws of computer graphics.
The distinction matters: a demonstration of scenes and movement is not the same as a complete, faithful port of the Nintendo 64 game. The interesting work lies in the compromises needed to make the idea function at all. Viewed as an experiment, it is a fine excuse to inspect the Super FX’s possibilities. Viewed as a demand for the entire original game, it would be a rather unfair performance review.
Game of Tobi’s Super Mario FX demonstration
🎼 Mario’s Master System orchestra gets an FM section
Sound spotlight
The tune is familiar. The orchestra has changed.
The Master System port of Super Mario Bros. includes an optional sound mode for the YM2413 FM synthesizer, with music inspired by Super Mario All-Stars. It gives familiar tunes a different instrumental wardrobe.
The hardware requirement is specific: a console with a YM2413 is needed, and the developer explicitly excludes the Sega Mark III’s FM Sound Unit from compatibility with this mode. Check the setup before planning the concert. Recognising a melody takes a moment; making it behave on another sound system takes rather longer.
Super Mario Bros. SMS project on GitHub
💾 FerriteWeazle puts a friendly face on floppy preservation
Utility spotlight
The floppy collection finally gets a welcoming front desk.
FerriteWeazle is a graphical front end for Greaseweazle, the hardware-and-software system used to read and write floppy disks at the flux level. The project offers builds for Windows, macOS and Linux, bringing drive operations, image conversion and batch work into a desktop interface.
The attraction is practical: disk analysis, format detection and retry controls are easier to explore when the collection is staring back at you from several cardboard boxes. It still needs the appropriate floppy hardware, and a pleasant interface cannot restore information that a damaged disk no longer yields. What it can do is make a careful preservation session less of a command-line memory test. The box marked “sort later” has fewer excuses left.
🌌 OpenPrivateer clears the launch bay for its public alpha
Public alpha
Another cargo run. Another suspicious repair bill.
OpenPrivateer is a modern reimplementation of Wing Commander: Privateer and its Righteous Fire expansion. The project is now in public alpha, using data from your own copy of the original games to recreate their spaceflight, bases, missions and trading systems.
The official page puts faithful behaviour first and describes compatibility with original save files, alongside builds for modern desktop systems. Alpha is the important word: this is an invitation to try a developing engine, with the usual possibility of rough edges. The original game data is not included. For anyone who remembers treating a cargo hold like a business plan, however, another route into the Gemini Sector is welcome. The repair bill will probably still ruin the profit margin.
OpenPrivateer official project page
👹 Doom64 squeezes the demons into a Commodore
Homebrew release · Updated 8 October 2026
The demons have found a smaller address.
Kweepa’s Doom64 is a Commodore 64 project, with the number referring to a very different machine from Nintendo’s. Version 1.0 arrived on 30 September, followed by October updates adding music, quick saving and loading, and control adjustments. The creator page currently lists 1.11.1.
Its design makes deliberate trade-offs: height changes and lighting take priority over textured walls, while hand-edited maps fit the game to its small host. Separate disk images cater for setups with and without the Krill fastloader. The result is interesting precisely because the C64 cannot simply swallow the original PC game whole. Every familiar-looking corridor is the product of a negotiation. The demons have accepted smaller accommodation, though apparently not better manners.
🗃️ G-Copy belongs on the floppy workbench
Utility finder
Copy first. Panic later, preferably never.
Looking for G-Copy? Its home is ESComputing, where the developer provides the software and documentation. The project connects the familiar business of handling Amiga disks with modern interfaces, including Greaseweazle and DrawBridge support; its documented arrangements include two Greaseweazle controllers acting as DF0 and DF1.
That makes the official page a better starting point than a mystery archive with an ambiguous filename. Check the manual against the controller and drive you actually have, and make sure the destination is the disk you intend to write. The appeal of this corner of retro computing is wonderfully concrete: a readable image, a working disk and one fewer irreplaceable item left to chance. Nobody ever wished they had made fewer backups.
🔎 Monkey Island looks different through a larger window
Practical feature · Display settings
A bigger island still needs the same rubber chicken.
Making Monkey Island comfortable on a modern display does not always require replacing its artwork. ScummVM offers graphics settings for scaling, filtering and aspect-ratio handling, providing a useful starting point for deciding how those original pixels should occupy a much larger screen.
A sharp enlargement and a smoothing filter create different impressions, and neither choice adds detail to the original art. Try the available modes with a familiar scene before settling on one. The island can grow to fill the monitor; the puzzle that stopped you years ago may remain exactly the same size.
ScummVM graphics settings documentation
🏎️ SP13KTRA packs a racing holiday into a tiny suitcase
Homebrew spotlight · Browser and Dreamcast
Eight tracks, one tiny suitcase.
Frank Force’s SP13KTRA turns the strict size limit of js13kGames into a futuristic racing game with eight ships and eight tracks. The project combines compact code, generated content and music with an energy-based turbo system. Its creator repository also points to a Dreamcast release, giving the small browser-born racer another place to stretch its legs.
The interesting achievement is not merely fitting a moving picture into very little space. It is finding enough variation inside that constraint to make another lap appealing. Small-file development rewards ideas that do several jobs at once, and racing is a fine test of whether the economy can stay invisible while you play. The suitcase is tiny; the urge to beat the next corner is not.
SP13KTRA by Frank Force on GitHub
🌊 An N64 engine makes room for water, cloth and ambition
Development demo
The water physics appear to be working.
Zoncabe’s Engine64 is a homebuilt Nintendo 64 engine using libdragon and Tiny3D. Its creator describes roughly three years of work and offers a demo ROM, with features including rigid-body physics, water and buoyancy, cloth, animation and positional audio.
The download gives the idea something tangible: a way to explore what the engine does, on a suitable emulator or real hardware with an appropriate cartridge setup. A technology demo is not a finished commercial game, but it can be a convincing argument for what a future one might attempt. There is a particular pleasure in seeing an older machine asked a new question. In this case, the question seems to involve how much of the scenery can be made to wobble.
Engine64 by Zoncabe on itch.io
🍄 Mario takes the scenic route through Sega territory
Homebrew port spotlight
The neighbour has borrowed the console.
Super Mario Bros. for the Sega Master System recreates the NES game on different hardware and adds optional graphics inspired by Super Mario All-Stars. The developer aims for close gameplay accuracy while stopping short of promising perfection.
That makes it an entertaining project to inspect beyond a longplay: familiar jumps become a test of how faithfully the important details survive translation. The repository documents the available modes and changes. The pleasure lies in recognising the game immediately, then remembering which machine is doing the work. Console loyalties can take the afternoon off.
Super Mario Bros. SMS project on GitHub
🏛️ World’s Edge cuts put the people behind the classics in focus
Industry report · 27 September 2026
A familiar name on the box cannot replace the people behind it.
PC Gamer reports major layoffs at World’s Edge, citing former staff including Adam Isgreen and Andrew Martz. Their accounts describe cuts affecting just under half the studio and cancellation of its next project, alongside a move under Activision.
The report does not establish that Age of Empires is ending. It does highlight a preservation problem: keeping a familiar name alive is different from keeping its experienced team together. The human cost deserves attention.
PC Gamer’s report on World’s Edge
⌨️ The C64C shape gets another turn at the desk
Hardware announcement · C64 Ultimate family
Same family. A different tailoring appointment.
Commodore has announced a C64C Edition of the C64 Ultimate, bringing the slimmer keyboard-computer silhouette into its modern hardware line. The announcement says the case uses the original C64C tooling, tying the new machine’s appearance to the familiar 1980s form.
The useful distinction is between an announced product and an independently confirmed shipment. The official announcement sets out the edition and its planned arrival; it does not by itself prove that a particular first batch has reached customers. As a hardware story, the attraction is clear enough: some people remember the breadbin, others remember the flatter machine that followed. Nostalgia apparently has strong opinions about the height of a keyboard.
Commodore’s C64C Edition announcement
📸 Let the Amiga take its own photograph
Utility spotlight · SGrab
The camera can finally take the evening off.
SGrab, by Stephan Rupprecht, is a screen-grabbing utility with a graphical interface for the Amiga. Its Aminet package remains a useful place to start when the goal is to capture a desktop directly, rather than photograph the monitor and hope the reflections behave.
Compatibility comes first: the package lists AmigaOS 3 or later and a 68020 or better. That rules out treating it as a universal answer for every stock A500. Match the tool to the machine, then check the captured image before sharing it. An emulator’s own capture controls may be more convenient for an emulated setup. Either way, a clean screenshot is a small kindness to everyone trying to read your Workbench.
🚪 A first game release deserves a proper front door
Creator feature · Publishing the first build
The hardest button to press is sometimes Publish.
Finishing a game is one achievement; making it easy for somebody else to try is another. itch.io’s creator guide walks through the second job: setting up a project page, describing the game, adding screenshots, uploading builds and choosing when the page becomes public.
For a small retro project, the most useful details are often the least glamorous. Say which machine or emulator the build needs, explain the controls and make the download easy to recognise. A private preview gives you room to check everything before publication. The first release does not need to pretend it is a blockbuster. It needs to give a curious player a fair chance to discover why you made it.
itch.io’s first project page guide
☎️ CompuServe’s next destination is the archive
From the archives · Online history
Before the web, there was still a queue to get online.
Before a browser tab became the default doorway to everything, services such as CompuServe gave people a different kind of online address. Preserving that history means keeping more than a remembered login sound. Documents, photographs and the records of the people who built the service matter too.
The Computer History Museum has described the effort to rescue and preserve CompuServe archival material, turning a fragile collection of physical records into something future researchers can use. It is a reminder that internet history has cupboards, boxes and moving-day problems, just like any other history. The modem may have stopped making its entrance, but the paperwork still has stories to tell.
The Computer History Museum’s CompuServe archive story
🏍️ The Amiga Sidecar took compatibility rather literally
From the archives · A1060 restoration
Compatibility came with its own parking space.
The Commodore A1060 Sidecar gave an Amiga 1000 an IBM-compatible companion, attached to the side of the machine and controlled through the Amiga. It is a wonderfully physical answer to a software compatibility problem: if one computer cannot run the program, bring another computer along.
Richard Körber’s restoration series follows an actual Sidecar through inspection, repairs and testing. That makes it especially useful reading for anyone interested in what survives beneath the case, including old modifications and the less glamorous work of finding out why something does not start. The photographs and detailed account are a better guide to the machine’s character than a specification alone. Desk space, however, remains firmly outside the compatibility layer.
Richard Körber’s Sidecar restoration series
🌿 Sometimes an Atari only needs a waterfall
From the archives · Homebrew demo culture
The console has scheduled a quiet afternoon.
A small homebrew experiment does not need a score counter to be worth making. The Atari 7800 Waterfall demo, recorded in the homebrew archive in October 2021, is a useful reminder of the quieter side of console programming: making a scene move simply because you want to see it move.
This is a return to an older demo, not a newly announced game. Its broader appeal is easy to recognise. A limited palette, repeated motion and an old television can create a place to linger, even when nobody is asking you to save the world. After enough games full of deadlines, enemies and disappearing platforms, a console taking a moment to look at the scenery feels like a reasonable development plan.
The Waterfall demo in the creator’s AtariAge thread
🌱 Maiya brings a new walk through the forest to Neo Geo
Homebrew work in progress
The forest has room for one more arcade adventure.
Maiya: Super Nature Girl is a work-in-progress Neo Geo homebrew project included in the NeoGeoSDK 1.7.1 prerelease. Its action-platforming systems include horizontal and vertical scrolling, climbing, character animation, enemies and collision handling, with builds offered for hardware testing.
The useful label is still work in progress. A playable build is an encouraging milestone, and the release invites testing and feedback while development continues. Following a project at this stage lets you see the less tidy, more interesting part of game creation: systems becoming a place, and a place gradually becoming an adventure. The forest has not closed for construction; it is simply still growing.
Maiya’s NeoGeoSDK prerelease on GitHub
🧱 The newest addition is also a good excuse to catalogue the shelf
Collector’s corner · Master System
There is always room for one more. Allegedly.
Adding one more game to a Master System collection is a perfectly respectable reason to rearrange the shelf. It is also a useful moment to record exactly what you have. SMS Power!’s game catalogue provides a reference organised by system, title and region, with routes into release information and related material.
That context can matter more than a triumphant photograph. Similar-looking boxes may represent different editions, and a collection becomes easier to understand when its owner keeps a few notes alongside it. There is always room for one more cartridge; apparently the spreadsheet must make room too.
💎 Final Fantasy VII’s decompilation has a different kind of boss fight
Preservation project
The next boss is a function without a name.
The Final Fantasy VII decompilation project works towards reconstructing the PlayStation game’s code in a form that can be built and checked against the original. Its repository documents the setup, including the need for the supported original game data, rather than presenting a newly finished replacement game.
Matching work is demanding because “looks right” is a much weaker test than “compiles to the expected instructions”. Progress happens function by function, with tools and careful comparison doing much of the heavy lifting. The value is in making an important game more understandable and creating foundations for further work. There is no reason to invent a completion percentage to make that interesting. Sometimes the most stubborn enemy is simply a routine whose purpose nobody has named yet.
Final Fantasy VII decompilation on GitHub
🛡️ Hägar still has unfinished business on the Amiga
From the archives · 1991
Raiding is hungry work.
Hägar, KingSoft’s 1991 Amiga game, is a reminder that the machine’s catalogue contains more than the handful of titles that always appear in anniversary lists. The familiar Viking gives this particular rediscovery a face that is difficult to mistake for a sensible expedition leader.
For owners returning to it, WHDLoad’s installer page provides a concrete technical reference, with the installation package, requirements and notes about supported game data. The installer is not the complete original game, so read those instructions before assuming a download is everything you need. As a retrospective, the appeal is the detour itself: another corner of the Amiga shelf, another old adventure and another opportunity to discover that your reflexes have aged more than the protagonist.
The Hägar installer at WHDLoad