Orphea
Orphea is a short NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) shooter built for Lost Cartridge Jam 2020. It is a designed to be reminiscent of early NES ports of arcade games. Many ports of that era were non-traditional in that they added more non-linear elements to the straight-forward design of their arcade originals.
Orphea was implemented as an actual NES ROM and so must be run in a NES emulator. For convenience, I have packaged this game with the Windows version of FCEUX. You can easily run Orphea by double-clicking on PlayGame.bat to launch the rom in FCEUX. Of course, you can run Orphea in your emulator of choice. If you write the game to a cart, you may even be able to play it on an actual NES (though I haven't tried this.) For more info about FCEUX, see the following page: http://fceux.com/web/home.html.
In Orphea, you must avoid or destroy enemies while navigating the level in order to find a key that will let you go through the door to the boss of the game. Along the way, you may also pick up Bits, small helper ships that will increase your firepower.
The default controls for the game in FCEUX are:
- Arrow Keys to Move (D-Pad)
- Enter to Start Game (Start Button)
- F to Shoot (A Button)
- D to Change Formation of Bits (B Button)
Much of this game was built using the tools and tutorials from https://nesdoug.com/. Without Doug's fabulous website, this game would not have been possible.
The zip file contains the rom and a NES emulator. You can also download the NES rom by itself.
If you want a little surprise, try entering the Konami Code on the title screen before pressing Start. ;)
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $0.50 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
Comments
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Fun little game. The character kind of reminds me of Apollo from Xexyz. I wish there was more to the game, but being a game jam release, I get it. Fun easter egg, too. I played Fire + Rescue a few games before this one haha
Ha! Thank you for playing and trying the Konami code.
Orphea was my first attempt doing something on the NES. I thought it was just going to be a little weekend lark, but I enjoyed making NES games so much that it's now a thing I do regularly.
That's awesome! I've been wanting to get into NES dev myself. It seems like it could be fun.
It's a pretty good time. I've been around the block a fair bit on C/C++ game dev, so the nesdoug.com tutorials were a great fit for me. I like being able to / having to break rules of "good" coding practice to make things work on the NES.
I'm mostly just a dirty script writer lol. Game development seems like a lot of work - I always wear myself out just thinking about the endless branches of logic and things to consider... but I really want to make a game in the style of Shadowgate etc. for the NES, and every year I get somewhat closer to actually trying. I have no experience with ASM, but I do have just enough autism to hyperfocus like a beast on things that interest me.
I bought NESMaker a few years ago, it doesn't quite seem to do what I'm after, but I'm thinking may be I can make something small with that as a starting point, then kinda work backwards to see how it does what it does under the hood and move over to 8bitworkshop when I'm really ready to make my game.
By the way, I returned here to drop a few bucks in the hat and add it to my library. Looks like I can only do that if its PWYW
I super appreciate the gesture.
Do you need it to be PWYW for the dropping a few bucks part or the add to the library part? Or both?
Would want to add it to my library. Doesn't let me if its not PWYW
Huh... what a wacky spec. I presume this is with the itch.io Launcher, yes? I haven't actually used it in years. I'll check it out to see if there's an easy fix I can do on my end.
If you're comfortable sharing more info about your use case, would you mind contacting me by email at rob-at-skyboygamesDOTcom? I'd like to make sure I have details straight in case I need to log a bug with itch.io.
Okay, I think I know what the issue is (and some of the reasoning behind it.) Here's what I can do. I'll temporarily make the game paid for the minimum of $1 and then put it on 100% sale. That way, you can register it in your library.
Done and done. Looking forward to seeing what else you come up with!
Really enjoyed this one. Been playing it on my PowKiddy handheld quite a lot lately. Thanks for making it!
Thank you TigerClaw, that really makes my day.
Nice looking game you got here. It reminds my a mix of the space ship arcade game and contra side scrolling gameplay.
I just have a question, For TigerClawTV, or Skyboy Games. How do you incorporate the rom into a physical device like PowKiddy as TigerClawTV mentioned. I lack technological knowledge and am just interested if possible.
I can't speak to the PowKiddy, but I did put Orphea on my NES Classic for some on-the-tv, real controller fun.
I imagine the general process is to connect a compatible device to your computer (usually using USB) and then transferring the ROM file into the appropriate folder on the device (varies by device.)
For the NES Classic, you have to hack it slightly to allow the installation of custom ROMs. This is relatively easy as it involved downloading a customized OS flashing program that overwrites the NES Classic operating system with a version of the operating system that displays custom ROM files. Once I flashed my NES Classic, I could connect it to my computer and copy Orphea on to it. Voila!
Ah, okay. Thank you for taking your time to explain this process. So most likely you might need to jailbreak/custom firmware your device is what I am kind of getting. Sorry if I am not understanding something. Again, thank yu for this amazing game, it reminds me of the old hard retro arcade games, especially the one retro game with the vertical spaceship shooter game. May you have a grand week of full rest and energy as well as everyone else! :)
A little necro-reply to link in a reference for the process I used to upload games to my NES Classic:
https://www.lifewire.com/add-games-nes-classic-4586505
Hi it's a decent concept but lacking a little in gameplay a little but that's because of how quickly you've put it together, which is impressive. The style is nice - especially the main character, the boss is a cake walk. More of a concept than an actual game but like to see where you take it.
Thank you for the feedback, Qupe.
I'm not sure if I'm going to develop this one more directly, but I might. I do have a vision for it that goes in more of a Rygar/Guardian Legend sort of direction, but to do that there are a bunch of tech hurdles I need to figure out. Basically, I need to grind levels on NES dev so I can unlock the Advanced Memory Mapper skill.
Hopefully you take it somewhere as it does show promise.
Great retro action game! It is in my top 5 of this week!
Check the video!
That's awesome!
Thank you for featuring my game!
Good game. Will the game have more content?
Thank you so much for doing a video!
I'm not sure if I'll be adding more content to this game in particular, but I might spin it off into something more full-fledged. I put this together for a weekend game jam as a way to learn about developing for NES. There are plenty of ideas that ended up on the cutting room floor because of the jam deadline.
I like your game very much. I would be happy too, if you have more some day.
Oh thank you so much!
I don't have plans to continue Orphea itself specifically, but I have lots of other games in the oven for NES. Some of the ideas are definitely influenced by lessons learned from Orphea.
Wow, that sounds great. Thank you for your the information. I'm looking forward to it :-)
Ha. Fun game. Thanks for including the emulator. Dang, an actual NES game. Nice.