NES Love

By: Derek Yu

On: February 22nd, 2010

This is kind of amazing: homebrew developer Sivak has just released Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril, a new NES (actual NES) Metroidvania that’s inspired by Kayin’s I Wanna Be the Guy and NES classics like Mega Man. It features 550 rooms, 30+ enemy types, and 8 bosses. There are 5 difficulty settings and a password system, too.

The cartridge, which is region-free and works on clone systems, can be purchased for $27. It comes with a full-color instruction manual and black dust sleeve.

Sivak has released a few other homebrew NES carts, I believe, although the only one I could find was Mystic Pillars, a Columns-like. Here’s a short interview that Screw Attack did with him earlier this month about Battle Kid.

(Thanks, Luke!)

Speaking of Mega Man, Cutman Mike (I really like that name!) is working on an FPS deathmatch based on the venerable Capcom series. Mega Man 8-bit Deathmatch, which is being made using the Skulltag engine, will let you play as every single Robot Master from Mega Man 1 through 6 (48 in total) and use all of their abilities (Mega Man himself is also a playable character)! The game will be released some time in 2010 as a free standalone title.

(Source: Duncan Bell, via Twitter)

P.S. This reminds me of Mega Man 2.5D, another fan game that’s based on Mega Man 2. That game is also planned for a 2010 release.

  • http://jerom-bd.blogspot.com/ Jerom

    Awesome!
    Nice musics too! .. who is the composer?

  • Jesus

    Now this is art.

  • Apprauuuu

    Ok the megaman deathmatch ist just THE SHIT! =D

  • alastair

    Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril looks pretty good. Looks like it actually has descent design in comparison to IWBTG.

  • Foppy

    Both games look like fun. Keep up the good work. :)

  • Tye The Czar

    I bet a good idea would be to get Nintendo to release this on Virtual Console or WiiWare, then it would get more coverage and attention.

  • SirNiko

    There were 46 robot masters in Megaman 1-6. Megaman 1 only had 6 stages, after all.

    I wonder if he’s going to keep the rock/paper/scissors weakness chart for the masters and powers.

    -SirNiko

  • Levi

    I bought my copy of Battle Kid the instant it popped up on RetroUSB. I’ve been waiting for this game. Played the demo, it’s good. Like a straight combination between IWBTG and Mega Man.

  • http://www.phubans.com phubans

    Now this… is freakin’ AWESOME O_O

  • http://www.smallcavegames.blogspot.com SmallCaveGames

    holy farts – that’s awesome – just trying out all of the characters would be boner inducing

  • Paint by Numbers

    Holy wow, Battle Kid – it’s amazing just how long the NES has technically been holding out.

    And oh hell yes, Megaman Deathmatch. I hope Plant Man gets some love here, because he’s totally underrated.

  • The Kid: Recoving Sodomy Victim

    THANK YOU SIR MAY I HAVE ANOTHER.

  • Allen Yu

    Oh my God. I want to pull down my pants and masturbate to that Mega Man video.

  • http://www.playthisthing.com Dustin

    Go for it.

    Here’s a link to the demo (I found it at the end of the video above).

    http://www.nintendoage.com/media/_usermedia/attachments/BK-demo1.zip

    This really is kind of amazing.

  • Hijongo

    Fortress of Peril looks amazing. However, I am sad. The idea(gimmick) of selling the game as an actual NES game may be a nice way to sell copies(seeing as they are out of stock), selling it solely as a cartridge is a bad move. I for one am eager to play the game, yet I am put of by the $27 price tag(which may or may not be worth it, I’ve yet to try the demo)and the previously mentioned sold-out-ness of the game. I hope in time, he will release the game as a full ROM, for a smaller cost, getting rid of the quantity problem, as well as reaching a larger audience.

  • Anthony Flack

    Print more carts please!

  • Grifter

    As cool as I think Megaman 8 Bit Deathmatch is, I fear Capcom will consider it an infringement on their intellectual property and threaten Cutman Mike with a lawsuit if he doesn’t take it off the net. Here’s keeping my fingers crossed Capcom is a good sport about fan appreciation of their merchandise! :-|

  • falsion

    They are. Just look at the Capcom Unity blog. They love fan works.

  • http://dead-heat.com Deadheat

    Now that looks…SWEEET!

  • http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

    I really liked the demo of Battle Kid, but seems like the author doesn’t want to sell the game as rom file and sadly I haven’t a working nes… I’ll wait for someone to dump the game and then I’ll gladly buy a cart that i’ll prolly never use (and then play the rom on my gp2x)

  • Jad

    Battle Kid makes me have fuzzy feelings inside. It really is a different beast from a lot of nes-alike indie games I’ve played, there just is something about the actual restrictions that ..

    man I dunno where this tingle comes from but there is some magic about OLD GAM

  • Jad

    even if it’s new

  • tom crab

    A good idea would be to grow up

  • This is totally a

    gimmick ripoff

  • Phasma Felis

    @tom crab: No it wouldn’t. that would be a terrible idea.

  • Cthulhu32

    Wow, he’s sold out already! I’m really glad Sivak and BunnyBoy are getting some notice, the story of how BunnyBoy started is pretty insane. To sum it up, he and another hardware hacker named Kevtris melted the top layer off of the Tengen Nintendo lock-out chip to try to count transistors (binary data) and convert to hex. But instead Kevtris wound up discovering that you could get the Tengen chip to output its entire hex data out of the OUT pin, and from there they reversed it discovered exactly how to create the Ciclone Nintendo lock-out chip. I <3 hardware hacking.

  • Zaratus

    Just played the demo, and it was fantastic. I wish I still had my old NES around and had the money to buy this.

    That first boss was intimidating at first, like “Damn, this is ridiculous” until I adjusted to his pattern. Which is how it *should* be. =p

    I found this, looking around, about Battle Kid, regarding a ROM File for sale:
    —–
    “The guy who makes the carts forbids this. I know that there are people who would pay like $10 for the file, but while production of the physical unit is ongoing, it won’t happen under legit means. The developer wants his cut too, so…

    But the game works fine on real hardware and should be fine on clones considering it’s really not a complex circuit board compared to others.”
    —–
    Which is really about what I figured anyway. If at one point it becomes discontinued or some such, we might see an official ROM release. A release right now would really cut down on people buying the actual cartridges, no reason to do that this early in the release.

  • Anthony Flack

    I do have a working Famicom and the idea of playing new games on it that benefit from a more modern design perspective definitely appeals. The idea of buying indie games on physical media appeals too. I bought an author-produced cartridge of Qwak for the GBA some years ago and I’m glad to have it.

    From what I’ve seen (just based on videos etc) the game doesn’t look especially original (the influence of IWTBTG and Mega Man come across quite strongly) and the artwork doesn’t quite nail the style (especially the cover art), but it still looks like a fun, well-put-together game and the cartridge would be a cool, collectable thing to own. I’d like to see more of this sort of thing.

    Now, if only somebody would port VVVVVV to the NES, and Spelunky to the SNES…

  • http://www.vacuumflowers.com/index.html Sparky

    Battle Kid looks pretty well done.

  • s_D

    Man, that Mega Man Deathmatch looks so awesome.

    Everyone who played Mega Man 2 will know that the Metal Blades would be overpowered ;)

  • Dykem

    Wait wait wait….I thought Mega Man 2.5d was just a concept video and something that will never planned to be made at all?

  • Levi

    MM2.5D is just an animation. It’s not a game in progress, and it will not be released in 2010.