This is a demake of Geometry Wars, which is a twin stick shooter - you may have noticed that the Gameboy does not have twin sticks. ➕ 🔴🔴
But I have some ideas for that to try out, either before or after I make the first enemies. I'm starting to get the hang of the hardware and thinking in assembly now, and I have more reusable functions. Progress!
After the kids are in bed I might get two hours where I have the brain function to get stuck into assembly coding. When I hit a problem bigger than two hours I get stuck for a while. This was the case moving specific movement and render code I wrote for the player to be more generic for entities including bullets and enemies. Now I'm unstuck this is looking more like a game.
So many fond memories of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved.
I used to work in Microsoft’s Xbox division during the launch of the Xbox 360. During our breaks, we could play Xbox games. There weren’t many to choose from, but one of them that I kept coming back to again and again was Geometry Wars.
Now my first exposure to video games was the Atari 2600. And I also spent lots of time in arcades as a kid. Thus, I spent lots of time on games like Asteroids, Defender and Galaga.
Even as all the other kids on the block had Nintendo Entertainment Systems, I was stuck with an Atari 2600 for a long, long time. So while everyone else seemed to have the latest and greatest, I had to imagine better graphics on my aging 2600.
Geometry Wars is what I imagined video games too be like in the future. By standards of the 2000s, it had simple graphics. But damn, did it make the most of those simple graphics! My favourite part was how the grid would “weave” when things got intense on screen. You couldn’t do that with a 2600.
But what made me love the game was that it was the first twin stick shooter with a true 80s arcade feel. I know Geometry Wars wasn’t the first to do it, but I think it was the first to do it well. Geometry Wars was most definitely an “evolution” of 80s arcade games, but it kept the spirit intact.
You don’t see many games like this any more – at least ones that are popular. But I remember in the ‘00s, this game was everywhere. People loved it. For a brief moment, that 80s arcade goodness made a comeback.
For awhile there, Geometry Wars was a legit franchise. We got lots of sequels, the last one being released in 2016. But I’m not sure if the modern landscape of gaming is friendly to this kind of early 80s arcade goodness. Nowadays, a game like this would probably be dismissed as “too simple”.
But damn it, sometimes simple is good! I don’t always want to know about characters inner motivations or the dystopic nature of a futuristic society. Sometimes I’d rather just try for the high score.
@CodexArcanum@atomicpoet yep, that's mine. well spotted! i'm a huge fan of the Geometry Wars series.
it's not finished because i got distracted figuring out how to hack dual analog stick support into PICO-8, and succeeded: https://github.com/VyrCossont/Pinput
someday i hope to come back to it and put the music and snakes in.