Japanese PC Engine Homebrew projects

[Punch]

I just realized that I know a grand total of zero games developed by the nihonese for the PC Engine, and I've been searching for it but I can't find anything.

Given that Japan had the Develo box thing to play with it's kinda odd to not see games made by them. There are some tape dumps of Famicom BASIC games so there must be something for it... even if it's only just a handful of silly basic demos.

[esteban]

Excellent topic.

[Michirin9801]

Please, someone who has the knowledge, answer to this thread and share your knowledge with us!
I'd love to know that too!

[Pokun]

The only ones I know about are the ones on the Develo Starterkit Assembler and Basic CDs and the Develo Magazine CD (only volume 1 seems to be floating around on internet). Both homebrew coded in the Assembler and the Basic version of Develo. According to the CDs themselves they where selected from programs that first appeared in the magazine MSX-FAN, sent in by readers.

All these 3 CDs are full of programs, artwork, songs and a few games made by readers. One is even using the mouse.

[elmer]

All these 3 CDs are full of programs, artwork, songs and a few games made by readers. One is even using the mouse.

Cool stuff, thanks for pointing those out! 

Yeah, I can see that 1st magazine CD is available online ... have you actually looked at the stuff on it?

Is there anything to recommend?

[Punch]

There's two homebrews on Vol. 1 according to MobyGames. Is that true? That's a disappointing number, you'd expect at least a dozen given that they could theoretically put hundreds of projects in the CD.

edit: "PC Engine Fan: Special CD-ROM Vol. 1 contained a simplified version of the game Virgin Dream as well as two homebrew games; Frisbee Ken John and Maru-Maru" - wikipedia

The Frisbee game is probably the same as the one on the Develo disc, Maru-Maru is unique (if you consider only both discs... wish I had a listing of games for all develo magazine CDs.)

[SuperPlay]

If my memory serves me right there are some homebrew titles on the Ultrabox series of CD Roms

[Pokun]

Is there anything to recommend?

It was a long time ago I played these so I don't remember anything that stands out. I remember that frisbee game (you are a dog that tries to catch a frisbee thrown at you over and over), a racing game (like HuZero but more simple), a very hard game where you bounce on disappearing platforms (very primitive graphics), some sound test-like programs and the mentioned mouse rakugaki program (I recently tried this one with my mouse).

There's nothing really great, just fun to see that people actually made their own creations for the system.

The number of homebrew games aren't great, but there are also lots of other things like artwork and songs made with those public tools on these CDs. I think Develo Magazine also had demos of commercial PC Engine games like Fray on the CD as well. And the Develo Starterkit CDs of course has the Develo software on the CD for communicating with the Develo Box peripheral and a PC.

[Arkhan]

I spoke to people last week who were shocked in the first place that I used Develo for PC Engine development at one point.   

They laughed and applauded it and didn't know of anyone who had done anything with it except dick around. 

PC Engine development doesn't seem to be happening over there from what I saw.  It's mostly MSX, Famicom, and PC 6001 (wtflol).

I also noted that there seems to be more hardware than software.

the racing game Pokun speaks of is pretty fun for what it is, but it is basically an MSX BASIC type-in game, lol.