It's not often you hear about developers working on new SNES games these days, and it's even rarer to hear about one that was fully created in just ten hours.
'Keeping SNES Alive' is a brand new game from developer Dr. Ludos, who recently released another game for the SNES called Yo-Yo Shuriken - which came on a physical cart and everything. This new release was created for the Ludum Dare 46 game jam event and actually features the older Yo-Yo Shuriken game within it. SNESception.
The game itself is very simple, with players having to make a SNES cartridge (which is where that older release comes in) jump from one console to another while trying to keep each console's timer running. You see, each console has a countdown clock, and you'll need to make sure the cartridge successfully lands inside its slot before that countdown ends. Doing so resets the countdown for that machine, and you'll find yourself quickly hopping between each of the four SNES consoles on screen.
You can play the game for free online, or you can download the ROM file to play on a SNES emulator or a real console if you own a flash cart. Dr. Ludos says, "All in all, I spent about 10 hours in total making the game (I wish I could have more time, but real life isn't always as you hoped). I spent about 2 additional hours cleaning up and commenting the code, as I hope it'll help and motivate you to start making new SNES games too!"
We don't have much experience with developing games, but being able to publish a fully-working SNES game in ten hours seems pretty impressive to us. Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
Comments 15
I'm not sure why you keep writing articles about Dr. Ludos' retro homebrew titles. They're decent but unremarkable.
You can't keep up the charade of "Wow someone's still making SNES and Game Boy games" when these articles become commonplace.
Ludlum Dare’s great fun, I’ve taken part a few times now. I probably should have done this one, it’s not like I’m particularly busy thanks to lockdown!
I've had a quick play of this new game, and it was a fun little distraction. I kind of got a 'Game and Watch' style of gameplay vibe from playing this for some reason, and made in 10 hours? WOW I think this is pretty awesome!
Or it could be after trying to get a super high score from playing Fire on Game and Watch Gallery Advance.
I would guess it's probably not very good.
I don't have to worry about keeping my snes alive. I haven't stopped playing it since i got the thing! Oh sure technology has changed and systems have come and gone but old faithful is always plugged right into my TV anytime I'm in a mood for the classics. Back when games were games and not interactive movies.
Cool he's still making SNES games, I just wish it was more than a game jam game. Chances are it will appear in one of those 999,999 games on 1 cartridge.
Now that was quick! I love new games for legacy systems!
If you're one person, and decide to do a game in ten hours, this seems like a reasonable target. You'd have a good amount of time for balancing the fun, after getting it playable.
But ten hours in itself isn't impressive for getting something playable on most platforms, unless maybe we're talking Sega Saturn.
Duration wise, most game jams come in the varieties of 'weekend jam', meaning 36 - 48 hours, '8-hour jams', which you can host in justs one day, and '0 hour jams', which really means 59 minutes. Point is, you gotta be real quick.
People make some quite amazing things at eight hour jams.
Would love some quality Dev team to make new SNES games. The system still had more potential.
I rather buy a game that took months or even years to develop. I even played better homebrew titles than this.
Meh I rather play that New Super Mario Land remake from a few months ago. I'm sure a fan made game about a jumping plumber that goes somewhere is better than a fan made game about a jumping cartridge which goes nowhere.
@Axelay71 Gamester81 still make Super NES games. Super Fighter Team also still make Super NES games as was Piko Interactive and if they didn't ruin their reputation on PAPRIUM, WaterMelon, the creator of Pier Solar could had finish their Super NES project too.
@retro_player_77
Yes I know about them, and water melon game’s dont make me laugh. They still have £60.00 of my money thanks to Paprium on Megadrive. That game won’t ever materialise. Won’t buy anything from them again. Im talking about developers with the caliber of NG DEV Team producing SNES game’s.
Wow, the standards for labeling something a game have definitely plummeted...
But even all kidding aside, this is not a game. It's a playable tech demo at most, but it doesn't deserve the title game.
I have seen amateur devs put games together real quick like that, it's usually just an exercise in abilities, but the games always seem to be very simple and not that good.
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