
2020 has changed things for a lot of people. While the video game industry has generally done well out of the fact that everyone has had to remain indoors for most of the year, the coronavirus outbreak has had a massively negative effect on other business sectors, with many companies having to lay off staff or even close due to the loss of earnings and general disruption.
Quang Nguyen is one individual who has found himself in such a situation. If you're a keen follower of the retro gaming scene in the UK, then you'll almost certainly know him via his @asobitech Twitter handle, via which he shows off his utterly insane vintage game collection. However, he's also rather good at coding, and actually entered game development way back in 1999, when he started messing around with the Game Boy Development Kit by Pascal Felber and Michael Hope.

Along with his brother, Nguyen decided to create a homebrew port of Jetpac by UK company Ultimate Play The Game, which would, of course, later become Rare. Manfred Linzner from Shin’en (Fast Racing NEO, The Touryst) composed some of the music and sound effects, and the final product was submitted to a competition run by Bung Enterprises, the manufacturer of the GB Xchanger cart which allowed bedroom coders to play their creations on original Game Boy hardware.
It sadly didn't win, but Nguyen's efforts were good enough to get him noticed by UK studio Graphic State Games, which offered him a job making Game Boy Color titles. JetPak DX (as it was known) would be put on ice as Nguyen's professional career began, but it didn't quite go according to plan:
I dropped out of university and accepted the job. Graphic State had acquired the contract to port Re-Volt over to the Game Boy Color. My first industry job was to cram this 3D remote control car racing game, in to a Game Boy Color cartridge in six months. I was the only programmer, naive and inexperienced, but wanted to do well as it was my dream job. I worked diligently, it was a trial by fire. I learned a huge amount, real fast. As the deadline drew near, the project was cancelled. This happens all the time in the industry. To salvage the work done, we turned what we had into an ATV racing game, that we would try to get published. Our next contract was to make two horse riding games, Mary King’s Riding Star and Equestriad 2001. We created prototypes for both, but then got the contract for Lego Stunt Rally. The horses got put on the back burner as we went all in with Lego, we only had three months. I took what I had learned from Re-Volt, and built upon that. As we entered the third month, pressure and stress had been building. Then disaster struck as my hard drive died. I lost everything between the last build and the current. I totally burned out. The boss fired me. I had failed at my dream job and was totally broken.
It was not until 2007 that Nguyen started coding again, and founded Asobitech to create games in his spare time. He's been working on MaoMao Castle: A Magical Cat-Dragon Fantasy Adventure for quite some time, and was due to launch the game this year just as the worst possible news struck – due to the pandemic, he was made redundant from his day job. Rather than allow this to get him down, Nguyen saw it as an opportunity to launch himself into full-time game development, and "invest everything into making this childhood dream job work."
To mark this move, Nguyen decided to return to JetPak DX and release the game on a physical cartridge. He has updated the in-game art with the help of Lucan Monks and has fixed various issues; new weapons and level layouts have been added, earning the game the new moniker Super JetPak DX:
As I type this, I am finishing up the code for Super JetPak DX, so it can be put on the cartridges and sent out. December 2020 posting happens, to the people around the world. Which means there is finally a physical Game Boy game with my name in the credits, 21 years on from when I started making a Game Boy game.
You can pre-order Super JetPak DX here. The game costs £40 (complete with box, manual and bonus ROM download) or £25 for an unboxed cartridge and ROM download. You can also purchase the ROM on its own for £10.
It's been a bumper year for new Game Boy projects, in fact – 2020 has also seen POWA!, Dragonborne and Where Is My Body? all come to the veteran handheld.
[source asobi.tech]
Comments 21
Fair play to the bloke. I wonder how many other people have a similar story? Got screwed over by the Industry and couldn't take it anymore so quit or got fired.
It's cool to finally achieve a dream even if it's years later.
"the coronavirus outbreak has had a massively negative effect on other business sectors, with many companies having to lay off staff or even close due to the loss of earnings and general disruption."
This wouldn't be too big of an issue if people realized that there was a coronavirus outbreak
Gameboy GOTY 2020
Soon as I saw that cover art I knew it was Jetpac. 🚀
Loved the original Jetpac and I love the music on this one - but isn't it a bit TOO inspired by Jonathan Dunn's title track for Ocean's Robocop?
Now THAT was the best 8-bit soundtrack ever! <3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os57CXh6COw
"Our next contract was to make two horse riding games, Mary King’s Riding Star and Equestriad 2001. We created prototypes for both, but then got the contract for Lego Stunt Rally."
Wow, this brings back memories. Equestriad was the first game I was lead on, back in Tantalus. Riding Star was IR Gurus from memory, and I worked there the following year on the Willowbrook Stables game.
If he wanted to do Gameboy Advance, then he might have used the Catapult system.
Memories...
Fingers crossed Rare (or at least their IP lawyers) don't stomp it out of existence. Traditionally they've been accepting of homebrew, but who knows how it will go with a cartridge release being sold.
Say whatever but the dude not only did it but also got noticed. Can’t say this is a happy ending story but rather inspiring! Thanks for this type of content.
Make backups to your hard drive, folks. Especially if your PC is more than a few years old.
"it was a trail by fire"
Wow, he must've run really fast!
Cannot like this article enough
Good for him.
But £10-40 for that 😬
POWA!, Dragonborne and Where Is My Body? on the other hand 👍🏼
I understand his perspective. I like the construction of this game.
The music sounds like it’s from Gameboy’s Robocop.
That's some dedication, good job.
@Entrr_username Oh, people realize. It’s impossible to avoid that information. But, some people don’t actually care, so they walk around without PPE.
@Entrr_username its not just people who got infected with the virus, a lot if businesses outright got shut down or limited from their main source of revenue by government order.
For physical copies, won’t they have to repurpose existing GBC cartridges?
I just know I want that Dragonborne game on Switch SO badly. Perhaps a Kickstarter?
@Tandy255 nope! A number of companies now make reproduction game cartridge shells and PCBs for cart-based consoles like Game Boy / Color / Advance, NES, Genesis / Mega Drive, SNES, etc.
I got the the game in the mail 2 days ago and it's awesome🙌 - I encourage everyone to order it, you'll won't regret it
🤘😎💥
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