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I'm trying to decide whether or not you might possibly be the real Doc Brown.  Does that little yellow car run on plutonium by any chance?

Lol.

Oh, man.  Clever idea.  It's very fitting to create a game for a retro console that has such an old school theme. I feel like it was just yesterday when I was defragging my mechanical hard drives, but I don't remember it being so rad.  😎

It feels finished now, and it looks, sounds, and plays great.  I love the steaming coffee on the title screen.

Looking forward to trying all of your latest revisions, (you've been busy!) but I am particularly interested in this game.  I love the physics in Seesaw.

This is impressive.  I love the parallax and the weapon modes.  Nice work so far.

The controls are great.  The tutorial is a nice improvement over 90's cinematic platformers.

Yeah, he did full color plates for books. That was back in the day when the illustrations were on separate pages in color that were inserted into the book. He also did tons of etchings that ended up being black and white spot illustrations all throughout his books.

I noticed a nice little detail in the high score screen.  It's an illustration from Arthur Rackham, an amazing illustrator from long ago, and one of my favorite artists.  Very nice touch.  I also noticed some of your new music in the game, and I think it's a perfect fit.  Congrats on everything coming together good sir.  As for the game, it's fun and quick to learn.  Reminds me of a couple of classic arcade games, (Three Stooges and Food Fight) but with a more lethal flare.

Yeah, well put.  Sometimes I play his Gen/MD games, and I get really into his compositions.  I can sense the way the tracks are separated.  Watching him recreate the track real time gives me an even deeper appreciation.  In particular, the uniqueness of the track he chose from Bare Knuckle III/Streets of Rage 3.  That soundtrack has some real depth.

I thought you might appreciate this piece of hardware, in the hands of the original master of Gen/MD music:  https://x.com/yuzokoshiro/status/1783416939215491453

Ah, well it is well worth the effort.  I love the walk cycle, and all the animation in general.  Color palette is very tasteful as well.  It looks and plays great.

This game is impressive.  At first I thought it was a short demo, (because of the lack of score and hud) but it appears to be a full game?  

Is this going to be a Sega Gen/MD game?  Thanks.

Nice!

It looks like I spoke too soon.  After level one, the music improves drastically in both games.  Sorry I didn't give the game more of a try before leaving feedback.  It was just the graveyard song.

This is incredible!  You did it!  You're composing music in only two months.  It sounds amazing.

I'm only a few minutes in and I had to stop and let you know how much I love the music in this game.  Incredible work.

I really love the music in this release.  Fits the mood of the game perfectly.  Awesome game in general.  Looking forward to the release.

Yeah, I wish there were more 5 minutes pick up and play shooters like yours.  I think you did a great job.

I love your game.  I enjoy it alongside similar games like Omega blast and Ixion.  Charming music themed sprites.  The soundtrack is amazing.

Thanks for writing back, and please know that I understand in my own way what you are going through.  You have a vision for each project that you wish to pull into existence.  But you must stumble around in the darkness and get hold of the vision, before you can start pulling it towards the light. 

It the same as any artist who feels compelled to create something that doesn't exist yet, only your tools and your canvas are more complicated.

Hey, I know you have been busy with other projects, but I'm curious about the status of S.P.K. This game is the kind of arcade game that doesn't get made too often these days.  So charming and easy to jump into.  You mentioned being out of ideas for levels a few months ago.  Any chance you may revisit this at some point?  Thanks, big fan of your work.

Pigsy just posted this.  Maybe you already know this stuff, but it's interesting nonetheless.  

well either way, I will leave you to your work.  I don't want my opinions to sew seeds of doubt.  The creative process can be fragile, even if the designer is confident and clear about what they want.  All respect and admiration for your unique creations.

Hey, nice work.  Please forgive me if my previous comment about the music frustrated you.  I remember several of your titles and experiments having pretty good sounding music.  To be clear, no one is expecting a one man indie dev to suddenly conjure up Streets of Rage quality beats. However, while I don't pretend to be a programmer or a music producer, I am aware of the Gen/MD's ability to produce high fidelity music, including samples and fm synthesis.  If the system's audio hardware were trash, I never would have pointed out the low sample quality in your last revision.  My only regret is the possibility that I somehow took the fun out of your creative process.

Very clever game.  I like that you have to knock the enemies off the canon.  I'm impressed that anyone could program so much happening at once.  My only gripe is the bitrate of the music.  I can hear the lounge stylings, but it's so garbled.  Is there any way you can use a higher quality sample?

I've played most of the projects and experiments you've posted here, and I see the evolution in your game design.  I can see that you have big and creative ideas in both the physics and mechanics.  Very few devs are experimenting to this degree on the Gen/MD.  SpacePantsGames is the one dev pushing innovation, and Safety Stoat Studios is the other.  :)

As of this update, the game's mechanics seem to be coming together nicely.  I love the new arrow system.  I like that I can freeze the green horned goblin thingy or it's pink bullet.  On the graphics, I'm not sold on the glitching effect, but I can see that you have a vision for the game so please keep pushing your vision and the uniqueness of your games.

Oh okay, that's very clever actually... I can't think of any retro games that have done that. There was this strange (modern) Pac-Man game that fooled around with corruption, But more like the game world coming to an end.

Hey, I feel like this project is really coming together.  You managed to make the mechanics feel pretty nice, and the game feels original (bow) while harkening back to some arcade (or Atari) classics at the same time.

I noticed that while testing the game on a couple of emulators that the graphics seem to get corrupted on screen three and beyond.  It starts with some discolored walls, and then takes over the screen.

In reference to the jumping, I don't think you need to change this.  My wife has been playing so much Flicky lately that any other kind of jump feels off to her.  lol

Happy to help.

Yes, this made a big difference for me.  The kick feels just right now.

I think I need to friend you on Discord, and then send you an invite.  You can find me there @megaryeguy if you want to join.

Hm, I'm trying to remember how I got on sega-16... Maybe through the message board.  Maybe I can private message you an invite.

After about ten sessions, my wife and I agreed on a few small issues with the games controls.  While she had trouble with the jumping, specifically timing the jump up to smaller platforms, I had trouble timing the power kick, and missing with the kick felt punishing because we were left open to attack if we missed.  We ended up abandoning the kick altogether and relying on the punches.

We feel that if you make the jumps a little smoother, and make the kicks more accurate and maybe more powerful, we would be more likely to use them.

Smaller requests would be the following, these are just ideas to make the game feel more flushed out.

1) An opening story screen to give us character motivation.  It could be something as simple an a still image of our characters with some text.

2) The boss battle would feel more fair if we had a quick indicator to jump out of it's path.  A boss power bar would be nice too.

3) After comparing SPK to Snow Bros. we thought it would be cool if the score for each kill would pop up briefly (where the character dies).  This is a minor request but it would add to the feeling of racking up a high score.

Please be encouraged though because we obviously felt inclined to keep on playing.  SPK is just a few tweaks away from being a classic style arcade hit.

I shared this post on Sega-16 Discord and it seems to have gathered some interest.  Here is the link to the conversation. https://discord.com/channels/516764139608211456/608027227514470400

Okay, I think you have the right amount of credits now.  On first try I got to the first boss with some credits to spare.  Definitely not too hard for high-score/arcade gamers like myself.  

I'll pop this on my flash cart and my wife and I will try to beat it tonight.  We have been trying to master Flicky, so I think this will be a good fit.  

The numbers up top are fine now because they don't flicker or flash.  This game would have been an arcade hit in the mid eighties for sure.

This project really has a great feel to it.

Oh okay.  I thought it was something to do with performance. It didn't seem like a score counter or the frame rate.