For the boulder bit... Let's see, best way to explain it without spoilers? I would say give the original game featuring the antagonist a try... I was doing my best to copy that, maybe not so successfully 👀
awesome... yes the game is fully compatible with the original NES, it uses a UNROM-512 mapper on original hardware so the flash carts from NESMaker/INL or Broke Studio will work...
really glad you enjoyed it! had a lot of fun making it definitely