If eroge would exist before the NEC PC's...

[Narcosis]

Behold! The full glory of an (almost impossible) C64 visual novel. No sound, cause pic.

Jokes aside, this might be a near perfect, running imitation (mockup?) I made, but I swear it can actually happen, sooner or later. Definately not with Holo, but a retro-esque catgirl vn, simulating C64 hardware is looming on the horizon.

Think of it as some sort of a test and a tribute to the most enjoyable times of my life.

DISCUSS

 

UPDATE 23/05/2016:

Time sure flies fast, eh? I resumed work on the project, which was previously on hiatus for quite a bit. That's right - nothing's cancelled. I'm not making any promises, but there might be something neat coming soon™. Meanwhile, have another poll.

UPDATE 20/08/2015:

I wrapped up the results of last poll and made a new one. Regarding previous one, there's no big surprise - cat girls, romance and dystopian steampunk got the most votes. It's not like I ever planned to go along with the demands, but it's more or less what I've been working on; it puts me at ease, knowing people would like to see that kind of thing as well. TL&DR - Your weeb tastes aren't that bad as I originally thought

Previous polls:

#1

#2

[zoom909]

Interesting, but, yes we need to hear that peculiar style of BGM, this is MOS SID we're talking about.  It can even do voices (I know that from Impossible Mission)

[Fiddle]

This is truly quite a comprehensive array of poll options. I already feel like I'm in a visual novel.

[Flutterz]

Horo Retro-esque catgirl pixelated eroge?

[Eclipsed]

I'd love to read Grisaia no Pixelated Nekomimis: PURE ROMANCE RABU RABU~ one day

[GetterEmperor]

More giant robots please.

[GLM4475]

Ohh, pixelated girls in this day and age, hmmm.

[Narcosis]

A small update of sorts.
 

 
This is the result of my painstaking work, I did for the last couple of days. I decided to stick with Ren'Py, because of it's flexibility, "ease of use" and cross-platform support. Unfortunately, it wasn't originally meant to work in low resolutions, while forced graphics filtering made it nearly impossible to display pixel art; Thanks to PyTom, this is all in the past now, as Ren'Py became a viable tool for those who want to create pixel-art based games.
 
I still have to test certain things, but the most important functions are already there and font is displayed as intended. I'm going to start customizing the engine and if everything goes well, I should have some early graphics ready. I'll propably have the most work with the script - it's more or less finished, but requires some serious rewriting in a lot of parts.
 
I should be able to post rather frequent status updates from now on. Be on the lookout for first teasers!
 

This is truly quite a comprehensive array of poll options. I already feel like I'm in a visual novel.

It was actually inspired by Spice and Wolf SLG's from NDS
 

Interesting, but, yes we need to hear that peculiar style of BGM, this is MOS SID we're talking about. It can even do voices (I know that from Impossible Mission)

Yes, that's true. Impossible Mission had a really decent voice synthesis on c64, it's also one of the most memorable.

 

STAY A WHILE, STAY FOREVER!

 

It's still amazing even today what C64 was capable of, considering it's hardware limitations.

[12kami]

chiptune one-san !

[Narcosis]

chiptune one-san !

I should propably remove the poll now, since it was meant to be more of a joke, than anything. Not saying I won't use the collected data, or troll people by making a game with least popular choices

 

System is more or less finished. I'll be working on the UI and art assets from now on, possibly script as well. This is going to be one hell of a week, I'll tell you that.

[CytosineThallia]

Looks cool. It reminds me of the Steins Gate 8Bit VN though.

[Scorp]

Zx Spectrum 2005 eroge

[Narcosis]

Looks cool. It reminds me of the Steins Gate 8Bit VN though.

Sadly, the 8bit version is a rather lousily made curiosity, unable to compete even with the earliest NEC games it was based on. A neat idea nonetheless, it's just the execution that failed; they didn't put enough heart and care to make it look and feel like an actual PC-88 game, but you can't really expect the same kind of effort towards bonus content.

 

Zx Spectrum 2005 eroge

I didn't knew people tried that kind of stuff on the old Speccy, haha. I never understood why the british adored it like some sort of a national treasure; that PC somehow managed to be quite popular despite being a completely awful piece of hardware. It's even more amazing to see ported/made NEC-styled vn's, considering it's very limited graphics capabilities. Creating anime-styled art in ultra low resolutions is a huge pain in the ass. Suprisingly, the art doesn't actually suck, even tho speccy's dithering makes your eyes bleed.

[Scorp]

Actually, if there were enough market, I am sure on Speccy would be great VNs. As even having its mind-blowing screen architecture, people really able to produce very pretty images.

Here are some examples of my personal favorites:

And there is more than 2000 of actual text adventure games on it! So if VNs have migrated from Japan in Speccy era... Well, never mind.

[Narcosis]

Truly glorious art! I always loved that loading screen from Phantis; it was a lot better than the game itself, haha. Phantis was actually known as Game Over II on the C64. Dinamic changed (or was actually forced to change) the main heroine into a guy, which completely wrecks the original premise. It's hilarious to imagine british fussing over that gal's breasts, but back then even a couple of pixels could be deemed scandalous and she had some huge knockers, indeed. I guess UK didn't changed that much, after all

 

Original Phantis never got outside the Spain. The loading screen from Speccy is also superior to the one from C64. To this day, I can't understand why they went with the ugly multicolor mode instead of using the highres one, which would be 100% compatible with the original picture. If not for the game, in the right hands Phantis could make a great animation, or comic series. The designs alone + aditional art from both Game Over games were enough to justify that.

[Scorp]

Actually image in post is not original image, that's a remake from MAC. Original is more crappy and far less colorful, but with much bigger boobs (on screen):

[Deep Blue]

[Scorp]

This does not look like 8-bit at all, PC-88 does not have all these colors. It looks more like MS Paint with scanlines...

[Deep Blue]

have you seen the zemmix or msx? they were pretty impressive for the time, not sure if there are more than 256 colors there or not(I'm speaking about steins;gate 8 bit)

[Scorp]

What 256 All games were in 16 colors. 256 was only for Mode 8, which was mostly suitable only for static graphic. And I am speaking about MSX2, MSX1 had 16 colors max.

[Deep Blue]

I'm talking about the limitations of 8bit which is 256 so in theory you could make a game with that many colors, nes used over 50 if I'm not wrong, so what I said was is steins;gate an 8 bit game or is it using more than 256...

[Scorp]

Man, 8-bit have nothing to do with 256 colors... 8-bit is about architecture, processors, not graphics. NES had a 56 color limit on a whole and 4 color per sprite limit (including transparent, so more likely 3 color per sprite from that 56 color palette)... Every system have its own limitations, so do not think that if console is 8-bit it would show you 256-colored graphics and if it is 16-bit - 65535 colors (for example Sega Genesis is 16-bit, but it still had 61 color on screen max. just from more wide palette than NES)

[Deep Blue]

do you know what 8 bits mean?

 

Man, 8-bit have nothing to do with 256 colors... 8-bit is about architecture, processors, not graphics. NES had a 56 color limit on a whole and 4 color per sprite limit (including transparent, so more likely 3 color per sprite from that 56 color palette)... Every system have its own limitations, so do not think that if console is 8-bit it would show you 256-colored graphics

I said the limitations of the 8-bit technology I never talked about a console referring to steins;gate I mentioned them just for the sake of to say how impressive the games were back then and I still do.

[Scorp]

do you know what 8 bits mean?

Absolutely But I was implying, that Stein's Gate was not a "8-bit game", it was "game with 8-bit graphics". Different things. Actually, it was even not 8-bit gfx, it was more likely 4-bit, according to images, so it is not correct to call it 8-bit or not 8-bit. It does not mimic any gfx from old times, and it does not have a 256-color gfx too, it is something in the middle, which tries to have a feel from "ye olde times".

[Deep Blue]

Again I never said anything about steins;gate referring to any console I was talking about the technology of the 8 bit and what is capable to do, that's why I posted that video of that game.