Retro remakes and demakes are all the rage at the moment, but what I love seeing is the creativity of a generation who grew up on the original games, who make their own titles. This is what Brendon Cobb and the guys behind Super Fighter Team are doing right now and have been doing for the last couple of years.

These creative geniuses have been working on 16-bit and 8-bit titles of their own accord, free from the reigns of Nintendo and with no desire to be publishing for a new console.  SFT have made a name for themselves as game creating rogues who are ready to give gamers a good kick of nostalgia but also originality for their dollar.

I spoke with Brendon Cobb about the upcoming release of their SNES title, Nightmare Busters, his love of games and what he sees on the gaming horizon.

HE: What was the inspiration behind Nightmare Busters?

The gameplay was inspired by Midnight Wanderers, a 1991 arcade game by Capcom. As for the story, which centers around a bloated tyrant who's tainting the dreams of children: it was inspired by Freddy Kreuger of the Nightmare on Elm Street films.

HE: What is it like developing for handhelds like the Lynx?

Funny you should ask that, because Zaku's developer, Osman Celimli of Pengui Net, was initially interested in producing something for the original, monochromatic Game Boy.Surprisingly he found little documentation to help him learn the machine. Contrary to this, there is developer support in spades for the Lynx.

Much of the actual work was done on the PC side, but an Amiga 2000 HD along with Atari's own development kit was used for the sound part. It was all fairly straightforward, as Osman is a whiz at both programming and taking to new hardware. When we got the devkit in the mail it was in lousy shape, so he put his skills to use in fixing it up for our needs.

I had a blast working with the Lynx and would love to do so again. If Atari hadn't engineered it into such a bloated beast, and had been able to get their heads out of their arses on the software side, it really could have been a juggernaut. Such brilliant hardware, but largely wasted on a sub-subpar game selection.

Share

Tweet

50% of voters think this story ROCKS!

Vote Now!    (9) (9)