Is there a reason why the Megadrive/Genesis gets more homebrew and or demos than the SNES/SFC?

[93143]

In my case, I think it's the higher expectations.

Not that I'm put off by them; far from it. Rather, all my prospective projects are (or would be) basically long-form demos that try to squeeze as much out of the hardware as possible. This is, in most cases, the main reason I'm interested in them. And for the most part the game concepts aren't very original: Super Doom, Super TIE Fighter, F-Zero SX, [Nintendo All-Star] Smash Bros., Street Fighter Alpha 2: SFC vs. Capcom... Even that hilariously intractable Super FX/MSU1-based 3D open world game I was musing about a while back was a fangame (originally a top-down Zelda-style ARPG, but feature creep hit it hard), and relied heavily on the specifics of the borrowed IP. Perhaps I don't trust myself to come up with a good game concept and setting from scratch, and I don't want to waste my time working on a bad one.

My active project, which I might actually eventually finish, is a port of a bullet hell shmup that somebody on some website once said wouldn't work on the SNES. It uses the extended Super FX map shown in the SNES manual, which no one seems to support, so I hacked Mesen to handle it almost correctly. I'm currently working on a memory map test ROM to facilitate expanded support, and I've gotten distracted by my attempt to program (as a subsystem in the test ROM) a 64-column high-resolution interlaced text mode with a fully functional TTY interpreter.

My only actual original game idea (other than a crude test game or two that I haven't yet felt like making) is an epic branching-story RPG with such scope and philosophical depth that I feel certain I am not up to the task of writing it.

Oh yeah, and there's the Super Game Boy Color, which I'm pretty sure is possible; I need to do a proof-of-concept one of these days.

...

In short, I'm a perfectionist that sees possibilities rather than difficulties. And the SNES feels (to me) like it's just on the edge of being something a single person could use in a comprehensively optimal way.

I think my big problem is my current life situation, which lacks work-life balance and loads down a lot of the same parts of my brain that this hobby uses. One way or the other, it's just about done with, so hopefully I'll be able to make better progress on my game in the near future. If not, well, I guess I was wrong and I'm actually just lazy...

[Oziphantom]

thinking about it the MD is probably the end of where C64 AAA size teams can function. 3 people teams can still push the MD hard its more work than a C64 game, hence the projects take longer, but its doable while 3 people is going to be very limited on SNES or you are looking at 5+ years.

[creaothceann]

1 person for graphics, 1 for audio and 1 for coding the engine + tools? Then everyone can also work on designing levels and playtesting, I guess.

SNES has a lot of RPGs, which take a long time to test.

[NovaSquirrel]

I don't think every game needs to be a huge adventure, or impress people with how they use the hardware. The licensed SNES library has games like Chrono Trigger, but it also has games like Super Bomberman, Zoop, Rampart, Aladdin, and Faceball 2000. Games with a lower scope are not out of place on the SNES at all, and I certainly don't think a SNES game's scope has to be more complicated than a Genesis game.

[93143]

I don't think every game needs to be a huge adventure, or impress people with how they use the hardware. The licensed SNES library has games like Chrono Trigger, but it also has games like Super Bomberman, Zoop, Rampart, Aladdin, and Faceball 2000. Games with a lower scope are not out of place on the SNES at all, and I certainly don't think a SNES game's scope has to be more complicated than a Genesis game.

Of course not, but the temptation is there. And when there's no schedule or budget pressure, the temptation is strong.

To be fair, I really don't expect to even start most of the games on my list. This is one reason why I'm so bold about using other people's IP - why bother rebranding a Smash game if I'm never going to make it anyway? It's just a fun thought experiment at this point.

I do expect to finish my main project. And by its nature it's a limit-pushing exercise, because the platform the game was originally on was far more powerful than the SNES, so the harder I can push the SNES (and the Super FX) the closer I can get to the original.

I might also do that pseudo-3D turret shooting game I was thinking about. It uses the base hardware well without being too massive for a one-man project. And it's original, so nobody is going to sue me over it...

[Pokun]

The SNES is has no doubt the largest barrier to overcome for getting started with compared to all other 8-bit and 16-bit systems I've worked with. It's not technically hard to get something on the screen, but there are a lot more initialization that needs to be done correctly compared to NES or Game Boy and a ton of hardware features that you don't need at first but is easy to get lost in. So I think the complexity of the system is definitely part of the problem as it weeds out most newbies. I struggled with it myself for a long time and I still get stuck from time to time.

When I started out with homebrew I actually wanted to start with the SNES, but I thought the hurdle may be too large and it made more sense to me to start with a simpler system that I also has a passion for and which had a thriving homebrew scene, so I started with the NES instead (and since it's what I grew up with first anyway). It turned out to be the right decision as the NES was much easier to get into and it worked like a nice stepping stone by having me learn 6502 and a simpler audio & video hardware. But at the same time I don't want to tell someone starting with SNES homebrew to learn NES first.


NovaSquirrel also mentioned something about the SNES maybe being a bit too powerful and is therefore less "retro" than the Mega Drive or the PC Engine which is what I also was thinking. If you want to go full 8-bit retro the NES and the Game Boy are both attractive targets, while the MD is a good 16-bit system and the PC Engine is a good middle ground. The SNES with all its colors and sample-based APU is getting closer to what can be done on Neo Geo or a modern platform, which means it also has less unique characteristics and thus less "retro".


The situation has changed since the "Why no SNES homebrew scene?" was first posted in 2014 though and as was said earlier in this thread there are a lot of tools, libraries, sound engines, wikis and tutorials now that should make life easier for homebrewers. People just needs to become aware of them and documentation may have to improve (considering SNES AYE failed to build PVSnesLib).
I prefer making my own libraries and sound engines (which I hope to do someday for the SNES), but the tools, wikis and tutorials are really welcome.

sorry by Game Maker, I mean the retro game forge "game makers", GB studio, NesMaker et al rather than https://gamemaker.io/en nobody is going from https://gamemaker.io/en to the SNES

I actually worked a lot with ASCII's RPG Makers (95 and 2000) and Mark Overmars' Game Maker (version 3 I think) before I moved on to real programming. It wasn't directly from Game Maker to assembly, the road was much longer, but RM and GM were definitely stepping stones for me. I think that the things I learned in RPG Maker (and the similar Game Maker drag-and-drop) actually made learning programming easier.

[turboxray]

I don't think every game needs to be a huge adventure, or impress people with how they use the hardware. The licensed SNES library has games like Chrono Trigger, but it also has games like Super Bomberman, Zoop, Rampart, Aladdin, and Faceball 2000. Games with a lower scope are not out of place on the SNES at all, and I certainly don't think a SNES game's scope has to be more complicated than a Genesis game.

Wait.. why is Aladdin on that list???

[NovaSquirrel]

Wait.. why is Aladdin on that list???

Aladdin is a pretty short platformer with mostly standard platformer mechanics (swinging is the main thing that sticks out to me), only a few boss battles, and it uses the SNES graphics hardware in a straightforward way (especially emphasized by how faithful the unlicensed NES version was able to get). It isn't a huge adventure with a complicated story that takes 20 hours to beat, and it doesn't have a huge world to explore, and I think someone who's familiar with implementing platformers could handle the logic involved. It does have a lot of art and animation, and the presentation of the game is very good, but I don't think it does anything especially wild otherwise. I think it would be reasonable to try to make a game like this with a small team (or even solo, if the programmer can draw and source music for it somehow) if the presentation were scaled down.

[turboxray]

Wait.. why is Aladdin on that list???

Aladdin is a pretty short platformer with mostly standard platformer mechanics (swinging is the main thing that sticks out to me), only a few boss battles, and it uses the SNES graphics hardware in a straightforward way (especially emphasized by how faithful the unlicensed NES version was able to get). It isn't a huge adventure with a complicated story that takes 20 hours to beat, and it doesn't have a huge world to explore, and I think someone who's familiar with implementing platformers could handle the logic involved. It does have a lot of art and animation, and the presentation of the game is very good, but I don't think it does anything especially wild otherwise. I think it would be reasonable to try to make a game like this with a small team (or even solo, if the programmer can draw and source music for it somehow) if the presentation were scaled down.

Yeah, it's a much more competent and complex project than all the other games you listed as examples. Short or long doesn't matter - the complexity of the game logic, interactions, gameplay mechanics (edge hanging, swinging, bouncing, gliding, etc), the level of art, all the animations, scrolling tilemaps with multiple layers (in 8-way directions), vram management, and some of the FX in the game (parallax, hdma, etc), etc. It's orders of magnitude more complex as a whole than something like Bomberman or those other ones. There's a pretty huge jump from Bomberman or Zoop to Aladdin. That's why it seems odd to be in the list as comparable examples. I'd probably put Super Valis 4 or even something simpler (platformer) - Super Adventure Island or King of Demons.

I think something like Pocky and Rocky would be in the simple game category. One directional scrolling (no back scrolling), no traditional parallax layers (a few easy dual layer spots with simple one directional scrolling), no HMDA in 99% of the game, straight forward simplistic gameplay mechanics, simple projectile system. No climbing/bouncing/hanging/sliding/etc.

[Tigerskunk]

In a different but related way, that’s been my experience with PVSnesLib and the SNES development scene in general. It seems well suited to a handful of people who learn, code, and interact in a certain way—and that covers not only the tools but the particular community sites and styles of collaboration.

From someone who used both: if you are not able to create a game with PVSNESLIB you won't be able to get something out of SGDK as well.
So, it must be something else why the SNES isn't as popular as the MD as a homebrew platform.

[SNES AYE]

In a different but related way, that’s been my experience with PVSnesLib and the SNES development scene in general. It seems well suited to a handful of people who learn, code, and interact in a certain way—and that covers not only the tools but the particular community sites and styles of collaboration.

From someone who used both: if you are not able to create a game with PVSNESLIB you won't be able to get something out of SGDK as well.
So, it must be something else why the SNES isn't as popular as the MD as a homebrew platform.

Are you suggesting that SGDK and its related tools are no easier to use than PVSnesLib and its ecosystem?

I’m not sure what your perspective is, but for me, the main barrier to SNES homebrew development isn’t things like popularity or hardware limitations—and the continued homebrew activity on far less popular and less capable systems (like the 2600, C64, Spectrum, Master System, PC Engine, or Vectrex) seems to bear that out. It’s the difficulty of setting up and using the available development tools that keeps me (and likely many others) from getting started.

Of course, everyone has their own reasons, but I think if the entry barrier were lower, more people would be experimenting with SNES projects and learning its quirks over time.

Edit: Just to clarify, the SNES actually sees quite a lot of modern development—possibly more ROM hacks than any other retro console (with Super Mario World being the most popular, as far as I’m aware)—along with around thirty increasingly impressive NES-to-SNES ports and even a handful of new homebrews. Where it really seems to lag behind is in the physical release aftermarket, and the overall number of original homebrew projects, which could definitely be higher. To be fair, I think it’s more a matter of relative numbers than there being nothing happening at all.

[SNESPlayer]

Huh, I imagine efforts like these https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025 ... -md-engine

Are what allows more people to jump in on platforms than anything else I take it? (Seems the tutorial sports Linux Mint! Nice!)

Edit: Seems that it is not open-source? Sad! Oh well.