nesdev.org

I'm working on an NES game right now and IF (big if) I finish it, I would definitely like it to be released on a cartridge. However, this raises a couple of issues. My financial means are very meager, so any self-release would be limited, which would kinda dull the whole cartridge aspect of the release. I could try to go the whole retro-usb route, but then no ROM, and some totally legit people in other countries might not be able to get their hands on the game, either easily or cheaply.

I don't care to make any money off this game, but I'd like as many people playing it on an actual NES as possible. Any thoughts?

The demo version of Battle Kid shows that you can sell through retrousb and release a ROM. The ROM just has to be missing some of the features and most of the levels.

Ian A wrote: I don't care to make any money off this game, but I'd like as many people playing it on an actual NES as possible. Any thoughts?

Congratulations on being such a good guy ! I wish most people on this board were like you

Other than that, yeah I'd be in the same situation if (big if) I finish my game. Can't think of anything but save money and use it for self-publishing, hopefully making at least no loss.

If you can get quite a few (in the hundreds) sales, then the PCB price becomes really small (a few bucks), but you'd still have to pay aproximately $8 per cart for the plastic case + Ciclone, and also costs for labels and packaging would be more significant than that. Let's say every card costs you $30 in material.
Then if you order material for 100 of them that's "only" $3000, ok it's a big investissement so you'll need to save money, but if you sell them back for $35 (assuming all of them would sell, which is FAR from being evident), you'd gain $500 overall which sounds nice.
Of course I have no idea how you could get box or printed manuals, and I guess the port to all kind of countries across the world would be expansive and quite complex to handle too.
Then you can be pretty sure there will be people who ordered&paid it but never got it, they will not be happy and you'd have to know how to deal with it.

I'm sure if you took pay-per-orders before you start making carts on NA to make in bulk and get discounts, bunny might be able to give you a couple discount on all the parts and you can get the ROM's and release it. People might be scared to pay before they see that your trustworthy, but I'm sure you could get somebody to vouch for you.

There have been a lot of people on NA who have done limited runs and then released the rom to the public. I'm sure you could sell 100 pre-pay very easily on NintendoAge for $30 cart only or $55 CIB. Uncle Tusk makes some nice boxes, and people like Coinheaven (Nesdump.com) do LE runs all the time. With the collector mindset on NA, people go crazy for Homebrews ever since the Garage Cart sky-rocketed in price.

If you have the skill to program your own carts, then you can just order boxes and labels. It would be a lot of work for one person. As far as I know, you have to prepay for an entire run on RetroUSB.

I can't see why one can't release a ROM and get a Retrousb release. Personally, I wouldn't want to release there only because of all the bootlegs they sell. Whatever works though.

I had no idea that programmers had to pre-pay for a production run on Retrousb. If that's true, then that really makes little sense for them to tell you what you can and can't do with your own ROM. WTF? It's your game, you call the shots.

For a long time I had wanted to get into cart publishing, but I sorta held off to work on my own projects. But I had kind of a different approach I guess, I figured I would pay royalties in advance if a developer wanted it, for one. Not billing them for it. I consider releasing someones game to be a great privilege and not some kind of business deal. I definitely never even thought about making contracts, if I didn't trust someone's word I just wouldn't work with them. I feel extremely honored to have all the contributions to Garage Cart #2 that I've gotten, some offered to me for free, even. Yeah, I need to get that finished up..

edit: Sorry, I got carried away and didn't address the original issue. The previously mentioned stuff wasn't really about ethics as much as my own view/approach.

Yeah it's hard to do it for cheap, I faced the same question even with Garage Cart, it was a limited supply for practical reasons, but since I set out to make a certain number of them I also turned down sales (though I could have coughed up a couple more later, I had a lot of offers). I thought selling it for $35 was really high, but it was a good deal for everyone.

I don't think there's any problem with releasing the ROM and the cartridge. If people want the cart to be exclusive, all they can do is buy it as soon as possible. It will be dumped and distributed if it's interesting enough. If wasn't interesting, they wouldn't want the cart to begin with. Best thing to do is release the cartridge and ROM on your own schedule. I'm still not sure if there's an ethics issue, because maybe that would imply it would be unethical to make a game and not release it. Maybe it is? Who knows, heheh.

3gengames wrote:I'm sure if you took pay-per-orders before you start making carts

PayPal has shown that it doesn't take kindly to taking orders before a product is even manufactured. See the case where OpenPandora.org had to refund hundreds of preorders for not being able to ship in 20 days.

Another problem is that battery-backed PRG RAM increases the bill of materials significantly, as I've gathered in IRC discussion with bunnyboy, unless you're (say) buying up Ultima Exodus boards in bulk to rewire them. In this topic, blargg linked to a memory part search tool through which I find this 6264-compatible NVSRAM for just under $8 each in 1000-packs. Workarounds include making your game one episode long (like early games) or fitting the entire game's persistent state (cash, experience, found plot coupons, etc.) into the 32 bits of a password (like Battle Kid).

What says you can't put down something like "Orders will be shipped within X days."? If you give money to somebody, doesn't mean you have to get something within 20 days. Pier Solar is a darn good example of that, lol.


And I don't know about you guys, but I ran across a lot of like 20 RAM's on a board that looked to be a 1980's server board and I got lots of sockets and 6264's from it! Haha, but yeah, it'll run up the costs for the batteries and chips, but thats why you make your pre-order more. You can always take the maximum price, wait until orders fall, then refund the money you don't need to make the carts and then start ordering parts.

3gengames wrote:What says you can't put down something like "Orders will be shipped within X days."?

PayPal says that you can say this, as long as you use a payment processor other than PayPal for any order more than 20 days out.

tepples wrote:

3gengames wrote:What says you can't put down something like "Orders will be shipped within X days."?

PayPal says that you can say this, as long as you use a payment processor other than PayPal for any order more than 20 days out.

Well nobody follows this, so who really cares? I think somebody screwed Mark on NA over on it by telling, so I guess to be safe it'd be easier to drop PayPal altogether?


And also, it would make sense that RetroUSB produces the game and then sells it, giving you X per cart sold, and you have all power over how many are made, but that way you guys say it works is really dumb. You pay for the production, you lose rights to your ROM for two years JUST for the ditribution from RetroUSB? Thats not worth it in my opinion. If a game is good, word will spread, and it will sell. Just because it's on RetroUSB doesn't mean it will sell more I wouldn't think. I don't know about you guys, but if I ever make a game, it won't be on RetroUSB with those policies. It sounds like your doing everything yourself anyway, why add a middle man? :/

I have to agree, I mean I have an EPROM burner and eraser. I've got plenty of soldering gear. I can get the carts pretty cheap from the local flea market even. So why would I want to have someone tell me what I can and can't do with my own game?

67726e wrote:So why would I want to have someone tell me what I can and can't do with my own game?

Every PC developer who crosses over to licensed development for the modern consoles likewise asks himself this question.

tepples wrote: In this topic, blargg linked to a memory part search tool through which I find this 6264-compatible NVSRAM for just under $8 each in 1000-packs.

Eh, a normal SRAM is under $1, and a CR2032 is maybe 20 cents. In single quantities. This is definitely not the application for an NVSRAM (in fact, I don't know of those would even fit in an NES cart case - they tend to be really tall).

Memblers wrote:I had no idea that programmers had to pre-pay for a production run on Retrousb. If that's true, then that really makes little sense for them to tell you what you can and can't do with your own ROM.

It would be bad, but that simply isn't true. You only prepay if you want boxes (because of the 250 minimum order). And then you only are paying for the boxes. Everything else costs $0 for the programmer.

So what is the criteria for RetroUSB to release a homebrew game?