''Micro Mages'' is a

platform game A platformer (also called a platform game, and sometimes a jump 'n' run game) is a subgenre of action game in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are characterized by levels wi ...

for the

Nintendo Entertainment System The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on 15 July 1983 as the and was later released as the redesigned NES in several test markets in the ...

that was published on April 30, 2019 by Morphcat Games. The game raised over €150,000 on

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

. The game was published as a physical cartridge for the NES, and later as a digital download, bundled with an

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

, on

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

and

Itch.io Itch.io (stylized in all lowercase) is a website for users to host, sell and download indie video games, indie role-playing games, game assets, comics, zines and music. Launched in March 2013 by Leaf Corcoran, the service hosts over 1,000,000 ...

Development

The game was developed to fit within 40

kilobytes The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix '' kilo'' as a multiplication factor of 1000 (103); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes.International Standar ...

, the size that all games published when the NES was released, such as ''

Super Mario Bros. is a 1985 Platformer, platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It is the successor to the 1983 arcade game ''Mario Bros.'' and the first game in the ''Super Mario'' series. It was origi ...

'', had to fit into (later development techniques allowed larger games, such as '' Super Mario Bros. 3''). The game was written in

6502 The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small ...

assembly language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

. 8 kilobytes of cartridge space was reserved for graphics, while the remaining 32 kilobytes were used for game code. Graphics were reused across levels and animations to save space.

Player characters A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

were deliberately scaled down in order to avoid sprite overflow. The game was written with the goal of creating an expansive multi-player game with the same limitations that the first NES developers experienced.

References

External links

* 2019 video games Indie games Kickstarter-funded video games Homebrew software Nintendo Entertainment System games Platformers Video games about witchcraft Video games developed in Germany {{platform-videogame-stub