Twas the Flight Before Christmas
Summary
10 Years ago I spent a weekend creating a flash game featuring Santa throwing presents down Chimneys. For the 10 year anniversary I wanted to challenge myself to recreate this same game over a weekend but this time as a fully functional GameBoy game.
I was working at Merge at the time and my manager saw it, passed it around the C-suite and I was asked if they could use it as a Holiday Card.
And yes, you can actually play it on a GameBoy.
Client
Personal | MERGE
Roles
Creative Director
UX/ UI Designer
Game Designer
Animator
Part One
The Original Game
The original was a simple game, styled after an infinite runner. Santa flies from left to right, dodging anti-cheer mines, and dropping as many presents into chimneys as possible.
Part Two
Making the Demake
I used a free, open-source tool called GBStudio to do all the game design and development. Limitations within the hardware of the original GameBoy don't allow for a true infinite experience so a lot of smoke and mirrors and trickery was created to simulate the same effect.
Part Three
Flashing to Cartridges
Once the game was complete, it was time to put it on GameBoy game cartridges and get it out to people (who still have Gameboys) to play. I placed a bulk order for some Chinese knock-off monster collecting games, wiped the carts, then used a tool by BenVenn to flash my Rom onto the knock-off carts.
Part Four
The Final Product
I am fairly proud of how it all turned out. It runs well on original hardware and has a great web version you can play on your phone. I will probably port it to GameBoy Color and do a bigger release of physical copies in the future.
