POSTED BY

Brandon Boyer

AT 9:30 AM
Monday February 2, 2009

Retro

UUDDLRLRBA-Rock: 8-bit Guitar Hero comes to the NES

Right, we're only a few hours in and it's going to be hard to top this for best new development of the week: following remakes on the Commodore 64 and text adventures, Kent 'SnowBro' Hansen and Andreas Pedersen have created D+Pad Hero -- rhythm action for the NES -- and it's entirely excellent.

The game uses a bizarre mix of DDR arrows with Rock Band-like strums (and, smartly, its responsive audience): only the A and B buttons are used to hit notes, but overlaid arrows are this game's version of colored fret-buttons. The result is a game that feels like learning to walk all over again (and is strongly recommended for a joypad only), but genuinely comes together as you stick with it.

Included are Hansen's chiptune remixes of G'n'R's Sweet Child of Mine, A-Ha's The Swing of Things, Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, and Michael Jackson's The Way You Make Me Feel (and oh man are Jackson's yips and ooh-hoos cute in blip-form).

Grab an emulator, grab the rom, and let us know how you perform via the comments (my Sweet Child record currently stands at a paltry 16350, with 411 hits and 199 misses).

D+Pad Hero

Previously:
Champion of Guitars: text adventure Guitar Hero gets real - Offworld
Guitar Hero 1.0 begging for real-life remake - Offworld

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9 Comments

Bill Meltsner

#1 – 10:36 AM February 2, 2009

This is pretty fantastic. I'm a big fan of the Aerodynamic remix used for the title screen.

I managed to get 30,950 on Sweet, with 537 hits and 73 misses.

grooverut

#2 – 11:10 AM February 2, 2009

This is great. If it was a real game it would have been very popular back in the day. Release multiple carts with around 25 songs, each from a different genre. Or have the themes from popular video games like Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. It would have sold tons.

My first time through "Sweet Child" I only got 8250 points but that was on a keyboard.

FarrisGoldstein

#3 – 12:16 PM February 2, 2009

Anyone else experiencing the optical illusion where the gamepad and background appear to be slowly drifting up as the note prompts scroll down?

SnowBro

#4 – 12:29 PM February 2, 2009

Farris: Haha, you should see it at 2X speed. :-) The stats screen appeared to be floating upward... I had to doublecheck the game code to make sure that there wasn't actually any scrolling done there. ;-)
The beta tester complained of dizzyness, so that's ultimately why we brought the speed down again.

Ian70

#5 – 2:12 PM February 2, 2009

FarrisGoldstein, that illusion is quite common, actually. It can be seen after playing DDR, Beatmania, Rock Band, Guitar Hero, etc.. It can also be seen if you watch the news ticker crawl on a TV station for a long time. Some (including myself) see it after driving for a long time, especially in a snowstorm.

wemgadge

#6 – 6:26 PM February 2, 2009

You know... I hope this is part of a trend of new games for old platforms. Free legal ROMs for NES emulators... sweet!

Anonymous Anonymous

#7 – 12:19 PM February 5, 2009

This is so great! How was it programmed?

Anonymous Anonymous

#8 – 3:17 PM February 22, 2009

I'm also curious about how this was made. I've seen ROM hacks, but how are people making original material? Where do you get started? I haven't had alot of luck googling it- again, more info on ROM hacks than building original stuff.

Anonymous Anonymous

#9 – 6:41 PM February 24, 2009

google nesdev and lurk on the board also the nintendoage board has some good info.

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