Old new, but I just found out about it now, so here’s your thread?
The English trailer:
The 2010 homebrew game Battle Kid and the fortress of Peril is getting a new release in Japan! But more than just the ROM in a Famicom cartridge, the game has been severely tweaked, to the point that developer bit-games (who also made 8bit music power / final and Kira Kira Star Night DX) tasked with translating the game ended up reprogramming the whole thing!
Here’s the list of what was changed, according to Wikipedia:
Translation to Japanese (English is also selectable)
Changes to the story and adding cutscenes (like the ones from Battle Kid 2)
Switching to Hit Points instead of one-hit deaths
Adding the life counter
Adding some checkpoints
Adding at least one new boss
Adding at least one new stage
Adding sound effects
Adding 11 music tracks, and changing or removing others
Improving bonuses
Change of the movement and attack patterns of some enemies
Doubling ROM size, from 256Kb to 512Kb
Removing the oxygen limitation (re-balancing difficulty)
The tweaks may anger the purists, are they are mostly about lowering the overall difficulty. But those are welcome in my opinion, as I found the original game so difficult I couldn’t get to the end of the demo! Getting the game in a reworked state with an adjusted difficulty, extra content and in a Famicom cartridge is more than what I could have wanted, and I’ll gladly receive it once my preorder is shipped!
[edit] A warning: their earlier releases, most notably 8bit Music Power had problems working in anything that wasn’t an AV Famicom, due to how the cartridge was made. While their following releases got better (there are reports that Kira Kira Star Night DX work on NES and original Famicom), better use caution and assume that it may not work on consoles other than the AV Famicom.
Hmm this is interesting and all, but it’s being released by Columbus Circle which as you mention released the 8-bit Music Power cart which is notorious for not working on most actual Famicoms because of their decision to use 3.3v chips without any proper voltage regulation. It didn’t work on my first Famicom and I know there were others on Neogaf that had the same issue. So that kind of makes me weary about ordering it even though I’d love to have it.
You’re right, their work was very shoddy at the beginning. According to the Internet, They fixed something for their Kira Kira Star Night DX release, as it seem to now work in NES frontloaders and original Famicom. Hopefully this new release will work even better, but you can’t be too cautious if you don’t have an AV Famicom. https://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=13237.0
Unfortunately I won’t be able to do any extensive testing as I only have an AV Famicom.
I got to play a little, the game is completely transformed. There is a new intro with dialogues and easy platforming, and the game proper starts directly with the new screens! There is a dozen screens with an easy difficulty to traverse before arriving at what was the start of the game in the original release.
I felt the game was much easier than what I played years ago. I didn’t notice changes in the old screens, but maybe they were slightly tweaked and I didn’t see it. However having three life points makes things much easier.
There is now six difficulty levels, ranging from having loads of hit points and the enemies having their health halved, to hard (1hp, infinite continues), very hard (50 continues), and unfair (1hp, no continue, aka hardcore mode). There’s difficulty levels for every one, which is very cool.
So yeah, after 5 minutes of playing, I’m very happy with the result! Very good remake of the game, much more accessible (initially) and is becoming a must have now imo.
