Horror Hospital - NES 3D Raycaster RPG!
A downloadable 3D NES game
NOTE: This is just a demo/proof of concept. The game is not finished yet
It was a routine visit to the hospital... But a mutant germ made it otherwise!
Your friend got hospitalised (it happens), and being a good person, you decided to pay them a visit. However, upon arriving to the Sinai Hill hospital (not as good as the Mount Sinai one just by the street... bloody healthcare...), you soon came to the realisation that something's wrong.
It seems like some of the hospital's patients went mad, and they want you dead! Can you avoid getting mauled by the hospital's weird residents? Can you find your friend and get them out of there? Find out in: FG's RealCast™ Volume 1: Horror Hospital
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The Game
In this first-ever realtime 3D textured game for the NES, your object is to navigate the hospital in search of your friend. Fight mad patients along the way, level up, and collect all 18 tokens for a special surprise!
This all started back in August/September 2020. I had the wild idea of making a 3D raycaster for the NES (think Wolfenstein). After getting a walking simulator out on Twitter, it somehow exploded, and a big part of the retro scene wanted more.
Thus, a few months later, I picked the project back up to see if it was possible to make a little game out of it! I made the framerate palatable, corrected a few issues, added a basic random battle system, and here we are!
Woooooah! 3D?!?! On the NES?!?!
Unfortunately, Dr. Fine took the day off
What other devious foes await you?
You're gonna need all those goodies!
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The controls
Main Game:
- Left - Right keys: Turn
- Up key: Move forward
- Down key: Move backward
- A - B keys: Strafe
- START: Show map
- SELECT: Pause/Status screen
Battle / Status:
- D-pad: Select command
- A key: Confirm
- B key: Go back
Map:
- D-pad: Move map around
- START: Go back to game
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Credits:
- Programming, Graphics, Design, SFX: Antoine Fantys (Vectrex28)
- Music: Myles Davidson (Famicuber)
This game is ™ & © FG Software, 2021. All rights reserved!
Enjoy, and don't forget to drop me or Famicuber a little tweet @FG_Software or @Famicuber :)
Download
Install instructions
Simply open the raycaster.nes file in your favourite emulator!
...Or stick it on your favourite flash cart and play it on a real NES!!!
Comments
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You know, it's funny you mentioned Wolfenstien as an inspiration. At one point, Wisdom Tree, (yes, the same studio that developed Bible Adventures,) licensed the Wolf 3D engine from Id, and also acquired a license to produce a video game based off the movie Hellraiser of all things! They were originally developing for the NES with plans to use a co-processor similar to the Super FX on SNES, but there were concerns over the cost to produce the cart, on top of issues getting the Wolf 3D engine to run properly. That, plus the fact Wisdom Tree had earned a reputation for developing Christian-themed games and a game like Hellraiser would've clashed with that image. (They were formerly Color Dreams, but I guess they couldn't revive that label.) So, WT would let the Hellraiser license expire, shift development to SNES and restart the project as Super 3D Noah's Ark.
Now fast forward over 2 decades later, and here comes an original raycast graphics game for NES running on stock hardware, (aside from using MMC3,) and it all runs fairly well aside from a fish-eye affect coming from a lack of distortion correction, but I don't know if that was a limitation. Whether or not this engine could be used to make a first-person shooter or some other type of action game, I don't know, but it's certainly impressive as it is.
The only other thing I have to say is: I'm no stranger to homebrew. You know the ROM, and so do I. An impressive demo's what I'm thinking of. I couldn't get this from any other guy!
This was too good! I lolled so hard at the end. If I could make some points of critique:
1. The map icons - it was confusing to tell what icons meant what - even by the end I was a bit confused. There are also some walls that didn't show in the map, even if I hugged them while I walked.
2. The map's focus - it was a bit frustrating that the map always loaded in the same point and you had to scroll to your player. Probably a tech limitation so I can't fault you there.
3. The tokens - at the start the lady tells you to collect them, but it isn't until the game over that you get to see how many there are in the game. It would be cool if you could return the the game after the "Game Over" screen to collect the rest of the tokes and then go back to the "game over" trigger again.
Other than that, I'm at a total loss for words. This is an awesome tech demo, and the fact it's not using any extra mappers or anything!? This game could have literally coexisted with Super Mario Bros. That's bonkers. I really hope you continue on with this project!
Hey! Glad you liked it :P To be fair, it's more of a proof of concept than anything so there's gonna be some rough spots, but I really appreciate the criticism and it'll be very valuable for if I ever decide to go back to this 😎👍
Sadly, as impressive as it would've been, it's actually using MMC3 and not NROM :D
Ah - my bad, I thought it was running NROM. Even still, it's impressive. I went in with the expectation that it was kind of a tech demo/flex more than anything lol. It was a lot of fun, but I'm not sure I want to slog through it again to find all the tokens... but maybe I will, and just use some save states in case I accidentally run into the end game trigger again haha
Oh trust me there's a very fun surprise in store for you if you find them all ;)
HOW. I've seen some similar things on Gameboy but I never knew this was possible on NES. Can you imagine how people would've responded back in the day?