Micro Mages Press Kit

Edited on Nov 18, 2020

Micro Mages Press Kit

Welcome to the Micro Mages Press page. Here you can find information about us and our new NES game.

Fact Sheet

Description

Micro Mages is a new platform game for the NES, for 1 to 4 players. Slip into your wizard robes and enter the Demon Fortress, home of great treasure and ghastly creatures alike.


Micro Mages complete in box Micro Mages complete in box

Gameplay

Features

Morphcat Games

We are a two-man team bouncing around Berlin, dedicated to bringing new games to old hardware.

Julius Riecke


Julius created Morphcat Games in 2011 when he released the NES demo Super Bat Puncher. He made other games during game jams and also composes music on his free time. On Micro Mages, he did the programming, created tools for optimization as well as music and sound effects.

Nicolas Bétoux


Nicolas joined Julius during the game jam Ludum Dare 32 and together they created a tiny NES game named Banana Nana. On Micro Mages, he made the graphics, level design and illustrations (box and instruction booklet).


History & Challenges

Development on Micro Mages started in December 2015, born out of the desire to do a simple one-month project. Needless to say, things didn't quite work out as planned due to how complex and slow of a process making a new game for the NES is, while also wishing to push the hardware to its limits.

Much like developers in the past, we had to program the entire game from scratch using 6502 assembly language. So for the next two and a half years, we would be working during nights and weekends until the game grew into an experience that we deemed worthy of the NES.

Fun was our number one priority. Half of the game's development time was spent on polish and code optimization. Fluid gameplay, tight controls and a carefully balanced challenge were our dedication.

While many homebrew games and later commercial NES releases can be upwards of 512 Kilobytes in size, we challenged ourselves to make the best game we could given the harsh limitations that the very first NES games (e.g., Super Mario Bros.) had to deal with. The whole game fits into 40 Kilobytes. Micro Mages could have been an NES launch title!


Interview and review

Videos

Download a .zip of the videos (contains also a short version of the trailer)

Trailer

Documentary

Original soundtrack

Micro Mages OST is available on Bandcamp (contains 2 bonus remixes tracks by Heophoros and Blitz Lunar)


Instruction Booklet

We invite you to check the Micro Mages manual PDF


Screenshots

Download a .zip of the screenshots (contains more pictures than shown below)

Key art and illustrations

Download a .zip of the illustrations (contains more pictures than shown below)

Sprites

Download a .zip of the sprites (contains more pictures than shown below)

Title and Logos

Download a .zip of title and logos (contains more pictures than shown below)

Miscellaneous pictures

Download a .zip of miscellaneous pictures (contains more pictures than shown below)

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