The Sega Mega Drive / Genesis has never been short on amazing shoot 'em ups, and remarkably its library of games continues to grow even more impressive as time goes on, with the emergence of exciting homebrew projects from fans with a passion for the console.
A great case in point is ZPF — a brand-new sidescrolling shoot-em-up from the publisher Mega Cat Studios and the developers Perry "Gryzor" Sessions (artist & creator), Mikael Tillander (coding & hardware), and Jamie "JGVex" Vance (composer and voice artist). It sees players hop behind the controls of one of three playable characters (Knight, Gladius, and Gold) as they battle through a mix of fantastical, futuristic, and alien worlds.
The project has been on our radar for a while now but has just recently made headlines again (on Time Extension and elsewhere) after launching its Kickstarter where it smashed its goal of £11,852 in just 19 minutes. Last time we checked, it is currently on £97,667 and the campaign shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
Before the campaign went crazy, we were lucky enough to put some questions to Sessions to find out a bit more about how the project came to be. He gave us a little insight into the games the devs have previously worked on together (which bizarrely includes a dental-themed run and gun for NES that was created for Marc Vance of Advance Dental PC), some of the difficult challenges they've faced working with the Mega Drive / Genesis hardware, and let us in on how close the game is to being finished. You can read our Q&A below:
Time Extension: When did the journey of making ZPF start? How did the team initially come together?
Sessions: I knew our coder Mikael from years spent hanging out at the old system11 shmups forum. In 2019, he messaged me on Twitter about using some old graphics from a previous unfinished project (the older PC iteration of the game.)
I've known our musician (Jamie/JGVex) since I was a kid. Just previously, we had worked on a fun little side project called Cavity Destroyer (built in Game Maker), which he learned how to make NES tracker music for. Going from that to a different classic system was a challenge he happily accepted.
Time Extension: Why did you decide to make a new shoot ‘em up for the Mega Drive/Genesis? What about the platform in particular stood out to you as the perfect home for this kind of project?
Sessions: Both me and the coder had been making our own homebrew shooters for years and he had been working on a Megadrive one right then. The plan was just to use some of my old graphics for something similar and it evolved from there.
The Mega Drive / Genesis is built for speed after all and has tons of great games in the genre already so it's a no-brainer.
Time Extension: Has it been difficult trying to fit the game on a Mega Drive cartridge? Could you tell us a little more about the prototype cart you have at the moment? Are there any special tricks you used to get the most out of the system and the cart?
Sessions: Yes. The first problem is having enough tiles, then having enough available sprites, then you run out of ROM space! Since we have no FM sound effects, a big drain on that was PCM audio... all of which I put in were too large, too long and had to be chopped down. We had voice samples (courtesy of our musician) for boss intros early on which all had to be cut.
Since we have no FM sound effects, a big drain on that was PCM audio... all of which I put in were too large, too long and had to be chopped down. We had voice samples (courtesy of our musician) for boss intros early on which all had to be cut.
The proto cart has a special demo version just to give a taste of the full thing. It has 1 of the 7 total stages to play, including the end boss.
I wouldn't say we used any tricks as it was mostly a learning process of how to get all this stuff done and assembled and working as well as possible. Multiplexing is quite useful for saving sprites from the dreaded horizontal line limit I suppose.
Time Extension: From what we’ve seen and played of the game so far, its visuals are seriously impressive. Could you talk a little about how you developed the art style? What were some of the main inspirations behind it? Did you do any hand-drawn sketches to workshop how the game was going to look before you jumped in-engine?
Sessions: Thank you! I find it difficult to anticipate the problems that come from going 'sketch to screen', especially with all the many tweaks that become inevitable. My style mostly developed from skipping that step entirely, just feeling things out in terms of shapes and color and fixing things on the fly.
Unfortunately, that leaves us short on fun behind-the-scenes material to show afterward. Most of my design sketches are no better than stick figure scribbles.
Time Extension: So far, I haven’t seen much information about what sorts of tools you’ve been using. Is it mostly custom or are there any common homebrew tools you’ve been using?
Sessions: The base of it is SGDK (Sega Genesis Development Kit) with custom C code for refinement and optimization. Our coder provided me with a whole suite of useful custom tools for building and animating objects, plotting things on a timeline for constructing stages, and even a scripting language I could use to devise enemy logic. As for a more common one, I use Cosmigo Pro Motion for all of the graphics, tile, and palette corrections. Our musician uses Deflemask.
Our coder provided me with a whole suite of useful custom tools for building and animating objects, plotting things on a timeline for constructing stages, and even a scripting language I could use to devise enemy logic.
Time Extension: To talk a little bit about the game’s design, why did you decide to include three playable avatars? What was your approach to designing these three different play styles? How do these differ from one another?
Sessions: Originally there were 5! We didn't have enough ROM space for all of them, though. The main reason was to have characters to match the different level themes; but also because I always find them easier to build vs, say whole new stages.
Previously, the basic weapon concepts were a few genre standards: a spread shot, a straight shot, and a homing shot. But we had to iterate on them quite a lot to make them look distinct and good under the system limitations. Homing was nixed for performance then replaced with something similar to TF4's Blade. The melee attacks also mutated from older ship-specific specials that depleted from an accumulating power bar: one was a big beam attack that we just couldn't recreate very well and another was close range only and encouraged some fun risk/reward play. Take a guess which got kept.
Time Extension: The game borrows the currency and shop mechanic from the PC Engine game Lords of Thunder. What did you like about this concept? And what are some of the changes — If any — between your approach and theirs?
Sessions: The main difference is the cash-in system which lets you redeem medals for extra score, which you'll want to do for a score-focused run. We also let you power up your melee attack there. The "hint" option is also borrowed from games like Forgotten Worlds mostly as a way to inject some story details and personality.
Time Extension: A Kickstarter for the project is being launched on July 1st. Why have you decided to turn to Kickstarter to fund the project? How do you think crowdfunding will benefit the project?
Sessions: Without it, it would much more financially taxing to manufacture carts, do printing for boxes and manuals etc. to please the large percentage of retro collectors in our audience. Even having a publisher on hand, it definitely helps to take away some of that burden.
Time Extension: Lastly, roughly how much of the game is completed at the moment? Are there any future challenges still standing between the team and a release?
Sessions: It's pretty much all done. There are only some bugs to fix and backer names to add in, really.