Summer Games Fest is almost at an end, but thanks to the indie developer Matt Hughson, there's still a special treat in store for fans of retro games.
As Hughson announced earlier today on Twitter, he is putting on a special 30-minute event on Thursday 29th June, which is devoted entirely to the world of homebrew video game development. It will feature 140 new homebrew games across 17 retro consoles, which pretty much guarantees there will be something in there to interest everyone.
Speaking to Time Extension, Hughson gave us some more info on how the event initially came about: "The idea spawned from seeing all the "E3" events happening and thinking that we could put together something similar to that for homebrew games. After some discussion with other developers, and after narrowing down the requirements (games released this year or in development, for consoles pre-2000 or handhelds pre-2004), I opened up the submissions form a day after the idea was first discussed.
"Mostly, I'm excited about just sharing everything that is going on in the community," he tells us. "I had a similar initiative last year when I released RETROBREW, a print and digital homebrew magazine. This serves a similar purpose but is easier to create."
Hughson posted up a breakdown of all the games that were originally submitted earlier this month (some of which ended up being ineligible). He also included more information on what types of games were submitted, and when they might potentially be released.
"The breadth of submissions is [...] huge," says Hughson. "There are tons of NES, Genesis, and Game Boy titles as you might expect. There are also submissions for things like Virtual Boy, 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Lynx, and other obscure consoles. It's been really fun to work on this because the homebrew scenes are much more foreign to me. The genres are just as varied. Platformers, puzzle games, adventure games, and shooters probably make up the majority of the projects. But there are also rhythm action games, light gun games, music creators, racing, sports, JRPGs, and more. Honestly, I'm not sure which genres ARENT represented!"
The special showcase premiers at 12:30PM PDT|3:30PM EDT|8:30PM BST. You will be able to watch it on YouTube here.