Indie/Homebrew Showcase
The participants below attended the 2024 Expo. Updated Showcase Info coming in 2025.
New Games for Old Systems!
Did you know that there are still people making new games for our beloved aging hardware? These talented developers easily show that there is plenty of life left and discoveries to be made in systems that many wrote off as having “complete” libraries long ago.
Located on the Second Floor.
Presented by VGNY Soft and VideoGamesNewYork
Experience dedicated retro gaming sections across different platforms set up for specific genres, eras, and levels of competition. Attendees at LI Retro will find no shortage of retro games to play ranging from fighting, puzzle, adventure, and open world games to games requiring special peripherals such as light gun. music, and racing games.
With a huge assortment of iconic and hidden gems in each section, you’ll be amazed at the amount of games you’ve barely scratched the surface of playing.
Full Indie / Homebrew lineup coming soon.
Opcode Games
LIRetro Attendees can demo the following games from Opcode:
– DK Arcade – Gradius – Moon Cresta – Pac-Man DX – Amidar – DK Jr. Arcade – Time Pilot – Lady Bug Arcade
NESmaker
No matter your experience level, you can get started creating real NES games right now. Play them on real cartridges or in your favorite emulator.
NESmaker comes with prebuilt modules to get new users started creating right away without writing a single line of code. Advanced users can dig into the organized code base to go as far as to create entire engines from scratch.
Champ Games
Champ Games is a leading developer and publisher of homebrew games for the Atari 2600 using the latest cutting-edge technology.
Rivet Gun Games
Rivet Gun Games is an indie studio focused on creating fun and challenging 8-bit adventures.
Our current project, Sunset Land, is an 8-bit sci-fi, gangster, western adventure for the NES. Welcome to the planet Venture, where it’s sunset all the time. Your mission is to steal three Stellar Crystals, artifacts which contain tremendous amounts of energy, for an intergalactic mob boss. Your ever increasing psychic powers will be the key to victory. Use psychic blasts to fight the vicious enemies that stand in your way and use carefully timed air jumps to navigate deadly platforming challenges. Your journey will take you across mountains, into abandoned mines, through arid wastelands, to an industrialized metropolis, and even the recesses of your own psyche. Travel off the beaten path to find secrets and talk with townspeople to uncover the history of Venture.
WhaleFood Games / KungFu Kickball
ROBYSOFT
GameTank
The GameTank is a brand new retro console, with a growing developer community and library of games. Built on a 6502 CPU and a pile of basic logic, it’s an 8-bit playground for programmers and tinkerers alike. It’s also fully open-source, so anyone can build it or build for it!
LoBlast / GunTneR
GunTneR is a thrilling new hyper-arcade shmup experience for your NES only 24kb in size and released in 2022.
LoBlast is a young, scrappy company focused on creating new low-fidelity experiences. Helmed by owner/operator Langel Bookbinder, we celebrate both retrofuture and backwards tech.
Trevor Boddy
Trevor lives in Brooklyn and makes bullet hell(ish) games during game jams for the Sega Genesis.
STELLAR INTERFACE
Explore the randomly-generated galaxy to find merchants, unlock spacecrafts, collect Cartridges and checkmark your kills of the various galactic overlords.
Run through the universe, discover the numerous perks/consumables and their synergistic effects. Explore the randomly-generated galaxy to find merchants, unlock spacecrafts, collect StellarNetES Cartridges, checkmark your kills of the various galactic overlords… and die. A lot!
Rogue-like Elements: With a randomly generated universe and randomized perks, no journey will ever be the same! What will happen to you, in your own unique apocalyptic cataclysmic transgalactic voyage?
Synergistic Perk System: Over 100 perks and consumables! Look out for the synergistic nature of the perks that suits your playstyle!
Galactic Bounties: Complete over 100 missions to participate in the StellarNET Entertainment System lottery!
Customize Your Start: Choose your spacecraft: there is one for every playstyle, as they have unique starting perks. You can personalize your arsenal from numerous weapons: cannons, missiles and lasers!
Unlock Spacecrafts, View Your Progress: Check out what have you accomplished in our in-game encyclopedia StellarNET. Unlock new spacecrafts, kill all the bosses to progress in StellarNET’s kill table. Check which perks and consumables you have used and seen, and what is your progress towards the achievements!
Explore the Universe: Some levels are more special than others: Merchants, Bosses, Spacecraft Factories. Fight through lower-difficulty levels to stock up on perks, or just streamline to the end-boss if you feel powerful enough!
EARTH ATLANTIS
“The Great Climate Shift” struck at end of the 21st century. Ninety six percent of the earth’s surface is underwater. Human civilization has fallen. Machines have adopted the shape and form of marine animals.
The ocean is full of creature-machine hybrid monsters. You are a “Hunter” and the new journey begins…
Earth Atlantis is a side-scrolling shooter with an original “Monster-Hunting” gameplay. Search and hunt down dreadful sea monsters and explore the post-apocalyptic underwater world. Unlock multiple ships with special weapons and abilities for your journey and become a legendary hunter!
The game is presented in a very unique and artistic “Old Sketching” visual style, which expresses the essence of the 14th century’s ocean exploration when the sea was considered a dangerous place full of monsters.
TANUKI JUSTICE
Tanuki Justice is an intensive run ‘n gun in which you play as one of two tanuki siblings. You’ll face hundreds of enemies in feudal Japan across various environments and landscapes and find yourself challenging scenarios reminiscent of good old arcade games. Gameplay is easy to learn, yet difficult to master, allowing for flexibility in combat. A two-player co-op mode is also included for double the fun! You’ll also face powerful bosses that will challenge even the most skilled players, but there is no greater foe than time itself!
Colossal Cave
The Colossal Cave Adventure, originally created by Will Crowther and Don Woods in 1976, is considered one of the first and most influential text-based adventure games. Roberta Williams, co Founder of Sierra Online and designer of Kings Quest and Phantasmagoria has come out of retirement and created a New Colossal Cave which is now available where ever games are sold.
Visitors to our exhibit can experience the original Colossal Cave game as it was played on the Teletype Model 33 and Apple III computers, as well as the IBM Dos versions that were released over the years. For those who prefer a more tactile experience, we also have original boxed games on display for visitors to examine and appreciate.
But that’s not all – for those who want to take their exploration of the Colossal Cave to the next level, we offer a Virtual Reality version of the game designed by Roberta Williams.
This exciting new format allows players to fully immerse themselves in the game’s world and interact with its inhabitants in a way that was not possible with the original text-based game.
Whether you are a seasoned adventurer looking to relive the nostalgia of the original game, or a curious newcomer eager to explore one of the earliest examples of interactive storytelling, the Colossal Cave exhibit has something for everyone
OKINAWA RUSH
The Black Mantis clan has come to Okinawa…
DEMONICA: EVERLASTING NIGHT
Gothic “metroidvania” adventure awaits in Demoniaca: Everlasting Night, a side-scrolling action platformer that mixes beautifully grotesque imagery with seductive style. Explore, fight, meet new friends and seek revenge against those who brought you unbearable pain and loss! As you journey through the dreadful and corrupted Tower of Babel, you’ll uncover its many dangerous secrets, challenge powerful lords and slay hordes of their minions. Immerse yourself in fluid real-time combat that’s easy to learn but challenging to master. Gain access to new areas in and around the tower as you progress and upgrade abilities. But what end could await one filled with such anger and despair?
ANDRO DUNOS 2
The sequel to the famous shoot’em up from Visco studio is coming to PixelHeart. It’s time to bring out your good old spaceship fighter in ANDRO DUNOS 2.
Andro Dunos (アンドロデュノス, in japanese) is a side scrolling arcade game from shoot’em up category (Shmup). Developed by Visco and Distributed in 1992 by SNK ON Neo-Geo MVS and Neo-Geo AES, Andro Dunos is a shooter with one of the best developer lineages in the genre.
Some 28 years have passed since the Earth Defence deployed Yellow Cherry and Red Fox to stop the imminent invasion from an unknown alien race. 52 light years away on the edge of our galaxy the threat has reared its ugly head again and this time they mean business. There’s just one thing to do, dust off the finest Earth Defence ships ever made and send the alien scum packing. It’s apparent that these relics from a war time that was forgotten had seen better days and only one ship the Yellow Cherry could be saved using parts from Red Fox which was critically damaged in the war of the past. Are you up for the task of saving the earth?
