Following in Beggar Prince's footsteps is...

[CMA Death Adder]

There's a huge different between creating a game from the ground up, and patching/translating a game.

It's amazing how many people, for whatever reason, completely miss the point of what we did with Beggar Prince. "Patching/translating" is not accurate, and by no means whatsoever was it easy. Our work on Beggar Prince required extensive reprogramming, which was contracted out to professional Megadrive developers. No, Beggar Prince wasn't a 100% brand-new game from the ground up, but it also wasn't just a case of "translate the text, replace the text, done". In fact, the translation work was the smallest work.

I'm not trying to sound rude, I just get a bit insulted when people try to dismiss our work on Beggar Prince as something as simple as just a mere 'translation'.

There are 1000s of completely translated games

Incorrect. There are many, many translated games for the Nintendo, Super Nintendo and et cetera. The Genesis / Megadrive, on the other hand, doesn't have all the flashy, fancy debuggers and so on so forth, and thus, its Japanese / Chinese language games get overlooked almost completely. Just to engineer a Japanese / Chinese Megadrive game to accept English text properly is usually a task within itself, due to the almost complete non-existance of helpful tools. What, then does one do? They develop the tools, hardware, etc. on their own, and code new assembly routines to handle any snags that come up.

but only a handful of commercial quality homebrew games. This should give you some idea of the complexity of creating an entirely new game.

Sure ... it's difficult ... and it doesn't pay a dime.
That said, it requires heart and a full belief in yourself and your abilities. Most of the unlicensed or 'homebrew' projects I've seen fail and die over the years weren't due to complexity, they were due to the fact that the developer(s) lost faith in themselves, or lost their focus. Working on new products for dead consoles means you're not going to get a huge crowd cheering you on, especially if you're working on a smaller game - and the problem is, many developers can't keep their spirit up unless they have constant pats on the back from others.

And, unfortunately, people are always more likely to say something negative than they are to say something inspirational. So, you set out to develop a little game. Cool, maybe someone will like it and say, 'thanks'. But ... wait ... they're cursing at me, saying that instead of a puzzle game I should be doing a shooter, or instead of making a clone of Defender, I should be making a clone of Moon Patrol. So ... it's so easy to begin questioning why you're developing anything new at all, for these people, when all they want to do is throw verbal trash at you. And the ones you truly appreciate what you are doing? They rarely speak up ... so, yeah ... believe in yourself or you're done for.

In our case? Everyone told me that working on Beggar Prince was a bad idea, that we'd never finish it, etc., etc. ... and under that kind of negative pressure, I can see many people wanting to give up. Me? I didn't let it phase me, because I had faith in myself and in my team. If you have that faith, that drive - it doesn't matter what everyone else says - and then BAM! - one day, you have a finished product, and everyone's like, "...wow."

Usually the biggest challenge facing a homebrew programmer is the lack of graphics or graphic artists.

True enough. Artists are ... unique people.

[108 Stars]

Hmh...I don´t know.
On the one side, developing something at all is something to be appreciated. But I don´t think it is unimportant if you want positive feedback to try and develop something many people are really interested in. Very, very few people will play a game only because it´s on Mega Drive not caring ybout the genre.

That´s why I think doing a poker game may not have been a wise decision; few people will learn to play poker for the game, and poker games are widely available as freeware games in the www. It´s just not that interesting for a majority of people. Doing something more flashy, more exciting than plain old poker would attract more people to support a project.
People to talk us down were very, very few so far, mainly in the beginning (before I even joined) when nothing was done, haysayers stated that a few fanboys could never pull it off. Now that we have something to show, I experience great support and trust. TRPG had 90% positive feedback so far; that is mainly because it is a popular genre we´re working on. So I guess had Spotnick Team ported a jump´n run, or even a puzzle game, feedback would be more positive than for a card game. That´s why I think the choice was not so wise in the first place; negative reactions were to be expected.

But I thought about my negative first reaction and I now think Teenage Queen is a game worth buying; if not to play and have countless hours of fun, at least to show gratitude for the effort and hope it will encourage the team to go into turbo-mode and do bigger and more impressive games someday.

[CMA Death Adder]

The Spoutnick Team website is now back online, for (not updated) news of Teenage Queen MD.

[Barracuda]

Raising a thread from the dead.

Anybody have any news on this game? The website hasn't been updated in some time.

[Mr Smith]

I think the term is "Wising a thread from its glay".