In brief: Multiplayer on the original Nintendo Entertainment System meant gathering around a single television and either engaging in a two-player battle, connecting a four-player adapter for an insanely good time in Bomberman, or passing a controller around to take turns in single-player games. The Internet forever changed multiplayer as we know it, allowing gamers with a quality connection to engage in remote play on modern platforms. Now, even classic consoles are getting in on the action thanks to modern technology and a bit of custom engineering.
French developer Broken Studio has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Super Tilt Bro., a new platform fighting game for the NES that comes with Wi-Fi connectivity baked right into the cartridge. Each cartridge will include an ESP8266 Wi-Fi chipset and an FPGA to manage communications between the NES and the Wi-Fi chipset, we're told, and will use rollback netcode.
Super Tilt Bro. will offer three modes of online play including casual, ranked and private. In a casual match, you'll be randomly paired up with another player for a standard battle. A ranked match offers the opportunity to climb the ladder as you earn wins and with private play, you can compete with friends, organize private tournaments and so on.
Super Tilt Bro. has already garnered more than $37,000 in pledges from 406 backers en route to its goal of just over $44,000. A pledge of €55 (about $60) will get you the game along with a retail box and instruction manual as well as a digital comic book and a digital copy of the original soundtrack. A bit more coin (€80) gets you the collector edition with a blue translucent shell.
Broken Studio has also published a demo of the open source game, a ROM file that can be used with any standard NES emulator, so you can try story mode and local multiplayer before committing to the project.
Should everything go according to plan, the first wave of rewards is expected to ship out in April 2024.
https://www.techspot.com/news/98445-custom-nes-cartridge-has-wi-fi-chip-online.html
