NESMaker shows off version 5, is getting renamed, and announces SNES tools

The New 8-Bit Heroes held a stream to make some announcements about their NESMaker development platform. They covered (among other things) details about the upcoming version 5 update, announced that it will soon be retitled to Retro Game Forge, and revealed that support for SNES game development is on the way.

What interested me, personally, was the demonstration of the platform’s version 5 update. It has been resting at version 4.5.9 since 2020. At its current version, it’s still a capable program that allows you to craft games for the Nintendo Entertainment System using modular code and a variety of tools that simplify the process. However, I could see room for improvement, and what they showed off is definitely that.

The stream lingers mostly on the art editor, which is getting a number of useful tools and tweaks. It also moves to the map editor, which adds the ability to make changes to various parameters on a screen-by-screen basis. It’s all good stuff.

They also explain the reasons for the change of moniker. Specifically, they’re making the tool somewhat console agnostic, with the first announced expansion allowing the creation of SNES games. They promise that the tools will work similarly, meaning that familiarity with one console’s tools will be largely transferable elsewhere.

A new marketplace called The Retro Verse, which will allow developers to more easily swap and demonstrate projects.

I’ve made some effort to learn NESMaker, and have been gradually poking away at a game of my own. However, I just realized that when I recently formatted one of my drives after it became corrupted, I erased that project. But to demonstrate how much work I still had to do, I don’t consider it much of a loss, because I was still largely working with placeholders to familiarize myself with the tool. There was nothing really there worth saving. Maybe someday.

There’s no word on when version 5, the SNES tools, or the rename to Retro Game Forge is going to happen. But we’re being told to “Please, be patient. There’s still a lot we’re trying to work out.”