So many of the really old two-player games are deeply similar in the broad strokes, so why not try to cram all of them into the same engine and make them fight? The goal is to get really gameplay-accurate reproductions of what’s interesting about these individual games, and then in addition to making them all available in one package, have a big shuffle mode that recombines the player sprites in the wrong worlds and sets up unexpected asymmetric mashups.
Right now there’s just renditions of Pong, Spacewar (1963!), and the Tank and excellent Biplane mode from Intellivision’s Triple Action, but even those four games recombine quite interestingly: playing Pong around Spacewar’s supermassive star is nearly impossible, but in the best of ways. I’ve tried to build this as extensibly as possible so I can dump a lot of game types and variations into it (a top-down Sprint-style racer comes immediately to mind, along with Frog Bog, because I was an Intellivision kid) but I really need to know if this is appealing to anyone besides me, and would love feedback. Don’t really need game suggestions, because there are so, so many obvious options.
Left player uses up/down on the D-pad to rotate, right to move, left to shoot, or tilts the Playdate to control the paddle. Right player uses the crank to rotate or control the paddle, B to move, and A to shoot. Shuffle mode is the default but you can select the individual games or a couple choice alternates from the system menu.
