· Game Boy AdvanceRally Atlas: a rally game for Game Boy Advance, with a free demo
After VECTOR, another game for the Game Boy Advance: Rally Atlas, an isometric arcade rally. Eight stages across Italy, from the Riviera di Ponente to the Stelvio pass. The full game comes out on 5 November on itch.io, and the first stage is already a free download.
It is not a game in the style of the GBA: it is a real cartridge image that runs on the hardware, on a flashcart and on any emulator. This is the Giro del Tricolore, 1986: Nando Ferri drives the Lupa 1300, red with a white stripe and number 13, prepared by his uncle Gino in the workshop of San Lupo, in the Apennines. Uncle Gino rides along as co-driver and mechanic, with pace notes for every corner and plenty to say about your driving.
The tyres have a limit. Go in too fast and the car slides wide, so you brake before the bend. On gravel and snow you can hold a power slide with throttle and steering, and the handbrake turns the car on the spot in the hairpins. Six rivals with a name and a time of their own, three cars, three difficulty levels, and damage that carries over from stage to stage until you repair it at the service park.
Under the hood it is written in C, no engine. The stages are pre-rendered isometric landscapes streamed into a ring of tiles as you drive; the cars are 3D models rendered in 64 rotations and turned into sprites; skid marks are drawn pixel by pixel into a third background and blended by the hardware; the spectators' shadows are the same sprites drawn again by the affine hardware. The game was made with the help of an AI model: the code, the 3D models and the pixel art tools were written together with it.
The demo is the first stage, with all three cars and all three levels. You need a GBA emulator, such as mGBA, or a flashcart.