A Homebrew Draws Near!

A blog series by @Scrobins

Episode 46: Zed and Zee

Introduction:

A frequent element of homebrew is structuring gameplay around or sneaking in references to classic licensed era games. The homages are meant to connect these new games to the enduring originals which inspired them, and acknowledge the nostalgia that has made them legends. Sometimes though, the names of legend need not remain in the past. CollectorVision bought the Acclaim Entertainment brand (but not the IP) in 2016 in order to publish new games under the classic name once associated with such franchises as Wizards & Warriors, NBA Jam, and Mortal Kombat. So too can other names be resurrected in a way to tap into nostalgia and honor its forebear. It’s all about the vibes!

For this entry, I’m covering the arcade platformer Zed and Zee for the NES by TENGEN GAMES. As of the time of this writing, the game can be purchased digitally here, and is available physically here.

CIB in both NES and Famicom form

 

Development Team:

Jeff Silvers: Developer

 

Game Evolution:

TENGEN GAMES’ story begins in 1987 with the founding of the original Tengen Inc. A subsidiary of Atari (both Atari and Tengen are derived from the Japanese board game Go), the company sought to get around Nintendo’s famously restrictive licensing rules and bypass the NES’ lock-out chip. Ultimately successful, Tengen became known for its distinctive black cartridges to denote its unlicensed games, including Alien Syndrome, Klax, and Ms. Pac-Man. The company went defunct in 1994.

In 2022, Jeff Silvers learned through research that the “Tengen” name was not owned by anyone, and acquired the trademark in 2024 to release new games in homage to the original company, under the belief that “gaming has no gatekeeper.” And with that Jeff exploded TENGEN GAMES onto the homebrew scene on July 9, 2024, with the launch of his social media channels, a YouTube trailer, and the release of his first game: Zed and Zee, on itch.io and Dalyen Games.

Tengen’s unlicensed Tetris cart next to its licensed brother

 

Gameplay:

Zed and Zee describes itself as an arcade platformer. You play as Zed and Zee, two humanoid robots rebelling against their creator, Dr. Otto Matton. Originally a benevolent inventor, years of corporations stealing credit for his work has driven Dr. Matton evil, causing him to seek world domination with his robot army. As his most advanced inventions, you must thwart your creator’s ambitions.

Controls are straightforward: press left or right on the D-pad to move accordingly, press up or down on the D-pad to climb ladders, press the A button to jump, hold the A button for a longer jump, and hold the B button to run while moving.

Screenshot of Zed and Zee

 

Review:

Zed and Zee is a cutesy platformer that masks a really challenging arcade puzzler just below the surface. Lulled in by the colorful characters is a true NES hard game that quickly brings that familiar pain of replaying a level over and over, as you test new theories of conquering a particularly stressful stage, followed eventually by the ecstasy of victory when you beat it. A good mixture of enemy types brings the difficulty to a slow boil. And each area is capped with a boss battle, though that may be a misnomer as the stage is more of a creative puzzle challenge that mixes up your experience and upends how you think you should engage the level. My own critique would be that, as with any game featuring points and a timer, there seems to be a missed opportunity for speedrunners and tournament players for the remaining time to be added to your point total at the end of each stage.

Graphically Zed and Zee is very colorful, showing that 8-bit arcade games can be detailed and pretty. Each level clearly shows off careful thought as a well-developed puzzle, and features a different background to highlight your progress, demonstrating a degree of effort and showmanship on the part of the developer. Meanwhile the music offers bright, upbeat melodies reminiscent of Mega Man, with their robotic and adventurous bloops. The different style of music for the bosses are a cool clue that something very different is afoot, where the music reflects a slower, more contemplative tone as if to signal to the player they must stop and think a moment on their strategy toward bosses.

 

Interviews:

Jeff used his research skills to bring a classic name in gaming back to life. I interviewed him to learn more about the new life he’s breathing into the old name he’s resurrected.

 

Jeff Silvers

@tengengames

-Before we dive into Zed and Zee, I would love to talk about you and your background. What first inspired you to become a homebrew game developer? What is your origin story? What is the story behind Tengen Games? You note it all started on a whim, tell us about that whim!

When I was a kid in the '90s, making my own video games was a pretty big dream of mine.  I would draw fake issues of Nintendo Power featuring maps of NES games I'd made up in my head, and Excitebike and Wrecking Crew became two of my favorite games just because they let you design your own levels.  My family finally got a computer around 2000 and I would make little games on it however I could, but the desire to make a real NES game was always there, even well past the SNES and N64 eras.  It just stuck with me.

I finally jumped into NES homebrew development in 2020 during the COVID pandemic.  Zed and Zee was the first project I started, but I released a few smaller projects under a different name in 2022.

A couple years ago I was talking to a friend about how big of a fan I was of the original Tengen and I mentioned that it'd be cool if somebody could buy the name and resurrect it as a brand for new retro games.  That was the whim that led me to do a trademark search and find out that nobody actually owned the name anymore and hadn't for almost thirty years!  I did some research on what it would take to register an abandoned trademark and realized it was very doable.  I went from fantasizing about somebody bringing back one of my favorite video game brands to being the person actually doing it.

 

-Who are your influences? And whose work are you watching closely now?

Shigeru Miyamoto's philosophy that games should be easy to pick up and play while still offering a challenge for more advanced players drives a lot of my design choices.  Zed and Zee gives you infinite continues and a password system, but also zeroes out your score every time you get a game over.  Less experienced players can keep going without feeling discouraged, while players looking for a real challenge can start over and try to beat it beginning to end to get a high score.

The great Shigeru Miyamoto

There isn't one developer or another I'm following closely right now—I just like to keep an eye out on the homebrew scene for any new and exciting projects.  It seems like just about every console has a thriving or growing homebrew scene nowadays.  It's an exciting time to be into retro gaming!

 

-How would you describe your design aesthetic, and what to you are hallmarks of a game designed by you?

So far my aesthetic has been bright colors with dark outlines around characters and foreground objects, kind of cartoonish.  That's probably less a reflection of an overarching personal style and more a function of the themes I've dealt with so far, though.

I think a hallmark of any game I've designed is that I try to make sure every visual element has an appropriate personality.  Zed and Zee has six unique worlds, each one of which follows a theme, and some of those worlds have more than one theme (e.g., Robohari Desert is divided between outdoor desert and subterranean pyramid stages).  I put a lot of focus on ensuring that the graphics for each stage uniquely reflected that world's theme while still maintaining a unified visual aesthetic throughout the game.

 

-Your website alludes to the original Tengen Inc. as a maverick that influenced you. What does it mean to you to be a maverick, that gaming should have no gatekeeper?

I truly believe that video games are an important contemporary artform and that artists should have a right to distribute their art how they want.  Nintendo had placed a lot of restrictions on third-party developers in the 80s and 90s.  Some of these were just attempts to protect the industry from another crash (like the one that had occurred just a few years prior), but some were clearly meant to enforce a Nintendo monopoly, putting them in the position to dictate which games would see an audience and which wouldn't.  Tengen was the first major company to challenge this idea.  They were hardly a small indie company, but I feel like that maverick attitude of “We don't need anybody else's permission to create art” is the soul of the modern indie gaming movement.

 

-What tools do you use to code, compose, and create?

For NES games, most of my coding and level design work takes place in the NESmaker suite.  I do prefer to edit ASM scripts in Notepad++ rather than in NESmaker's text editor, but NESmaker makes it easier to find your scripts across multiple directories.  I actually designed Zed's idle standing sprite and the game's font in a pixel editor app on my phone.  If I compose my own music, I do it in FamiTracker. 

 

-Ever since my first episode, artist M-Tee planted this idea in my mind that a game’s protagonist serves as the player's point of immersion in the game, informing how we understand the game's world. I also believe that the protagonist’s design serves as a reflection of its designer. What is the intention behind the androids’ design? Do you see yourself in them?

I hate that my answer to this is so shallow, but no!  Zed's and Zee's design started off as a nameless android sprite I drew on my phone out of boredom.  It was literally called “Robot Guy.png.”  I liked the design and decided to use it in this starter project I was working on that I was never going to publish, just a way to get used to NESmaker.  One thing led to another and then to several other things, and eventually that game morphed into Zed and Zee.  I have ideas for games where we'll get to really explore the protagonist and what drives them as a character, but Zed and Zee are just cool robots.

 

-What aspects of Zed and Zee are you most proud of?

The graphics.  I'm proud of other things, too—this was my first time coding in ASM, which can be a real bear sometimes, and I think my level designs kept a pretty simple gameplay concept from getting boring even after 36 stages and 6 boss fights.  But I feel the proudest of the graphics.  Every enemy has its own personality, I stretched the few colors I had available in clever ways, and I think the game just pops visually.  I tend to be really critical of my own work, but I think Zed and Zee's graphics stand up well to scrutiny.

 

-What new challenges or surprises surfaced in developing Zed and Zee? What lessons did you learn that you would like to share with the people who aspire to follow in your footsteps?

Most of the challenges and surprises I encountered really happened around Zed and Zee's development rather than as a result of it.  Our son Wilder was diagnosed with cancer in October 2021.  He's been in remission for more than two years now and is doing awesome, but as you can imagine, Zed and Zee and a lot of other things in our lives were placed on hold for a while.  When I did finally come back to it, it felt strange because it had been sitting untouched for so long.  I almost considered abandoning the project.  I'm glad I didn't, of course, and to anybody who has the luxury of working on a game solo without deadlines or anybody else's expectations, I'd say don't feel bad about taking a break.  You can come back to it when you need to.  It's not going anywhere.  Honestly, that's probably good advice even when you do have deadlines.

 

-Are there any other projects you have lined up on the horizon, NES or otherwise? Any dream projects?

I can say that I almost certainly know what my next project will be, but I don't have anything that's far enough along yet for me to share.  Right now I'm mostly focused on getting Zed and Zee in front of as many players as possible.

As far as dream projects, I'd love to be given the reins on some neglected video games series, like Adventures of Lolo.  I said this in another interview that may or may not appear before this one, but I will work for almost free if HAL lets me make Adventures of Lolo 4.  Like they could probably pay me in coffee.  I'd also love to create an 8-bit wrestling game, only because the NES had several but only a few of them were good.

Given the box art, maybe an Adventures of Lolo wrestling game doesn’t seem to outlandish…

 

-Are there any homebrew games in development that you are excited to play?

I only recently discovered that Flea! 2 is in development.  I've not had a chance to play the demo yet, but it's on my to-do list.  It looks great, and the first one was a lot of fun.  The New 8-Bit Heroes, who also develop NESmaker, have Mystic Searches coming out soon as well, I believe.

 

-I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me and share your experiences. Is there anything else you would like to tell readers and fans?

The pleasure was all mine!  Thanks for allowing me to ramble on about trademarks and robots.  To readers and fans, I sincerely hope you enjoy Zed and Zee and everything else you'll see from us in the future!

 

 

Conclusion:

Thanks for tuning in to this latest episode of the series that takes a deep dive into your future favorite homebrew games. What are your thoughts on Zed and Zee? What homebrews are you eagerly looking forward to? Perhaps you’ll see it here soon when…A Homebrew Draws Near! Command?