Haunted Halloween 85

Hey. I picked up a cart the other day, Haunted Halloween 85. It has the distinction of being the first homebrew that I've purchased.

(I've only had time to play about 10 minutes of it, but it looks pretty good, so far).

I've played it twice so far. I got to the werewolf boss both times, but I still haven't beaten it.

(Also, why not just called this topic "Haunted: Halloween '85"? It has nothing to do with locks. You can edit the topic name by editing your post.)

K, done

(Why I called it "recently locked topic" is because I wanted to post it under that thread, but couldn't)

The lead designer recently PM'd me that he finally feels ready to offer his thoughts on the game.

Where will he write them down? If he publishes his thoughts, please let us know the link.

Thanks for getting this conversation rolling again!

First, I apologize for not being available during the first round of discussions. By the time I read the initial thread it was locked. Also, a word of warning, I am new to message boards / forums so if I do something taboo on here please inform me.

Reading through the initial thread was very enlightening for me! I didn't realize how important having a presence on here was; same goes for NintendoAge which I will be addressing next. The main point I'd like to make after reading the initial thread is that Tepples was hit with some questions and criticism that he shouldn't have had to deal with, it should have fallen on me. I cannot stress enough how good of a programmer Tepples is (I'm sure you all know this), but seriously, he kicked ass!

I'm open to any and all feedback on the game. I love criticism, preferably posed in a constructive manner, but either way I find it to be a good thing when coming from passionate people who share a common interest. I'm not sure how to proceed with this so let me know if there are specific questions/concerns I should go back and address from the initial thread or if we should just start anew. Please advise...

Is this Tim? (Cash-In Culture owner)

Love the stores.
You should sell more homebrews/repros.

My only feedback is, it should come with an instruction booklet, and maybe a box.

I think many people willing to pay for a homebrew would be willing to pay more for that. Whether it would be worth the extra time and effort is hard to say; you would have to sell enough "deluxe editions".

This is Greg, Tim's business partner.

Thanks for the kind words about the stores dougeff! We try to make them a nice place for retro gamers and collectors so when we get positive feedback like that it really helps to reaffirm that we're doing things that customers like.

I agree about the homebrews! I'm in contact with several brewers about getting their games into the stores. We just added Armed For Battle and Star Versus this week actually! We're looking for any fully finished games that are solid so that we can showcase them. If anyone reading this is interested please PM me and we'll work out the details. Ideally we want stuff that is largely glitch/bug free so that we're putting good games out there to draw attention to the community. Many people have no idea that any of this exists and since I can't pay the community back in the way of coding experience/help I can at least offer a market place and some publicity. We're setting up demo stations so that people can play the games in-store, the response so far has been overwhelmingly positive. We're looking to dedicate a whole section to homebrews so that people can see the awesome stuff that's out there first hand.

Repros are a different story. We're already getting some people in the stores who assume that homebrews are re-skins or hacks. People aren't taking the time to distinguish between what's a legit homebrew and what's not. In fact we've already had one person tell us that Haunted was a re-skin of Splatterhouse and another tell us that it was a hack of River City Ransom; this was of course before we told them it was our game and built from scratch I took it as a compliment since both of those games are so cool. Someone asked me today if Armed For Battle was a hack even though there is nothing out there like it for the NES. So we're taking the time to educate customers on the difference between hacks and homebrews, highlighting the fact that brewers spend so much time and effort learning to do things on their own without taking code from existing games.

I also agree about the manual/box. We just didn't have enough funds or time to get those ready yet. We fully plan to right after the holidays when we have a little extra money and the time to create them. This was another mistake I made along the way for sure. I didn't realize how much a box and manual meant to the collectors. As soon as possible we'll get those made though! Maybe even "deluxe editions" too...

And in my absentmindedness I forgot to post this link to the official trailer...

https://youtu.be/o2d1YwnBAQA

If anyone wants longer game play footage I would be happy to post some!

I think I'm missing something here, anyone care to summarize?

How long have you been gone Dwedit? Some people came over to NESDEV asking if anyone was interested in programing an NES game for them, tepples said yes and joined them, they finished the game, but some people had complaints about it and (intentionally or non intentionally) kind of put it on tepples even though he didn't have anything to do with game design and the topic turned into a mess and it got locked. Later, dougeff bought the game as it is for sale, and decided to make a new topic about it, which is this one.

1. Original topic began civil. Some notes on palette compromises and VRAM update architecture; some foreshadowing.
2. Last minute sound engine replacement months later once the composer becomes frustrated with the lack of portamento in what is now known as the Pently music engine.
3. Mustardseed notices it's out: persistent begging for gameplay videos.
4. I finally post a video Some praise how well our artist hid the tile grid; others complain about the music and perspective; still others jump to my defense that I not be a scapegoat for the designers' decisions.
5. Vocal critic accepts my lack of fault but argues that I should have published video even earlier to seek constructive criticism. Cue bickering over the validity of criticism by someone who's never shipped.
6. We end up ninjaing each other as our composer's instrument choice is compared to that of Hummer Team. The vocal critic gets called a troll by someone who missed the vocal critic's acceptance of my lack of fault, and they argue a bit over what a troll is and who actually said what. Locked two days after the video was published.

Draw your own conclusions.

These were good questions to direct at Tepples since he was the brains behind the tech side of things.



This was a bit of a misunderstanding and some inexperience on my part. I didn't know enough about the audio side of things to explain the details to our audio guy. He learned to compose in Famitracker as I suggested and assumed that all effects were in play. I didn't realize that different effects were handled differently with code so I failed to communicate to Thomas that not all effects were available to us. I also didn't realize that each instrument had to be built individually and that it took time to do so. We assumed that if we delivered an FTM file everything could just be "magically" imported somehow. So he went nuts with the instruments, making new ones for each tune and sound effect in the game. He also heavily used portamento and other effects when composing and so he was understandably frustrated that it wasn't in the music engine since he had taken so much time crafting the songs to his liking. Had I known more about the whole process I could have prevented this issue so that's completely on me! The Pently engine is really good and in any normal situation it would have been more than adequate.



This is also on me and stemmed from my inexperience with releasing a game. It was totally reasonable to ask for game footage. He didn't want a commercial-esque video with quick cuts, rather, he was looking for some basic footage of someone playing the game for a few minutes. If I understood correctly he was looking for a specific kind of beat 'em up, he didn't like the Double Dragon/TMNT style were you had to beat up all enemies in one section in order to move on. So I think Haunted initially appealed to him in that regard since you could run through it. Had I been more prepared I could have easily had something ready or at least recorded something on my phone of me playing it on a TV as he suggested. Of course I didn't even realize the conversation was even happening.




The tile grid being hidden was a result of the graphic artist's (Zack) style. I showed him my original artwork for the backgrounds that I made early on when we were trying to get this off the ground. They were completely 2D and followed the tile grid much more so. I had never made graphics, I can't draw and I had never worked with pixel art before so they were tremendously inferior to what Zack did. Maybe some people would have liked that better since they were simpler and more akin to original NES games but we all really like what Zack did and so we ran with the somewhat isometric perspective and complete shucking of the grid. Needless to say, this was graphically intense and Tepples had to keep us in line with our tile usage.
The music is not to everyone's liking but that's how music is. I understand the complaints about it but what didn't make sense was people directing criticism at Tepples. Once again on me since I wasn't on here to take the criticism. I ultimately gave the green light on all the music so if anyone wants to ask specific questions or make specific complaints I'm completely open to addressing them. Personally, I think Thomas has a cool style and he did a great job making music to fit the game as I asked of him.
Much thanks to everyone who came to Tepples' defense!! From what I gathered, most people seemed to understand that none of this was Tepples doing but a few people wanted to voice their opinions and it came off as an attack on him.
The rest of the thread is not worth addressing since it wasn't constructive at all.

Opinions are always valid, bickering is a bit much. As someone stated, just PM each other rather than having a public battle of who said what. If anyone wants to re-post their complaints I urge them to do so. Opinions are always valid; I stand by that opinion !! I will take the time to address them and let you know my thoughts on any matter that anyone seeks clarification on. If you want to bash the game now is the time. Seriously, I won't be offended.

To touch on the perspective issue...
We were initially sticking to the complete 2D standard dynamic of a side-scroller even though there was some dimension built into the backgrounds. While we were building the Woods level we started flirting with the idea of adding some depth to the platforms themselves. We demoed the game at Replay FX here in Pittsburgh and people really took to the added dimension, even stating that there were certain things they wished they could have jumped on that we didn't have blocked as a platform. At that point we felt comfortable continuing with the idea and added the additional blocking to things like the bleachers as we developed the levels. When people play the game in our stores most are a bit surprised to find that they can jump into the background but every single person says something to the effect of, "oh, that's cool" or "that's so neat" referring to the added depth. So while it does violate the standard we feel that it adds a bit of character and uniqueness to the game.

The bedroom scene with the over-sized bed was funny to me. I enjoyed the jokes about that! It was not intended to be that way initially but we were running out of time so we improvised and just used the main character sprite in the scene instead of adding larger sprites that would have required more work and more time to complete. We already had plane tickets to Portland and purchased a table at PRGE and we wanted to have the game ready. So we did our best to work with what we had and put together the opening cut scene. Again, most people tell us they like it and that they get it that the story is being told by a ten year old boy so things are exaggerated and don't always make perfect sense. Other things in the game are exaggerated as well like the giant hay bales and cornstalks. The monologue is poorly written and rambles at time just as ten year olds do.

So I accept the criticisms that some perspectives don't match and that the physics might not make sense in parts but I stand by the decisions made and call upon the wonders of the suspension of disbelief. I will gladly discuss any specific perspective concern if someone asks.

Belated congratulations to the team on getting a NES game made from initial pitch to physical production in just a mere 7 months.

When I got Haunted Halloween 85 back in November, I almost got the werewolf boss before running out of continues. Then other things occupied my time until now. Today I got through the whole game on normal difficulty, but I don't think I could of made it if I hadn't found that infinite 1up trick in the silo of level 4 ("Malaise Maize"). The remaining levels are a lot less frustrating when you've got 40 Serum Sodas.

I must say the game has quite a bit of loose physics (which is actually expected for a beat 'em up game). Using a soft upward eject for the ground, like how SMB1 ejects horizontally through the walls, is an interesting choice. Makes slopes and landing on corners feel right. There was one moment where I did zipped upward though a solid ceiling in the descending part of the silo (probably won't save time in a speedrun).

I think it was one of the most solid homebrew releases yet.

Failing to jump on slopes is the biggest complaint. It's not game breaking, but after I died to that I had to make sure I was at a stop before jumping on a slope again.

If I can say, the thing that frustrated me about the game's initial reception here was just that I felt there could be a bit more professional and personal courtesy to not post an overly critical review of a game that's already shipped right when it's released. Maybe I overestimated the affect that this board has on homebrew sales, I don't know. I did PM the person with whom I bickered and apologized for being a dick to them, because I was, but isn't there validity to wanting to see courtesy extended to other homebrew projects, especially when people have time and money invested in them?

I don't know. I got frustrated and I shouldn't have said anything.

I liked the game. It was a fun play with friends on Halloween. The movie theater scenes were my favorite part. I just hope the project's successful and more projects like this get to happen.

I'm always surprised that people who I know make NES homebrews (and go to other forums) seem to have no idea what's going on over here. Therefore, I think it probably had no impact on sales.



More projects like this are going to happen.

On what other forums should one be announcing NES homebrew releases, both open source and cart?

Apparently, Reddit.

I don't know, I live in a bubble. What other forums are there?

Thanks! It took some serious effort to bring it all together in that last few weeks leading up to release. Especially the bosses, cut scenes and some backgrounds that weren't working out. Again, Tepples deserves a lot of praise for his efforts and skills!



Glad you figured this out. No one has brought this to my attention yet, it looks as if you're the first to make it public.
We kept this option in there because of the difficulty level evidenced in early play-testing. Rather than just do infinite continues (which just seemed too easy) we elected for the infinite serum soda option at the point of the game where you have to have already developed some skill and put in some time to have gotten there. Then, for those who realize it, you are rewarded with a way to guarantee beating the game. What we ultimately wanted was for people to see the entire game and hopefully want to play it again and be interested in a sequel..



The looseness was meant to give the game a more relaxed, fun feel rather than a Mega Man style where everything is super tight and mechanical feeling.

You've also discovered another feature of the game here. There are some key places in the game where exploiting this functionality can prove useful. Some speed runners may find it advantageous along with some extra Serum Soda seekers.

This has been brought to my attention several times, hopefully this is something we can work on or at least work with (i.e. not putting slopes right before pitfalls) as we move forward.




So far all signs point to this being successful at least according to public feedback so far. It will take continued effort to reach its full potential but for our team it's well worth it doing since it's something that we love.
I hope others come here looking for programmers and more collaboration can happen that yields new games. The NES homebrew scene is definitely getting stronger with the release of games like Armed For Battle, The Incident, Swords and Runes, Lizard looks to be awesome, etc... Obviously this forum plays a pivotal role in the burgeoning scene!




I have posted on here, NintendoAge, DigitalPress and RetroCollect. So far each forum seems to have mostly unique users who are unaware of what the other forums are discussing. From what I can tell this is the most technical forum being an actual development forum by name and so it appears to have the least amount of carry over to other forums. As I stated a while ago, I'm new to all this forum stuff so I'm still learning but I'm trying to keep spreading the word on other forums one by one. I'll try Reddit next...

Out of curiosity, is there a parallel codebase for the PC version or are you leveraging an emulator?

I don't know. I did not create a parallel codebase, and if there is an emulator, I haven't been involved with it yet.

It's probably an emulator then, I doubt someone besides the original programmer would hand-convert the ASM code to something else. Personally, if I was going to release versions of an NES game on modern platforms, I'd go with emulation. It's not like you need a super accurate emulator anyway, since you're dealing with only one game and you can use emulation hacks if necessary.

The game is being built for PC in Unity from scratch by Two Coins Entertainment to match the NES version. We've had a lot of people telling us that they don't have an NES but want to play the game so hopefully this meets that need. Does this seem ridiculous? It's the only route I could think to take after talking with TCE.

Steam does not allow packaged software with your game so an emulator wasn't an option. I also don't know of any emulators that could be used freely. I do know that FCEUX is what I used while play testing (should that be a hyphenated word?) along with a Power Pack. I thought the FCEUX was fantastic but I don't know any of the legalities behind utilizing it beyond playing games.

So unless I'm missing something (and I don't doubt that I could be) there's no way to use an emulator on Steam and I can't see asking people to install one in order to play the game on their PC if it was sold to them outside of Steam. If there is a place where someone would know how to get around this I'm sure that place is here and I'd love to hear about it for future reference!

[quote][quote="tepples"]Vote for Haunted on Greenlight

Ahhh...ummm.... that Tepples quote didn't work as planned.

I guess it's beyond my skill set to quote a hyperlink properly.

Blam!

I don't know what rule it would break if the emulator is locked down to run one particular ROM. There have been plenty of games released with an embedded emulator; I'm pretty sure rereleases of the Sonic the Hedgehog games for Genesis on modern platforms work this way.

But in order to lock down an emulator like that, it can't be a copylefted emulator. And most popular existing emulators are copylefted: FCEUX, Nestopia, Nintendulator, and NESICIDE are all GPL. So the developers would have to commission an emulator. But Haunted doesn't use any tricky mapper or split-screen scroll effects apart from the title screen, which uses a sprite 0 split to use more than 256 unique tiles.

Googling for "bsd licensed nes emulator" finds https://github.com/joeyloman/lamenes

No idea how accurate it is, but you can test if it's adequate.

In cases like this, the emulator is locked to playing only one game, and the game is embedded like any other asset, such as images or sounds. It should be indistinguishable from a native game.

Rebuilding the game from scratch is probably more trouble than coding a barebones NES emulator. A lot of people who coded emulators were able to get games running in just a couple of weeks. Also, once you had an emulator at your disposal, future releases would get ready much quicker (provided the original version is an NES program).

I was wondering about this myself. In other words, if I were ever to bring games I make to modern platforms, I wonder how hard it would be to write an NES emulator that is tailor made for whatever hardware quirks I happen to be exploiting in a particular game. I imagine that would be dramatically easier than writing a truly accurate emulator that can play any game. I recall seeing Bisqwit's video where he codes an NES emulator in c++ that's only ~1000 lines long. https://youtu.be/y71lli8MS8s Not that anything I make would necessarily achieve the same results right away---I was just intrigued it is possible to emulate the NES with so little code.

I believe that what makes an NES emulator complicated is the CPU-PPU synchronization, which is mostly necessary for raster effects. In a controlled environment, you can probably get away with simple cycle counting and rounding CPU x PPU interactions to whole scanlines.

Another complicated aspect of emulating the NES, IMO, is the APU. There's so much stuff going on in there it isn't even funny. Luckily, most sound engines currently in use don't seem to rely on the complicated details, so simply generating the individual sound waves (according to their current frequency, volume and duty cycle) and mixing them together using the correct formula might actually be enough. If you design your own sound engine, like many people do, you'll know exactly what needs to be emulated and what doesn't.

Coding a relaxed emulator like this shouldn't take longer than a couple of weeks, provided you're familiar with the NES architecture and comfortable with working with audio, video and input in the target platform.

Well, if you want to use it without asking, that's true. But the author of a GPL program still owns the copyright, thus I'd think all you have to do is ask permission or request terms to use it under a different license. Of course, if the emulator has a whole bunch of authors over time (like I'd suspect for FCEU) then that's another problem in itself. If it was me, I'd find an emulator that has just one, or a small number of authors, and ask. Worst they can do is say no.

By the way, I wanted to add, admittedly the instrument choices get a little rough after a couple listens, but some of the melody work is genuinely good. Particularly the mall level music. I can still remember how the tune goes and it's pretty catchy.

The Mall theme "Convenient Chaos" is definitely one of the catchier ones and a crowd favorite according to most of the feedback I've gotten. My personal favorite is the Neighborhood theme "No Community". I agree the Thomas' melodies are good overall but that one stands out to me as the best.

As for the emulator topic, I have an inquiry out to Steam to find out if a locked-down emulator with everything embedded would pass their restrictions. I'll report back as soon as I get word..

How could they possibly tell apart a program that uses a ROM as a data file from a program that uses images, sounds and other miscellaneous data files? I mean, virtual machines and scripting languages have been used in games since forever, so it's not like running a game off of interpreted bytecode (which in this case happens to be "a lot like" 6502 assembly code) is anything uncommon.

I don't know if the word "emulator" will trigger any red flags with them, though. Maybe "virtual machine" would be a better way to describe a setup like this without alluding to piracy.

There are plenty of games on steam that run python or lua as an embedded scripting language, often with raw text script files right in there with the game data, lying naked. I can't imagine that an embedded emulator is a real concern, unless it was allowed unrestricted access to the native file system in some way, but even that I don't think is Valve's concern, just it should be yours as a developer.

I'm not certain that Valve even has that kind of policy at all. I think they tend to reserve the right to react to problems as they arise, rather than provide a strict list of requirements up front. (I did some searching of the documentation available to me, but I don't really see anything that would apply here.)

There are also a large number of Steam games that have DOSBox in them.

Why do you even think Steam has an anti-emulator policy? (And why would they?)

I only know what I was told when I contacted them about getting the game on Greenlight. I don't know enough about this so all I can really do is convey the information from others who do have the experience and knowledge. I submitted a follow-up email about this issue so as soon as I hear back I'll let you know. Everything you said makes perfect sense, I can't understand why it would matter to them. Maybe they were just immediately reacting to my inquiry and wanted to shoot down any thought of running the game on an emulator. I did not go into the sort of detail that has been discussed on here..



I think this sounds about right. If I had to guess they saw the word "emulator" and that triggered a canned response that they rattle off to anyone who uses the word.

Rainwarrior, you know infinitely more about this stuff than I do so if you want to spearhead an inquiry that would be cool. I'm sure you could get to the bottom of it much more quickly than I. If they throw technical jargon back at me I'll have to come back here for more info or look things up piece by piece to try to educate myself. Hopefully they dumb it down a bit and I can make headway; if not I'll look to you guys for some answers and/or better questions

Call the ROM "bytecode for our scripting system".

My point exactly.

My point is that you're talking about a workaround for a problem that doesn't exist, yet. Who is being prevented from publishing an emulation-based game on Steam?

No one is being prevented, yet, as far as I know. I guess this all started from the statement, "Steam does not allow packaged software with your game so an emulator wasn't an option.", meaning I couldn't put the ROM on Steam with an emulator to play it and distribute it that way.

This statement from their FAQ is what prompted me to ask them about an emulator in the first place:

I have a game that runs in a web browser – can I submit it to Steam Greenlight?
Games distributed by Steam must be able to launch and run as stand-alone applications. If you have a browser-based game, you will need to create a version that can operate as a stand-alone executable and not require use of the customer's web browser.

I was informed that I couldn't package emulator software with my game. That was it. After reading through the responses on here I realized I didn't phrase my question appropriately so I rephrased it to be more clear. My follow-up question about a tailored emulator with everything embedded has not been answered yet. It took several weeks to get my first answer from them so who know how long this will take.

To your point, I did not use the term "emulation-based game" so maybe you're right and there is no issue with this. Again, I don't know this stuff like you guys do and apologize if what I said was misleading, I was just trying to answer the questions about whether we were using an emulator to play Haunted on Steam. I added the phrase that I quoted above because I thought it might be useful to anyone trying to or thinking about packaging their game with an emulator. I will gladly send another question to Steam however it should be posed in order to get to the bottom of this but I need help crafting the question.

I don't think they'll have a problem with an embedded emulator (simply on the basis that I don't see any reason why they would). There are games on Steam right now that run on an embedded emulator, like Mega Man Legacy Collection.

The version of HH85 that made it to Steam is reprogrammed, but HH86 for Steam runs in a specialized emulator.

I'm told some people think this game is a ROM hack of Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari/River City Ransom/Street Gangs by Technos, possibly because Donny looks a bit like Kunio. Is there a reliable way to search for common code in two 6502 executables in order to conclusively rule this out? Searching for literal substrings doesn't rule out disassembly and reassembly methods used in more recent Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 (J), such as ShaneM's, as relinking will move things around in RAM and/or ROM. For example, the process might use a good dump of RCR and this stand-alone version of the demo included in the third Action 53 volume.

Just tell those people they're idiots.
So, because the graphics style of one character is similar means that it's likely to be a hack? Hence, if he looked differently, they wouldn't think it?

And if you actually made a hack of "River City Ransom", the characters have to look like that and couldn't be replaced with different graphics altogether?

The gameplay is different. There are no similarities in the physics. Graphics are just pixels and have nothing to do with the code. End of discussion.

I think some people might be more used to the idea of romhacks than the existence of new-made games for the NES, even if there's sometimes awareness that there's something called homebrew. Homebrew itself is ill defined. I think it's likely the same people probably don't know what makes up a game at a detailed enough level that they're equipped to make out the differences between hack and all-new software, or they might even be under the impression that all homebrew are more or less hacks. So they draw conclusions on the first visual reference they see that match with something within prior experience. If there's such a similarity, then there you have the confusion. Which is a shame.

I wouldn't take such allegations too seriously, but i think it might be a bit of a problem unique to post-market NES development (as opposed to for example c64 where homegrown software is bread and butter, or web/pc software which they'd take for granted anyone with the proper skills can do). Maybe rspecially when some retro gamer celebs unintentionally have been hard at work to muddy the waters.

A hack that wanted to obfuscate it being a hack may employ a number of techniques, making any perfect proof impossible. Just let them think what they want, they'd discount a live challenge-response of your access to the source even.

Coffee Crisis is a TMNT hack, and Creepy Brawlers is a Power Punch 2 hack according to these folk. Little Medusa will be called a Kickle Cubicle hack. That's just how the game plays.

And my game is a "Kung Fu" hack.

Yeah, the problem is not to find a way to disprove their statement. The problem is that their accusations have no basis in the first place.

Did they find any similarity in the game physics? Then you might try to disprove them with factual knowledge.

If no, then why do they accuse the game of being a hack? Because of the graphics of the main character?
So, when you change the graphics to a Mario sprite, the game has suddenly retroactively become a "Super Mario Bros." hack?

The thing is:
A homebrew can have similar graphics as another game and it can have completely different graphics.
And a hack can have similar graphics as its original game or it can have completely different graphics.
Both things can have both kings of graphics.

Therefore, judging the homebrew/hack status of a game based on its graphics is stupid and doesn't deserve a justification in the first place.

If this is the only reason why they think it's a hack, then there is no reason to think so.

Explaining it to them would be a waste of time. Because if someone bases his hack assumption on the graphics style alone, he's one of those idiots who couldn't be convinced by code analysis anyway since he knows jack shit about coding.
If he knew even a tiny bit about coding, so that he would understand your reasoning, then he wouldn't have made the accusation in the first place.

So, I don't understand why you even asked for an actual way to disprove the claim. Instead of simply asking for the best and easiest and fool-proof way to explain to stupid people that the pixels in the graphics are totally interchangable and say nothing about the origin of the game.

I guess the more general question is "What NES games are based on the same engine, and how can one tell?" but I'll take that to a new topic. Another interesting question that may go to a new topic is "how can the programmer of an NES game get a code review from someone else to find Daily WTF-worthy bad practices if they exist?"

Not that it says that much either, but a chr dump would at least be able to show in a visual way that tiles have been structured differently. Shiru’s space checker would show some differences in how code and data is structured.

I'd say a short, easily accessible Youtube video that explains in a very clear way (with visual examples / walk along with a small portion of the code) a single, unique point of the coding (such as the double-buffer CHR-RAM loading) would be beneficial to other coders, curiously entertaining to potential customers, and would serve the function as a single link that could be thrown someone's way to prove that the game is coded from the ground up. (as in, specifically made in a "this is how I solved this one problem/this is how this one aspect works…" way–not, "this is not a hack, see" kind of way, because the latter wouldn't be professional.)

I mean, are people actually arguing over whether HH85 is homebrew or not? Or was it just an offhand comment from someone who was mistaken and had no ill intentions?

It's the latter, no? I find it bizarre to think people would actually argue against the creator on such things.