Pizza Rush development

I am here to talk about the development process behind Pizza Rush.

Before I finalized the concept, I wanted to make a game that could match the feel of the Game and Watch series by Nintendo. For those who don't know, Game and Watch are a series of built in games that had their own game with their own functions added to them meaning that you could not add newer games to the console like how you could do it for the Game Boy.

But that's what made them so special as each game had its own rules to follow and had frames that were manually drawn to them and that is where they bring in some kind of personality as the drawn frames add character to the entire game. My personal favorite games of the series is Octopus and Oil Panic.

Now its been a long time since Nintendo hasn't done anything to revive the game and watch series. Sure there is the Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda anniversary editions for the game and watch series but I was hoping for something that brings back the Game and Gallery Series that were on the Game Boy.

So I was thinking of developing a game that captures the feeling of the game and watch series by making my own concept that matches it. The challenging part was to make a game that not only was fun to play but also could replicate the technical limits that were apparent in the game and watch series. And the other issue is that the games had two modes which added replay value depending on which game is played. GAME A is beginner-friendly and for those who wanted a challenge, GAME B would be the choice.

In a game and watch game, every sprite not only has to be manually drawn but must also be placed in a manner that all sprites don't intersect with one another and are spaced carefully. While drawing each sprite in Pizza Rush was challenging, placing them without even a single intersection between all the sprites was the hardest!

I was brainstorming for concepts that could work for all of the above. One idea I had was jailbreak but that concept was too similar to Octopus so I had to think. Eventually, I came up with the idea of Pizza Rush after seeing the Game and Watch version of Mario Bros

Mario Bros was more of the character expressions that I got the idea of as well as it is based on the movement of the character. So I thought to myself, what would make a game that could do just this? And then it hit me that Pizza Rush was the best idea. Just have yourself deliver pizza across the streets without wasting time or getting hit by cars. It worked because GAME A didn't have to include the sidecars and was more approachable to those who want to get the idea of how to understand the idea of the game and GAME B I just had to add sidecars for more challenge.

As for why I decided against Multi-screen that were in some of them like Mario Bros and Oil Panic, I felt that seeing two screens in one big screen would not capture the immersion of playing a game and watch game and because of actions that have to be done on two screens simultaneously, having one screen was more than enough.

Now I could have done like how the emulators would release games and have just focused on the screen size of the game and call it off. But that won't be very authentic wouldn't it? So I ended up drawing all the portions such as the controller and knock as well as adding the Game A and Game B buttons to make it look exactly like a game and watch..except that it isn't called like that here due to trademark reasons so I used Play and Clock. One thing I did not notice before making the font is that the Game and Watch font had the first letters italic and others normal so I had to do the extra bit of making them italic so that it matches clearly the feel of the Game and Watch series(except that its not game and watch technically)

The hardest part to accept however is even with my effort, I could not entirely capture the feel of it being like Game and Watch entirely due to my art style is limited as well as the programming side(from my programmer) not being perfect in some aspects and so I had to live with such things and move on with the project as that is the best I could do. I do hope that if  I could make this as actual hardware, I can revise it to fully realize it as a game and watch identical.

Most of all, I hope this game brings joy to everyone especially to those who admire the game and watch series. Hopefully, Nintendo revives the series because it is historically, an important part of not just for Nintendo but also for the game industry.