SNESMaker
Image: The New 8-Bit Heroes

The New 8-Bit Heroes's director Joe Granato revealed that the popular NES development software NESmaker will soon be changing its name to Retro Game Forge and will also be adding support for SNES development.

NESMaker, in case you're unaware, is a software development tool that currently costs $36 to download and provides a suite of tools and editors for creating original NES games. It's been used to develop a large number of homebrew NES games in the past — many of which are available to play online via the virtual arcade The Retro Verse.

In a recent direct, however, Granato announced that the software will soon become more platform agnostic, being capable of assisting with the development of games for other consoles such as the SNES. This is all while still taking advantage of the same approachable front end that creators are used to.

In a short teaser video, Granato shared a look at the graphic user interface for SNES development in action, before showing the results of what it created running on real SNES hardware on a CRT TV. It's hoped that this new tool will eventually empower more people to take up SNES development and make it easier for individuals to port their existing NES titles over to the 16-bit platform.

Elsewhere in the Direct, some of the other major announcements that Granato revealed include plans to expand the virtual arcade The Retro Verse into a proper marketplace, allowing creators to opt in to sell their games on cartridges without the need for Kickstarter or crowdfunding. As outlined in the video, creators will get royalties from the sales of their games, but the exact revenue split has yet to be revealed at this moment in time.

In addition to this, Granato also revealed that his publishing label BitMask Publishing is also now capable of helping NES developers port their games to Switch, Steam, Xbox, iOS, Android, Mac, PC, and Linux, with the company about to release the NES titles Steel Legion and Crabbie Attack to the Nintendo Switch.