Steamboat Willie Rides Again on NES!

Paul Palmer
disney indie games Mickey Mouse NES public-domain steamboat-willie

Hoo boy, been a while. Let me briefly say, November and December sucked personally, and I found it hard to get back into blogging and making YouTube videos after I lost my momentum. But here's my attempt at getting back into things.

As you may know, Mickey Mouse went public domain as of January 1, 2024 in the US, along with the cartoons Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy. (For a comprehensive look at what that means, and what the public now has legal access to, check out this great writeup by Jennifer Jenkins at the Duke Center for the Study of Public Domain, Mickey, Disney and the Public Domain) Back in November I had the idea that it would be cool to make an NES game of Mickey Mouse and get it ready to release shortly after his release from copywrite. My plan originally was to start the game in November, and then with luck, since it was going to be very short, have it ready to go on New Years Day or shortly thereafter. But like I said, November and December kind of sucked, and I was not able to get motivated to make it. But shortly after New Years I started feeling like it was worth it to give it a try, and so for the past few months I have been working on the game!

a screenshot of 8-bit mickey mouse on a series of platforms made of docks over a river, with barrels stacked on the dock.

I'm using a program called NESMaker, which while not exactly easy to use, is far easier than learning the NES from scratch, and it helps that there's a great community of people willing to help you if you have questions. Right now, I'm planning on it being a rather short game, maybe four stages and a boss battle, all focused around Steamboat Willie. The enemies are some of the animals that Mickey tormented in the original short, who are not taking very kindly to the mouse anymore!

screenshot of an 8-bit mickey mouse standing on a raised cliff, a fish flopping in front of him and a cat running by below him near some crates

In what may have been an overly ambitious move for someone with limited knowledge of the NES and its palette at the time, I thought it would be cool to try and make the game black and white, or at least as limited in color as I could. However, with the NES' capabilities, that means that I have black, white, and two grays. That's not a lot to work with, so I'm also using a few lighter blues, which kind of feel like they mix in with the black and white well enough.

screenshot of 8-bit mickey mouse standing on a floating platform while a cat runs by underneath

Work is coming along nicely on the game, and I'll be releasing it for free on my Itch.io page when it's complete, though right now I've put the game on pause momentarily to participate in a game jam around NES games, the NESMaker Byte Off IV, which I will write about in a future post. But so far working on this game has been a lot of fun, I've learned a lot, and I'm looking forward to releasing it so people can play it.