ChibiAkumas ASM Programming Forum

How difficult was it to market a game for a retro system like the C64 or Amiga .
Are there still publishers out there who deal with niche markets these systems are. I'd love to write a title for fun and profit so these questions interest me.

Chibiakumas took 6 months to write, working every day for a minimum of 3 hours (and many full 9-9 days on weekends)

It would be easier on an amiga due to needing less optimization, and if you program in C or use prewritten graphics libraries it would save time too.

ChibiAkumas was sold through polyplay: https://www.polyplay.xyz/

I wouldn't expect to make any money 'selling' retro games though - ChibiAkumas sold around 30 copies, at such a small number, I never made a penny - and I'm pretty sure PolyPlay didn't make any either due to the printing costs of such small runs, and the cost of 3 inch disks these days...

Your only chance of making money from retrogames is if you can convince people to kickstart you somehow (doubtful*) or if they'll back you on patreon

Of course, I'm only experienced with CPC/MSX/Speccy scene, maybe amiga is different.

* Nogalious by LUEGOLU3GO STUDIOS made their €25,000 goal, but they had to put around 3k of their own money in to avoid it failing, and the game had major marketing as I understand it was a passion project by a wealthy businessman

Oh, If you're curious to see the programming experience from my point of view* on a simple game, take a look at my 'Y Quest Livestreams'

This is a little game I'm writing 2 hours a week entirely on livestream (no work done off camera)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 9NSL74Aaco

The final game will be released free/open source and covered in a tutorial series.

*Of course other smarter people can probably do things faster than I can.