935: CJ Made A Sega Game In 2025

CJ takes us behind the scenes of Hackweek to share how he built a custom Sega Genesis game from scratch, complete with assembly code, level loading, and retro hardware tricks. From SGDK to parallax faking, this episode is a deep dive into old-school game dev with a modern twist.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!

00:44 Why a Sega game?

Sega Genesis.

Sega Master System.

MKBHD Retro Tech: Sega.

06:55 What is it running on?

07:49 Working with assembly code.

10:11 Sega Genesis Development Kit.

Stephane-D GitHub.

10:54 Awesome Megadrive.

12:02 Booting on an emulator.

13:07 Gens and KMod.

15:54 Compiling stage.

17:44 Genesis Code VS Code Extension.

18:22 Images and Assets.

19:46 Loading images with bitmap.

23:50 Megacat Studios.

25:21 Z index?

Faking Parallax.

27:34 Specific code examples.

27:51 Platformer Engine.

30:01 Platformer Sample Game.

30:44 LDTK (Level Designer Toolkit).

33:13 Tiled Collision mapping.

37:42 What about debugging?

39:37 Loading in levels.

RetroGameMechanicsExplained.

Sega Mega-CD Development Unit.

43:56 Challenges with graphics.

49:56 Adding music.

Super Cartridge.

Flahskit Programmer MD.

Flashkit Cart MD.

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