I Made Fruit Ninja Into a REAL 8-Bit NES Game

I recreated Fruit Ninja as a real 48KB NES program, fully compatible with the NES Zapper. Using 6502 assembly, I cover some solutions to the constraints of the Nintendo Entertainment System, including the limitation of 64 sprites, 4 color palettes, and background creation. Also covered is a deep dive into how the NES Zapper works and how I implement it into my program. Fruit Shinobi is available to download now to run on the NES, Famicom, or your favorite emulator.

Relevant NESdev page:

How the Nes Zapper in FCEUX

Other Interesting NES forum discussions I found:

Zap Ruder in particular is interesting as it does a real time calculation of where the zapper is looking on the screen, turning it into a fairly accurate cursor.

Disclaimer:
The game "Fruit Shinobi" is a unique title. The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with other games (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

No fruit was harmed in the making of this game.

[HalfbrickStudios]

This is awesome! Our Fruit Ninja devs love it and give it a huge thumbs up!🥷

[therealohead]

1:20 It's worth noting that Kirby's Adventure actually used 8x16 sprites for Kirby, so he only consisted of 2 sprites (when he wasn't puffed up, in which case he uses 6)

[Luluco_G]

The way the screen turns black and the fruit being sliced afterwards really looks like those shots in Animation, where someone slices something in half without seeing it directly, it's a cool stylistic coincidence!

[Nikku]

Really cool clone. It's like Fruit Ninja was meant to be a light gun game.

One problem, as the game requires a CRT to play with an actual light gun controller, the HUD elements are too close to the edge of the screen, meaning they will be cut off on most NTSC CRTs.

[plumjet]

Looks great but your orange sprite looks like a chocolate chip cookie.

[augustleded]

thank god you made this a real nes game. i hate people who say they made a full nes game but its only an 8 bit game instead of a full nes rom

[CrazyDoodEpicLeaves]

Finally someone who ACTUALLY makes their "NES game" into a....NES game, most people just make 8-bit graphics without considering any of the limitations they had on the NES.
I remember this "NES Mario Odyssey" which had rotating sprites, widescreen, insane amounts of sprites on the screen at the same time and so on.

[AverageMichaelJordans]

This vid getting less than 1k views is a crime! I'm actively subbed to 200 people and I catch myself genuinely just looking forward to the next vid you create, I seriously don't understand how this gets less views than some of the bigger guys.

[teu]

YES finally! A "i recreated [Blank] in an NES" that's ACTUALLY a nes game!! Loved the video!

[mattgio]

This is absolutely amazing!!! I still cannot believe you did this. Cannot wait to see what else you come up with!

[nstbayless]

You can reduce the number of frames spent checking for light detection from linear to log(n) by lighting up multiple fruit per frame such that the pattern of light detection uniquely identifies the fruit's index.

[potchary]

I love how the English romanization of the title says „Fruit Shinobi“ but the Japanese title still says „Fruit Ninja“ (Even tho fruit is technically果物 and 果 alone just means „result“)

[davidwalker]

You can do hit detection on all fruit in 4 frames or less by using a binary search instead of a linear search. (Flashing half of the sprites at once to eliminate 50% of targets per frame, instead of eliminating 1 sprite at a time with your current linear method).

You may be able to reduce this further by analysing aiming trends (spatial or temporal) and skewing the elimination percentage towards the trend, for faster average detection of hits at the cost of more flash frames to detect misses.

E.g. players might aim more often at the most- or least-recently launched fruit, or fruit at the top of its arc. Check that fruit first by itself, or the top 2, then use binary search from there. If you can identify a consistent trend and predict the most likely 1 or 2 fruit targets, you can save 2 or 3 frames when your prediction is correct, at the cost of an additional frame for misses/bad predictions.

[sufferingincorporatedtm]

i thought this would be moving the blade around with the d-pad (which would have sucked), but what a great way to use the zapper! :D

[zazkegirotron]

Wooow, the quality, the code, the love. All amazing. Watching your videos has been so rewarding. I've learned a ton and in a fun way. Thank youuu and keep your amazing work up!

[droidlycodes]

I love seeing others remaking modern games for retro consoles! Someone recently made a game for GBA called something super pets it was a fun venture this should be a game jam contest 😂

[ruebenhernandez]

Fruit Ninja has an arcade vibe, like it'd work as an arcade game on an arcade cabinet.

[JuanG]

It's so cool to know that awesome people like you are still creating video games for the NES. Such an iconic console. I have never seen one in person, but I have played a few games on emulators before. I first got interested in the NES from watching AVGN, seeing as that console makes an appearance in most of his episodes. It's really amazing to see what it is capable of.

[Francium]

it would be cool if you did a whole series of turning popular phone games to nes games

[DoobyShoo]

A while ago I remember seeing an OLD OLD NES back of DUCK HUNT and it was like a rlly simple version like this! Except the sprite was like a mario sprite throwing the bombs instead of the ducks, it was rlly cool. Sadly I think it’s been lost to time