Alwa’s Awakening Being Ported to the NES

Alwa’s Awakening, a retro metroidvania from Elden Pixels, is being ported to the original NES. The game originally released in January 2017, and it even has a sequel that released earlier this year called Alwa’s Legacy.

It is not every day that you get to write about a new game coming to a console that released over 30 years ago, but here we are. It is 2020, and the homebrew scene is getting stronger and stronger. It is almost poetic that we as a gaming community want to go back to the old days if even for just a visitation, similar to movie goers that love to revisit old films or new indie ones filmed in a similar way to the classics.

On top of the announcement for the NES port of Alwa’s Awakening, Brad Smith, the lead programmer for this NES project, and Elden Pixels released a fun video highlighting the game, the port, and the programming behind it all.

It is an excellent watch, and it looks as if Brad and the team will continue to share progress updates over the next few months.

One of the biggest reasons for the NES port is because that is honestly where Alwa’s Awakening began. Back in 2014, the game was first conceived as an NES homebrew before the team at Elden Pixels moved it towards a more modern route. A lot of this came down to the coding, as the team’s ambitious desires to run such a large game on the NES were not quite up to snuff with all that needed to be done.

Six years later, and those ambitious desires are finally becoming a reality. The team connected with homebrew creator and indie developer, Brad Smith, and asked him to lead the project. Brad has familiarity with ported to the NES system, as he has previously ported Lizard to the console. He brings great knowledge of the NES hardware and programming to the port, and he will be leading to help the team realize their dream of releasing Alwa’s Awakening on a real NES cartridge.

The port will come complete with a box and manual later in 2021. They have even signed with a publisher, as retro-gaming store Retro-Bit is dipping its foot into publishing and doing a game that is not a reissue as their previous releases have been is exciting.

There’s also a public beta starting early next year if you are interested in giving your thoughts on the game as the port is being developed.

Alwa’s Awakening will release sometime in 2021 on the NES, and it is currently available on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch if you are interested in checking out the game now.

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Thank you for stopping by Nintendo Link for all of your NES news in 2020! How random and awesome is this announcement? Are you excited to see how this port develops? Do you think you will be interested in buying a working NES cartridge to play this on your old console? Let us know in the comments below! Happy gaming, everyone.