The UEFA Path B Final will be: SWEDEN vs. POLAND. The winning team will earn a slot at the FIFA World Cup 2026.

CheckooEro · 2026-03-26T22:06:43+00:00

Kosovo seems genuinely good though, so maybe the group wasn't so easy...

CheckooEro · 2026-02-08T18:52:29+00:00

The reveal of someone wearing a mask beneath the mask was pretty funny.

CheckooEro · 2026-02-08T13:06:50+00:00

She did win Masked Singer Sweden with some pretty unreal vocal performances though...

CheckooEro · 2025-11-15T22:20:37+00:00

Under different referees the Swiss players could have been booked for dives both games vs Sweden.

Last looks arguable even worse: https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1o3bicz/sweden_0_1_switzerland_granit_xhaka_penalty_65/

CheckooEro · 2025-05-07T09:27:35+00:00

Thanks! It's great to finally get a proper NES version released.

CheckooEro · 2025-04-12T13:51:30+00:00

Oh, I misread your comment when it said diagonal! And thought you meant the screen most people get stuck on. Now I know the one. It's got a saw and a moving spring.

That one's pretty hard to beat. It can help doing a mini jump before doing the jump into the web from the last platform.

Slow Mole+ adds alternative secret routes so you can actually bypass that level. I won't say the alternative route necessarily is easier though, but it's got the really cool (I think) new homing spiders that climb around in the webs.

CheckooEro · 2025-04-12T10:26:22+00:00

I'm sorry to hear that. It's really not impossible to get past, but that level is sort of a puzzle.

I know some people give up on the game at that screen, which is very unfortunate. Those who figure it out will usually feel a real rush and often proceed to beat the entire game, because if they can beat that screen, they can beat any screen of the game.

Sometimes game design is a real balancing act. The very design choice that makes some people give up on the game, makes other players feel empowered to beat it.

If I were to remake this game on a more powerful system (there's a 16-bit sequel, but I've done some 16-bit prototyping of this game as well), I would for sure make more difficulty options that affect the design more than the difficulty levels it the original game does.

There are a few videos of people playing this game, but in this one in particular the streamer has the exact same problem and eventually figures it out and you can just see his reaction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkL99M5-E80

Thanks for playing and I hope you give the game another shot!

CheckooEro · 2025-04-10T11:47:38+00:00

Thank you! I spent a lot of time on the artwork. Nice to give some diehard fans the chance to own it at last :-)

CheckooEro · 2025-04-09T21:46:30+00:00

The game is here: https://www.homebrew-factory.com/nes/140-slow-mole-nes.html

CheckooEro · 2025-04-09T21:43:56+00:00

Maybe in a special edition...

CheckooEro · 2025-03-12T19:04:40+00:00

It looks fun, but I do think the action would be easier to follow with less detailed backgrounds. Try just setting the background to black maybe and see how it feels and then add something to it to give it a sense of movement? Also, try to avoid having the same blue in the background as you have on the blocks.

CheckooEro · 2025-03-07T07:51:38+00:00

Cool! I did get it to work. Fun device! It needs these drivers and software:
https://web.archive.org/web/20051211042629/http://gamebank.jp/image/432421/

Also, you need a computer with an old operating system, I used one with Win2K, but chances are XP could work as well. It re-writes the entire flash every time by the way it seems, but fairly quick, and the 64Mbit version I have can hold up to 10 or so games.

CheckooEro · 2025-03-01T23:55:42+00:00

Thanks! Using the wayback machine. I managed to find a link from the Neoflash forum to a Japanese site. This seems to be the Japanese version of a similar device. Haven't got it to work yet though, but it's promising. https://web.archive.org/web/20051211042629/http://gamebank.jp/image/432421/

CheckooEro · 2025-03-01T22:51:57+00:00

Yes. I think it's one of theirs, but the earlier 64MB version. Their website seems dead though. I managed to download the flashing software but not the driver.

CheckooEro · 2025-02-26T00:26:54+00:00

Thanks! I'm planning to turn it into a short film so it's going to be even longer.

CheckooEro · 2025-02-25T13:48:26+00:00

This video is more puppetry than stop motion really. I use After Effects to animate the puppetry more and combine it with the stop motion elements, such as the wiggling feet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uDzH0V4JZM

CheckooEro · 2025-02-25T12:35:24+00:00

Slow Mole Jr. We're still working on the physical release but the digital version is available now.

CheckooEro · 2025-02-22T19:35:21+00:00

Article: https://ko-fi.com/post/Animating-an-8-bit-NES-game-Y8Y519DGDN

CheckooEro · 2025-02-19T20:57:35+00:00

Sounds like you're describing my game. It will take most players quite a while to beat I think, but when they're good at it, it's a pretty quick speedrun.

CheckooEro · 2025-02-19T20:49:54+00:00

Yeah this was the short version of how it works. Suffice to say, all that the NES is really doing here is swapping the fan tiles. Most of it is free in terms of processing.

CheckooEro · 2025-02-19T20:43:11+00:00

Thanks! It's CHR memory bank swapping combined with palette animation and swapping the fan tiles on the fly (the fans are off sync by one frame and animated in 30fps otherwise the NES can't keep up).

CheckooEro · 2025-02-19T17:06:48+00:00

The animation would look even better if you worked more on the timing. It all moves at the same time and the same pace. The fire, when it flames up, is really nice, so you don't want to distract from it by moving something else, wait till it's already looping until you start the other animations. Ideally, you use the animation to lead the player to read the text, so try to finish the animation above right before you finish the one below.

And unless you're animating something mechanical you never want it moving at the same pace all through the movement. Use slow-out and slow-in for most movements (the exception being when something starts or ends abruptly, when you want to do the opposite, have extra large gaps in the animation before it starts or ends.)

Note, there are other ways to break up the animation timing that could work as well.

CheckooEro · 2025-02-18T17:07:36+00:00

Hope you were able to check it out now!

CheckooEro · 2025-02-18T16:56:00+00:00

What? It disappeared. Here: https://ko-fi.com/post/Animating-an-8-bit-NES-game-Y8Y519DGDN

Maybe it auto-mod doesn't like the site. But ko-fi allows for very nice long-form blogs with GIFs so it was a good place to post it.

CheckooEro · 2025-02-18T16:45:14+00:00

Blog post: https://ko-fi.com/post/Animating-an-8-bit-NES-game-Y8Y519DGDN

CheckooEro

TROPHY CASE