My 1st Homebrew - Mr. Yo-Yo, WIP

[Prizrak]

Absolutely love it! Reminds me of the game commercials from the golden age of gaming. ❤️

[Prizrak]

 ❤️

Edited October 16, 2022 by Prizrak
Duplicate post please delete

[DaveM]

Had a great time at my first PRGE!  It was so nice to finally meet everyone in person, from Al to the developers, to James and Tanya from ZPH.  Everyone was so friendly and made me feel at home.  I got to play a lot of the fantastic AA homebrews, and received a lot of great comments about Mr. Yo-Yo.  I also got to see random strangers stop by the booth and play my game, which was a bit of a nerve-wracking experience, watching someone play the game for the first time.  A number of them got frustrated and walked away, but that's the way it goes, I guess. 

 

I did want to share some info though.  I wasn't going to post anything about it, but I was encouraged to, and after thinking about it, I'll go ahead.  So you may have seen me mention before either in this thread or my Kick Ice thread that I was getting married.  Well, that didn't happen.  It was supposed to happen Oct 8, and the PRGE was supposed to be tacked on to the end of our honeymoon.  Well, the first part of our honeymoon was supposed to be Charleston, SC, and a hurricane took care of that, but that's not why the wedding got canceled. 

 

One week prior to the wedding day, I woke up to find my fiancée on the couch.  She had gotten sick during the night and couldn't move.  I tried to get her up off the couch so I could take her to the hospital, but she just couldn't move.  She didn't want to go to the hospital, but I finally convinced her, and I wound up calling 911.  The fire department came out, got her on a stretcher, and got her over to the hospital.  An initial MRI showed she had developed a large infection of some sort.  They transferred her to a different hospital, since she couldn't move her legs, and the first hospital didn't have a neurology department.

 

Now, you may have seen me mention before that she's a cancer patient.  A few months back, they implanted a pain pump device in her to help with the chemo pain.  The doctor decided to now do surgery on her to remove the pump, as it appeared that the location where the pump went into her spine to deliver the meds might be where the infection started.  They removed the pump, removed a lot of the infection, and kept her in the ICU for a few days.  She still couldn't move her legs, but they put her on antibiotics, hoping that would clear the rest of the infection, and once the infection receded from the spine, she'd regain movement. 

 

All that was on the Saturday prior to the wedding.  We had a call set up with the wedding venue on Monday afternoon and we decided if she wasn't up and walking around by that call, we'd have to postpone the wedding, and that's exactly what happened.  No improvement by Monday, and to make matters worse, the meds they had her on caused her to lose control of some other muscles as well as her ability to speak.  At first, they said maybe she had a stroke, but now it's looking like it wasn't a stroke, and the meds are the cause of the speech issues.

 

So, I ended up spending Monday in her room at the ICU contacting all our various vendors, trying to reach all our out-of-town guests to make sure they could cancel their plans, and then start contacting our other guests.  Along the way, I forgot to contact her family.... Whoops! 

 

I spent all of last week going back and forth to the hospital.  I told her I didn't want to go to Portland with her in that condition, but she insisted I go.  That was a very long conversation, but I ended up going, and glad I did.  She was moved out of the ICU on Wednesday, and has started to recover a bit.  She's being moved to a physical therapy rehab facility today.  Her speech has almost returned to normal, although she has a little droopiness on the right side of her mouth.  I'm told that's most likely from the meds, and she most likely didn't have a stroke.  Friday night she was able to slightly move her legs for the first time.  To give you an idea of how bad it was for a while, on Saturday afternoon while I was standing at the AtariAge booth, I got a text from her.  It read, "I can finally drink with a straw!"  She hadn't the strength to drink through a straw prior to that.  I saw the text and almost broke down right there in front of everybody.

 

They expect her to be in the rehab facility for 4-6 weeks.  Our wedding vendors have been marvelous, and they're all willing to work with us through all this, so once she's done with rehab and we have a better idea what things will look like going forward, we'll be rescheduling the wedding.  This whole thing has been like a bad nightmare.  I haven't felt like myself since it started, and I could tell I was just a little bit off while I was in Portland.  So, if you met me up there and I seemed a little off or awkward or distracted, now you know why.  But I did have a fantastic time, and I was so happy to meet everyone, and I'm looking forward to attending more PRGE's in the future.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

25 minutes ago, DaveM said:

Had a great time at my first PRGE!  It was so nice to finally meet everyone in person, from Al to the developers, to James and Tanya from ZPH.  Everyone was so friendly and made me feel at home.  I got to play a lot of the fantastic AA homebrews, and received a lot of great comments about Mr. Yo-Yo.  I also got to see random strangers stop by the booth and play my game, which was a bit of a nerve-wracking experience, watching someone play the game for the first time.  A number of them got frustrated and walked away, but that's the way it goes, I guess. 

 

It was an extreme pleasure to finally meet you in person and talk with you, thank you so much for coming out to the event Dave!

 

 

25 minutes ago, DaveM said:

I did want to share some info though.  I wasn't going to post anything about it, but I was encouraged to, and after thinking about it, I'll go ahead.

 

I'm so sorry to hear about what your fiancée and you have endured during these past few weeks and I'm so glad to hear that there is positive progress being made with her health. Hopefully your time in Portland brought you some good memories that you can bring back home to share with her. Please extend Tanya and my well wishes to your fiancée that she recovers quickly and fully so that your wedding plans can go forward and we can see you both at a future PRGE!

 

- James & Tanya

 

[Atariboy2600]

Someday I hope to be at the next PRGE for the first time.

[DEBRO]

On 10/16/2022 at 9:41 AM, Atariboy2600 said:

I hear that folks at the Expo like the Mr Yo-Yo commercial I put together. If anyone like to see a smaller file here I upload hope you also enjoy the 4x3 ratio format.

I love this! A nice touch for a great game! You and Dave should be proud!

[BLASTERS]

On 9/16/2019 at 7:16 AM, DaveM said:

My original first post starts below this link.  If you're looking for the most-recent release of the game, you'll find it here:

 

 

Greetings DaveM just wanted to confirm with you Mr. Yo-Yo was definitely completed in 2021?

 

Thanks 

[DaveM]

On 3/8/2023 at 5:10 PM, BLASTERS said:

 

 

Greetings DaveM just wanted to confirm with you Mr. Yo-Yo was definitely completed in 2021?

 

Thanks 

Yes, I finished work on it in April, 2021.

[DaveM]

My wife, BJ Myers, passed away last week after a long battle with cancer.  BJ helped me so much with the development of Mr. Yo-Yo, and the game would never have been completed without her.  She wrote the music that you hear in the cutscene following a successful completion of the bonus round, and more importantly, she provided me with so much encouragement and support throughout the entire development of the game.  There were so many points along the way where I thought it was just too difficult, and got so frustrated, that I told her I wasn't going to continue.  She always responded by telling me I could figure it out and would give me the love an encouragement to go on.  

 

As a tribute to her, I hid her initials in the game as an easter egg.  It's one of two easter eggs that are in the cartridge version of the game as sold in the AA Store.  So if you just have the downloaded ROM, sorry, it won't be in there.  But if you bought the cartridge, you can find her initials.  I've kept this a secret until now, but with her passing, I now want everyone to see it, so that her contributions to the game can be remembered.

 

But before I tell you how to get the easter egg, I have one more announcement.  I talked about this in more detail in the Frazzled development thread, but I'll mention it again here.  Going forward, I'll be publishing all my games under the name "Beezy Games".  "Beezy" was a favorite nickname of hers, and I thought this would be a fitting tribute to this incredible woman that I love more than anything.

 

OK, back to the easter egg.  It's not easy to get, but you can do it.  When I try to trigger it myself, I'm successful about half the time, but with a little bit of luck, you can do it.

1. Start the game on any level.  I don't think it matters if it's a 1 or 2 player game, but honestly, I can't remember.  But it does work for 1 player games.  Starting on Level 1 is obviously the easiest, but this will work regardless of which level you start on.
2. Complete that first level that you start on.  Remember, a level consists of multiple caves, and perhaps a bonus cave.
3. The first cave of your next level will be a purple cave (this will be the 2nd purple cave you encounter).  In that purple cave, you must complete that cave without losing a life, and also without firing a single shot.
4. So how the heck do you complete a cave without firing a single shot?  By picking up coins and power-ups.  That will trigger the Notelies to appear.  If you can get some coins and power-ups rather quickly, the screen won't have a chance to fill up with the Blue Bouncers, and you can rescue the six Notelies you need to complete the cave.
5. If you can do that, starting with the next cave, the Mr. Yo-Yo icon next to the lives remaining will be replaced by her initials, "BJM".
6. The initials will remain there until you lose a life.  You can get them back by doing the same trick on any subsequent purple cave.

There is another easter egg, that I've explained earlier in this thread, but I'll give it to you again here anyway.  If you can complete level 9, Mr. Yo-Yo will be very surprised.  😮

 

So those are the easter eggs in the cartridge version of the game, that are not in any of the posted ROMS.  Hope you enjoy the game, and if you haven't tried my new game, Frazzled, head over to that thread and give it a download.

 

Thanks!

[+Karl G]

I'm so sorry for your loss. 

[+cvga]

Dave, I'm so sorry to hear about BJ but I love the tribute and how you're remembering her. 

[+D Train]

Sorry to hear that.  This is a great tribute.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

I'm so sorry to hear of the passing of BJ and the naming of your game publishing company is such a wonderful tribute to her legacy of contributions to the games you made together. ❤️

 

- James

[Prizrak]

My sincerest condolences, I'm sorry about your loss. You have some beautiful memories of her, and I think the naming is perfect.

[MrTrust]

May perpetual light shine upon her.

 

Mr. Yo-Yo is a brilliant design, and has the kind of charm and character that make for an instant classic homebrew.  Very impressive especially given you were a neophyte at the time, and the community certainly owes her a debt of gratitude for helping that to come about.  I hope you stay strong and resilient as you go forward without her.  

 

I had been thinking about your game and the story of it's creation over the last week as I've gotten back to learning the 2600 and trying to get motivated to work on developing a new game.  If anything comes out of the effort, certainly Mr. Yo-Yo will have been an inspiration, and just as certainly, this sad news and your fine tribute to her will be inspiration to be more grateful for the gift of my own family.

 

Peace.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

My sincerest condolences. As long as you remember someone, he or she is not really dead. And using her nickname will keep the memory of "Beezy" alive for a very long time.

[TrekMD]

I'm very sorry for your loss.