Anyone who has ever thought of developing a platform game knows it’s a hard biz to crack. First you have to have a great concept, then you have to develop that concept into a marketable product. More often than not it requires you have a team of talented and motivated people working with you to achieve your vision.

On top of that Nintendo, Playstation, and the rest require you purchase a very expensive (multi-thousand dollar) software development kit from them and gain their approval of your title before releasing it. All of that is enough to discourage even the most motivated of people.

Bob is a solo developer who has created a 20-hour long 2D role playing game for the Nintendo DS – by himself.

Step back for a minute and think what that requires…better yet, I’ll quote him in his own words.

"bob’s game" is a sort of masterpiece for me. I’ve invested well over
15,000 hours into its development over 5 years of dedication-
That is no exaggeration, and it shows!

All concepts, story, code, sprites, tiles, music, samples, fonts,
etc. were created entirely from scratch by me- and I had to
teach myself the skills as I went along, with no training!

The code is straight C, the music is tracked, and the art is all
completely hand-clicked tiles and sprites- done the right way,
pixel by pixel, like the classics we all know and love.

I intend this to become one of the last great old-school
2D retail console games- truly the design of a single mind.

It’s the game I wanted to play when I was younger,
a vision I’ve been following since then.

This dude is a mad genius. A mad, obsessive compulsive genius. Some people are giving Bob a hard time on youtube, but I have nothing but respect for his effort. Anyone that can see out their vision with only their time and hard work is ok in my book. Props to Bob.

Problem is, Nintendo won’t even sell the guy a SDK so he can release his game on the Nintendo DS. Because of this, Bob is staging a 100 day protest. He’s locked and barricaded himself in his room, with friends delivering food once weekly. Man, he’s not just really smart and motivated – he’s crazy too! This could be the worst adult temper tantrum ever, or one of the most clever viral marketing campaigns to date. I can’t tell and I don’t really care. Gotta love a guy like that.

Anyhow, Bob would like for everyone to write Nintendo and tell them you want to play his game. Simple as that. Please take a few minutes out of your day to help him out. Crazy Bob should have the chance to succeed or fail, just like everyone else. There are a number of titles out for the DS that are of questionable quality, but they seemed to get released just fine. His game actually looks like something I might play.

Trailer for "bob’s game"