Mech n' Parcel - Unboxing

You may not know this, but there's actually a decent chunk of content that got "cut" (or since this was a jam, never implemented) from Mech n' Parcel.

The original idea for Mech n' Parcel had been to create a game that took "advantage" of both NES controller slots. The idea being that if it had been a real game it would have been packaged with a special controller that was essentially two NES controllers put together with one upside-down so that the A/B would be on the left, and the d-pad on the right. And much like any good peripheral controller, this would've caused the price of the game to be much higher than a standard NES game. However due to the short playtime and lack of content this would have generally been seen as a rip-off and as such the game would be lost to time.

That's a lot of nonsense for L O R E purposes, what would it have meant for actual gameplay?

Well, the Mech was actually intended to have a significantly higher movement pool. There would have been additional moves such as a dashing slide, jetpacks, I was even considering a shoulder tackle option. Unfortunately,  between the amount of work it would've taken to code those options, and implement the weird controller setup I realized it would be too much work. With the number of buttons back down to the base NES levels, that meant I had to pick my movement options wisely.

Which, as you know, ended up being "none at all". The only one that had been close to making it had been the jetpack. Alas, I couldn't figure out how I wanted to implement flight and didn't have the time to really sit down and implement something I wasn't even really sure about. The jetpack technically lives on in the flying mechs you start to see towards the tail end of the game.

Movement options weren't the only thing that had to be left behind. I had wanted you to be able to pick what your loadout was, and possibly even your mech color, if you didn't like cardboard brown. You can even see remnants of the loadout option in that in the password bits for the torso and weapons all support values from 0-7, despite the torso bits always being 1, and the weapons always being 1 or 0.

Planned weapons had been things like other types of rockets, auto-cannons, and flamers. Standard mech warfare stuff. I didn't end up making any plans for torso swaps though, so not quite sure what would have gone there.

You may have also found the Castlevania level to be a bit out of place, and you'd be right. The original idea for the armor upgrade and health upgrades would be you needed to find a special chunk of ore, bring it to the weapons dealer, and then you could purchase the upgrade you wanted. The Castlevania level had originally been planned to be a more somber moment, where you recover a memento for an old woman who fears her husband has run afoul of bandits. You would've found the husband's corpse, recovered their ring, and returned it to get the ore from her. 

The last bit of major content that had been cut was a post game world. It wasn't going to be anything really ambitious, just that once you had finished the main delivery, you could pick up other packages from towns and deliver them to the appropriate person. You are after all, a mech-based postal service. Unfortunately, with there not being any incentive to do endless repetitive quests like that, I didn't feel the addition would be appropriate. I suppose it would have been useful for a challenge to see if you could max out the money counter.

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So what's next for Mech n' Parcel n' I?

Well, truth be told, I'm not terribly sure. I would like to do a new edition of Mech n' Parcel, a more complete one, with more of the original ideas intact. Ideally, I'd like to sell that version, as I can't sell this one due to not owning commercial rights to some assets (and I hadn't talked about it with Ryan, who did the music.)

And on that note, I leave you with some sprite tests I've been doing for that newer edition. I don't think I'll continue in the 8-bit fashion if I were to redo the project, but I would keep things retro feeling.

Needs a name though... "Mech n' Parcel - Repackaged"? I'll keep thinking on it.