Megazeux DS

By: Derek Yu

On: September 25th, 2007

Megazeux (MZX), the popular game creation system based on the Tim Sweeney’s legendary ZZT, has been ported to the Nintendo DS by MZX developer and homebrew hacker Kevin Vance.

By default, the top screen shows a zoomed-in portion of the screen, and the bottom screen shows the entire thing. The stylus can be used to perform mouse clicks and pan around the top screen. Use the right trigger to toggle a software keyboard.

This port is still very rough, and just for testing. Be sure to make backups, as earlier versions have caused filesystem corruption on my CF card.

I had a good time playing with Megazeux as a kid! The simplicity of the engine is great, and it only takes a few hours to make something fun. Some of the classic MZX games (like Bernard the Bard, pictured above) are extremely clever. Good to see it on the DS!

Download MZX for the PC here (Sourceforge), and try the games at DigitalMZX (MZX is required to play).

(Source: Mr. Apol from the selectbutton.net forums!)

Posted in Developers, Homebrew, Mobile / Handheld

haowan

Is this a Spectrum thing? Might be worth mentioning it :D
Derek

They’re both originally DOS apps. :)
haowan

Ahhh, ok. I got confused by the screenshot :D
http://gnomeslair.blogspot.com/ gnome

Ah, lovely! It was about time the DS got itself some proper ASCII graphics! Great find!
Advenith

I remember Bernard the Bard! I spent hours getting nowhere in that game.
KKairos

Holy crap. MZX on TIGSource.

I didn’t know it was that big.
wildweasel

I still need to get MZX compiled for my PSP and try it out like that. maybe then I’ll finally get around to playing bernard the bard to completion. Or Engine Remix.
http://teabone.awardspace.com/mzx/updates.html Tyrone

This certainly broadens the out-reach…