935: CJ Made A Sega Game In 2025

Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

Wes Bos

Tech News, News, Technology

4.9 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

CJ takes us behind the scenes of Hackweek to share how he built a custom Sega Genesis game from scratch, complete with assembly code, level loading, and retro hardware tricks. From SGDK to parallax faking, this episode is a deep dive into old-school game dev with a modern twist. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:44 Why a Sega game? Sega Genesis. Sega Master System. MKBHD Retro Tech: Sega. 06:55 What is it running on? 07:49 Working with assembly code. 10:11 Sega Genesis Development Kit. Stephane-D GitHub. 10:54 Awesome Megadrive. 12:02 Booting on an emulator. 13:07 Gens and KMod. 15:54 Compiling stage. 17:44 Genesis Code VS Code Extension. 18:22 Images and Assets. 19:46 Loading images with bitmap. 23:50 Megacat Studios. 25:21 Z index? Faking Parallax. 27:34 Specific code examples. 27:51 Platformer Engine. 30:01 Platformer Sample Game. 30:44 LDTK (Level Designer Toolkit). 33:13 Tiled Collision mapping. 37:42 What about debugging? 39:37 Loading in levels. RetroGameMechanicsExplained. Sega Mega-CD Development Unit. 43:56 Challenges with graphics. 49:56 Adding music. Super Cartridge. Flahskit Programmer MD. Flashkit Cart MD. Hit us up on Socials! Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Syntax.
0:08.3	I think that was my first one.
0:10.2	Yeah, yeah.
0:11.1	Oh, man.
0:11.9	That was good.
0:12.7	CJ here.
0:13.5	And today I'm talking all about this custom Sega Genesis video game that I made for Century Hackweek.
0:23.1	So Hackweek is put on every year by Century. Essentially, everyone at the company gets an entire week to work on whatever they want.
0:28.3	And this year, I decided I wanted to try to create a Sega Genesis game. So with me today
0:34.9	is Scott and Wes. What's up, guys? Nope. I, hey. Yeah, not,
0:40.0	don't care about us. You made a freaking Sega game? Yes, yes. Holy smokes. Why Sega? We all know
0:47.5	that Nintendo does what Sega don't. Or no, wait. No, Sega does what Nintendo. Don't. Oh,
0:57.9	uh-oh. But that's my first question for you guys. And first, like, some back, some backstory here for all the Gen Z people watching that don't know
1:02.9	what a Sega Genesis is. This is a 16-bit game console that was released in the US in 1989.
1:08.7	So my first question for you two is, were you an S-N-E-S guy or a Sega guy? What did you have?
1:15.2	I don't feel like this is a real question. I had the N-ES and then I had the S-N-E-S. I was S-N-E-S-H head all day. I never ever owned a system made by Sega. I kind of went the Nintendo route up until the GameCube and then move to PlayStation,
1:30.2	and then obviously Nintendo Switch.
1:32.2	Nice.
1:32.7	And Wii.
1:33.1	I had a Wii.
1:33.7	I'm a video game person.
1:36.5	Wes is not necessarily, but I, I've played a lot of video games in my life.
	...

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