German Garage Games has launched the Kickstarter campaign for Legionnaires, a new action game developed for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. The project comes from father-and-son team Dennis and Noah Fleaman, with another familiar Dutch name joining the project: acclaimed comic artist Romano Molenaar, known for his work on Storm as well as comics for Marvel, DC and Top Cow, created the game’s box artwork.
For us at Retrolike, there is another connection that makes this project particularly close to home. Dennis “Fleaman” is a long-time contributor to Retrolike.net and a valued member of our team. We have also been following his unlikely journey from retro game collector to NES developer almost from the beginning.
From Christmas Crisis to Legionnaires
Back in 2023, we interviewed Dennis about Christmas Crisis, the first NES project he completed together with his son Noah. That game actually started life as an abandoned prototype originally connected to Retroplayer.nl. Dennis acquired what remained of the project and, after rediscovering the development cartridge while moving house, decided to see if he could finish it.
Neither Dennis nor Noah had previous experience in programming or game development at the time. Dennis taught himself the basics of NES development through NESMaker, online resources and even Rodney Zaks’ classic book on 6502 programming. Christmas Crisis ultimately became a four-level Christmas-themed platformer and, perhaps more importantly, a hands-on crash course in making a game for Nintendo’s 8-bit hardware.
Three years later, Legionnaires feels like the next step in that story.
Rather than finishing somebody else’s abandoned prototype, Dennis and Noah are now building their own game under the German Garage Games name. Legionnaires combines action-platforming and exploration with puzzle mechanics, including security systems based around logic puzzles. The game sends two legionnaires onto a mysterious island and deliberately embraces the rather unforgiving design philosophy associated with old-school NES games. A playable ROM demo is already available and runs both in compatible emulators and on original NES hardware.
A familiar comic artist enters the picture
German Garage Games also went considerably bigger with the presentation this time around. The final box art was drawn, inked and coloured by Dutch comic artist Romano Molenaar.
Molenaar is particularly well known in the Netherlands as the artist who took over Storm following the death of legendary original artist Don Lawrence. He has worked on the science-fiction series since 2006 together with colourist Jorg De Vos and later also worked on its Roodhaar spin-off. His international résumé includes Witchblade, The Darkness and Lady Death, while his work for Marvel and DC includes X-Men Unlimited, Detective Comics and an extended run on Birds of Prey.
That background makes Molenaar a particularly good fit for a game trying to capture the illustrated action-game packaging of the late 1980s and early 1990s. German Garage Games recently showed how several early concepts were considered before the final design was selected, after which Molenaar completed the illustration by hand.
Built for the NES
Legionnaires isn’t simply a modern game dressed up to look 8-bit. German Garage Games is developing it as an actual NES game, intended to run on Nintendo hardware more than three decades after the console’s commercial heyday.
The gameplay combines combat and platforming with exploration and logic puzzles. Alarm systems, for example, have to be disabled through puzzles inspired by Light Up, also known as Akari. German Garage Games describes the overall approach rather appropriately as “no hand-holding”, with a dark atmosphere and a deliberately high level of difficulty.
Development has already progressed beyond the purely digital stage. The first physical prototype cartridge was completed this summer and Dennis subsequently brought the game to Gamescom for further public playtesting. The project was also shown earlier in the US, where it picked up an award at the Midwest Gaming Classic in Milwaukee.
For anyone who wants to try before backing, German Garage Games has released a free playable demo through itch.io.
The Legionnaires Kickstarter campaign is live now, with the crowdfunding campaign intended to take the father-and-son project from working NES game to a full physical release.
Check out Legionnaires on Kickstarter
And if you want to know where Dennis and Noah’s game-development story started, you can also revisit our original 2023 interview about Christmas Crisis.
