However, I just made a breakthrough, which is setting up the NES to use the MMC5 mapper. It allows me to color each character graphic (8x8 pixels) with its own color, as oppose to 2x2 character blocks. It's not really a good picture to see this, as there is only one good example of such (the fourth row down). The MMC5 is a pain to program but this will allow me to match the capabilities of the C64.

Because of what I had to go through to get this monster of a configuration working on the NES, I've taken some time to research and evaluate the practicality of targeting the other 6502 systems.

I have pretty good faith that I'll be able to port the library to the Atari 400/800. I've considered the Atari 2600 in the past, but it turns out its CPU is a heavily restricted version of the 6502 which only provides 128 bytes of RAM. This would greatly hamper the quality of any game I'd make for the C64 or NES.

It was brought to my attention that the successors of the 2600 were likely more apt. It turns out the 5200 is nearly identical to the Atari 400/800; so, that's good news. However, the 5200 was not very successful. The 7800 was more successful; however, its harder varied from the last few Atari systems a good deal. My verdict is to hold off on targeting all Atari systems for now.

I plan on supporting the Apple IIe. I just ordered an old out of print book "Apple Graphics and Arcade Game Design" which should help with that endeavor. If all goes well, I should be able to have a version of my game that stutters under the processing pressure and has terrible sound--I just couldn't resist.