GNOME vs KDE

Title: GNOME vs KDE: Battle of the Desktops
Developer: Damian Yerrick
Publisher: Pin Eight Software
Year: 2000
Platform(s): NES
Description:

G vs K is a partial clone of Panel Action Bingo. A GNOME mascot and a KDE mascot (a Mega Man-like character that was apparently KDE's mascot before the KDE dragon) are running around on a 5x5 square board chasing a red square to claim it and trying to get Bingo with claimed squares. There's no CPU opponent; it's two-player only.

Why "GNOME vs KDE"? Easy. Initial prototypes of the game had players leaving colored footprints on claimed squares. However, trying to play the game on a black-and-white display was quite confusing; to fix this, the developers added different footprints for the two players. Player 1's marker remained a footprint; player 2's marker turned into something that looked like a landmine. But then one of the developers remarked "A footprint and a landmine? Why not just go with a footprint and a sprocket with a big K on it?" And so NES Bingo became GNOME vs KDE.

The first public milestone wasn't even meant to be released; a ROM site picked up a private release of the game, but because the game is GPL'd, they were able to do a public release, after which Pin Eight made an official milestone release. You can find the latest version at http://www.pineight.com/nes/ or a recent version at http://nesdev.parodius.com/ or http://nesdev.icequake.net/; it's an NROM so it should work on most development hardware.

A final version was never released because the project was put on hold when the lead developer had to return to university.

A developer contributed to this review. To avoid a conflict of interest, he'll shut up.

• NES programming