Dangerous Demolition

Dangerous Demolition is a mashup between breakout and a top-down shooter. Don't you hate when the ball is taking ages to hit the last remaining brick? Now you can shoot to guide it and finally kick this brick! But beware, if the ball hits you, you'll get wiped out too!

The game offers 4 games modes and 30 levels (+a "survival mode" with infinitely generated levels). The game saves your progress and your best times for each level. This game will challenge your arcade gaming skills!

The game is available for several retro game consoles (more details afterwards): Game Gear, Master System. More versions are currently in the works (Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Mega Duck), and will be released on the same page when ready. Once you buy the game here, you'll get access to all the upcoming versions for no extra cost!

Also, in addition to buying the digital version (ROMs), this page will also let you access the source code of all versions of the game for free (see more details at the end of the page).

How to play

The rules of the game are simple:
In all the versions of the game (except the Master System one), you can hold down the button to keep firing while moving:

• If you hold Button 1 and move, you will always shoot forward, based on your current movement direction.
• If you hold Button 2 and move, the firing direction will never change as long as keep the button down. It allows you to fire in a different direction than the one you are moving. It can be useful to dodge balls while keeping to fire at them.

In addition to the brick walls to destroy, the game features 3 "special" blocks:

Available game versions

Over the years, the game was ported to several different retro consoles. Many versions even have benefited from a fully-fledged physical release, thanks to the help of different homebrew publishers.

Game Gear (2025)

In 2025, the game was released for the Game Gear console:

While this was the second version released, the Game Gear version is actually the "original" one, as it was developed first. But as it's much more difficult to build new cartridges for the Game Gear than for the Master System, the home console version was published before the handheld one. On the plus side, it means that the Game Gear version was also tweaked a little using the feedback I received from players of the Master System version. Namely, that's why the ability to "hold down fire" to keep shooting was introduced in the Game Gear version.

A gorgeous physical edition was published by 2Minds. It came with an extremely high quality box, with manual and a plastic tray holding a brand new cartridge:

Master System (2022)

In 2022, the game was released for the Master System console:

A beautiful physical edition was published by Côté Gamers. It came with an in-depth "Making Of" book detailing how the game was created and all the steps we took to produce this physical release:

An open source game

The retro games homebrew communities are wonderful places where people create new games for old consoles for the fun of it, and love to share their work and knowledge with others. So whenever I can, I try to contribute too by documenting and sharing the source code of my games, hoping it may help others to make their own games. 

In addition to the ROM, you'll find zip files containing the fully commented source code of the game (see the "demo" downloads at the end of the page). As detailed in the README inside each zip file, the source code is released under the MIT license, and the assets (graphics and audio, with the exception of the music that was not created by me) under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. The game was programmed 100% in C using various SDK for each platform. The Game Gear and Master System versions use the wonderful devkitSMS. Please don't hesitate to ask me if you have any questions about the source code or how the game works.

Wait, is this game free or paid?

For this project, I'm experimenting with something different. This game is a commercial release, with several versions even getting a physical edition. So buying the digital versions (ROMs) of the game will cost you $4.99.

However, I like to share the source code of my games to contribute back to the homebrew communities. My goal is to help other people make their first game for the retro console of their childhood. This is especially important when dealing with less popular platforms, like some of the ones I chose for this project. And I don't want to put a barrier of entry for fellow people who would like to start developing homebrew games. So you can also access the source code of all the game versions for free from this page.

Does it means that you can legally get the game for free if you compile it yourself?

Yes, 100%! And the good news is that you'll also get a working toolchain and a template to start creating your own homebrew game in the process. Isn't that cool?

So to summarize, on this page you'll find:

- Compiled ROMs file of the game, ready to play for each console it was released for. Accessing those files will cost $4.99. This is a one-time payment that will also grant you access to any future version of the game for a different console that will be released here. You'll receive a notification update when that happens.

- Commented source code of the game, with instructions on how to compile it for each console it was released for. Accessing those files will cost you $0. And I'll also release the source code of any future version of this game under the same conditions on this page.

I honestly don't know what to except from this choice. I think it's a good balance between contributing to the homebrew scenes, while helping me to offset the costs of buying and maintaining new retro consoles and development hardware (e.g. flashcarts) to port this game on different platforms.