Primates

About the game

Primates is an artillery duel. Two apes stand on the rooftops of a city skyline, and each turn you choose an angle and a strength and throw an exploding banana in a high arc toward the other one. The wind changes from round to round, buildings get in the way, and the first ape to land a hit wins the point.

There are two ways to play. Arcade mode is a race: both apes aim and throw as fast as they can. Classic mode is the polite version, where the apes take turns and type in the numbers. Before a game you choose how many points to play to and a few house rules.

It was made for the SMS Power! coding competition in 2023, inspired by the old BASIC artillery games, with its own graphics and music.

Playing it here

This is a homebrew game made for the Master System: a new game by an independent developer, not a commercial release. It runs here in Gearsystem, a Master System emulator compiled to WebAssembly. Click Play now, press Z on the title screen and choose 1 Player to face the computer.

Two people can play here in Classic mode: set "Share controller 1?" to Y and take turns on the same keyboard. Arcade mode for two players needs a second controller, which this player does not provide. F2 saves the full state of the emulator in this browser and F4 brings it back. A gamepad works too.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

Check the wind. The wind arrow changes every round, and a strong gust can carry a banana a whole building further.

Higher is safer. A steep, slow throw clears tall buildings that a flat, fast one would hit.

Remember your last throw. Classic mode can keep your previous angle and power, so a near miss only needs a small adjustment.

Credits and licence

Primates was made by Will Britton with the devkitSMS. It is released under the Apache License 2.0. The licence text is linked from this page.