nes-hanoi-tower

A homebrew NES game based on Tower of Hanoi

Title screen

The title screen shows the title Tower of Hanoi, loops music to a chiptune version of "Jingle Bells", and instructs the user to press start.

Gameplay

When the game is started, initially the tower height is 1, and each subsequent level increases the height, to a max of 8 for the eighth level and upon completion of that the game is won.

The colors of each block are starting from smallest to largest: magenta, red, orange, yellow, yellow-green, foreat green, teal, deep blue.

Selecting a block to move is done with the A button, then the left/right D-pad to move it between the three towers, then the A button again to place it. Pressing the B button cancels picking up of the block, as does pressing A a second time on its original tower.

To pass a level, the player must use the minimum number of moves for that level's puzzle (i.e. 2^n - 1).

Each time a level is failed, the player loses a life, after 3 lives lost it's game over.

Artistic style

Rudimentary 2D side-view of the tower, basically each tower loop can appear as a rectangle.

Music

During gameplay, play a chiptune version of Ode to Joy (Beethoven's #9).

Implementation

Implemented using C and the cc65 compiler toolchain, appropriate makefiles to build a .nes file from source.

The .nes file should be playable on any decent NES emulator.

Download

You can download hanoi.nes from the releases tab on GitHub.

Build

Prerequisites

First, install the cc65 compiler toolchain:

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cc65

macOS (with Homebrew):

brew install cc65

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S cc65

Windows:

1. Download the latest release from cc65 GitHub releases
2. Extract the archive to a directory (e.g., C:\cc65)
3. Add the bin directory to your PATH environment variable

From Source (any platform):

git clone https://github.com/cc65/cc65.git
cd cc65
make
sudo make install

Build the ROM

Once cc65 is installed:

make

This creates build/hanoi.nes which can be played on any NES emulator.

Play the Game

# With FCEUX (recommended):
fceux build/hanoi.nes

# With Nestopia:
nestopia build/hanoi.nes

# Or use any other NES emulator

See BUILD.md for additional build details and troubleshooting.

Controls

• D-Pad Left/Right: Select tower
• A Button: Pick up / Place block
• B Button: Cancel (return block to original tower)
• Start Button: Begin game / Continue to next level
• Select Button: Give up and retry level