Game Pack Simulator
A downloadable game for Windows
If you were a child in America in 1989 you may have seen these scratch-off cards by Topps. Titled the Nintendo Game Pack, the full set included 60 game cards plus stickers. Probably more than 60 since I've found evidence of a second series of 36 newer cards. So possibly 96 in total. But for 25 cents you got 3 cards, 2 stickers, and some game tips!
The cards were based on popular videogames, like Mario, Zelda, Double Dragon, etc.
This is an attempt to simulate the Zelda and Link cards (10 each, a total of 20). The music is me humming because kids playing this at school would have hummed the game's music. Possibly.
This might be the world's first ever "scratch card to PC conversion". Have any other scratch card games been converted for use on computers?
The game is controlled by typing numbers and hitting enter. I wanted to include mouse support, and have it where you could click the cards themselves, but this would have turned 3 days of coding (25 hours roughly including testing) into 3 weeks. So I went with the quickest option. If you type "68" it'll bring up a debug grid showing text positions and graphics lines spaced at 50 pixels each. If you want to mod the game code to display symbols on the cards themselves, be my guest, the source code is yours.
We do not have an accurate database of how many of each symbol were on each card, or their position. I believe the positions were fixed, so repeat playing would become easier as you memorised where winning symbols were. But I'm not sure. At the moment the symbol ratios are best guesses on my part, for the left and right sides, and their positions randomised. You can play with the DAT files to change the ratios if you like. I've found 11 cards on eBay, pre-scratched, and am trying to find more.
Source code is included.
No donations will be accepted. This is free software, the source code is released to the general public under the GNU.
All copyright materials belong to their respective rights holders.
If any rights holder wishes for these historical simulation to be removed it, I will remove it immediately. This software is intended to educate and inform, and is for historical and educational purposes only.
Please do NOT sue me - I am not trying to violate copyright or infringe on any company's ownership, I am simply trying to document history.
If you worked on creating this game for the Topps company, please get in contact so I can interview you. Likewise please contact me if you have images of pre-scratched cards so we can update the data!
Thank you and please enjoy this slice of 1989 history.
Download
Install instructions
The folder contains the EXE and source code. Just launch the EXE and it will access the data folders.
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I love this!
As a history and game enthusiast (especially of Zelda), I cannot thank you enough for helping preserve such a niche and interesting piece of memorabilia.
I happened across your article on Time Extension and appreciate your work. Despite the difficulties, this is truly one of the most heartfelt ways one can contribute to the series.
You have my full support and I will try to get more interest involved in this project!
Thank you! If you check the TE comments you'll see someone else is also working now on a Javascript version for web pages, which features mouse support. Plus, we now have an almost complete set of scratched cards, so now have the data of where symbols were positioned. At some point I will update this page to reflect all this.
That's fantastic news! Thank you for the update, and thank you again for the initiative. I look forward to the progress of both this project and TE!