A solo developer is simultaneously porting an original 3D platformer to six different retro consoles. The game is called Noah and the Poohloudies, and developer Walfrido Abejón is building it for the PS1, N64, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, 3DO, and the Nokia N-Gage.
Abejón pitched the game back in 2021 as "Super Mario 64 meets Pokemon meets Tamagochi." You play as Noah, rescuing robots that have gone haywire because of an approaching meteor. Once you beat them, you capture them, toss them in your backpack, and use their abilities to progress. They also need food, water, and medicine to stay functional. It's the creature-collecting structure of Pokemon combined with the open 3D movement that made Super Mario 64 work.
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Why porting to six platforms from the 90s is genuinely hard
Today, a multiplatform release usually means adjusting resolution and frame rate. The core game stays the same. That wasn't remotely true in the 1990s. The PS1, N64, Saturn, and Dreamcast handled 3D rendering completely differently, ran on different audio hardware, and had memory limitations that varied wildly. Ports between those systems often looked and played like entirely separate games.
Abejón is dealing with all of that at once, which takes either serious dedication or a complete disregard for sanity. Likely both.
The Dreamcast has been the smoothest platform to work with since it's the newest hardware on the list. But even that comes with complications. "Every console of that generation is very picky with how they want the information to be processed, so they are all challenging for different reasons," Abejón explained in a Reddit discussion.
The 3DO launched in 1993 under a licensing model pushed by EA founder Trip Hawkins. It flopped due to its steep price and remains one of the more obscure targets in the homebrew scene.
The 3DO is currently causing the most headaches. "Hope I can squeeze a few more fps out of the system before having to resort to reducing draw distance or similar actions," Abejón wrote. The 3DO was already a commercial disaster at launch, and its architecture is notoriously awkward to develop for.
The N-Gage port nobody asked for but everyone should appreciate
Then there's the Nokia N-Gage. The phone-handheld hybrid that became a joke before it could prove itself. So why bother porting to it?
"Well, I had one at home and I was curious what would happen," Abejón said.
That's the entire reason. No deeper motivation, no business case. Just a developer with an old device lying around and a question worth answering. This is exactly the mindset that makes the retro homebrew scene interesting.
Abejón isn't framing this as some monumental achievement either. In a Reddit comment, the developer said: "I'm no one special, if I can do it everyone can. Just have to have a lot of patience because development is way slower for these platforms."
Patience is probably underselling it when you're writing code that has to run decently on hardware ranging from a 33 MHz RISC processor to a phone Nokia tried to pass off as a gaming device that nobody took seriously.
What this means for homebrew fans
Noah and the Poohloudies isn't a tech demo. It's an actual game with creature-collecting mechanics, 3D platforming, and a full overworld. The fact that it's being built to run on six platforms from the 1990s and early 2000s is a bonus for retro collectors and homebrew fans who want something genuinely new on old hardware.
There's no confirmed release date yet, but Abejón has been posting progress updates on Reddit and other homebrew community channels. You can track the project through those threads where the dev stays active.
For more on what's happening in the retro and indie space, browse our gaming news or check out the latest reviews for a sense of what else is worth your time right now.
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