itch.io

There aren't any dangerous NES emulators among reputable, reasonably modern free open source (FOSS) ones. The NES emulator I played the most was PocketNesterPlus for the PocketPC but for the PC, I'd pick out 3 accurate, well-known emulators, each the best for a use case:

• FCEUX
  • gold standard: lightweight, feature-packed
  • classic PC program design
• Nestopia
  
  • user-friendly
  • modern design
• RetroArch
  
  • comprehensive frontend for various emulators (typically uses Mesen, FCEUmm or Nestopia for the NES: first install one of these cores and then you can open the ROM file)
  • enables you to use your PC as a retro gaming powerhouse with a console-like interface
  • great for massive game collections for various old platforms
  • available for Android with mobile-friendly interface
• Bonus: emulator to play online on itch.io (it is free and open source too so Megacat Studios could bundle it with the game's ROM and add a play-in-browser version)

The notion that emulators may be unsafe or illegal is propaganda by console manufacturers. In reality, emulators are no less legal than playing on original hardware, with the added benefit of not needing a TV with RF input and a flash cart to load the ROM, plus savestates, portability etc. The NES is just a rather simple computer architecture whose patents ran out in 2003-2005 so clones and emulators exist legally. Only software, protected by copyright, would be a concern, and the NES itself includes no software (the Famicom Disk System does but that has been reimplemented legally in a "clean room"). Both emulators and (modded) original hardware can be used to play illegal copies of games: however, if you bought Little Medusa standalone or as part of the Game Industry Hardship Bundle, you're in the clear. The fact that this game is "unlicensed" only means that Nintendo hasn't given it a stamp of approval and provided the official lockout chip key, therefore hacks have to be used to play on original hardware (one is presumably included in the cartridge version). As for safety, emulated games distributed as ROMs are safer than native games since the the game code runs inside a sandbox and the "sandbox manager" (emulator in this case) is a well-maintained piece of software, as opposed to when the game gets bundled with a specific version of a proprietary engine that may later turn out to have bugs or exploits. Additionally, not bundling the game with an emulator adds flexibility, for example I can play on PocketPC that nobody would otherwise release a game for, or I can TAS the game (not possible on native games for modern Windows).

You can play on any platform that can emulate the NES, which includes almost every recent piece of hardware with a screen and a way to load programs. That includes everything with a modern browser, look up NES emulators. Open source ones recommended of course.

You could get the bundle here: 
/b/3802/game-industry-hardship-fund

Posting this since the page has not been updated with a link to the resulting bundle, which is [Edit:] no longer available for purchase anyway,

I can't rule that out, I'm not that good at reverse-engineering code, especially object-oriented like this. I'd probably have to make a debug copy of the game and where I can spawn food and watch the variables. Also, this is from v0.1.00, which is not up-to-date anymore.

BTW there is more unused code, for example a mother character with another hunger meter


and a script for a short VN featuring a character named Elias, and it seems only the code of the dialog boxes was ported from that.

I haven't achieved it either, I don't have the patience to play and check but it's called "hollow bride" in the image files and "liquid" in the code. The code for it is different from the Parasite and Anomaly paths but I haven't been able to reverse-engineer either, it's a bit of object-oriented mess. However, upon closer inspection it looks like healthy liquids might not actually increase the liquid level, see last line:

for keys in [Content.UNHEALTHY, Content.PARASITE, Content.ANOREXIA]:
    if health_lvls[keys] > 0 and val_count <= 3:
        health_lvls[keys] -= 1
    else:
        val_count += 1
        if val_count == 3:
            health_lvls[each] += 1
            if count.has(Content.LIQUID):
                if count[Content.LIQUID] > 0:
                    pass
            else:
                if count.has(Content.HEALTHY):
                    if count[Content.HEALTHY] > 0:
                        health_lvls[Content.LIQUID] -= 1

Anyway, ¥100 is best for anomalous liquids too (11 %: bottled blood/eyes/sewage) and ¥150 for unhealthy liquids (100 %: Kola Classic/Zero/Chost). So maybe anomalous and unhealthy liquids are a way to go?

Search for my comments in this thread, I also made a spreadsheet and it looks like ¥10 and ¥150 are best for surviving (especially if thirst gets critical), and then only ¥100 (and ¥500 if you have the coin) are worth it for the other routes, as they offer best variety of liquids, anomalies and parasites. I haven't tested this but for ¥100, the 11% chance of healthy anomalous liquids should be enough to get the top stage of the "liquid" route:

(here is the second one:)

In the item_dir array, the 0th member of each element is the hunger satiation, the 3rd one is the thirst satiation. For example, "antarticwater" restores 5 food and 30 water. The best satiation to cost ratio is 1 for a single apple seed but it's tedious to farm so I always go for 10, which gives 5.

Agree! I also decompiled it and I think the ideal strategy (in version 0.1.00 at least) is

• At first, only eat ¥10 packs of apple seeds and drink ¥150 unhealthy liquids (100% chance for each). This grind will let you survive, stay normal and save a lot of money or food items. You can even go down all 5 steps of the healthy route or fat route by varying the ratio between seeds and sodas. You can always starve to return to normal.
• Only other price point worth bothering with besides the aforementioned ¥10 and ¥150 is ¥100 (and ¥500 if you have that coin). This gives a good value-for-money of anomalies, healthy liquids and parasites. Healthy seeds and unhealthy liquids are best obtained in the previous point.
• After saving up enough items from it, eat a selected category at once to transform as you wish to the 3 stages of the other routes. 

Minor optimizations:

• Only eat on the street to waste less time not begging, although looking into your inventory next to the vending machine is the only place to see the front standing sprite.
• First operate the coin slot as many times as you need, then collect everything from the output tray by spam-clicking.

I extracted the game files (version 0.1.00, which was up-to-date when you wrote the comment but no longer is) and it seems you are right. I don't fully understand all of it yet but I think

• There is an oversight that you can survive without drinking, probably will be fixed
• There are six transformation paths: 
  • "anorexia" (starving): 3 levels then death
  • "unhealthy" (sweet, fatty or rotten food, some is also anomalous such as choco shapes or donuts): 5 levels
  • "perfect" (healthy food): 5 levels ranging from beautiful to muscular to space being; contrary to popular belief all healthy food counts but apple seeds are easiest. I think only number of items counts, so 10 apple seeds are as good as 50
  • "parasite" (worms and bugs including giant alien ones, bees, maggots, earthworms, wasps, crickets, scorpions, but not fried roaches, tadpole soup, snail skewers, milk spiders, rat on stick or dog feet): 3 levels, ranging from maggot-infested to insect queen
  • "anomaly" (SCP food:  human body parts, spiced candy, leeches, bag of colorful apples, lemon clams, fluffy alien box, pyramids, choco dildo/floppy/chess/robot/bullets, Ponari Sweat, swimmer bottle, Xocolatl, can with alien language): 3 levels
  • "liquid" (drinks): makes your belly and head very round and full of ulcers, idk if it even works: 3 levels

• Starving or eating/drinking non-category-specific food will decrease level in category
• Idk if you need to return to normal to change categories

Costs:

• ¥1-¥10, ¥50 only gives corresponding amount of seeds
• ¥150 only gives unhealthy liquids
• nothing costs over ¥1000
• no parasites above ¥300
• seeds are best satiation for your buck: 
  • theoretically best is 1 seed = ¥1 = 1 satiation point (but you'll spend too much dispensing them they're not worth it)
  • likely best is 10 seeds = ¥10 = 5 satiation points
  • also good is 50 seeds = ¥50  = 10 satiation points

• best parasite chance: ¥100 (26 %), same as ¥300 but that's not worth it
• best anomaly chance: ¥500 (59 %), or ¥100 (22 %) for best value
• best healthy liquid chance: ¥100 (11 %) (needed for "liquid" route, presumably)

I'm guessing that your best chance at surviving, making money and staying normal is by eating 10-packs of apple seeds and occasionally ¥150 junk drinks to reduce healthiness and thirst (if a thirst consequences get patched in a future version). You'll save up to fill the inventory with various things. Eat a selected category at once to transform as you wish. Only eat on the street to waste less time not begging, although looking into your inventory next to the vending machine is the only place to see the front standing sprite.

In the game files, you'll also see unused sprite versions with an open mouth (perhaps for eating animation that didn't really work, may be fixed later), traces of a "mother" mechanic and the script for a little VN I don't think was released.

Works on Android with Firefox, with the font, images and everything. Landscape orientation recommended because of how wide the images are.

I had a discussion with the game's author and once another project of theirs is done, they will be updating the game for online play! I wish I had the art and narrative skills to make such a game. Oh well, at least I can help with the technicalities.

Here is how to adopt this (or other SugarCube-based) game for itch.io without hiccups.

• Go to your girl things folder (if your files are a mess like mine, just download and unpack the ZIP from here)

• (Optional) The freely-distributable Helmet font has been used, which not everyone has installed. Please include it or link to it! Open your HTML file in Notepad (⊞), TextEdit (🍏) or similar, find "@font-face" and copy one of these lines in front of it, with line breaks or not (the first one is more reliable but only works if you supply a copy of Helmet-Regular.ttf (case-sensitive) yourself in the images folder):

@font-face{font-family:Helmet;src:url(images/Helmet-Regular.ttf);}
@font-face{font-family:Helmet;src:url(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/carlstype/helmet/master/Helmet-Regular.ttf);}

To embed the game and qualify for the popular "Play in browser" category: 

• itch.io is looking for an index.html file directly in the ZIP root dir. Change the file name from girl things.html to index.html and repack the ZIP (press Ctrl+A (⊞) or Cmd+A (🍏) to select the images folder and index.html, right-click and press Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder (⊞) or Compress (🍏) - do not do this on the upper-level "girl things" folder). Check that if you open the resulting ZIP, you don't see another "girl things" folder but images and index.html already! 

• Use these itch.io project settings:
  • Kind of project: HTML
  • Uploads: Reupload "girl things.zip", which is the downloadable game, to update it to include the font. Mark ⊞ Windows, 🐧 Linux and 🍏 Mac as supported. Then, rename the ZIP on your computer to anything else (like "girl things online.zip" - to avoid overwriting the first one) and upload it again, this time check "This file will be played in the browser".
  • Embed options:
    • How to run: Embed in page, manually set size
    • • Width: recommended 800 (full page is 920 but that opens the left bar so images won't fit)
        
      • Height: about 600, up to you
    • ☑ Mobile friendly
      • Orientation: Landscape (recommended)
    • ... Automatically start: you decide, I'd say yes
    • ☑ Fullscreen button
    • ☑ Enable scrollbars: important

I tested that this works by creating a bare-minimum, content-free testing version of this game and uploading it on my account.