The rewards for a homebrew developer's labor are few. The majority of their games and applications will never see a commercial release or any cash return. The number of people who can even appreciate their work on the DS is limited because of hardware requirements (i.e. third party storage carts). To find out why these programmers pour countless hours into projects that they won't likely profit from, Modojo interviewed the minds behind four of the homebrew scene's most visible games: Tetattds, Tower Defense, The Lemmings Project, and QWAK.

Tetattds is a polished clone of Tetris Attack/Panel de Pon for the SNES, adding online support to the puzzler. Tower Defense is an adaptation of the popular Warcraft 3 mod. The Lemmings Project jerry-rigs the PC classic to work with the DS' touchscreen and resolution limits. QWAK, a GBA puzzle platformer reminiscent of Bubble Bobble, was actually self-published with a small run of 300 carts.

So what is it that drives these homebrew developers? Several of them cite community participation or the need to fill a gap in the DS library. Others have a reason that's even more simple and obvious: They just want to make the best games they can.

If any system is well-suited to guiding chains of lemmings through levels filled with danger, it's the DS ... and thanks to homebrew developer Matt, that potential has been realized. LemProject brings a homebrew Lemmings game (based from the Amiga version) to the DS, with full stylus functionality and all the tools you need to build your own levels. And if you're the type who wants to dig around on the back end, it's all open source.

It's not perfect -- not all the old levels could be transferred to this game, there are a few reported bugs, and some people are pulling sad faces that it doesn't work with DS-X, but nothing's perfect. All in all, this looks like a great homage to a classic.

[Via Digg]