MusicIf going all out, I was thinking maybe one little tune per section of the game (Lava, Warehouse, Forest, etc). Just simple looping elevator chip tunes?
Otherwise a simple intro screen tune would do, along with all the sound effects for the creatures/droids, jump, death. I quite like the intro tune for M.U.L.E., and the one in Giana Sisters is Epic.
A retro style would be cool, no samples, just synth stuff (triangle/square/sine). Maybe a nasty LCD game MRREEP MREEEP when you die? A boot/credit/crew cracktro tune and text scroll would be cool too...
I don't know much about music editors nowdays, but I used to do stuff in
StarTrekker 1.3 for the Amiga. I think I tried some ModPlug a few years ago.
ResolutionYeah a border could work, 320*240 in total, 640x windowed at 2x, and fullscreen. I just thought a GBA rez would be nice if I ever finished then ported it, but the GBA days are kind of over. DS have a slightly higher rez.
Yes, I think a got the GBA resolution wrong for the fake screens.
In BlitzMax I actually have a game I made in 128*128px, then I scale it realtime every frame (SetScale 4.0,2.0 for phat wide pixels), because computers are fast these days (BMX uses openGL). I used Integers (int or long) for the positions of the characters, then divided by the precision I wanted per pixel.