Wampus started as a joke and a challenge for some friends of mine. I thought I was "done" with it a long time ago. But I find myself coming back to it again and again, especially as I continue to work on new NES games.

Since more people than ever now have access to Wampus and are downloading it, I thought I would go in and offer some quality of life changes.

1. I've taken the extreme challenge away by offering periodic checkpoints and three lives for players to finish the game. While still a challenge, players can at least fail a few times before having to start all the way over.
2. I've updated the HUD to reflect the number of lives the player currently has.
3. I've fixed a glitch that made the HUD change colors between screens.
4. I've added the ability to pause the game. Imagine that?
5. I've added a Game Over screen.
6. Minor tweaks for performance, but slowdown still occurs and is more or less part of the game design since it was a limitation I couldn't overcome when designing many of the screens.
7. Several minor tweaks that nobody will notice.

Free the Wampus! End space colonialism!