Posts Tagged ‘c64’

  • Assembloids is in stores!

    assem_tape_bigRemember Quartet, our flash game from 2010? Remember the Commodore64 port called Assembloids from late last year? After being an unexpected hit in the RGCD C64 Cartridge Challenge it is now available to buy on a C64 cartridge in both regular and deluxe editions from RGCD and also as a cassette tape from Psytronik.

    I was excited to receive my deluxe copy in the mail today, and just as back in the golden days, the box comes full of goodies. Apart from the radioactive-green cartridge itself, there’s a neat little instruction booklet, a code-sheet for keeping track of your best scores, a sticker and a themed business card.

    The game itself is further improved from the competition version, and features a multitude of neat little details.

    Developing a game for C=64 has been immensely fun, in no small part thanks to having a great team of people. Enthusi (Dr. Martin Wendt) was constantly finding ways to squeeze even more stuff onto the cart and had endless patience for my (and others) requests and nagging.

    It was a rare honour to have Conrad (Owen Crowley) employ his mastery of the legendary SID sound chip to provide a better-than-original rendition of my original Quartet MODs. Last but by no means least, Heavy Stylus (James Monkman) conceived and organised the whole effort and basically fathered the project.

    Furthermore mad props to Jazzcat the trusty playtester and consultant who saved us from eternal shame on many an occasion. For me it’s always a blast making graphics on the C=64 as working around its limitations  feels like a mix of doing pixel art and playing a puzzle game. Having to program a game from scratch meant re-balancing everything and the result is perhaps even more fine tuned to wreck your nerves just enough to still leave you wanting to have another go.

    Here are some shots of the box contents (click for the high res version):

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  • Assembloids Released

    Back in May 2010 we released the game Quartet. The aim was simple – you had to put together the robots faces as quickly as possible. The more accurately you assemble them, the more points you get. As you progress the game gets faster and faster until eventually you’ll end-up putting a piece in the wrong place. It was a simple little game that Ilija and I put together over the space of a few days, but it has since been converted and revamped for the Commodore 64. Yes, the C64.

    Called Assembloids it was an entry for the RGCD C64 Cartridge Challenge. Here is what they had to say about it: “Assembloids is all about assembling faces against a tight timer. Featuring high score verification codes and full screen open-border presentation (on both PAL and NTSC) there’s a lot going on behind the simple design. Using player feedback, the team are already finalising a retail version with some nice improvements. Expect to hear more news on this one soon!”

    Ilija did all the graphics and Enthusi and Conrad handled the coding and music respectively. I just watched on in admiration as it all come together at the very last moment 🙂 It’s great to see our game on another platform, especially one as cool as the C64.

    Download Assembloids from CSDb (who also made the great animated gif above)

  • Gravity Crash Anthems Soundtrack Available

    I’ve got nothing much more to say other than – it’s out! The Gravity Crash soundtrack by CoLD SToRAGE is available to buy online for immediate download. It costs £10 (which is probably £3 more than it ought to) but you get 16 tracks for your money, including some awesome remixes – most notable of which is a C64 SID rendition of the title track Scarface.

    Track previews, downloadable PDF booklet, exclusive mixes and direct support of the composer are included in the price. Have just thrown it on my mp3 player ready for the drive into work tomorrow. Even if you’ve never played the game, still check this out – as the man himself says, it’s a “buffet of 80s electro” 🙂

  • Flashtros & C64 SID music from AS3/Alchemy

    flashtroI came across a great site called Flashtro. It’s a collection of classic demo scene / warez scene intros and cracktros, recreated in Flash. There are 21 different intros on offer ranging from cracktros such as the Mandala Studio crack by Scoopex, to the “beauty” (*cough*) that is the Pang 100% Trainer by PROJ Inc (coder colours FTW!).

    New intros seem to be released on a semi-regular basis, so I’ll definitely keep this one in my bookmarks and check it out now and again. Perhaps they may even accept some  “guest tro’s” from me? (although I’d rather redo Atari ST demos!) 🙂

    Here’s a shot from the Scoopex one:

    Scoopex

    C64 SID Music from AS3 / Alchemy

    On a similar retro scene theme I found a brand new C64 SID Chip player written in AS3 by the always inspirational UnitZeroOne. It’s a port of the Linux TinySID library (which is where Alchemy came in) with a minimal front-end interface to show it off. Flash Player 10 is required. Replay quality is great and it weighs in at around 150KB. Sadly the source is not yet released, the usual “it’s a mess, I only threw it together in a few hours” excuse is given 🙂 but I can appreciate that, although I’d still probably sell my Mother for it.

    Now if only I could find the time (and skill) to try and do something similar for an SNDH YM2149 replayer!

  • Behind the Square

    This is just a short post to say that the excellent new album “Behind the Square” has been released on C64 Audio.com. It’s a collection of remixed Mad Max (Jochen Hippel) tunes, put together by ACC:Xess. They are superb, spanning everything from the haunting Astaroth game over track, to some classic demo screen music. Superb value for £4.99 🙂 Click the album cover to visit the site and buy it!

    http://www.c64audio.com/productInfo.php?cat=STCD2