RetroGaming Shorts Part 068 - Beast of Eden
Beast of Eden 1985 (VIC20)
I love the cute 8x8 pixel art/animation of the beast and devil in this game.
#retrogaming
RetroGaming Shorts Part 067 - Sea Route to India
Sea Route to India 1984 (Commodore 64)
A COMPUTE type in BASIC game of the Oregon Trail type, with nice little minigames, all in PETSCII.
I think it could serve as good inspiration for mobile game design and aesthetics. For example, the PETSCII map and travelogue "dot" movement gives a particularly effective feeling of scale and adventure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG5WvhyFp44
#RetroGamingShorts #RetroGaming #C64 #Commodore64 #Commodore
RetroGaming Shorts Part 066 - Coil Cop
Coil Cop 1985 (Commodore 64)
Thing on a Spring is a cute platformer where you control a cute cartoon creature with a springy pogo leg. Here in the USA, though, it was renamed Coil Cop and advertised by Epyx as part of its totally rad MAXX OUT series.
So look at the totally rad COP OUT magazine ad for Coil Cop. And then contrast with the cutesy gameplay. I still wish the game I imagined from the ad existed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwEiKJXPpMA
#RetroGamingShorts #RetroGaming #C64 #Commodore64 #Commodore
RetroGaming Shorts Part 065 - Mutants from the Deep
Mutants from the Deep 2021 (MSX)
This game has pixel art worth studying. The backgrounds and most bosses show ways to use pixel art where each 8x1 pixel tile is restricted to only two colors. There are numerous sprites showing how to do two colors sprites (two overlapping single color sprites).
RetroGaming Shorts Part 064 - Chopper Hunt
Chopper Hunt 1984 (Atari 800/C64)
Buried Bucks/Chopper Hunt is an interesting game with small sprites and a whole lot of pixel level terrain destruction. This sort of game design was never terribly common, but there's a lot of fun little possibilities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffoztcxOkB8
#RetroGamingShorts #RetroGaming #C64 #Commodore64 #Commodore #Atari
RetroGaming Shorts Part 063 - Ad Astra
Ad Astra 2023 (Commodore 64)
Ad Astra is a recent space trading action game, with an overhead view similar to Asteroids. It's deliberately slow paced rather than relying upon quick arcade action reflexes. The space trading genre, born in 1973, is one of the oldest computer game genres but it's still going strong.
It's a good place to try a game design, since the basic space trading framework gives the player a reason to travel different places and accomplishments to achieve by traveling around, without too much explicit developer effort designing "levels" or explicit missions. And it's not just the same game over and over again, since you can randomize which goods are more expensive where, as well as randomize prices rising/falling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzzNgZ-BUAo
#RetroGamingShorts #RetroGaming #C64 #Commodore64 #Commodore
RetroGaming Shorts Part 062 - Fire Town
Fire Town 1987 (MSX)
I haven't seen any info on Fire Town, which looks a lot like Rise Out From Dungeons. Basically like Lode Runner, but not quite. Puzzle platformers are pretty popular today, but it's also cool to look at real old school puzzle platformers for game design inspiration.
Fire Town and Rise Out show how small modifications to the "rules" and goals can really change things up compared to Lode Runner.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 061 - Various Star Raiders type C64 games
Various Star Raiders type C64 games (C64)
Here are a few Star Trek type C64 games with first person shooting action (as popularized by Star Raiders).
3D Time Trek (Anirog 1983) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ckKxDZprDE
Star Force (ECP 1987) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKyt8KNu8Mw
PETSCII StarForce (???) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUFlhAsBOHk - actually a Star Fire clone
Okay, that last one isn't actually a full Star Trek/Star Raiders type game, but its PETSCII graphics could be used for a PETSCII Star Raiders type game.
Just throwing these out there for Star Trek or Space Trading game inspiration!
#RetroGamingShorts #RetroGaming #C64 #Commodore64 #Commodore
RetroGaming Shorts Part 060 - On the Tiles
On the Tiles 1987 (Commodore 64)
I really love the pixel art and animation here, especially the cat. The dancing mouse and demonic cat face add something also.
The backgrounds also look really nice, and are a bit of a puzzle how they did it if you're familiar with C64 graphics modes. Despite the high resolution look, it's actually using multi-color mode with dark grey background and blue/yellow for the multi-colors. All tiles with high resolution have dark grey as one of the colors, and the other color is always one of the restricted MC colors 0-7 (for example, black or white). The lower resolution of the tiles with blue/yellow is disguised with clever pixel art.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGOKFwPpwxM
#RetroGamingShorts #RetroGaming #C64 #Commodore64 #Commodore
RetroGaming Shorts Part 059 - Adrenalin
Adrenalin 1991 (Commodore 64)
An obscure little shooter with a potentially interesting game mechanic idea - you have a limited number of bullets, but each bullet can go through any number of enemies.
So, the idea is to try and figure out where/when to aim in order to take out as many of them as possible with the limited number of bullets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=164_LFwSbcY
#RetroGamingShorts #RetroGaming #C64 #Commodore64 #Commodore
RetroGaming Shorts Part 058 - Chomper Man
Chomper Man 1983 (Commodore 64)
This Pac Man clone looks inspired by another Pac Man clone, Munch Man for the TI-99/4A. It uses the same small 8x8 pixel sprites that made Munch Man suitable for the TI video chip, even though C64 sprites are much larger.
The maze design also feels like Munch Man. I really like how it makes the maze feel a lot bigger, although the original Pac Man actually has small 8x8 hit detection boxes so the feeling is actually illusory. Nevertheless, I really like the look and feel of the small sprites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUciKftgywA
#RetroGamingShorts #RetroGaming #C64 #Commodore64 #Commodore
RetroGaming Shorts Part 057 - W*H*B
W*H*B 2009 (ZX Spectrum)
This puzzle game is another example of 45 degree isometric perspective. The basic idea is to roll one or more blocks to place them on the exit.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 056 - Rival Gangs
Rival Gangs 2022 (ZX Spectrum)
Rival Gangs is a demake of Grand Theft Auto. I just love the overhead pixel art of the cars and peds. This is what the classic CRPG "Autoduel" could have looked like.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 055 - Starflight
Starflight 1986 (DOS)
This space exploration game is extremely ambitious for its time, influencing games like Mass Effect. If you want to try out an early space exploration game with an epic galaxy scale story, try out Starflight.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 054 - Rootin Tootin
Rootin Tootin 1983 (Commodore 64)
This enchanting Pac Man type game has a lot of interesting features that make is more than just another Pac Man clone.
First off, the main mechanism is that you "shoot" a note when you "eat" it, which makes it difficult and interesting to attack enemies, as they usually chase you.
Second, when an enemy is shot, it instantly respawns from its pen. This makes getting at notes near the pens an interesting challenge.
I'm this principle of instant respawning for my Rivers of Impossibility game. It's sort of like Gauntlet, but each generator only spawns one creature at a time. You need to touch a spawn point to seal it, but a simple direct assault won't generally work well because the creature will simply respawn instantly no matter how many times you shoot it. So you have to think about how you will lead away the creature or get around it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIM8OtNf1yg
#retrogamingshorts #RetroGaming #C64 #Commodore #Commodore64
#RiversOfImpossibility
I'm going to start posting random development thoughts on my current project, "Rivers Of Impossibility", a sort of MC Escher inspired hybrid of Realm of Impossibility and Gauntlet.
First off, my isometric perspective inspiration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OC6vJaeExk
This C64 BASIC program shows an interesting random isometric maze generator. Unlike true isometric, the dihedral angle is a steep 45 degrees (it should be 30 deg for true isometric). But there are a number of mathematical and geometric conveniences to this 45 degree isometric perspective.
Random game idea - turn based Roguelike/Atari 2600 Adventure hybrid
Like many, I was enchanted by Atari VCS Adventure, but at the time I had no idea how to program it on my VIC-20. However, I have since realized that even slow BASIC could have done the job, using turn based Roguelike movement instead of arcade style action.
So, you have 8 keys for directional movement, and SPACE to act as the fire button (which lets go of an object). Running into an object grabs it. Unlike the original, all objects are a single character tile in size, and all movement is aligned to the character grid.
Gameplay revolves around grabbing a weapon in the direction it will be needed in, or dropping the weapon and guiding enemies to run into it. Different weapon types are:
SWORD - Like the original Adventure sword. It can be used any number of times.
DAGGER - Unlike the sword, pressing SPACE throws the dagger rather than just dropping it.
SHURIKEN - Like dagger, but it can only hit one enemy and then it disappears
Another aspect is light management, similar to the C64 game Tenebra. You can grab and drop torches, which affects where you can and can't see enemies and objects.
I've got so many ideas and stuff I haven't been posting, so I just felt like posting a random one.
Paging @smellsofbikes
♲ Sebastian Staacks - 2023-11-03 20:00:13 GMT
Time to reveal my wooden Game Boy, which I CNCed out of walnut wood. How do you like it?More details, footage and project files (under CC-BY license) can be found at
Youtube: https://youtu.be/rECMivhOat4
My blog: https://there.oughta.be/a/wooden-game-boy
#Anime #Games : City Hunter - #PCEngine - #Rétrovision T.V.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u73-fcHm8kg
La Bande #Animée :
https://labandeanimee.fr/
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https://www.manga-news.com/
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