RetroGaming Shorts Part 065 - Mutants from the Deep
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
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
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 063 - Ad Astra
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
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 062 - Fire Town
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
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!
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 060 - On the Tiles
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
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 059 - Adrenalin
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
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 058 - Chomper Man
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
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RetroGaming Shorts Part 057 - W*H*B
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 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
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
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
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#RiversOfImpossibility
RetroGaming Shorts Part 053 - Various Super Star Trek type C64 games
Here are just 3 of many Super Star Trek type games for the C64. Star Trek was one of the first really popular computer games, and its basic structure would be used for Star Raiders and many flight sims since.
The basic idea is that you command one ship and you try to rid the galaxy of enemy ships. This galaxy is a grid of square sectors, within which are randomly placed stars, friendly starbases, and enemy ships. You go from sector to sector, managing your energy, shields, and ammo ... you can resupply at starbases.
It was a really great game design with random placement making each game different and providing a feeling of exploration.
Space the Ultimate Frontier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS92L9N-rtk
Star Trek (1985, Share Data) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3kB5uxTXmU
Star Trek (Dave Neale) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ROrEUe_2IY
I'm using these games as references; my Obligalore game project is more along the lines of Star Raiders in that there's first person arcade style action for the combat, but other aspects are inspired by classic Super Star Trek. Also, I'm drawing inspiration from space trading games, so you trade for supplies rather than simply being repaired/supplied at starbases.
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RetroGaming Shorts part 052 - Zero Fighter
Here's an overhead air combat game with only 4 directional movement. It plays remarkably well regardless of the crude 90 degree turning.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 051 - Endless Forms Most Beautiful 64
This old school action game has some interesting gameplay mechanics that make you think a bit differently. In particular, instead of doing a normal wrap around, you wrap to either the next or previous floor. You have to think more carefully about how to avoid the enemies.
This C64 port shows off nice overlapping high resolution sprite graphics and aesthetic use of C64 color.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORCHQOy70jY
#RetroGaming #RetroGamingShorts #C64 #Commodore #Commodore64
RetroGaming Shorts Part 050 - Riot
Riot is noteworthy for two things. First is its ridiculous stream-of-consciousness game design … there are magic terrorist ninjas, disparate creatures that make no sense together, different settings that have no rhyme or reason … it’s glorious.
Second is its twist on Cabal type gameplay - you are in the mid-ground, and enemies can come at you from both the background and the foreground. It’s honestly a fresh take, that puts you more inside the action.
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/riot/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpmP3muW7oY
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(reposting this as part 050 because I had a typo in the hashtag before)
RetroGaming Shorts Part 049 - Pinball
This pinball game is unusual in that the ball doesn't have pixel smooth motion - it moves in a "chunky" way aligned with 8x8 character tiles. And yet it still works. The ball motion almost feels like an LCD game.
I'm not sure how useful this game design inspiration is, but I think it's different in an interesting way.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 048 - Lockdown Town
Lockdown Town is a taxi type maze game, with pretty cute ambulance and covidiot pixel art/animation.
There are no "power pills" to let you take out the covidiots - your only option is to try and avoid them. Fortunately, their movement is random rather than trying to chase you down.
Normally, I prefer a game with smaller sprites and a more expansive maze, but since the monster movement is random, the cramped maze keeps the challenge interesting. Good game design.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 047 - Auto Chase
I'm not sure how to explain what's special about this one. The CreatiVision uses the same TMS9918 video chip as ColecoVision, TI-994/a, MSX and others ... this chip did NOT support smooth scrolling.
And yet, Auto Chase has smooth scrolling. How? It's very clever graphics design. Even though the 8x8 pixel tiles can't budge, the graphics in Auto Chase are designed to be able to smooth scroll either horizontally or vertically while keeping a limit of only two different colors in each 8x8 tile.
One obvious idea is to simply surround each colored thing with an 8 pixel border between it and any other color.
A less obvious clever idea is to use colored 8x8 blocks. If you only scroll horizontally or vertically - but not both at the same time - then there will still only be 2 colors in each 8x8 tile.
A VERY clever idea is the way the cross shaped roofs work ... Examine closely to see how it works, keeping at most 2 colors in each 8x8 tile.
This could be useful for an AutoDuel or racing type game, especially one with two players, since it's possible to use side-by-side split screen. On the C64, you'd normally use hardware smooth scroll, but this doesn't really work for side-by-side.
RetroGaming Shorts Part 046 - PETLifter
A lovely PETSCII rendition of Choplifter. Admire the creative PETSCII art and animation!