Spaceman Splorf: Planet of Doom - Pico-8 port of Pondsoft's C64 casual game

One of the most common uses for the Pico-8 game creation tool is for people to re-make classic games from the 8-bit era using P8's differently limited set of constraints, or to DE-make more modern games from 16-bit and later platforms. But Spaceman Splorf: Planet of Doom is something slightly different... it's a port of a modern release on C64 so it actually represents a true port, made at around the same time as the original, and it's really well done!

Splorf is a casual one-button game. All you have to do is hit the action button to fire Splorf's jetpack to avoid oncoming asteroids. easy right? RIGHT?  Of course not. you have to counter gravity which you have no control of and if you fall into the slime at the bottom, yeah, you die. If you hit an asteroid, yeah, you die. If you hit the "sky" you fly away home happily ever after... nope, you die. But if you get the balance right of thrust vs gravity so you never end up flinging into the zap bar at the top, you find yourself rhythmically bobbing along and racking up points..

And points are hard to come by, you get them for distance traveled, but most plays will see you languishing in the hundreds. I found myself quite proud when I broke 5500 until I saw someone in a community post a 12K+ score!

The port is amazingly faithful to the C64 original, with a few improvements in places. The pallette choice is vibrant and the sprites crisp and the music is very very close to the original SID version. and nice beepy spacey tune with a touch of Journey of the Sorcerer (a.k.a. HHGTTG theme) mixed in.

In short it's a lovely thing.so check it out on the lexaloffle bbs or the C64 original on the Pondsoft website

-Alistair
@ABrugsch (twit/insta/github)