Not happy with continually supporting the Commodore 64 game dev scene with the phenomenal 16KB Cart compo -James Monkman of RGCD announced 4 brand new cartridges. Following 2 official announcements for Retaliate DX and Grid Pix on the RGCD blog page, I spoke to James, who confirmed that the next C64 cart release will be Kobo64 - an interesting 16KB multiscrolling shoot em up in the vein of Hunters Moon and Survivor. Followed by Retaliate and Grid Pix as well as a new version of Psytronik's Argus - finally getting a cart release featuring on cart saving.
Omnomnomnomnom tastes like candy... pic.twitter.com/elZCJjCC33— rgcd.co.uk (@RetroGamerCD) May 17, 2019
It was RGCD's release of Paul Koller's C64nabalt back in 2011 which got me checking out C64s on ebay, buying a shiny C64C and restocking my long lost C64 game collection. My old collection had long since disappeared: last being seen being loaded into the parents' car boot!
Starting with whatever RGCD had in their store, I then tried to collect the tapes and carts I used to have, then the tapes and carts I remembered wanting.. then I got a Turbo Chameleon, then a real 1541 disk drive and eventually the Ultimate 2+ and a need to acquire any C64 game good or bad with a nice cover. Since then the scene has never felt more alive, with new publishers, new devs, old devs returning, and even a small but growing community of live streamers on Twitch and Youtube - myself included - find us on the CommodoreStreamers.net website (Shameless plug!).
Kobo64 was actually an entry in the 2013 RGCD competition, and this version will feature some improvements over the original release, but still be small enough to fit the 16K cart. Even the cases look gorgeous, and were teased on RGCD's facebook and twitter last week. With a re-release improved version of Argus (featuring cart saving) to be released after Kobo, and then Grid Pix, Retaliate DX.
Grid Pix is a Nonogram / Picross style puzzle game developed by Carlton Handley, with puzzles designed by Ilija Melenijevic, music from Andrew (Merman) Fisher and Cyborgjeff and fab cover art by Ste Pickford. Not only do the graphics impress but the game will feature a humongous set of 100 levels which should keep us busy for a while. Interestingly Carlton used the levels from Mario Picross on the Gameboy for test data during development, and as a result, the levels are saved in the same data format. He's also developing a system for more levels to be loaded onto the cartridge from .d64 (c64 disk image) files, and RGCD plan to release more levels in this format totally free of charge. Free DLC on the C64!
Retaliate DX by Marcelo Cabral is an enhanced version of a preview released on CSDB in 2018. It's a shootemup like Galaga, but with an interesting mechanic requiring you to absorb enemy fire with your shield to shoot back at the enemies. It's a demake of an Android/Roku game of the same name, and James at RGCD decided to approach the devs with an aim to improve the game and give it a cart release. He even assembled an incredible team to help Marcelo complete the game which includes Trevor Story who redid the game art and GUI, Richard Bayliss composed a new title track, Antonio Savona helped with porting the game to cart and Jon Egg produced a stunning title screen.
I asked James Monkman for more information earlier today: "Not widely known at this stage... both [Retaliate DX & Grid Pix] will likely be available from RGCD and Psytronik like the good old days"
If you ever wondered why the C64 scene is thriving at the moment it's thanks to Psytronik, Protovision, RGCD Polyplay, Collectorvision, Double Sided Games and all the other great publishers' continued and ongoing support for the system!
Links:
Posted by
Supporting C64 since 1984 - twitch.tv/hayesmaker64
No comments:
Post a Comment
Constructive criticism allowed, but abusive comments will be removed and you will be IP banned! Banned users will not show up in my comment feed, you will be gone for good as will all of your posts! - Play nice, ENGLISH ONLY and enjoy IndieRetroNews!