Mario's Cement Factory C64 port coming soon - My first assembly game

As the C64 was my first computer you would think it was the system which first introduced me to the magic of play at home video gaming. But actually it wasn't, because before my family brought home the bread bin that day, I’d been playing some of the Nintendo Game & Watch handheld games. Including my favourite: Mario’s Cement Factory. For almost as long as I can remember I’ve been wanting to make a game for the C64 - But apart from some BASIC text adventures and messing around in SEUCK, I never quite managed it until now.

I always knew that BASIC games were too slow, and SEUCK games were too limited, and the secret to make those smooth arcade like action games - you needed to use assembly language. For some reason I never figured out how to do that myself though or even how to enter a single line of assembly language. Maybe I was too hooked on just playing the games, or distracted by boring school work!

I’ve been able to figure enough assembly instructions to cobble together my first ever C64 game written in pure 6502 assembly language - and with it fulfill a life long ambition. Thanks to some awesome live coding streams by Shallan50k on Twitch, and inspired by Arlagames’ recent Game & Watch ports to the C64, I decided a relatively simple and fun first project would be to port my favourite Nintendo Game & Watch game: Mario’s Cement Factory to the Commodore 64.

If you’ve been following my own Twitter feed, or Twitch channel these last couple of months this won’t be news to you, but for all Indie Retro News readers, I’d like to announce that the game is nearly complete, with mostly the game’s UI components like the high score screen - and some gameplay balance fixes required for the game’s release.

Here you can see the game in progress as I test out the game’s SFX, and on my youtube you can see earlier work in progress videos of the game progressing. I hope you all enjoy playing the game when it’s finally released - I’m obviously not going to be releasing a Nintendo IP commercially or make a physical version: you’ll be able to download it from the usual places. I’ve tried to keep gameplay as close as possible to the Game & Watch handheld - but other versions of the game can also be played on the Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS and the Tabletop game which all play slightly differently to the original handheld.

Enjoy the early footage, please leave any questions in the comments. You can also catch me live on Twitch playing my favorite Commodore games, and requests.


Shoutouts and links:

Shallan50k (6502 Shogun!): twitch.tv/shallan50k
Arlagames: https://arlagames.itch.io/
Phaze101 (SID Music): https://www.facebook.com/AmigaPhaze101
Richmondmike (SID SFX): twitch.tv/richmondmike
My channel: twitch.tv/hayesmaker64

Posted by @hayesmaker64