03-26-2023, 12:01 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-10-2023, 02:41 PM by Yawackhary.)
Have been so busy heavily downsizing my gaming collection that I haven't had much time to rip at all until recently. (goes back to downsizing)
Out of This World
The closest thing to Fantasy Zone on the computer (surprised that it didn't get a port but neither did the original Hang-On or maybe it did start off as one... since it was published by Ariolasoft who originally brought out the Master System in Germany but later pulled out). It does seem unfinished though since there's sort of only one boss in the entire game and there is no HUD and you have to press Enter to view your score and weapon (similar to LED Storm) that is a bit clunky. It is a technical achievement though since it was the first game that uses both horizontal overscan and the rarely used hardware scrolling, this was later refined in BMX Kids, the last Titus games Super Cauldron and Prehistorik 2 as well as modern homebrew.
Nova Blast
This was done for the fill the letters project, this is my first and most likely my last Colecovision rip. So that covers all of the pre-gaming clear-out rips.
Milk Race (Spectrum)
A quickie rip.
Outside of the above, the Amstrad rips are on the backburner and struggling on the Spectrum so decided to do some Commodore 64 rips. Was going to finish off ripping my Terry Gedou Densetsu sheet that I started back in November but looks like I got beaten to the punch yet again... Not complaining at all, Xinos has done a great job and one less rip for me!
As a technical note in case any one is interested. The C64 has 2 main sprite modes, one is monochrome (two colours) like the Spectrum and they are in 8x8 blocks while the other has 4 colours like the NES however has a weird size of 24x21 blocks as generally the 4 colour sprites are on bitplane 3 (but not always). Some games mix and match these modes for the sprites like Hyper Sports where one layer is monochrome and the other is 4 color. Feels weird to say sprites again since most of the other 8 bit computers don't really have them even if some games use character sets instead.
(Oh and because CSFEC uses a general custom palette for the sprites most of these have been recoloured back to how they appear in game. The sprites might not be technically 100% in terms of palette choice however this is just for the background. It's a shame that VICE doesn't have a graphics viewer at all and that's the leading C64 emulator but CSFEC is far easier to use.)
Footballer of the Year
Some games on the C64 do stretch/scale the sprites in game, this is one example.
Night Racer
Invade-a-Load!
When I was ripping Night Racer, this loading game based on Space Invaders popped up. This appeared on quite a fair bit of Mastertronic's games on the C64, even a story was written on how it happened. If only someone was aware of this then Namco wouldn't have patented the idea for nearly 20 years but then again Taito might have complained...
(The hardest thing to do was actually getting an icon, the game is just too difficult for me and getting a half decent one took about 15-20 minutes of gameplay losing 100s of lives, usually getting a Game Over with half or more of the enemies on screen. Only cleared a stage once but died on the 2nd straight away.)
911 Tiger Shark
With a name like that you'll think of a shump but nope. Considered one of the worst games on the C64, even the people who worked on the game used the words "naff" and "lame" to describe it. I would also add the words "crap", "terrible" and "broken" to that list along with "the only good thing that I found was that the Porsche sprite isn't too bad for 1985 standards and only ripped it because I was looking for a number game to add to tSR's C64 section". Then again it was a licensed game for... tires. Not the actual Porsche itself as there are good licensed games such as Porsche Challenge on the PS1 and Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed. Apparently it was going to be sold full price but copies were either dumped onto petrol (gas) stations or given away if you bought Dunlop tyres depending on who you ask. Probably because it was originally mail order but no one actually bought the game once the reviews got out.
Overlander
As mentioned the 3rd sprite suffers from graphic corruption, this is from an original tape dump rather than a cracked version. Still working on the enemies.
Lemans
This was one of HAL Laboratory's pre-Nintendo games, they did a bunch of Commodore stuff (VIC-20, C64) beforehand. Many of their early games was a clone and this was inspired by Monaco GP (with an added "pit" function when you crash your car).
Also ripped from a certain Italian drainage duo, this time a C64 adaptation of a Game & Watch game and a remake before the Game & Watch Gallery series existed. The origins are rather mysterious on where it came from but is a Dutch game done by the scene. For some reason the programmer chose the music from Roland's Rat Race for the game...
(It was actually pretty stressful ripping the MB2 sheets at the time to the point of having a shutdown but recovered the next day.)
Just as a mention; in the future and as shown in my backlog below, my main focus is going to be racing game rips. A lot of my non-racing backlog will just have to be dropped but will try to finish as much as possible. For anyone curious, some WIP progress and pitfalls:
Out of This World
RP2-16
Enemies
The closest thing to Fantasy Zone on the computer (surprised that it didn't get a port but neither did the original Hang-On or maybe it did start off as one... since it was published by Ariolasoft who originally brought out the Master System in Germany but later pulled out). It does seem unfinished though since there's sort of only one boss in the entire game and there is no HUD and you have to press Enter to view your score and weapon (similar to LED Storm) that is a bit clunky. It is a technical achievement though since it was the first game that uses both horizontal overscan and the rarely used hardware scrolling, this was later refined in BMX Kids, the last Titus games Super Cauldron and Prehistorik 2 as well as modern homebrew.
Nova Blast
Nova 1
This was done for the fill the letters project, this is my first and most likely my last Colecovision rip. So that covers all of the pre-gaming clear-out rips.
Milk Race (Spectrum)
Cyclist
A quickie rip.
Outside of the above, the Amstrad rips are on the backburner and struggling on the Spectrum so decided to do some Commodore 64 rips. Was going to finish off ripping my Terry Gedou Densetsu sheet that I started back in November but looks like I got beaten to the punch yet again... Not complaining at all, Xinos has done a great job and one less rip for me!
As a technical note in case any one is interested. The C64 has 2 main sprite modes, one is monochrome (two colours) like the Spectrum and they are in 8x8 blocks while the other has 4 colours like the NES however has a weird size of 24x21 blocks as generally the 4 colour sprites are on bitplane 3 (but not always). Some games mix and match these modes for the sprites like Hyper Sports where one layer is monochrome and the other is 4 color. Feels weird to say sprites again since most of the other 8 bit computers don't really have them even if some games use character sets instead.
(Oh and because CSFEC uses a general custom palette for the sprites most of these have been recoloured back to how they appear in game. The sprites might not be technically 100% in terms of palette choice however this is just for the background. It's a shame that VICE doesn't have a graphics viewer at all and that's the leading C64 emulator but CSFEC is far easier to use.)
Footballer of the Year
Players
Some games on the C64 do stretch/scale the sprites in game, this is one example.
Night Racer
Car
Invade-a-Load!
Gameplay Sprites
When I was ripping Night Racer, this loading game based on Space Invaders popped up. This appeared on quite a fair bit of Mastertronic's games on the C64, even a story was written on how it happened. If only someone was aware of this then Namco wouldn't have patented the idea for nearly 20 years but then again Taito might have complained...
(The hardest thing to do was actually getting an icon, the game is just too difficult for me and getting a half decent one took about 15-20 minutes of gameplay losing 100s of lives, usually getting a Game Over with half or more of the enemies on screen. Only cleared a stage once but died on the 2nd straight away.)
911 Tiger Shark
Porsche 911
Obstacles
With a name like that you'll think of a shump but nope. Considered one of the worst games on the C64, even the people who worked on the game used the words "naff" and "lame" to describe it. I would also add the words "crap", "terrible" and "broken" to that list along with "the only good thing that I found was that the Porsche sprite isn't too bad for 1985 standards and only ripped it because I was looking for a number game to add to tSR's C64 section". Then again it was a licensed game for... tires. Not the actual Porsche itself as there are good licensed games such as Porsche Challenge on the PS1 and Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed. Apparently it was going to be sold full price but copies were either dumped onto petrol (gas) stations or given away if you bought Dunlop tyres depending on who you ask. Probably because it was originally mail order but no one actually bought the game once the reviews got out.
Overlander
Overlander
As mentioned the 3rd sprite suffers from graphic corruption, this is from an original tape dump rather than a cracked version. Still working on the enemies.
Lemans
Car
Rival
This was one of HAL Laboratory's pre-Nintendo games, they did a bunch of Commodore stuff (VIC-20, C64) beforehand. Many of their early games was a clone and this was inspired by Monaco GP (with an added "pit" function when you crash your car).
Also ripped from a certain Italian drainage duo, this time a C64 adaptation of a Game & Watch game and a remake before the Game & Watch Gallery series existed. The origins are rather mysterious on where it came from but is a Dutch game done by the scene. For some reason the programmer chose the music from Roland's Rat Race for the game...
(It was actually pretty stressful ripping the MB2 sheets at the time to the point of having a shutdown but recovered the next day.)
Just as a mention; in the future and as shown in my backlog below, my main focus is going to be racing game rips. A lot of my non-racing backlog will just have to be dropped but will try to finish as much as possible. For anyone curious, some WIP progress and pitfalls: