Friend of mine just finished a few year-long journey of developing and releasing a game, soon in physical format as well for Commodore 64 https://delta-machine.itch.io/tantooman There's still something magical in developing for ye olde machines, even by using modern tools like you know, text editors :), cross-compilers, etc.
MomsAVoxell · 16h ago
Awesome, thanks for sharing!
There are many modern games being developed for these 40-something year old computing platforms, which - incidentally - still work great as a gaming/hacking/fun platform, and therefore are attracting all kinds of interesting hacks and devs.
My favourite recent endeavour, is DBugs' EncounterHD - a reboot of an early text adventure game, but given the modern UI and tooling treatment (by a world-class AAA-title developer, it has to be said) ..
This is essentially, a text adventure game for a somewhat obscure 80's-era UK-based 8-bit computer, the Oric-1/Atmos, but now in the 21st Century, DBug has done an outstanding job of adding graphics and realtime dynamics/sound to it, some ~30 years after the fact...
It has become a delightful thing to play - on a Steam Deck, for instance, it is quite comfortable!
The game ships within its own build of an Oric-1/Atmos emulator, which you can escape to and use as if it were an Oric Atmos - if you want an Oric-1/Atmos emulator to further play with - and there are other delightful treats in EncounterHD among the lives of the characters in the game... watch out for the Game & Watch, for instance, which features a familiar grumpy monkey in fully playable form ..
georgeecollins · 18h ago
I think I could add some great entries to this website! When I started at Activision I went through a bunch of old Infocom (Zork/ Planetfall) docs including design docs for games they never made. It taught me a lot.
And then I have my own. I might even still have a cartridge for Halo for the Nintendo DS. It was really pretty nice, but Bungie was like: No way!
There’s a lot of comments claiming it was a modded Goldeneye DS game, curious if you could confirm.
RyanOD · 11h ago
I would absolutely LOVE to see those design docs.
I've been playing Zork, Planetfall, Deadline, etc off and on since I was in elementary school. The only Infocom game I've ever successfully solved is Enchanter. My favorite games by far!
I wonder how entertaining the old style text games would be with modern AI to help interpret actions that people try to make.
RyanOD · 11h ago
That's a good question. I wonder if part of the charm of the Infocom games was the limited vocabulary. Sometimes it was frustrating, but other times just trying to figure out the correct way to communicate with the game was part of the fun.
morleytj · 16h ago
Wait, are you the person who made a prototype of Halo for the DS? That's extremely interesting!
chubasco · 21h ago
Over here still holding my breath for a hi-def remaster of the Fate of Atlantis game.
Gravityloss · 53m ago
I think pixel art works in a way that your brain can fill in the blanks. It's probably really hard to create a remastered version that would capture the imagination in the same way, ie so that most people who liked the original would find it an improvement. Some kind of a heavily styled thing perhaps.
Nifty3929 · 18h ago
That game was SO GOOD. I really liked how they provided three different ways to play, and I completed the game on all three.
ggambetta · 20h ago
Shut up and take my money
egypturnash · 17h ago
In 2017, a cartridge release was discussed for the game, but the response from Thorsten was that the game was so complex that it could take many years – the limitation was not RAM or CPU, but “Time”. He was very busy, managing a family with three small children, and so time to do the game was extremely limited. It seemed this would eventually contribute to the game being abandoned.
This sounds reasonable, the original game was the product of about 40 people working for about a year. Plus the four or five years some of those people previously spent on building their adventure game interpreter. Demaking a game takes less time than making one - you've got the whole game there already and you just have to figure out how to simplify it to fit into your target system - but it's still A Lot.
This was not found on some 30+ year old floppy that some Lucasfilm Games developer found in his attic or anything.
It is from a fan-remake from 2012 that was abandoned.
basfo · 20h ago
Agree completely, the title is misleading. I was amazed by it by just watching the video, but this is actually a fan project. Which is cool, but not a prototype of the original game as the title implies, or something that should be "recovered".
Two9A · 16h ago
Reminds me of a ROM-hack for Zelda: Ocarina of Time from a few years ago, that was presented in the release video as using unused assets and storyline from the game itself, when it was actually almost entirely new material. A great technical achievement, to be sure, but somewhat dishonest in its presentation.
There are many modern games being developed for these 40-something year old computing platforms, which - incidentally - still work great as a gaming/hacking/fun platform, and therefore are attracting all kinds of interesting hacks and devs.
My favourite recent endeavour, is DBugs' EncounterHD - a reboot of an early text adventure game, but given the modern UI and tooling treatment (by a world-class AAA-title developer, it has to be said) ..
https://defenceforce.itch.io/encounter
This is essentially, a text adventure game for a somewhat obscure 80's-era UK-based 8-bit computer, the Oric-1/Atmos, but now in the 21st Century, DBug has done an outstanding job of adding graphics and realtime dynamics/sound to it, some ~30 years after the fact...
It has become a delightful thing to play - on a Steam Deck, for instance, it is quite comfortable!
The game ships within its own build of an Oric-1/Atmos emulator, which you can escape to and use as if it were an Oric Atmos - if you want an Oric-1/Atmos emulator to further play with - and there are other delightful treats in EncounterHD among the lives of the characters in the game... watch out for the Game & Watch, for instance, which features a familiar grumpy monkey in fully playable form ..
And then I have my own. I might even still have a cartridge for Halo for the Nintendo DS. It was really pretty nice, but Bungie was like: No way!
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/-StVwe2D39k
There’s a lot of comments claiming it was a modded Goldeneye DS game, curious if you could confirm.
I've been playing Zork, Planetfall, Deadline, etc off and on since I was in elementary school. The only Infocom game I've ever successfully solved is Enchanter. My favorite games by far!
These issues of The New Zork Times are fun...
https://infodoc.plover.net/nzt/NZT4.1.pdf
https://infodoc.plover.net/nzt/NZT4.2.pdf
https://infodoc.plover.net/nzt/NZT4.3.pdf
Edit: Added links to NZT
This sounds reasonable, the original game was the product of about 40 people working for about a year. Plus the four or five years some of those people previously spent on building their adventure game interpreter. Demaking a game takes less time than making one - you've got the whole game there already and you just have to figure out how to simplify it to fit into your target system - but it's still A Lot.
(original game credits: https://www.mobygames.com/game/534/indiana-jones-and-the-las...)
This was not found on some 30+ year old floppy that some Lucasfilm Games developer found in his attic or anything.
It is from a fan-remake from 2012 that was abandoned.
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