carleton

That looks lovely. I looked into starting a Mario C64 port a few years back and read up on how the levels are created to save memory. It was impressive stuff that they came up with back in the day to squeeze it all into so little memory. I think level 1-1 takes 26 bytes in total. I didn't end up going much further as I thought Nintendo would perhaps kick up a fuss I didn't need. I've never heard of the VSP thing but I wouldn't have gone that route personally. Depending on how fast Mario can run you'd probably have enough frame time to scroll the level characters over 4 frames on a background buffer and scroll the attributes themselves on the frame required. It's an interesting challenge for sure. I'm impressed the aspect ratio looks correct, I think this was another stumbling block I came across. Giana Sisters uses 3x2 blocks vs. the 2x2 used in Mario because of this.

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/popeye-kart-racing-review/1900-6127851/ I don't think it would have been for our game as they were digital only. More concerning for me is that it was 13 years ago!

Where did the Popeye carting image come from? I worked on a mobile phone Popeye Kart thing years ago and it reminds me of that.

I loved Celeste so much despite my trepidation that I’m programming a Commodore 64 game influenced by it. I can’t cope with the B sides though, never mind the C.

Maybe @jon_cybernet should poke the rights owner again...

Our first compilation was Soft Aid. We didn't have many games then so it was a bargain for a fiver. I mainly remember playing Gumshoe a lot but most of the other got a fair bit of TV time.

My C64 came with International Soccer on cartridge. I played it so much I dreamt about it. My older brother was working so bought Chiller and Daley Thompson”s Decathlon soon after. Which we broke the terrible bundled Commodore branded joystick playing.

Just anecdotal from me and I'm only on the 3rd area. But I had that issue in the first 2 areas. To be honest I'd forgotten I'd unlocked the 3rd area so I may have move earlier and saved myself a whole bunch of feeling stupid. I think the issue is they throw in a couple of red herrings and I spend an age thinking you must use that item. I'm back to really liking it now I can complete levels again!

It seems higher numbered levels even in early areas are harder than lower numbered ones in later areas. I think this was my mistake as I was trying to 100% each area before moving on. I’ve moved to the next area and they’re back too hard but not 1/2 hour feeling like an idiot hard.

Cheers, it was a great app to work on with @jon_cybernet but we weren’t the money men. Somebody made a mint off it though. Jon and I came up with the hint coin idea which effectively cost nothing but made tens of thousands alone. I should have negotiated a royalty but I was happy enough for the paid work. My task was to effectively fix the broken Collection app which had bombed after the original SWYS was a huge success. Actually got the gig via RLLMUK.

You don't need to be able to fly on Run For It, it's just hard. And you need to time the jumps over the moving walls at the end pretty well, a spin in the air can help. EDIT: Man alive I've just google videos and everybody is using a flying suit which makes it really easy! Took me ages as standard Mario.

Loving this but even early on I'm getting so stumped that I think the level has a bug! Then I have a a-ha moment and do something totally new for it still not to work.

I can’t decide between Maclean or Braybrook for my fave developer. The latter had it for really original concepts but the former made brilliant souped up versions of similar games. Dropzone is still excellent but some of the ideas in Paradroid were amazing and made for tense games. I’ll call it a tie.

I too regret not owning my C64 these days although for the life of me I can't remember why I no longer have it, I don't remember selling it. I just missed out on a bargain C64 last week which would have been great now that I'm developing C64 games again. My worst C64 memory is saving up to buy a 3rd party disk drive by Evesham Micros, it cost me £160 back in the 80s and was really unreliable. I lost loads of code and stuff to it and ending up smashing it in frustration.

I programmed a successful iOS app back in the day, Say What You See. I tried to get a deal together with the bloke who published it to rework it with higher res canvases and newer OSs etc. but we couldn’t agree terms. And that’s just 2 or 3 people discussing an original IP. It’s a shame, the app would still work as a game today. Feels like we’re throwing money away.