New Enhanced Features by Hokuto Force:
1. Play at NTSC speed on PAL C64s.
The European releases of Dig Dug were imports/licensed versions directly from the Atarisoft code. As a result, the game plays slower on PAL machines than intended from the arcade. This optional feature speeds up the game timing to match 60hz for gameplay and music.
2. Extended the score display to add an extra digit.
This fix makes it possible to score in the millions. Expert Dig Dug players can now play for hours without hitting a score wrap-around limit.
3. High score name entry and score table saved to disk.
Added a high score table display on title screen while preserving the original screen layout. High scores are saved to disk (when not using trainers).
Added high score name entry by keyboard, and high score support in two player mode.
Because the choice of PAL or NTSC timing affects the difficulty of the game, high scores are saved in two different save files depending on the speed selected.
4. Added an option to use arcade style dig speed.
The arcade Dig Dug game slows movement down when digging and speeds back up again when running in tunnels. This fixes a bug in the C64 version that leaves the player moving slowly most of the time after digging. Since this change makes the game easier, the option to play with arcade dig speed was made into a trainer.
5. Default joystick set to Port 2 with ability to swap.
The original game used Port 1, which can very rarely cause interference with the spacebar for pause mode. This changes default joystick to Port 2. However, for preservation reasons, you can toggle joysticks to Port 1 by pressing F7 on the title screen.
6. Added Extreme Difficulty speed hack.
Since we already found a way to speed up the gameplay to match NTSC timing, we were able to unlock the fastest possible speed for the game. This makes Dig Dug extremely hard, but also provides a challenge for expert players looking for something different. If you play the extreme hack and don't use any trainers, you get to save your high score.
Links :1) Source 2) Download
I love that people are still making games for the C64.
ReplyDeleteSuperb release. I often thought before in all those years, that this game is too easy on the C64 and that it feels to slow, while playing on my PAL-machine. Now it's clear why and now this "problem" is gone too. :)
ReplyDelete@Jason Spencer, overall true what you wrote, of course. But in this case here, it's not a completely new C64 game. This game already existed on this machine, but it got some very cool add-ons here in this new version, like for example choosable functions for NTSC-gamespeed (120%), various trainer-functions, a saveable highscore-table and one digit more in the player-score (original C64-version began with zero points, when player reaches a score of 999.999, here now 9.999.999 is possible, which is more than enough).
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