Parasol Stars C64 is in development and it looks fantastic!

One of C64s most heart breaking stories - a fully completed and faithful Commodore 64 port of Parasol stars was lost forever when the developer - Colin Porch's wife destroyed all his disks in an argument.  The story was the subject of an infamous cover up, reported by Ocean and Zzap magazine as a burglery, but has recently been covered in great detail by Games that Weren't and Commodore Format which I recommend you read more about if you haven't already.

Could the story have a final twist in the tale? As yesterday Doc Cosmos developer Simon Jameson has revealed he has been working on his own port of Parasol Stars, and has even shown off some early demo footage for us all.  

Cracktro Tuesday #1 - Exploring the very latest releases from the C64 Scene

Welcome to a new series of articles where I pluck a selection of C64 programs from Commodore Scene Database (CSDB), play them live on my Twitch stream on real C64 hardware, and write up the highlights here on Indie Retro News. Whether it's artwork, demos, music, classic games revisited in the form of trained cracks or the very latest games - we've got it covered!

Thalamus Lunark announcement - C64 and Spectrum Next?

Legendary C64 publishing house Thalamus have announced that they will be porting Lunark to the C64 and Spectrum Next, if the Nintendo Switch and PC/Mac versions are successfully backed on Kickstarter.

L'Abbaye des Morts 64 - Exclusive first review

L’Abbaye des Morts (The Abbey of the Dead) 64, is the latest game from Antonio Savona and Double Sided Games. It’s actually a port of a ZX spectrum inspired mini game, written by Locamolito and released as freeware for Windows in 2010, It’s been ported to Linux, Mac OSX, Nintendo Wii / 3DS, SEGA Megadrive and in 2014 received a cassette version for ZX Spectrum. It’s also got a Dreamcast and now a C64 version on the way.

The game was recently finished for C64, with a limited run of cartridge and floppy disk versions announced for pre-order from Double Sided Games. And a cassette version will be available later from Psytonik. So far we’ve only seen work in progress screenshots and videos from the game… but Double Sided Games were kind enough to send me a fully working version of the game to review and to play on my Twitch stream. So let’s start with the review!

Scuttlebutt - Behind Enema Lines: New game from Karl Hörnell for C64

Veteran Game developer and Cartoonist Karl Hörnell has ported his free to download ZX Spectrum game: Scuttlebutt, to the C64. Karl created a number of games for Interceptor Software while still at school. These included Clean Up Time, Velocipede, Fruity, Ronald Rubberduck and Toad Force. These were all pretty much entirely solo projects. As working for a UK company whilst in Sweden kept him isolated from the rest of the in house development team, and no internet or email to share knowledge. Even so, his games are well regarded, even to this day.

Another Paul Koller C64 port in the works plus brand new Psytronik releases

A little known fact about Christmas... Just as Santa is travelling around on his sleigh dishing out presents.. Paul Koller's elves were stalking the Earth installing extra ram and cpu clock speed into everyone's C64s while you're asleep.  There can't be any other reason Paul Kollers' infamous ports function on a 36 year old 8 bit microcomputer!  If you need proof just check out Super Bread Box, Micro Hexagon, C64nabalt and the recent phenomenal LuftrauserZ (RGCD).

Axe of Rage - Aptly named C64 horror story fixed by Hokuto Force

Known in Europe as Barbarian 2, Axe of Rage was released in North America by Epyx in 1988.  Barbarian 2 (Palace Software) was banned in Boots in the UK for featuring a pin-up model on the cover.  The name and cover change on the North American licence, probably an attempt by Palace and Epyx to avoid such controversy.  Although the game still managed to be banned by a wholesaler in Canada, because, I dunno, the guy's face on the cover was too ugly or something.  While Barbarian 2 cracks are two-a-penny on CSDB, Hokuto Force have managed a smart release here, by properly PAL fixing this version which was itself a rather lazy NTSC port of the European original.

C64 GOTY - We take a look at the very best of this year's Commodore 64 productions

2017 is coming to an end, so we thought we’d roundup all the major Commodore 64 releases, and announce a few of our favourite releases from the year. 2016 had some great releases, like Tiger Claw (Lazy Cow & RGCD), Quod Init Exit IIm (Retream), Donkey Kong (Oxyron) and Frogger Arcade (Digital Monastery). But I think we can regard 2017 year as one of the very best for quality C64 releases. And we’ll also take a quick look at what we can expect to see coming in 2018 and also announce Indie Retro News’ C64 Game of the Year (GOTY).  We'll also pick our favourite C64 VLOG, C64 Book, C64 documentary and our favourite "Scene Release".

3D Skramble - Classic isometric shoot 'em up gets a fresh release

For those that don't remember Scramble, it was a classic early horizontal shoot-em-up where you had to blow up ground targets and missiles with bombs or bullets and navigate increasingly difficult terrain. It was so popular, it spawned many home computer conversions, and also this great fun isometric 3D version from LiveWire Software UK (1984). It's Zaxxon meets Scramble with all the best features of the original game, plus an extra dimension.

Chuck Rock - Another C64 Game that Wasn't... Case Closed!

One of my favourite pieces of news to do write ups on are the reports from "Games That Weren't" ... A dedicated investigative news website which delves into the histories of C64 games. Especially ones which were either left unfinished, or mysteriously vanished at some point, usually between magazines' reviews, and actual release day. Last year saw some high profile Hi-Tec and Warner Bros games, not only found, but also restored and finished to a playable level, for everyone to enjoy. And on 12th Jan another exciting story surfaced, as they announced to have found a fully working and completable version of popular Amiga platformer Chuck Rock (Core Designs).

Thrust 30 - A truly awesome version of Thrust aims for a Greenlight success

Earlier this month we did a big feature of HayesMaker's Thrust remake known as ' Thrust 30 ' for PC, Mac and Linux. It is a 2D vectored game that celebrated the 30th anniversary of Jeremy Smith's "Thrust", which puts you in control of a fast moving ship that could blast away defences, take out power stations and tractor orbs from deep underground and out into space. Well you'll be pleased to know after our recent feedback saying it was a recommended game with a bloody awesome soundtrack by Matt Gray, it's now going through a Steam Greenlight campaign with a demo that needs all your thumbs up.

Thrust 30 - Hayes Maker Games celebrates the 30th anniversary of Jeremy Smith's "Thrust"

I'm sure many retro gamers will remember Thrust, which was first published by Firebird Software Ltd and released in 1986. It also originally came on a multitude of systems including the Atari 2600, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, BBC Micro, Commodore 16, Plus/4, Commodore 64, Electron, Vectrex, and ZX Spectrum. In fact it was such a popular game, over the years we've had many remakes and ports and this time in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Jeremy Smith's Thrust, Hayes Maker Games with music by legendary C64 composer Matt Gray has made available his version that is playable on PC / Mac or any other HTML5 enabled device!