Watch Chopper Command (C64) Gameplay First - Live!

I'm Really pleased to announce that we've been given access to play test the BETA version of the brand new C64 Chopper Command port from Antonio Savona and Steven Day.  Antonio reported yesterday that the game was feature complete, with just SFX and difficulty fine tuning left to do.

Chopper Command (C64) - Exclusive WIP screenshots from Antonio Savona

Chopper Command is an Atari 2600 exclusive title published by Activision and released in June 1982, programmed by Bob Whitehead. C64 fans can look forward to their own port currently being developed by Antonio Savona (P0 Snake, Planet Golf, L'abbaye des Morts) and graphics by Steven Day, who did loading screens for past classics like Green Beret, Ballblazer and Highlander as well as more modern releases like Ghosts N Goblins Arcade and Prince of Persia.

Minit is coming to C64 - That Awesome Thalamus reveal in full.

We’ve had some pretty cool announcements for the C64 in recent years.. But Thalamus’ reveal last week that Devolver Digital’s “Minit” is being ported to the humble 8 bit machine as well as the soon to be released Spectrum Next could well be the most exciting news since the end of the C64 era in the early 1990s. The news has been spreading not only in the usual retro news circles such as Commodore Format who revealed the news in an exclusive last week, but also AAA gaming news websites.

RGCD officially killing it with 4 new C64 cartridges announced!

Not happy with continually supporting the Commodore 64 game dev scene with the phenomenal 16KB Cart compo -James Monkman of RGCD announced 4 brand new cartridges.  Following 2 official announcements for Retaliate DX and Grid Pix on the RGCD blog page, I spoke to James, who confirmed that the next C64 cart release will be Kobo64 - an interesting 16KB multiscrolling shoot em up in the vein of Hunters Moon and Survivor.  Followed by Retaliate and Grid Pix as well as a new version of Psytronik's Argus - finally getting a cart release featuring on cart saving.

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.

Bub and Bob return home to the C64 - Puzzle Bobble announced!

Earlier tonight Neil tantalized you with in development screenshots of a C64 port of Bitmap Brothers' seminal Amiga blaster: The Chaos Engine.  Well it turns out this was just a warm up for what could be the news of the year as far as I'm concerned.  Time to forget the modern consoles' turgid E3 2018 and their endless reboots / remasters / sequels... and turn your attention to the latest announcement for the 36 year old Commodore 64.   We could also be seeing a port of Puzzle Bobble!   It's only 22 or 23 years late (The Arcade original from Taito released in 1994).

Guy In A Vest - C64 work in progress with a Q&A is not to be missed!

Antonio Savona has published some awesome looking gameplay for his latest work in progress: Guy in a Vest.  Guy is in no way affiliated to any well known Austrian action heroes turned USA Governors in any way! I caught up with Antonio today, to do some digging on his brand new game...  Here's what I was able to find out:

El Loco Challenge - Lotus inspired WIP C64 Racer gets a game menu theme update!

It wasn't long ago in one of HayesMaker big C64 weekly write ups that he mentioned a very cool looking new Lotus style racer called 'El Loco Challenge' in which is currently in development and the developer JammerC64 is hoping to release as much as possible in time for the Forum64/Protovision game competition. Well fast forward to this lovely sunny day and there's been a new update which shows the game menu as being finished!

Joe Gunn - A rather excellent platformer with new gameplay footage!

During this week Hayes Maker yet again had excelled himself with a great weekly write up full of interesting C64 games that had been released or were still in development. Once such game that he mentioned called Joe Gunn; a game first published by Psytronik in 2007 and RetroGamer Sizzler. Had recently been released as a digital download at Itch.io. Thankfully Zbigniew "Saberman" Zieliński joined in with the fun and has now done his own gameplay video of this lovely game!

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".

Lunar Lander - Atari's 1979 classic finally given justice on the C64

While everyone is busy playing golf on Jupiter, Mars and Neptune, it's quite easy to forget that we were not always so fortunate, and couldn't always visit the far reaches of the solar system so easily. Back in the 1960s men had to risk their lives to land rudimentary landing craft just to be able to land on the moon and play golf outside of Earth. This game relives those pioneering steps of mankind as you struggle with the forces of gravity, limited fuel and the lethal rocky mountains of the moon just as they did.  Classic Atari arcade game Lunar Lander has some notoriously dodgy ports made for it on the C64, but finally the game has been given the justice it deserves. A really nice attempt, particularly as it's the vary first attempt at programming a C64 game by Michael Cassera of Defiance Studios.

Cross Chase - Cross platform 8 bit chase-em-up gets a Beta release

Cross Chase (aka Ascii Chase) is the personal project of Fabrizio Caruso. His goal was to create a simple yet playable game that would run on a multitude of 8 bit computers (any which run 6502 and Z80 cpus). It's achieved by writing compatible cpu instructions in Ansii C, and cross-compiling using CC65 and Z88DK.  I've tried the C64 Beta version which he released on CSDB as Cross Chase
(Beta Version 2017) and it's incredibly fun!

Space Trip 2086 - A brand new C64 game released.

Space Trip 2086 is Psytronik software's latest C64 release. The download version is available to play now when pre-ordering physical copies of the cassette or disk version, which should be released later this month (April 2017). Not only does the pack contain the excellent Space Trip 2086, but there's also a mini side scrolling shootemup (Space Trip 2085), a sound track, and documentation included.

Ninja - 1984 Text Adventure Restored by Hokuto Force on the C64

Ninja is a graphical text adventure released in 1984 by Softgold. This recent release by Hokuto Force contains training modes, map, walkthrough and bug fixes. Including an option to disable the annoying speech. Unfortunately most of the issues with this game are probably unfixable.

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!