DRACULA DONE RIGHT
Interview about Dracula Dark Reign for Game Boy Color.
Taking part - Chris McAuley (writer), and Chris Beach (developer, Spacebot Interactive).
What inspired the idea of a new Dracula-based game?
Chris McAuley: I am a big fan of the games I grew up with (the titles of the late 80s-90s), I remember most of the titles based around Bram Stoker’s book being very disappointing. When I created StokerVerse as a multimedia franchise, having a video game was very important to me. In some ways, Dacre and I are trying to ‘right the wrongs’ of the past.
How important was it to be part of the official StokerVerse with a full licence from the Stoker Estate?
Chris M: For Dacre and I to provide the licence means that we give the developers access to Bram Stoker’s notes and research, as well as a place within the established canon of the series.
How did you get involved in the StokerVerse as a writer?
Chris M: Dacre originally asked me to write a comic book based on one of Bram Stoker’s short stories. It became incredibly popular (beating Stephen King and Clive Barker in the charts). We started to look at Dracula together and came up with the idea of a horror universe based on Bram Stoker’s books and research. We called this ‘The StokerVerse,’ it’s a wonderful and sometimes daunting thing to be co-creator and co-owner of this part of Bram’s legacy.
What material from the book and the expanded StokerVerse does the game draw on?
Chris M: There were 110 pages removed from the original Dracula novel which showed various creatures and Dracula getting up to all sorts of grizzly stuff. We use this and Bram Stoker’s research as well as elements from the StokerVerse RPG and comic books.
What was your role in writing, and did you get involved in game design?
Chris M: I gave the basic outline to Spacebot who ran with the ideas beautifully. I was consulted about the type of game that we should do, and we all agreed on a Metroidvania-style title. I worked with Spacebot in examining which characters should be included in the various stages. Dacre and I then consulted about the mood and tone of the game.
Was the design always influenced by Castlevania - and what sets this game apart from that
series?
Chris Beach: I think it’s hard to avoid the game being influenced by the Castlevania series when making a Metroidvania-type game based on Dracula, seeing as the Castlevania series is also based on Bram Stoker’s characters. I think the thing that sets it apart is the fact that it tells the story as intended. It certainly sets itself apart from the Castlevania Game Boy games due to the amount of attention to detail in the character sprites, environments, and mechanics.
The game was developed in GB Studio. What are the advantages of using this, and were there any issues/problems that made things difficult?
Chris B: GB Studio can expedite development due to the intuitive nature of the engine, by no means does it make development of a game like this easy, however. You have to be very creative when developing a game like this for GBC even with the quality-of-life features that GB Studio brings. Fitting all character animation frames into VRAM has been the biggest challenge so far, the game is still in development however and I’m sure we’ll come up against some more obstacles before completion.
How important are the boxed physical editions from Incube8 Games to the developers, and are you looking forward to the finished product?
Chris B: Knowing that there will be a physical product that people can cherish at the end of development definitely helps the team push on and we’re very much looking forward to the end product.
Could this be the start of a series of games set in the StokerVerse?
Chris M: Absolutely. We always have to listen to the consumer, but I would like to push further into the timeline bringing the undead with me.
Have you played any of the other Dracula-inspired games over the years, and what are your memories of them?
Chris M: I grew up with an Amstrad CPC 464+ and adored Night Hunter. I thought it was incredibly innovative to ‘be the bad guy.’ I’ve also played Dracula (the text-based title) and a game from Codemasters simply called Vampire which was on a Quattro collection. It was a platformer with some atmospheric graphics and foreboding gameplay.
THE DIGITAL DEMO IS AVAILABLE NOW VIA:
SPOOKY SOFTWARE
Ghastly goings-on in retro gaming…
VAMPIRE VENGEANCE (C64)
Recently converted from the Spectrum, consume the blood of the guards to return to the sanctuary of your coffin.
RAMIRO THE VAMPYRE 4 (AMSTRAD)
This series of Mojon Twins arcade adventures moved to ancient Egypt in this instalment as you find helpful items around the pyramid.
ZX TERROR HOUSE (SPECTRUM)
Based on a 1982 LCD handheld, dodge the monsters (beautifully drawn by Fransouls) across two screens in this port by Menyiques.
THE ABBEY(S) OF THE DEAD (AMIGA)
One of two Amiga conversions of the Locomalito original, AB UltraNarwhal’s version adds a second abbey to explore with a female character.
SCREAM QUEEN (SPECTRUM)
In development by PuttyCAD and his son, survive long enough to wake up in this game filled with horror movie references.
NEWS BYTES
AMSTRAD CPC: The Mandarin II: Limoncello’s Revenge from Mananuk is available in GX4000, disk and tape formats, as well as Spectrum 48K and 128K versions at: https://mananuk.itch.io/
APPLE II: Sean Callahan’s Applz is a clever demake of the mobile app Ballz. https://bit.ly/applz-apple2
ATARI ST: French developer Electric Dreams released the current version of Nano Cave at Sillyventure 2023, a Rogue-style dungeon explorer still in development and planned to feature multiple retro skins. https://bit.ly/nanocave-st
ATARI XL/XE: Vega, Kaz and Miker converted BBC Micro shoot ‘em up Cyborg Warriors. https://bit.ly/cyborgwarriors-xl
BBC MICRO: Julian Mander and Ian Berry released Terkon for the Model B, originally written back in 1989. https://bit.ly/terkon-bbc
GAME BOY COLOR: RubenRetro’s Powerball: Monster’s Quest mixes Arkanoid and RPG-style upgrading, with Bitmap Soft to publish the physical cartridge. https://bit.ly/powerball-gb
NES: Check out the demos of puzzle games Soko-Banana from Flip For Fate https://bit.ly/sokobanana and Cursed Crown by Martin Reimer https://bit.ly/cursedcrown
Head over to The RetroVerse to play 200 different NES titles at various stages of development, in association with NESMaker. https://theretroverse.com
SATURN: Z-Team announced the Saturn conversion in progress of their Castlevania tribute, Maria Renard’s Revenge. https://bit.ly/maria-saturn
ZX SPECTRUM: Ed Toovey of Taskmaster Software “won” the honour of hosting the comp.sys.sinclair Crap Game Competition 2024 - https://csscgc24.blogspot.com/
2023 results and more can be found via https://bit.ly/csscgc-2023
CHAMPION CODER
[Name]
Antoine Fantys
[Info]
From: Japan (originally from Czechia)
Website: https://vectrex28.itch.io/
Format: Various
Previous games: Wordle (NES), Blazing Blocks (NES), The Great Fumo Binning (PC Engine)
Working on: Special Ninja Squad aka Ninja Butai (PC Engine
After six months of development, Antoine reveals his new PC Engine title.
What got you interested in developing for the PC Engine?
The reason I started coding for the PC Engine is that it's a console I fell in love with when I first came to Japan. I especially love collecting HuCards for it, but with 8 cards shy of a full set at the time of writing, there's nowhere else to go but making your own, hah!
And of course, the fact that there are very few homebrews being made for the system, and I want to change that.
What is your development environment and any key tools used?
My dev environment? If you consider PCEAS a dev environment, then this one assembler it is.
The rest had to be made entirely from scratch due to a lack of tools available (Which is part of the appeal and fun of that system, IMO). I have a program I wrote that handles most graphic conversions and level making (though I do want to make it even more generalistic in the future), as well as a few Python scripts to do some other things such as converting music from Furnace (which will hopefully get even easier after successful pestering for text export in that tracker), and a few things I got too lazy to add in my conversion program such as static screens (Title screen, level select, etc.).
Another huge help is MESEN 2's newly-added PC Engine support (Which my game dev helps out a lot in return - already helped fix 2 bugs hehehe). Mesen's proven tools are just as amazing on the PC Engine and are only getting better as time goes on. I still check on Mednafen when I get a weird emulation bug, but other than that Mesen is a huge help for emulating and debugging.
How did you develop the idea for Special Ninja Squad, and what games influenced it?
There's a few influences/motivations on this project.
I want to have an engine for platforming games, and what better way of making one than an actual full game
I want to make a HuCard game, specifically a platformer as I believe there could be more games of that genre on the PC Engine
I'm currently living in Japan, so I've had the idea of making a game with more Japanese themes. Japanese people at the pub/at conventions (I bring my PC Engine LT there) absolutely love it, and it feels right at home on the PC Engine.
I'm a huge fan of Natsume games, especially Shatterhand, so I wanted to make a game that's like a homage to those. One person at a convention successfully recognised the style too, which made me very happy
How long have you been working on it?
As of now? 6 months.
What is left to do?
A lot is left to do. The base engine is getting there, but after that, it will be everything else, such as levels (I only have my test level as of now), enemies, bosses, and all of that.
But once that core engine gets there, it's mostly design, with code mostly on enemies and bosses
Will it just be a digital download or do you plan a physical cartridge?
It's gonna be both digital on Itch for a very fair price, and I will try and make a physical version too!
DATABURST - REVIEWS
Toxic Tomb
Format: Windows
Credits: Locomalito (code, design), Gryzor87 (music), Jacob Garcia (illustration)
Price: Free
[Score] 87%
Turbo Outrun
Format: Plus/4
Credits: TCFS, Csabo, Unreal, Chronos
Price: Free
[Score] 90% - Retro Gamer Sizzler
40 Best Machine Code Routines For The ZX Spectrum 4th Edition
Format: Paperback
Credits: Andrew Hewson, John Hardman & Jim Bagley
Price: UK £18.99 / EU £22.99 / ROW £29.99 (prices include shipping)
PROCESSING - PREVIEW OF SPY AGENT (C64)
Spy Agent is Radek Burkat’s C64 debut – remaking the classic Taito arcade title Elevator Action.
Radek Burbat emailed me details of the game.
Hi Andrew, I'm not quite at the Elevator Action preview stage yet, but consider this a preview of the preview :)
I remember playing Elevator Action at an arcade in the 80s, and last year, I watched a video on YouTube that outlined all the ports of that game to different 8-bit machines and it concluded that the C64 version was the biggest POS ever. So I decided I'm going to vindicate the C64 and my goal is to make the best, most accurate representation.
I started looking into the c64 last September and since I have never coded for the c64 and have never made a game before the learning curve has been steep but very enjoyable. (Though I do have a background in hardware/software development )
Lots of people on the Lemon64 forum have been giving amazing advice. I have done the graphics and the code, but when I put up my absolute basic attempt at using the SID to create the music track, a user DMX ( Vidar Bang ), jumped in and created way better music and SFX. So he is going to be the musician on this project.
Not the easiest first game to tackle. Scrolling up/down along with moving lots of background objects while scrolling (elevators) and enemies being able to transition floors, riding escalators and elevators has been a challenge to synchronize. But I almost got it.
Example: showing the amount of movement while scrolling that will be required. Plus bullets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcpz5MCyU7E
So elevators and bullets will all be char animations
That gets us to the name. I don't think that no one would care about a game for the C64 and all this is just for shits and giggles but I don't think I can use the name "Elevator Action" because that is still an active copyright and that game is still sold on platforms like the Nintendo Switch.
So I'm thinking of using the name "Spy Agent" which apparently was the original name for this game. https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7700
I have a PRG file here to give you a small taste. Should run on PAL and NTSC. I use the VICE emulator to test it, but they do run on my NTSC hardware via Ultimate 2 cartridge.
Elevator Deathmatch
I decided to quickly make this demo as a 2 player game where you can fight spy vs agent with joystick 1 and 2. Best results if you play against someone.
This is just a static part of the level that I use to test a bunch of elements of the game. But it gives you an idea of what the look of the characters/animations, level colours, and movement mechanics/physics will be.
Tests:
Shoot out the light
Ride the escalator
Ride the elevator
Open up the top border and do scoring as sprites
Basic sprite multiplex
Collision detection for floors, elevators, bullets
Sprite animation walk, jump, duck, prone, shoot
Also here are some videos of other parts of the game.
Elevator Crush: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4sNjjhueSQ
Shoot out the lights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8P1TvYeHbU
Up/down scroll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H1sx7HbWug
I'm pretty close to getting the full scrolling up/down while riding the elevator that would give you a preview of the real operation of the game. Just not quite there yet.
At this point, I have learned enough and am far enough along that I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to release the game this year. It has been an awesome mind-bending exercise in optimization.
After you turn 50 years old, people say you should do puzzles like Sudoku to exercise your mind. Forget that. Just try to write a game in assembler for the C64 - that will do it! I want to make this game as good as possible so I'm all ears for any advice.
Radek Burkat
Since the publication of the preview, Radek has made more progress with the scrolling and is working on adding particle effects. The Deathmatch preview was first launched on the coverdisk of ZZAP! 64 issue 19 - given free to subscribers via the Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/zzapmagazine/
This link takes you to a download with the "cracked" version by Excess, allowing you to experience it.
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