UPDATES.. not again? (These go to eleven.)

Unfortunately, that seems to be the case once more. Since the last Updates post, which goes all the way back to July 2021, a good deal of new versions for games previously featured on the blog have been released for various platforms. I have been spotting and collecting these items for a few months now, most of them through the irreplaceable Indie Retro News blog, so I thought it a good time to release this entry after getting back from my summer holiday, to have a relatively gentle landing back to reality while starting the blog's eleventh year.

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UPGRADES/MODIFICATIONS

Let's start with a few notable upgrades, or modifications to old games, which are interesting and/or good enough to mention here, but I likely will not be updating their respective comparison articles, since they don't really bring anything of value to the original comparisons.

Firstly, Saboteur 2 has received an enhancing modification for both the 48k and 128k Spectrums in various formats, made by a Ukrainian coder by the name of thealfest and was made available early this year.

Screenshots of thealfest's enhanced Saboteur 2 (ZX Spectrum 48k/128k)

With this modification, Saboteur 2 has been extensively optimized, bug-fixed and updated to feature new sounds, music, visual elements from Clive Townsend's 2019 remake (which itself should be included in this entry, but I haven't managed to buy it yet), and a new mission and game map for the 128k version. To make the game suitable for more people's tastes, it even has an adjustable game speed, ranging from 5 fps to more than 50 fps by pressing keys 0 to 9 during play. In the plausible case that you wanted to enjoy Saboteur 2, but couldn't because of its slowness, this mod should suit your needs just fine and give you some extras while at it. For me, it is absolutely the best version of Saboteur 2 out there, but of course, I have yet to test the official 2019 remake.

Secondly, a new and frankly unexpected modification of Night Mission Pinball was released for the C64 around the same time as the Saboteur 2 mod. This one is called Night Mission Pinball Extended, and it was made by a group called Extend. Again, we have plenty of reoptimizing to the game code and lots of magic to make it run smoother and faster - and at a more constant speed than the original; and you also get a good amount of bugfixes.

Screenshots of Night Mission Pinball EXTENDed (Commodore 64)

Graphically, the overhaul is staggeringly complete. You get plenty of colour here, new visual effects on the cabinet sides, a new sprite-overlay-ed ball to make it look better in action, a Lancaster bomber instead of a B-17 to make it more historically correct, and there's even a new intro here, just to mention a few of the most obvious changes. Sonically, there are not that many changes, but the important bit is that there is now a SID chip detector to make the sounds more suitable for your C64's sound capabilities. It truly is one of the best modifications I have ever seen of a C64 game, and I highly recommend it over any of the original versions of the game.

Screenshots of Chuckie Egg 40th Anniversary (Acorn BBC Micro)

A 40th anniversary version hack of Chuckie Egg was released for the BBC Micro last December by Sam Skivington. While the word "hack" has an ugly ring to it, the fact that this version now features 128 levels along with an integrated level editor, optional longer jump, and previously title screen -occupied in-game music. This Chuckie Egg needs the 6502 co-processor to run, though, so it's not the easiest game to get to play on real hardware. Thankfully, emulation is an option.

Screenshots of Into The Eagle's Nest Deluxe (Commodore Plus/4)

In December 2023, Csabo of Legion of Doom released his new Deluxe edition of the Commodore Plus/4 version of Into The Eagle's Nest to great acclaim. It has the bugs from the original unofficial 1990 conversion fixed, corrected colours, new custom music and sounds, and even some new features, such as a new intro and an in-built cheat menu, if you're into that sort of a thing. Apart from the sound effects and slight differences in palette, there really is no easy way to tell this one apart from the C64 version - some might say it's even better.

Screenshots of Renegade Reloaded (Amstrad CPC)

Lastly, there is Renegade Reloaded by Geco for the Amstrad CPC from 2023, which is a considerable upgrade to the original CPC version. First and foremost, the game now scrolls smoothly, which kind of introduces similar enemy behaviour as you get in the C64 version, but makes the game feel closer to the ARCADE version. However, to make things more tolerable, Geco has also added new extra player actions: running, and all the fighting moves during running, all of which required some new graphics to be created. There are also in-built cheats to be activated via the function keys, but you can read a full disclosure of all the new features and actions at CPCWiki forum. Highly recommended!

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NEW PORTS OF PREVIOUSLY COMPARED GAMES

Although we're in a new segment here, let's continue with Renegade, since the Hungarian Videoton TVC was given its own unofficial conversion of the game in 2020. It appears Geco was responsible for this version as well, and he has made three variations of the port available, all requiring at least 64k of RAM to work.

Screenshots of Renegade (Videoton TVC)

The TVC port of Renegade certainly looks its part, with the graphics ripped straight from the Amstrad version. As a matter of fact, it feels like a one-to-one port of the original Amstrad version, so there is no smooth scrolling here. Since I haven't been able to find any documentation for the TVC port, I have yet to discover, whether this port features running and the running fight moves or not, but otherwise, it seems to work just as well as the non-updated Amstrad version, which is rather impressive for a TVC game.

New Videoton TVC ports/clones:
Bomberman Megablast (above) and Fred (below)

More mentionable games for the TVC since the last Updates entry are a similar series of releases of a port of Fred featuring two graphic modes, also by Geco from 2022; and even more impressively than Renegade, a Bomberman clone called Bomberman Megablast by Berysoft, for which three different versions have been released since 2020, including a Christmas version. All of these go a long way in pointing out, that there's a proper gaming computer hiding behind the mask of a thousand basic games and a language barrier.

New ports of Stunt Car Racer for Commodore Plus/4 (above) and Apple II (below)

Going back in FRGCB's history all the way to the first months, there are a few games from that time, which have been given new ports and even remakes for more or less unexpected platforms. In the previous Updates entry, I mentioned two then-new versions of Stunt Car Racer having been released for the Atari 130XE in 2018 and Acorn BBC Master in 2019, and since then, there have been two more unexpected ports of the game: one for the Commodore Plus/4, and one for the Apple II, both by Patai Gergely from 2023. Again, both new versions are very impressive, and makes me seriously consider doing a re-write of the comparison of Stunt Car Racer. Shortly put, the Plus/4 version plays and looks as nice, if not nicer, than the C64 version, but sounds a bit more IBM beeper-y with two channels. Unfortunately for the Apple II enthusiasts, their version is audio-visually the least impressive and inspiring version available, but it's a small miracle that it even exists, and in terms of playability, it's almost as good as the Plus/4 and C64 versions.

New version of JetPac for Tesla PMD 85.

The first time I came across the Czechoslovakian computer Tesla PMD 85 was while making the comparison of Trailblazer in early 2023. Turns out, there are more familiar games in the machine's admittedly meagre softography, including Manic Miner, Boulder Dash, Arkanoid, Penetrator, and old FRGCB featurees Jet Pac and Saboteur. The latter of these two will be featured in the last section of this entry, but JetPac has a firm place here.

The PMD 85 version of JetPac was written by the very same Libor Lasota, who made the aforementioned Trailblazer, only he did the JetPac conversion in 2013 - five years prior to Trailblazer. This JetPac plays exactly like the original, but uses greyscale in its otherwise already monochromatic look and runs a bit slower. On the plus side, you can redefine the control keys, which is nice, once you get over the language barrier. Since I obviously don't have a PMD 85, my experience with the emulator of choice, the PMD85emu, were not exactly optimal, since I was unable to get the tape image working,
likely because the emulator didn't want me to connect the virtual tape device. However, the game runs fine from the disk image.

New version of The Great Giana Sisters for Commodore Plus/4.

More Plus/4 goodness arrived in March this year in the form of a reasonably faithful conversion of the Great Giana Sisters from TCFS Design. Granted, it doesn't run quite as smoothly as the original, and the collision detection, the colours and the general controllability of the characters are slightly off, and enemy behaviour is a bit weird as they bump off from background elements, but it could be quite a lot worse, as demonstrated by most of the official conversions.

Booty - the Remake by salvaCantero for ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC.

One of Firebird's oldest classics, Booty, has been given a full remake by one Salvador Cantero in the last couple of years for the ZX Spectrum 128k and Amstrad CPC. The original Spectrum version of this remake was created for the 2018 ZX-DEV-MIA-Remakes competition, which called for creators to make "missing in action" games, be it non-existing sequels, actual games that were never finished and released or remakes of old games that required a new coat of paint. This Spectrum remake featured rather busy graphics, and a completely new game engine that didn't seem completely in tune with the original game, but Salva posted a new Black Edition with alternative graphics a couple of years ago on the game's itch.io page, which updated the game considerably. Last year, Salva released a version for the Amstrad CPC of the Black Edition, with suitably Amstradized graphics, of course, but also a much more pirateering-oriented soundtrack, which is nice. You can download both versions from Play On Retro's itch.io pages.

Looty v2, another Booty remake for Commodore Amiga.

Another Booty remake called Looty was made for the Commodore Amiga computers as early as 1993, and released on an Assassins PD free disk collection in 1994, but Looty has resurfaced as an updated version at itch.io. This Looty V2 requires an Amiga with at least 1 MB of Chip RAM, and features such upgrades as a level designer, a way to toggle music on and off, numbers on keys and doors (which apparently weren't included in Looty V1) and a number of bug-fixes. You can also collect extra lives, which was not part of the original Booty, nor were the red flags that act as checkpoints for your respawning upon death. The 1990's techno soundtrack can be a bit off-putting in the context, even if it is done fairly tastefully, but the graphics and collision detection are a bit on the wonky side, so there is room for improvement. Still, not too shabby.

Bootyful Demake for Pico-8

Since Booty remakes are not enough, we also have a fairly well functioning beta version of Nate2Squared's Bootyful Demake for the Pico-8 virtual fantasy handheld console. This demake was made already back in 2017, so I missed this one out already for the previous Updates entry. It truly is a demake, since it is missing important features and graphical elements, but the basic idea and gameplay are pretty much there.

Screenshots of the Atari 8-bit conversion of BoneCruncher

One of the most glaring misses that I made for the previous Updates entry was the 2020 release of BoneCruncher for the 8-bit Atari computers. This was compiled by Fandal, HardCore and Jose Pereira, and the game was officially released in the 66th issue of Flop magazine in 2021. The Atari version was converted straight from the BBC Micro original, so it looks very similar, but the music is different, and the Atari version is a bit slower. Not so bad as not to be playable, but as it is, this version offers nothing of real value, other than bringing a great game to another previously unoccupied platform.

Screenshots of the Atari 8-bit conversion of Mikie

As Atariteca helpfully mentioned in May, a version of Mikie (Shinnyushain Tooru-kun) was released for the Atari 130XE, which means that it's not playable on most unmodified or unenhanced 8-bit Atari computers. The first thing that caught my attention about this version was the new soundtrack, which starts off with a rendition of "Tonari no Totoro" in the instructions screen after the game has booted. The title sequence features a rendition of the Beatles' "Run For Your Life", and upon further playing, I noticed there's a new anime-driven high score tune as well (UPDATE, August 14th 2024: The track is called "Kimi ha 1000%" by Omega Tribe, as Atariteca so kindly informed us), but otherwise the Atari soundtrack follows the original arcade soundtrack pretty faithfully. The game plays a bit sluggishly, and not completely faithfully to the original, but it's not too bad on the whole. It's closer to the C64, if anything, but as I said, slower. Definitely worth a look, though.

Screenshots from the SAM Coupé conversion of Rick Dangerous

In 2021, Rick Dangerous got ported to SAM Coupé by Anton Javorček, and this one requires a half-meg RAM expansion to work. As a bonus for 1 MB external RAM users, there is even a save/load feature, which gives you the chance to save and load at any given point in the game. Kind of like emulation does. The graphics are more or less taken from the 16-bit versions, with some little colour limitations visible here and some choppy scrolling; the music is taken from the Atari ST version, and sound effects are as they were in the Amiga version. In essence, it's a 16-bit Rick Dangerous all over, but not quite as good as the originals.

Chuckie Egg for the Commodore VIC-20

Still in 2021, a guy called Derek went and ported good old Chuckie Egg to the Commodore VIC-20, where you are required to use a memory expansion to get your VIC-20 up to 32k of RAM. There seems to be something off in the gameplay, particularly concerning the upwards movements on ladders, but other than that, it's a surprisingly good port, with proper speed and all the levels included. The VIC-20 Chuckie Egg can be found through Reset64's itch.io page.

Having been an official Game That Wasn't for the Acorn computers for forty years, this April finally saw the release of a homebrew BBC Micro version of David Crane's movie tie-in classic, Ghostbusters, which was reportedly based on the C64 version. Chris Bradburne created two distinctly different versions: one for the regular BBC Micro and one that utilises the sideways RAM expansion and NULA support. In the non-enhanced version, there are considerable omissions and restrictions in the visuals, such as the Keymaster and Gatekeeper not roaming around the map, the primary colour being blue, the Stay Puft Man being smaller, and other small things. The music is good enough, aside from missing any percussive elements, and during the driving scenes, the music pauses while you are vacuuming ghosts. Also, the city PK meter isn't shown during the driving scenes, but that's not exactly an omission worth crying about. The standard version is also missing the ending scenes against the Stay Puft Man and Gozer, but it plays just about as well as the original, so all things considered, it's not bad.

New conversion of Ghostbusters for the Acorn BBC Micro in two modes.

I haven't been able to get the NULA supported version working as intended yet, so the screenshots are taken from the game's thread at the Stardot forum. As you can see, the colours are much closer to the C64 version, although there are still some notable limitations.

Screenshots of the new Windows remake of Scuba Dive.

Unless something unexpected happens, the most recent addition to this entire entry is the Windows remake of the Spectrum version of Durell's Scuba Dive, which was released on July 17th. This version not only features completely redone graphics, a wonderfully ethereal soundtrack and smooth omni-directional scrolling, but you also get a free-roaming mode that gets the camera closer to you than in the main game, and is more about exploration and meeting new species than collecting treasure. It plays better than its source, as well. In short, it is one of the best remakes of any classic game that I have ever seen, and I can only recommend it highly. However, it is such an upgrade, that it cannot be featured in the original comparison as part of the actual comparison.

Some example screenshots from the more recent ports of Tenebra (extended), left to right:
Acorn BBC Micro, Atari ST (lo-res), Atari 8-bit

Possibly the quickest and widest ported game of at least recent times, if not of all time, has got to be Tenebra from Haplo, originally published in 2021 for Commodore 64, and later expanded and ported to nine different platforms by the time I made the game's comparison in June 2023. Since then, Tenebra has been further ported to Acorn BBC Micro and Electron, the 8-bit Atari computers as well as ST by Haplo himself. Third-party ports have also been made for Atari Jaguar by Lawrence Staveley about a month ago, Tesla PMD 85 by Libor L.A., and an even more curious port was made for a machine I had never heard of until this one came along - Tesla Ondra SPO 186 - by one Jan Heřman, likely from Czechia or Slovakia or somewhere in between, since the computer itself was developed in Czechoslovakia in 1985.

Some example screenshots from the more recent ports of Tenebra 2, left to right:
Atari 8-bit, MSX, Amstrad CPC.

As if that weren't enough, Tenebra 2 is now available on Jaguar, ST, NES, the 8-bit Ataris, MSX, Amstrad and Spectrum, in addition to the C64, Plus/4 and Amiga versions that were already available at the time of the original comparison. Haplo has been uncommonly busy with making his hit game and its sequel available for all the usual imaginable platforms, except we still haven't seen the games on the Sega consoles. The thing is, though, both Tenebra games play and look so similar on all the available platforms, that further inclusion for the original comparison seems more or less futile. Be that as it may, they're still both great little puzzlers.

Screenshots of the recent ZX Spectrum port of Penguin Attack.

The last two games for this section were not featured as comparisons, for similar reasons. Firstly, prior to this, Pat Morita Team's Penguin Attack was only available on the Amstrad CPC, so I featured this game in the New (Unique) Christmas Games entry in last December. Obviously, I need to fix that now, since the game has since been ported to the ZX Spectrum, and is being worked on for the Spectrum Next at the moment. If I'm honest, I think this game fits the ZX Spectrum better than the Amstrad CPC, but perhaps it's because it feels closer to the game's obvious MSX sources of inspiration. Hopefully, we will see this game on the MSX, and maybe even C64, and I can do a right and proper comparison of it some day, as it is one of my favourite wintery games from the recent years. Until that day comes, if it does, you can find the Spectrum and Amstrad versions from Pat Morita Team's itch.io pages.

Screenshots from the NES port of Sam's Journey, taken from Knights of Bytes' website.

Perhaps the more obvious one is the NES & Famicom version of Knights of Bytes' epic and massively successful platforming game, Sam's Journey, which was originally released on the C64 seven years ago - exactly the amount it took the team to actually built the original, so it was only to be expected, that the NES port would take a similar time. I haven't actually bought this one yet, because it's a bit costly, and for me, the C64 version is quite enough. However, it would be remiss for me to not tell you, that the NES version is available for purchase at poly.play, in digital and various physical formats, along with many additional goodies. As it is a great game on the C64, I can only assume it is equally a great game on the NES, and I can most heartily recommend it, if you can spare enough money.

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CLONES & TRIBUTES

The final section was going to be called Miscellaneous, but I just couldn't find enough random stuff to throw down here, but instead, there's just a couple of clones and clear tributes to preceding classic games that on.

First, as I suspected in the comparison of Kung-Fu Master, which was the entry immediately prior to this one, there were a couple of clones of the game that I had not managed to find by the time of posting that comparison. I still suspect there might be more out there, but they are so well hidden, that my sleuthing skills are inadequate for finding them.

Kung-Fu Kid, a BBC Micro clone of Kung-Fu Master.

In 1987, Adam Nightingale wrote and released his own clone called Kung-Fu Kid, which bears resemblance to the source material in many ways, but omits such important elements such as crouching, enemies that throw objects and boss fights, and the soundtrack is well-made, but completely not what you would expect to hear in this context. On the plus side, you get a different colour for each level, and it is actually more playable (or at least tolerable) than the official Spectrum and Apple versions - perhaps even MSX. It's quite possibly the closest you can get to Kung-Fu Master on the Acorn computers, but is it worth digging up? I suppose it depends on how desperate are you to get to play this kind of a game on an Acorn computer, but for me, I'd give it a pass.

Kung-Fu: The Master, a Dragon 32/64 clone of Kung-Fu Master.

A remarkably uncommon unofficial port is Kung Fu: The Master from the lightning fast Alan Heywood, who got this game released through Blaby Computer Games, apparently in 1984 - before the original arcade game even landed on European soil. It could also be, that MobyGames' information is a bit off, but it's impossible to give any reliable information. Some sources seem to consider that Blaby's Enter the Dragon was the same game, but I have no idea.

This game is next to impossible to find online, but I did manage to find it eventually. If you look at Kung Fu: The Master's only available gameplay video on YouTube, it appears to play remarkably like the original game, even if it looks worse than your average Atari 2600 or Intellivision game. From my limited experience on the Xroar emulator, I barely managed to get the kung-fu person to even move, and even less so to fight anyone or any thing. So, at the moment, I cannot in all honesty claim that this can even be mentioned in the same paragraph as the source material. Apparently, though, the game is all there, although you are given five lives to start with instead of the usual three. If you have a copy of this game in some form and have managed to play it with no problems, please do send a comment below to describe how to play it.

Saboter, a Saboteur clone for Tesla PMD 85.

Saboteur's PMD 85 cousin was written by VBG Software - acronym from the three coders' surname initials: Vlastimil Veselý, Libor Bedrlík and Ladislav Gavar, and released in 1989 under the title Saboter. To be brutally honest, Saboter resembles the original only visually, and even there, it's only somewhat similar. The structure is completely different and the plot is to detonate a massive bomb and make your escape before the timer runs out, but you have no escape vehicle - you just need to find a balcony. On the plus side, Saboter gives you an inventory that can hold four items, which you will actually be needing for keys, shuriken and other useful items. Too bad it's ultimately a boring clone instead of a proper conversion.

Timo's Castle, a spiritual sequel to Henry's House on the C64.

For the last game for this Updates entry, we have a game that the internet was informed about through an April Fools joke this year. What we thought were getting was a sequel to Chris Murray's Henry's House, but about a month later, the game was eventually released as Timo's Castle, with all references to little Henry removed, likely due to copyright issues. Not that it makes the game any worse.

Timo McClane is a Scottish lad, wearing sunglasses and his cap backwards, but otherwise looks to be Henry's long-lost illegitimate cousin. His Scottishness is, immediately upon having loaded the game, accentuated by the theme song, which is the national anthem, "Scotland the Brave", where the SID chip has been rather nicely been made to sound like a bunch of bagpipes and drum corps. This, of course, is a nod toward Henry's House's original theme song, "Rule Britannia". Like the original game, the object of the game is to pick up all the items from the levels before you can pick up a key to open the passage to the next level, but here, picking up certain items are more likely to bring up a new hazard or other element on the screen, so there's a lot more graphics, music and sound effects here compared to the original game, also resulting in the necessity of using and entire disk side to occupy the game data. It is an equally challenging game as Henry's House, but the playability is notably enhanced, and your deaths are notably less the result of randomly spawning or homing enemies than your own abilities. For $5/€5/£4 + VAT, it's not a bad purchase at all, particularly if you're a fan of the original.

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As usual, I shall attempt to update the corresponding comparison entries accordingly, whenever I have the time to do so amidst of creating new content both here and for YouTube, while juggling with real-life responsibilities. It might take a while, but at least now I know what to do.

That's it for now, and the single comparison entry for August will arrive by the end of the month, since it's a two-fer. Until then, keep on retro gaming!