3rd June 2010
If you remember the days when a blue, hollow-eyed creature would go skiing, or chase spiders, then this week's retro news round-up might interest you.
Retro Mart: Horace Returns
Horace was an early-days hero for those lucky enough to get hold of a working Sinclair ZX Spectrum in the early 1980s. Published by Sinclair Research to support the fledging micro at its launch, and created by Psion Software, these games are fairly well-respected and very well-known by most Speccy fans. The trilogy was to be expanded with Melbourne House being the sole producer and publisher in 1985, with the release of Horace To The Rescue, telling the story of our blue binary hero's new-found love, but this game didn't see the light of day on the 8-bit.
Later, Psion launched the final Horace game, but on its own Psion series 3 palmtop, which was called Horace In The Mystic Woods. Now, thanks to Speccy guru Bob Smith, this game is being faithfully remade for the mighty rubber-keyed colour computer.
Horace In The Mystic Woods is very much a traditional 2D platform game affair, with beasties and other such unsavoury roamers to avoid and collectible items that add to your score. This development can be followed via Facebook (and if you use the social networking media, use this link) or through Bob's official website. Hopefully, I'll have a sneaky preview for you soon.
Trooper
Jarrod Bentley's new game Trooper has finally seen the light of day (with several reworkings on the original concept that I saw at a retro gaming event last year). For reasons unknown, the game is called Trooper: Point 5 and is a 2D single-screen arcade shooter for the old Speccy. This is not too dissimilar to Ultimate Play the Game's 16K wonder Jetpac, with the exception that you don't have to build your own space ship and then proceed to fill it with fuel.
Time will tell as to whether or not Jarrod with make any further amendments or improvements to this game, but you may try the alpha release for yourself by grabbing the current emulator image. Just in case you think you've heard of Jarron Bentley before, his pervious works include Sanxion (published 1989 by Thalamus), Crystal Kingdom Dizzy (a 1992 release by CodeMasters) and Turbo The Tortoise (released by Hi-Tec Software also in 1992) all for the ZX, on which productions he did the graphics. Trooper is, however, his first Speccy production in which he's worked on the game engine too.
Here's another reminder that it's heading for the time of year when the warmer weather means that news in the retro world starts to dry up, so if you have any news you would like to share with our readers then why not e-mail in?
My e-mail address is shaun@micromart.co.uk, or you could do things the old fashioned way by putting pen to paper, clearly marking your correspondence with "Retro Mart" and posting it to Micro Mart's address found on the letters pages near to the news section. On that note, I'll go and prepare for my holidays, and no doubt I've just jinxed the weather for a week of rain.
