26th April 2007
A whole load of new games have been released recently, so without further ado, Shaun has the latest Namco's popular little pill-chomping animated
Retro Mart: The Undiscovered Pacman?
A pizza base is probably one of the most recognisable videogames characters of all time. Of course, I'm talking about Pac-Man, which contained simple yet hypnotic gameplay. This spawned many clones throughout the binary age but unfortunately the official sequel, Super Pac-Man, wasn't such a big hit and only appeared on the Commodore 64 after its arcade debut in 1982.
However, the Atari Protos website uncovered the follow-up which was developed but never finished by Atari for its 5200 console and 8-bit home computer range. Now, www.atariage.com has announced that Ken Van Mersbergen has put the final touches to the production with the binary images available to download and play on your favourite Atari emulator. More information and discussion about this development (as well as a link to the relevant downloads) can be found over at the AtariAge 'Prototypes' forum.
Sticking with Atari for a moment, the 800-compatible machines (XE and XL machines) have seen a couple of original releases lately, most notably through the disk-magazine 'Flop', which is up to its 50th issue. The two pieces of entertainment software in question are Speed Up, which is a simple 2D racer, but allows up to four players to compete at four different computer terminals, and the puzzle game Mind Blast for all logicians out there. Flop issue 50 can be downloaded at www.atari.sk, which is an essential news site for Atari 8-bit and ST fans alike.
A Bit Of Logic
For all of those C64-owning puzzle fans out there, a pre-release of Brick Out is now available for you to download. Although sounding like a Break-Out or Arkanoid clone, this game, by Prollcoder, presents you with the simple task of eliminating the bricks in the wall which are grouped together by two or more of the same colour.
The playfield can be rearranged by shifting the leftmost column of bricks to the right, or by turning them upside down. Despite the few gremlins in the code, this is looking to be a very fine production indeed, and should provide more than a few hours of entertainment. To get the latest version, head over to www.prolicoder.com.
Continuing with software that will test your grey matter, Cronosoft is due to release Zoo Mania for the C64 very soon. This is roughly based around Zoo Keeper, which proved to be popular on Nintendo's DS, in which the animals must be arranged in groups of three or more. Again, a few bugs in the code prevail, but the final release of this is not too far off. This is part of nine forthcoming releases that the Cronosoft crew has lined up, four of which will be for the C64. Games on other formats include Stronghold, Metal Miner, Dominetris (Microdrive version) and Nipik for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and the recently reviewed and rather addictive Glove for the Dragon 32. For more, keep an eye on www.cronosoft.co.uk.
As a final note for the Commodore Plus/4 (or C16 with 32k or more), Chris Snowden has finished his first text adventure called Dark Mansion. Described as a 'learning experience', Chris is due to release the source code for other budding adventure writers to take a look at. The task in hand is to break into the mansion and steal the treasure within. You can download it now.
