In the last blog entry I was talking about how exciting it was to add a new game to the Psytronik range - especially if it's for a system that I haven't supported before ... Well, it has happened again! Literally the same day that I had finished shipping all the Armalyte PC pre-orders an email pinged into my in-box with details about a new release for the Commodore Plus/4 called Adventures in Time. I duly fired up the Vice Plus4 emulator to give the game a whirl ... I was not prepared for what happened next ... !
If you go down to the woods today ...The first thing that appeared was a neat comic-style intro with slick graphics and a seriously jolly tune - an intro sequence? On a Plus/4 game? NICE! The intro set the scene for the game nicely and told the story of our hero - a cute little yellow blob - who got lost in the woods while taking a stroll one day. He discovered some ruins that held something unexpected - a TIME SCRAMBLING MACHINE! Our hero pressed a red button on the machine that activated it and that is where his adventure begins. The game credits are then displayed before the music tails off with an almost Follin-esque flourish. All I could utter at this point was a rather Neo style "woah" ...
The title screen - complete with roaming Robin Hood & fireblobs!(tm)The colourful game title screen then appeared and an appropriately jolly title tune began playing. The game beckoned me to hit SPACE to start playing and so I did just that. I was immediately impressed by the colourful bitmap graphics. But there was something else ... the music ... who had let Martin Galway into the room? The more I listened to it the more I fell in love with the music in this game - A ticking clock at the start, Galway style wibbles and nifty "tschak" type drums along with a darned catchy lead - is this REALLY coming from a Commodore Plus/4? You betcha!
Our hero leaps into the air - watch out for that goo!The idea of the game is to safely guide your little yellow blobby chum through the screens while avoiding the assorted nicely animated baddies that inhabit them. The nasties include blinking eye-monsters, flamey fire-imps, ghoulish ghosties and, er, Robin Hood! The controls are nice and precise and the character-based movement helps you to land on tricky ledges. You can also move your character in mid-air when he jumps which allows you to steer around the roaming nasties in the game.
There's creepy caverns to explore - complete with eyeballs!The game also features some neat animated touches. If you don't move your character for a while he goes to sleep (cute!) and if you get hit by a nasty our yellow chum keels over dizzily. He also sinks to his doom if you drop him into any of the pools of goo that can be found on some screens.
The title page again - but wait a sec, that logo looks familiar!As you can probably tell I was rather impressed by this little platform romp and immediately responded to the email sent from the game authors about doing a Psytronik release. Work on the Psytronik release has already started and a version of the game has already been produced that features the Psytronik logo in the intro and on the title screen. Trevor 'Smila' Storey has also produced some excellent artwork for the Psytronik release of the game that captures the cartoony style of the game perfectly.
A sneaky peek at the cool Smila artwork!Adventures in Time will be released as a special collectors edition on disk (and hopefully tape) by Psytronik Software for the Commodore Plus/4 (and expanded C16) in June 2010. If you would like to try the game you can download a free version from HERE. You can also see the game in action in the YouTube video below.
Thanks for reading, see you ... IN THE FUTURE! (Hey, that's kind of appropriate for this blog entry!)
Kenz / www.psytronik.com
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