Psytronik Software

That was the year that was ... 2011!

2011-12-21T04:43:00.000-08:00

Greetings Programs!

Well, now that 2011 has been stuffed into the bin with all the Chrissy wrapping paper and turkey leftovers and I'd like to start this blog entry by sending a massive THANK YOU to everyone who has helped and supported Psytronik Software in 2011. I'm hugely grateful to everyone who has written or helped out with a Psytronik release, and of course, to everyone who bought a Psytronik game this year ... It takes a whopping amount of my (very limited!) spare time to run Psytronik Software but I don't mind as it's just so darned satisfying to see a release come together and appear in the BZ store in all it's lovingly packaged glory. It's also great fun putting together packages for eager retro fans as I know how cool it is to receive a shiny new game for your fave computer, rip off the shrink-wrapping and load it for some retro gaming fun!

Anyway, that's quite enough back-slapping and hugging for now. Now lets take a look at the Psytronik releases from 2011 complete with thoughts and musings about each one plucked directly from my addled brain type device:-

1,000 Kung-Fu Maniacs (C64) (12th Feb)

The first Psytronik release to bolt out of the starting gate for 2011 was the amusing Alf Yngve beat 'em up romp 1,000 Kung-Fu Maniacs. Once again Alf managed to push SEUCK in all sorts of directions that it wasn't designed to go and using cunning design and some ingenius tricks he actually managed to coax a scrolling beat 'em up out of an editor designed for shoot 'em ups! The combination of wacky storyline, tongue in cheek humour and cartoony graphics resulted in a pretty darned nifty release. Richard Bayliss also assisted by bolting on a new front-end and plumbing in some in-game power-ups and the cream on this particularly yummy cake were the oriental soundtracks that were specially composed for the game by Jon Wells. My only teeny niggly regret with this release is I didn't have the chance at the time to do a loading bitmap for the game - but I made up for this when the sequel to this game came along, but more about that later in this blog entry!

Sub Hunter (Amstrad CPC) (13th Feb)

The incredible Amstrad CPC conversion of Sub Hunter was one of my favourite Psytronik releases in 2011. I've always had a soft spot for the Amstrad CPC computer so I was really pleased to be able to release some Amstrad games thanks to the awesome skills of CPC programmer Paul Kooistra. I had a great time working with Paul during the development of Sub Hunter and was absolutely blown away by the quality of the completed game. Paul had managed to squeeze almost every single feature from the C64 game into the Amstrad version (including that stunning parallax scrolling) - and in some places he even managed to IMPROVE on the original C64 game! Herve Monchatre also did a superb job in converting the music from the C64 version onto the Amstrad. And the amazing thing about the CPC version of Sub Hunter? It was all crammed into just 64K!

AutoCross Racing (PC) (13th Feb)

AutoCross Racing is a fun PC release for Psytronik that came together REALLY quickly! I'm a huge fan of top-down racing games (I used to play loads of them on the Amiga) and as soon as I saw footage of the game in action I knew it would make a great Psytronik release - and I wasn't wrong, the actual game itself is a total hoot to play and is jam-packed with neat options. The game was produced for the PC by Damian Steele who I already knew from the C64 game Flubble & Squij - that very nearly got a Psytronik release back in the 1990s. Anyway, it took just over a week from seeing a video of the game to having a fully packaged Psytronik version of the game ready to go! Mat 'Preferred Image' Recardo also helped out with this release by rendering some action-packed artwork that was used for the packaging.

Sheepoid (C64) (1st June)

Sheepoid is a psychedelic shooter from Richard Bayliss in which you control two Sheepoid units defending the universe from a variety of weird and wonderful attackers from the beyond the Neon Vortex ... Or something! The game was inspired by Lazer Zone - by the hairy hero Jeff Minter and I thought it would be good fun to release the game in some rather colourful Psytronik packaging at the RetroVision event ... And it was at RV that I finally got to meet Richard in person for the first time ever - and a jolly nice chap he is too. STE'86 (Steve Day) delivered a gorgeous loading bitmap and Mat Recardo produced the superb cover design. This was based on artwork by Alf Yngve that was originally produced for a Jeff Minter themed edition of my old Commodore Zone mag that was never produced in the end. It was just a shame Jeff himself didn't turn up to the event to see the game ... Baaa!

Hyper Viper (C64) (24th June)

This was the debut release from programmer Jamie Howard. The game is a nice conversion of the original MSX version and not only featured everything from the original game but also included additional features as well. This was an interesting release for Psytronik as it was the first game to feature properly licensed music (the title tune is a cover of AM180 - as featured in the movie 28 Days Later). STE'86 produced a jolly loading screen for the game and Smila produced the eye-catching box art. All in all, a fun retro-style release and a great debut title from Jamie. I just hope he gets around to completing his C64 conversion of the MSX game Polar Star as that looked absolutely belting!

Shoot 'Em Up Destruction Set 2 (C64) (9th November)

Here's another of my fave Psytronik releases from 2011. As Alf Yngve is so darned prolific it can be tricky keeping up with all the cool C64 titles he keeps producing so I came up with the idea of releasing another compilation of his games - which is a great way to quickly get a bevy of his titles into the Psytronik range (and to offer extra value for money for all you lovely retro fiends!) I then thought it would be cool to make the compilation a sequel to the first SEUDS compilation - and to present the games with similar artwork to the original. For SEUDS 2 I chose two unreleased games from the Psytronik back-catalogue (Bloodwheels & Trojahn), a recent side-ways scrolling shooter (Super Tau-Zeta) and the brand new game 2,000 Kung-Fu Maniacs. Richard Bayliss did an absolutely superb job enhancing the games with power-ups, special effects, new front-end presentation and music etc., I worked with STE'86 on the loading screens (we produced two bitmaps each) and I also produced logos for 2,000 KFM, Bloodwheels & Trojahn. Interestingly, Alf was so impressed with the bitmap that Steve produced for Trojahn that he revamped the game completely to bring it up to a similar standard. I'm also very pleased that I got to make up for my lack of input on 1,000 Kung-Fu Maniacs by producing the loading screen and front-end logo for its sequel. As well as handling all the tape masters for SEUDS 2, Richard also worked wonders with the disk menu - which was done in the same style as the original SEUDS menu but with a re-worked bitmap screen ... And if all that wasn't enough, SEUDS 2 also featured a complete extra game as well - the excellent Forbidden Forest inspired game Forgotten Forest ... Bonus!

Oracle III (C64) (18th December)

The final Psytronik release for 2011 which just managed to get into the BZ store before the end of the year (albeit on a pre-order basis) was ORACLE III. This was one of those releases that started off simply enough with the idea to release a previously unreleased - but completed - puzzle game on the Psytronik label. It then got totally more elaborate with brand new ambient soundtracks being composed for the game, a soundtrack CD being bundled in with it (featuring recordings done from the composers own SID chip) and the whole thing being re-compressed to use less disk-space (oh, and the Psytronik logo was bolted onto the loading screen as well). Mat Recardo once again came up trumps (chortle!) with some excellent rendered cover-art that nicely depicted the in-game action. Oracle III was a great way to round off 2011 and it was great to add a different style of game to the Psytronik catalogue.

REPLAY EXPO 2011

In last blog entry I mentioned that Psytronik was going to be exhibiting at the REPLAY EXPO in Blackpool ... I bet you are all BUSTING to know how I got on at the show aren't you? Well, here's how it all went ... I was initially unsure as to whether I would attend the 2011 show as it would involve a 300 mile round-trip and it was all a bit of an unknown for me as I missed the first REPLAY show in 2010. I received a nice call from Dave Moore (one of the show organisers) that convinced me I should come along and everything else seemed to click into place at just the right time. On the Friday before the event I loaded up my mighty silver Mondeo and set a course for Blackpool. The Journey to the event was actually easy-peasy. I'm not usually a fan of the M6 but once you get past Birmingham it's plain-sailing all the way to Blackpool. 157 miles later (I know it was that far as I reset my mileometer just as I set off) I was standing outside the Norbreck Castle - the venue for REPLAY! I had a quick recce of the place to get my bearings and chatted to a few familar faces before I checked in at my hotel - the lovely Poldhu - which is literally 100 yards away from the venue. I then headed back to the Norbreck and bumped into Vintage Matt from RetroVision and somehow accidentally (heh!) ended up in a pub type environment with lots of the RV peeps - and a very nice evening of stout imbibing and pub japes ensued followed by a tasty CURRY. I had arrived!

The Specadore 64 got a lot of attention at REPLAY!

Saturday!! After nomming a tasty cooked brekkie at the Poldhu Hotel (served up by the Yoda-esque lady there) I headed to the Norbreck to set up my Psytronik table. I was situated next to my good chum Jason 'TMR' Kelk (he of the Retro Gamer Homebrew section fame) so it was great to be able to have a natter with him. I took a slightly scaled-down setup to REPLAY as I wasn't sure how much room I would have - so I only had two systems to set up. The first of which was the crowd-pleasing SPECADORE 64 - which is always popular at these events - and the second system was my shiny new COMMODORE 64x - which is the new PC-in-a-C64-style-case ... I planned to run emulators and Psytronik promo videos on the C64x, as well as the PC remake of Armalyte - which is awesome being played with a retro style joystick (a USB Competition Pro) running on a C64 style PC! The Specadore 64 featured the recently-released conversion of Prince of Persia running from an EasyFlash cart that I had literally received a few days before the event. This gave people the chance to play the stunning C64 conversion of the game on REAL hardware. I also demonstrated some new Psytronik releases including SEUDS 2 - with 2,000 Kung-Fu Maniacs being a highlight as it caused much mirth with its amusing power-ups (poodle attack!) The Psytronik stand was in the entrance area of the event (not in the main hall) so everyone attending REPLAY would have to pass me at some point! This meant there were plenty of people throughout the day going past so I had lots of interest in the Psytronik goodies that were on display. I ventured into the main hall at various times throughout the day and was blown away by the size of the event. It ... was ... HUGE! I've attended a LOT of retro events in the past but this was easily the biggest I've ever seen - a mindscrambling array of arcade cabs, retro & modern systems and pinball machines were available to be played on (if you could figure out how to get the freeplay arcade cabs to start!), there were impressive stands set up by various sponsors and retro selling peeps, HUGE screens showing what was going on, lots of Cosplayers, boothbabes and various heroes from the retro scene (Jeff Minter!! Oli Frey!!), it really was an incredible sight - it wasn't like any other retro event I'd been to, it was a proper EXPO! In the evening I headed along to an aftershow gig at another hotel that featured SID 80's (minus MadFiddler, sadly). Unfortunately, this was hampered by a massively overlong quiz, hugely expensive drinks and awful acoustics. The day was rounded off with a bazillion mile walk into town with various peeps to a restaurant that didn't exist. So an emergency kebab was duly purchased while we were amused at the shouty drunken antics of the skimpily dressed girls in the middle of Blackpool on a freezing Saturday night in November. And a classy bunch they certainly were! ;)

Me 'n' Yak!

Sunday!! Hangover part 2, and a room smelling of cold kebab (it was cold when I ate the bloody thing!) Another lovely cooked brekkie was served up by Mrs Yoda - I loved the way I came down to brekkie and she shuffled next door to bring it to me, already prepared! And as it was beautifully sunny outside I had a nice walk along the sea-front to clear my head and enjoyed some moments of zen-like calm before heading over to the Norbreck for REPLAY DAY 2! My second day at REPLAY started out pretty much the same as the first - but I was determined to PLAY MORE GAMES so did spend a lot more time in the main hall on Sunday. I also recruited Vintage Matt to be my camera co-pilot at one point and we went on a most excellent mission to get photographed with as many cosplayers and girls on the stands as possible. Our mission was very successful I'm pleased to say! All in all, I really enjoyed my time at REPLAY. As well as being a cracking event I knew loads of people there so there was always someone I could chat to and everyone else I met was friendly and seemed to be having a good time. One thing that amused me about the Psytronik stand was that a lot of people didn't actually notice the C64x as at a glance it looks just like and old breadbin style C64 - the Specadore 64 got a LOT more attention than the latest addition to the Commodore range ... ! There wasn't really much about REPLAY that I *didn't* like. I did notice an odd musty pong in one of the side-rooms near to where the talks were being held (a few people noticed this, apparently), the after-show gig on Saturday was a bit naff - although we did our best to liven that up with some incredible "free-form darncing" - Ben Daglish was most impressed with our efforts! I couldn't get a look-in on the Pinball machines - they were in constant use each time I went past them - and quite a few of the arcade machines seem to require some magical trickery to get them going, but these are minor niggles only and didn't spoil my enjoyment of the event one iota.

Me - In my natural environment. :)

And that pretty much sums it up for REPLAY. Would I go again? Definitely! I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend and it was definitely worth the 300 mile round-trip. A massive YO! to all the people I met and spoke to at the event (far too many to list here), I look forward to seeing you all again in 2012! You can view a selection of photos I took at the event by clicking the link below:-

MY PHOTOS FROM REPLAY 2011!

Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.net

Psytronik to exhibit at the REPLAY EXPO 2011!

2011-10-22T06:39:00.000-07:00

Greetings Programs!

I'm pleased to announce that Psytronik Software will attending the REPLAY EXPO 2011 and will be exhibiting at the show. The REPLAY EXPO is the largest retro event to be held in the UK and takes place on November 5th & 6th at the Norbreck Castle in Blackpool.

Hopefully there will be some of THIS happening at the event!

I will be releasing TWO new Psytronik Commodore 64 titles at REPLAY - Firstly there's the sliding block puzzle game ORACLE III and secondly there's the fab SHOOT 'EM UP DESTRUCTION SET 2 compilation - both of which have been featured in previous blog entries. To celebrate Psytronik being at REPLAY I've updated the artwork on both releases to feature the REPLAY logo on the front!

Two new Psytronik titles to be released exclusively at the REPLAY 2011!

As well as showing off the latest Psytronik releases I will also be demonstrating the new Commodore 64x system - which is basically a full PC system crammed into a gorgeous Commodore 64 style keyboard. There has been a bit of a mixed reception to this system from die-hard C64 fans, but trust me, when you play the PC remake of Armalyte running on a PC remake of the Commodore 64 with a USB remake of the Competition Pro joystick you're gonna love it, it really is a beautiful thang!

The super-sexy Commodore 64x - see it in action at REPLAY 2011!

Of course the mighty Specadore 64 will also be accompanying me to the event which will be used to demonstrate the latest Psytronik releases. I will also be running the stunning new C64 conversion of Prince of Persia which you will be able to play on REAL C64 hardware at Replay.

I never thought I would get to play THIS on the C64!

I will also be running some hi-score competitions during the Replay weekend with bundles of Binary Zone and Psytronik goodies up for grabs for the winner. So if you plan on attending the event come and visit the homebrew section and we'll have a natter about all things RETRO - you will also be able to pick up some Binary Zone BARGAINS from my stand while you are there!

See you there!

Kenz / www.psytronik.net

Psytronik gets all puzzled!

2011-08-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

Greetings Psytronikoids!

An interesting release has recently been added to the Psytronik Software C64 line-up which came to us literally as a bolt from the blue ... Well, kinda! The game is called Oracle III - The Final Chapter and was originally produced in 1995 by Art Project Studios. Unfortunately, the game was never commercially released on the C64 due to problems with the publisher at the time. Our chum Jazzcat suggested Psytronik as a possible publisher and after seeing the game in action I decided it would make a nice addition to the Psytronik range.

Psytronik has not actually released a puzzle game before and I was immediately impressed with the quality of the graphics and overall presentation of the game. I got in touch with the author in order to start the ball rolling on making this an official Psytronik release. The actual game itself was complete and the version I received to test already had been updated to include messages to say it was a Psytronik release so it was literally ready to be released straight away on the Psytronik label - but then things started to get even more interesting!

In of the message exchanges between myself and the game author Tufan 'SoNiC' Uysal, he sent along an example of one his SID tunes - a superb ambient track. He mentioned that back in 1996 he was thinking of changing the game music to his own compositions and would be interested in making new music for the game. I was so impressed with the music he sent me we decided to delay the Psytronik release of Oracle III slightly so that the game could include brand new soundtracks for the 2011 Psytronik release.

But then things got even better! Tufan had been sending me mp3 recordings of the soundtracks for the game recorded from his very own SID chip. This gave me the idea of bundling a free soundtrack CD in with the game that features all the music from the game. Tufan had also been thinking along the same lines and so we decided to run with that idea and include a CD with the Premium version of the game - that way people will hear the music with the filters as intended (the music was produced on the 8510 SID chip and so may sound different on the older 6581 chip).

Another problem that had to be solved was what to do for artwork for the game. Oracle III is a puzzle game that features blocks that are moved around the screen by your character that looks like a frog (or F.REE R.OAMING O.BJECT G.RAPPLER - as I decided to call it). The object of the game is to move two or more matching blocks next to each other in order to remove them. Once all the matching blocks are cleared you move onto the next screen. Anyway, for the artwork I called on the assistance of my chum Mat 'CGI' Recardo (he of www.preferredimage.co.uk fame) and sent him details about the game. Mat designed an excellent cover picture featuring a cool robotic-frog moving blocks around on a spacey backdrop. Perfect! I dropped in elements from the game as a border around the artwork to complete the cover design - you can see the completed artwork below.

Oracle III - The Final Chapter will be available for the C64 as a Premium & Budget disk release and as a digital download in October 2011. You will be able to pick up your copy exclusively from the Binary Zone Interactive Retro Store.

Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.net.

SEUDS STRIKES BACK!

2011-07-29T03:40:00.000-07:00

Greetings Psytronikeers!

For a while now I've had the idea of doing another SEUDS (Shoot 'Em Up Destruction Set) compilation for Psytronik and now at long last SEUDS 2 is fast becoming a reality! This is thanks to the ever productive Alf Yngve who not only still has some great unreleased SEUCK games tucked away but is also still churning them out to this day, ably assisted by Richard 'TND' Bayliss, who is doing sterling work adding new front-end presentation to each game along with power-ups, extra graphical effects and fantastic music etc. Lets take a closer look at the four games I have chosen for SEUDS 2.

Super Tau Zeta

"By Your Command!"

This is a recent Alf Yngve production that was originally produced for the Sideways SEUCK competition organised by Richard Bayliss. In this game you control a mini-fleet of ships doing battle in space and on alien planets. Alf has incorporated some very clever effects into this game including a cool space-warp effect, a black hole encounter, asteroid field, parallax scrolling when you are on the alien planets and much more!

Flying over a lovely alien vista in Super Tau-Zeta

Super Tau Zeta has been specially enhanced and now features a snazzy new front-end, superb soundtracks (the in-game tune is a real belter!) and weapon power-ups that have been added by Richard Bayliss and a stunning bitmap loading screen has been produced for the game by Steve 'STE'86' Day (inspired by a certain popular 80s sci-fi show).

Bloodwheels

How much action can I cram into one loading screen? Answer: All of it!

This game was part of the original 1994 Psytronik release line-up but is now being dusted off after 17 years for release as part of the SEUDS 2 compilation. The game is an exciting driving-shooter where you (and an optional player 2) battle your way through various locations in an army vehicle blasting enemy tanks, planes, helicopters and soldiers etc. The game features some very nicely detailed tiny sprites (the enemy soldiers are particularly ee-wee!) destructible background objects (you can level houses!) and there's blasting action aplenty to be had.

Once again Richard Bayliss has coded an eye-catching front-end the game and has added new effects to the game itself including multi-sprite explosions for when you blast those pesky bosses and animated water effects. Richard has also delivered some suitably thumping tunes for you to blast along to (the in-game tune has a nice Matt Gray flavour to it). For the loading screen I decided to transfer the original artwork for this game (drawn by Alf) onto the C64 and have drawn the screen in a similar style to the one I did for the SEUDS 1 game Silverfish (I.E. Lots of explodey action!)

2,000 Kung Fu Maniacs:
The Way Of The Exploding Fish

The other 1,995 Kung-Fu Maniacs are right behind you!

The sequel to 1,000 Kung-Fu Maniacs continues after your epic battle in Blapsville in the first game and once again features the ongoing adventures of the Master of Awesome! This time our hero is tasked with a dangerous quest to find the sacred scrolls that have been stolen by some nefarious Ninjas - and, also, to buy some pickled herring (as you do).

In the game you must battle assorted adversaries in various unusual locations - like on-stage at the "Lord of the Bland" concert (featuring a familiar-looking river-dancing baddie!), at the International Arms Fair, a corrupt art gallery and even at the "Happy Moose Megamart!" Various weapon power-ups can be collected during the game including shuriken, nunchucks, a deadly knife, a garden gnome (?!) and, best of all, the way of the exploding fish!

Once again Richard Bayliss has added extra enhancements to this game including a new front-end, funky Oriental soundtracks, the weapon power-ups I mentioned above and he has even coded a special end-sequence for the game! For the loading screen I decided to make up for the fact that I didn't have the time to contribute any pixels to the first game - so for the sequel I pixelled an eye-catching loader pic featuring Ninjas - cos Ninjas are COOL!

Trojahn

The fourth game in the SEUDS 2 pack is another Alf Yngve classic that has been stomping around for approximately the last 5,000 years (well, since the early 1990s!) The game features the titular Trojahn hero on a mission to rescue his beloved Elena who has been kidnapped by an evil Minotaur. The game uses an interesting arcade style vertical screen with all the action being viewed on the left half of the screen. The right half of the screen is used for occasional interlude screens showing the plight of Elena and her cries for help in comic-book style.

Ste'86 has provided the stunning loading screen for the game, Richard Bayliss will be producing the music and coding the front-end - which will feature additional graphics by little old me!

The Shoot 'Em Up Destruction Set 2 will be released for the C64 on tape, disk and as a digital download by Psytronik Software later this year (exact release date to be confirmed). For more details head on over to www.psytronik.net ...

Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.net (29/07/11)

To boldy go ... Sub Hunting!

2011-06-06T02:32:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Programs!

Here's an interesting little Psytronik related tidbit for ya ... I recently discovered that an "Enterprising" individual (pun intended) had ported Sub Hunter onto the somewhat obscure Elan Enterprise computer! This rather unexpected conversion is based on the amazing Amstrad CPC conversion by Paul Kooistra but has been tweaked for the Enterprise to include elements from the C64 version. So lets fire it up and have a looksee, shall we?

In order to get the Enterprise version of Sub Hunter running on my PC I downloaded a copy of the ep32 emulator. Once the disk image containing the game had been dropped into the emulator I was ready for some Enterprise Sub Hunting ACTION!

As you can see from the picture above the colours on the loading screen are based on the Commodore 64 version. The intro begins with the hi-res Psytronik logo from the CPC version and features an identical intro to the CPC - although the colours of the intro pics have been changed from the CPC sepia shades back to the monochrome C64 style. The nice parallaxed section of the intro is also present and correct and the marvellous intro theme from the CPC version can also be heard in all its glory.

Once the main game has loaded you will see the front-page once again contains elements from the C64 version (the animated bubbles) and the rippling logo reflection is also present. Unfortunately, although the credits for the original Sub Hunter authors (Frank Gasking & Richard Bayliss) are visible there is no mention of the author of the CPC version (Paul Kooistra) on the title page of the game. This is a very annoying oversight as the Enterprise conversion is based on the CPC code! Tut-tut.

Anyhoo, hitting fire launches your Sub into action and you will see straight away that the actual game is almost identical to the Amstrad CPC version of the game. The colours seem to have been toned down slightly which makes seeing the swimmers you have to rescue a bit easier but everything else is pretty much the same as the CPC version (although this version of the game does suffer from slow-down at times).

Aside from a few technical issues and the annoying lack of credit for all the hard work Paul Kooistra put into his CPC version of the game this is a pleasing conversion of Sub Hunter and it's nice to see the game running on another system. It would have been nice if the person responsible for the Enterprise port had contacted Psytronik first as at least I could have ensured that the game contained the correct credits - but apart from that, the Enterprise conversion of Sub Hunter is well worth a look. It's also worth noting that Hervé Monchatre has been helping out with this version of the game and produced specially modified versions of his amazing CPC tunes for the Enterprise version. These sound much better than the glitchy tunes that were present in earlier versions of this port. He also requested that Paul Kooistra was reinstated into the credits scroll in this game - which was duly done. Nice work Hervé!

If you would like to play Sub Hunter on the Enterprise you can get the ep32 emulator HERE and here's a link to a .zip file that contains the disk image of the game:- Sub Hunter Enterprise Version. The .zip file also includes a ReadMe.txt file that contains instructions for loading the game into the ep32 Enterprise Emulator.

Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.net

Sheepoid - The making of the artwork

2011-04-07T05:43:00.000-07:00

I've been following the progress of the latest Richard Bayliss C64 production Sheepoid since it began and as the project took shape my Psytronik senses started tingling. The game is an homage to the classic Jeff Minter game Laser Zone which was released on the VIC-20 and C64 in 1983 and later on the C16 and Plus/4 in 1986.

Laser Zone on the Commodore Plus/4

For Sheepoid, Richard has taken the basic concept of Laser Zone (control a horizontal and vertical gun turret, blast weirdy meanies, avoid blasting goodies) and has improved the graphics, presentation and music for his C64 remake / tribute "Sheepoid".

Sheepoid on the C64

As Richard was planning on releasing Sheepoid at the 2011 Retrovision event I asked him if he would be interested in doing a Psytronik release so we could present the game at the event as a fully packaged Psytronik release. Richard gave this idea the thumbs-up so my next thoughts turned to the game artwork. Seeing as the game featured a level called The Mutant Camels Are Back this suddenly reminded me of a picture that Alf Yngve drew many years ago for a Jeff Minter issue of my Commodore Zone mag that never materialised:-

Llamas Attack! Previously unseen artwork for an
issue of Commodore Zone that was never made.

I always liked this image of Llamas attacking from space and thought this would make a cool cover for Sheepoid. I sent Alfs pic to my chum Mat 'Preferred Image' Recardo to see if a 3D rendered version was possible - and as luck would have it, Mat had a Llama object that he could use! So some swift rendering work later and Mat sent over the splendid design you see below:-

Llamas attack - in 3D rendered-o-vision!

The next thing needed was a logo for the game. I initially dabbled with a B-Movie style logo (similar to the "LLamas Attack!") logo in the Alf pic but in the end decided to use the Sheepoid logo from the front-end of the actual game - which I recreated in hi-res, tilted at a jaunty angle and then coloured in retro-arcade logo stylee.

The nice colours in the logo made me decide to go one step further and give the artwork more Yak-appeal by continuing the colours around the edges. After the the addition of game screenshots and extra text blurb the official Sheepoid Retrovision poster was born!

The yaktastic Sheepoid promo poster!

Now that all the artwork elements had been produced the next step was to the adapt the design for the Psytronik packaging. Using the premium disk edition artwork template I tweaked the artwork to fit on the packaging and you can see the end result below:-

Ta-daaa! The finished Sheepoid disk packaging.

And there you have it! That's how you go about creating the box artwork for a Psytronik release (for techno-buffs who are listening). The game was officially released at Retrovision in May 2011 and is now available on tape and disk for the Commodore 64 exclusively from the Binary Zone Interactive Retro Store.

Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.net

Some good news, some sad news

2011-03-09T03:25:00.000-08:00

Firstly, the good news ...

In February last year I recorded a special Psytronik Software episode of my retro game music podcast One Man & His Mic. The 1 hour show featured music from almost all of the Psytronik releases available at the time from Sceptre of Baghdad right up to the PC version of Armalyte. The show was included as a bonus extra on the Armalyte CD-ROM and you can read all about the making of the show in this Psytronik blog entry HERE.

As over a year has now passed I've now made the show freely available to listen to and download on the One Man & His Mic webpage. And that's not all! Rather than just plonk the existing 1 hour show online I've completely remastered and extended the show by an additional 20 minutes. It now features FIVE extra tracks including the superb in-game theme from the C16 / Plus/4 title Adventures in Time, a remix of the theme from the C64 game City Bomber (which will hopefully be released on the Psytronik label at some point!), the sublime intro theme from the Amstrad CPC version of Sub Hunter and MORE! To listen to the show scoot on over to the OMAHM Series 2 webpage and fill your boots ... er, or your ears.

One Man & His Mic - Psytronik Software Special

01. Sceptre of Baghdad Intro (DJ Skitz)
02. The Sceptre of Nu Baghdad (Kate Z)
03. Archetype - FZ vs JMJ Remix (FeekZoid)
04. Nukenin & The Ronin Title (TMR) [C64]
05. PsykoZone Intro (FeekZoid) [C64]
06. Sub Hunter Title (Maniacs of Noise) [C64]
07. Escape from Arth Title (FeekZoid) [C64]
08. Mayhem in Monsterland Title (Tonka) [PC]
09. Creatures Remix (Infamous)
10. Creatures 2 Redux (Infamous)
11. Joe Gunn in-game (Laxity) [C64]
12. Armalyte Loader (Martin Walker) [C64]
13. The Path Of Destiny - Knight 'n' Grail Subtune #2 (Project N.A.)
14. Knight 'n' Grail - Good Ending Orchestral Mix (Hans Axelsson)
15. The Last Amazon Title Tune (Richard Bayliss) [C64]
16. The Wild Bunch (Jon Wells) [C64]
17. Star Sabre In-Game Tune (Targhan) [Amstrad CPC]
18. Armalyte PC Title Tune (Infamous) [PC]
19. Adventures in Time (Luca / Fire) [Plus/4]
20. City Bomber - KateZoid Fusion Mix (Kate Z)
21. Sub Hunter CPC (Herve Monchatre) [Amstrad CPC]
22. HyperViper (Jamie Howard) [C64]
23. Sceptre of Baghdad Outro (DJ Skitz)

And now the sad news ...

I'm very sorry to have to report that my good friend Paul Hadrill (aka DJ Skitz) passed away peacefully on February 16th 2011 after an incredibly brave five year battle with a brain tumour. Paul was a very popular member of the C64 remix community and as well as producing many fine C64 remixes he also regularly hosted live radio shows on SLAYRadio and attended many retro computer events and gatherings. He also contributed the opening and ending tracks for the OMAHM Psytronik Special mentioned above. Paul was a close personal friend of mine and will be missed by myself and many people who got to know Paul through his radio show and contributions to the C64 scene. He may be no longer with us but his memory and excellent remixes will live on. Farewell to my most excellent friend, DJ Skitz.

Thanks for reading,

Kenz / www.psytronik.net (09/03/2011)

Gentlemen, start your engines ... !

2011-02-06T00:24:00.000-08:00

At the end of last month I received details about a PC game that the author asked me to evaluate for possible inclusion in the Psytronik Software range. The game was a top-down racing game called AutoCross Racing, programmed by Kevin Murphy. Kevin had included some screenshots of the game with his initial email and as soon as I saw the screens I just knew I would like this game!

Vrooom, whizz - now, this looks like FUN!

I'm a big fan of retro style top-down racing games and used to spend hours playing games like Super Cars 2, Roadkill & Micro Machines on the Amiga. So as soon as I saw the screenshots of the game and the video of the game in action I was already won over - and this was before I had even PLAYED it! I just had a good feeling about it.

It came from the desert!

A few days later the game arrived at the Psytronik HQ on CD-ROM and after a quick and easy installation I was ready to roll. And the good news is the game played just as well as I had hoped! I was instantly hooked on AutoCross Racing - it has a really cool retro racing vibe to it. It's really quick and easy to get into, it plays like a DREAM and, most importantly of all, it's FUN!

Some serious peddle being put to the metal!

Everything about this game just seems to WORK. You can adjust the camera height to view your car from a comfortable distance, you can even switch the camera to the other cars in the race if you wish. The music by Dafunk is great - and as another nice touch you can also add your own music to the game by simply adding mp3 files to the Music folder! So I was soon whizzing around the tracks with remixes of classic C64 tunes like Formula 1 Simulator and Miami Vice playing. Fab!

Beep! Beep! Coming through! *CRASH* Sorry Mister!

As the game would be getting a release on CD-ROM as well as a digital download the next thing I would need is some ARTWORK. The game didn't actually have any cover art at this time so I contacted my good chum Mat 'Preferred Image' Recardo to see if he wanted to help out with this release (as I know he is a bit of a fan of driving games). I sent the game to Mat and he very quickly delivered a beautiful 3D rendered image that very nicely captured the feel of the game (in fact, it looked just like the game - but in 3D!

Mats rendered cover image for AutoCross Racing

I then took Mats cover image and, using the Armalyte CD-ROM box as a template, created the final box artwork for the game which you can see below. I was very pleased with how the artwork turned out as it matches Armalyte very nicely - especially when you put them side by side on your games shelf! I think this has got to be one of the fastest Psytronik releases ever - it went from the initial email from Kevin to being a pretty much ready for release in approx two weeks!
The full game will be released by Psytronik Software later on this month - but you can try it out RIGHT NOW by downloading the excellent playable demo which is now available on the Psytronik Software DOWNLOADS page. And you can also find more information about the game on the main Psytronik site (click HERE).

And finally, a bit of techno-trivia for you. Kevin Murphy was a name already familiar to me as he co-wrote the C64 title Flubble & Squij that was ALMOST released by Psytronik Software back in the 1990s! So with AutoCross Racing it's nice to see a game by Kevin getting a proper Psytronik release at long last. :)

Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.net (06/02/2011)

Does whatever a Spider can ... !

2011-01-24T03:00:00.000-08:00

Greetings fellow blogonauts!

Back in 2009 Psytronik Software published a very jolly platform romp for the VIC-20 called Carling the Spider ... The idea of the game was to manoeuvre weeny little Carling the Spider around several screens collecting glittering diamonds - just like real spiders, er, don't. Out to thwart Carlings jewel grabbing expoits are the diabolical BALLS OF STEEL who like nothing better than squishing little spiders.

The game was produced by Joe Dixon who managed to cram the whole kaboodle into an unexpanded 4K VIC-20. The game proved to be popular with VIC fans as it featured excellent Chuckie Egg style gameplay, responsive controls and was nicely presented to boot.

So why am I enthusing about this 2009 release? Because the game can now be downloaded for FREE! Simply head on over to the Psytronik website and grab yourself a copy of this nifty little platformer (click here to visit the download page). The free package includes both the PAL and NTSC versions of the game in .D64 format along with a text file that contains the game instructions along with info about how to run it in an emulator.

Carling the Spider 2!

And more good news for Carling fans - Carling WILL be returning for another adventure at some point - but this time on the VIC's bigger brother, the C64. We can't give away too much info about Carling 2 yet as the game is still being developed - but the work-in-progress screenshot below shows it's definitely something to look forward to! Keep an eye on www.psytronik.net for more info about the game.

Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.net

Psytronik Software in 2011!

2011-01-02T04:30:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
(Cue fireworks, clinking glasses, much dancing around and one big mother-hubbard of a hangover!)

Yep, here I am at last with a long overdue blog update to bring you all the latest news from Psytronik Software. Apologies for the huuuge delay since the last blog update, it was caused by a combination of various real-life issues which meant the development of new Psytronik releases had to slow down for a while ... But just because I haven't been able to update this blog for a while doesn't mean nothing has been happening with Psytronik - quite the opposite in fact! There's lots of exciting releases in development at the moment, I just haven't had the chance to sit down and type up the info about them all - until now! One of the first New Years Resolutions I made was to update this blog at least once a month from now on - so here's your January update from www.psytronik.net!

1,000 Kung-Fu Maniacs NOW AVAILABLE!

So lets get this New Year off to a very good start with a brand new release from Psytronik Software! The creative genius that is Alf Yngve never ceases to amaze us with his incredibly inventive C64 games and his latest offering is no different. 1,000 Kung-Fu Maniacs is a crazy side-scrolling beat 'em up set in the Ninja infested town of Blapsville. You are the MASTER OF AWESOME and are on a mission to find a missing toy robot - the only thing that stands in your way is a city filled with creeps, hoodlums, Ninjas and ... erm, MIMES?! The game features enhancements added by Richard 'Sub Hunter' Bayliss and superb soundtracks by Jon 'Sceptre Of Baghdad' Wells. And the good news is you can now download the complete game for FREE from www.psytronik.net and you will also be able to buy fully packaged Psytronik versions of the game on tape and disk later in January 2011. PREPARE FOR AWESOME!

Adventures in Time - Now Available for C16 / PLUS4!

The Psytronik disk version of this great game just managed to sneak into the Binary Zone Retrostore right at the end of 2010. Adventures in Time is a brilliant platform romp for the expanded C16 and Commodore Plus/4 that features a cute snorkel-headed hero who gets zzapped through time. The game features an intro sequence, excellent background graphics, nicely animated sprites and a simply wonderful soundtrack!

HYPER VIPER - Coming Soon! (C64)

Hyper Viper is a C64 conversion of a game released on the MSX way back in 1985. Jamie Howard has done a fine job converting the game onto the C64 which looks and plays just like the original - but now has improved presentation and music! The game features an officially licensed version of the track AM180 (you may remember it from the movie 28 Days Later) - You can hear the original version of the tune in the video below:-

Hyper Viper will be released on tape and disk for the Commodore 64 early in 2011. Keep an eye on the Psytronik website for more details!

SUB HUNTER (AMSTRAD CPC)

Another Psytronik release for 2011 that I'm very excited about is SUB HUNTER for the Amstrad CPC. The CPC version of the game has been produced by Paul 'Star Sabre' Kooistra and he has done an absolutely incredible job in converting the C64 game onto the Amstrad CPC. All the features and levels from the C64 version of the game are present in the CPC conversion (including the gorgeous parallax scrolling) and the game also features a selection of fantastic soundtracks by Herve Monchatre. The Amstrad CPC version of the main game itself is now complete and Paul is currently working on a separate intro sequence for the game which will be released later this year on tape, disk and as a FREE DOWNLOAD for the Amstrad CPC. More info about Sub Hunter CPC can be found on the Psytronik website.

AND THAT'S NOT ALL!

Those are only a few of the new releases currently in development here at the Psytronik HQ. I'm also hoping to release another game for the PC later this year, a follow-up to the Shoot 'Em Up Destruction Set for the C64 and there will hopefully be a Psytronik release of a sequel to a very famous C64 game ... Keep your peepers peeled on the Psytronik site and this blog for more info!

Thanks for reading, see you IN THE FUTURE!

Kenz / www.psytronik.net (02/01/11)

Psytronik website down but not out!

2010-06-18T00:24:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed the Psytronik Software website has not been working recently. Don't worry Psytronik fans, we currently have a team of boffins working on the problem and normal service will be resumed very soon. The actual website itself is fine, the bit that has broken is the all-important part that joins the domain to the website. As a temporary fix you can access the fully armed and operational Psytronik Software website by heading along to:-

www.psytronik.net

It's time for a Plus/4 adventure!

2010-05-25T23:12:00.000-07:00

Greetings fellow carbon units,

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

Amstrad ACTION!

2010-04-16T07:36:00.000-07:00

Greetings Humanoids!

It's always exciting when new releases get added to the Psytronik catalogue (well, I get excited about it anyway!) and it's even MORE exciting when it's releases for a new format that I haven't supported before. I was particularly pleased to add two titles for the Amstrad CPC to the Psytronik range this month as I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the Amstrad (and I'm not talking about the marsh at the bottom of the garden - Badum-tish!)

Anyway, I actually got into the Amstrad CPC kind of by mistake originally. Before I owned an Amstrad I was an avid ZX Spectrum user. I LOVED playing games on my Speccy and I can't imagine how many HOURS I used to wile away playing classic Ultimate games and various other Speccy related goodies - until one fateful day I went round to my friends house and played on his Commodore 64. My little computer-mad mind was blown apart by the beige wonderbox. I had NEVER seen a C64 in action until that moment. One of the games he showed me was Uridium and I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. Stunning bas-relief arcade style graphics, absolutely silky smooth scrolling and THAT music. And so started my love affair with the Commodore 64 and its awesome SID sound chip. From that moment on I was certain of just one thing ... I WANTED A COMMODORE 64! I lived and DREAMED about C64 games, I listened to C90 tapes filled with the latest Commodore 64 tunes that my friend compiled me and spent many a happy Saturday round at my friends house playing on his C64.

And then my Dad decided to buy me a new computer to upgrade my ageing Speccy. He obviously sought advice from Mr Computer Store bloke as to what computer to get me - and I can just picture the bloke in the store saying THIS computer comes with a colour monitor, a built-in tape deck, a better version of BASIC, stereo sound and MORE colours. You don't want to buy your son a Commodore 64, you want to buy him THIS computer ... Which was an Amstrad CPC 464 ... And so he did. Instead of zooming around in my Manta class starfighter blowing up dreadnoughts in Uridium what did I get instead? Roland on the sodding ropes!!

This is NOT Uridium!

BUT, before all you Amstrad fans start typing angry emails, fear not my retro chums. I stuck with this strange machine that my Dad had given me and after a while I discovered some real gaming gems were available for the Amstrad. I have many happy memories of playing delights such as Get Dexter, Tempest, Mercenary (faster than the C64 and higher-res too!), Feud (with THAT tune that blows away the C64 version), Knight Lore, Alien 8 and Head Over Heels (4 colour bitmap screens - NICE!) I even began to appreciate the AY-3-8912 sound chip thanks to the likes of David Whittaker and Dave Rogers who churned out some great tunes. It was those years spent dabbling with the Amstrad that game me a certain amount of fondness for the machine.

This computer is NOT s**t with sugar on top.
(see what I did there?)

Of course, all that came to an abrupt end when I eventually bought myself a C64 and sold my Amstrad, but the Amstrad love still remains to this day. :)

Now flash forward to 2010 and my little Psytronik Software label is churning out releases like billy'o. I received an email from Paul Koositra, an Australian programmer who was looking for a publisher for the 128K version of his awesome Star Sabre shoot 'em up and forthcoming title Dead on Time - both for the Amstrad CPC. I naturally jumped at the chance to support the Amstrad CPC once again and so we worked together on the Psytronik release of the games. Thanks to the wonders of email it was easy for Paul to send me Beta versions of the games but things got a bit more tricky when it came to actually mastering the games. The first obvious problem is that Paul lives over 8000 miles away from me. The second problem is getting hold of a supply of blank 3" disks - which ended up with me fighting in my PANTS on eBay over a box of the mythical (and rather pricey) 3" disks. The disks I received then had to have gooey labels removed (not a result of my pant-fighting, I might add), shiny new Psytronik labels added and then the disks had to be shipped all the way to Australia for Paul to copy the game onto them. The disks then had to be shipped all the back to the UK (a round-trip of over 16000 miles!) before I could add the Star Sabre disks to the Binary Zone store.

Only one other problem remained. I always like to test any Psytronik games before they go in the post. This wasn't a problem for Dead on Time becuase, in a moment of retro weakness, I had actually obtained an Amstrad CPC 464 with a colour monitor, and although it had been languishing in my shed for a while, it was nice to set it up once again so I could test the Dead on Time tapes.

My CPC 464 - no longer based in the shed!

BUT ... Star Sabre is a DISK game - and it's 128K only. So, in ANOTHER moment of retro weakness, I managed to win a CPC 6128 on eBay. A bit of a risky purchase I might add as it was an untested machine (and it cost me a tad more than I expected!) Luckily for me, the Amstrad itself worked fine. The built-in disk-drive didn't work however - but Paul warned me that the CPC drives were prone to the drive belts breaking. I followed the CPC Wiki guide to opening up a CPC in order to replace the drive belt, and sure enough, the belt had completely disintegrated! So after an hour of faffing about I managed to clear out all the bits of broken belt-belt, removed the gooey bits that were stuck to the spindle (what IS it with Amstrad disks and goo?) and I managed to fit a new drive belt. I reassembled the Amstrad, fired it up, inserted a Star Sabre disk and you know what happened? It only bloody worked!! This meant I could test the disks before they went in the post. Yay!

Red-hot CPC disk loading ACTION!

BUT, the CPC game saga didn't end there! Star Sabre was originally meant to be packaged in a 5.25" disk case - and I actually produced an inlay to fit inside one of these cases. As Dead on Time was a tape game Paul asked me if the game could be packaged in one of those clear twin-tape boxes that were popular with 8-bit games back in the day (I'm not quite sure why exactly so many single-tape games were released in double tape boxes, but I'm pretty sure it's just because they looked cooler on the shop-shelves). Anyway, when I put the two Amstrad games together it looked a bit strange having them in mis-matched packaging - but as a 3" disk will easily fit into a twin-tape box I decided at the very last minute to re-package the game so it would match Dead on Time. Phew!!

And that, my friends, is how the Amstrad CPC titles were added to the Psytronik range. It involved a heck of a lot of time, a lot of faffing (that's my word of the day) and a lot of cash outlay which I totally don't expect to get back with the sales of the games. But hey, that's not what Psytronik is about. It's putting those nice packages containing shiny Psytronik releases into the hands of retro gamers that makes it all worthwhile. :)

One last thing ... If there's anyone based in the UK who would be willing to duplicate some Star Sabre disks for me, please get in touch - kenz@binaryzone.org ... It would sure make things easier than sending the disks 16000 miles to be duplicated! The first batch of Star Sabre disks have now sold out but as soon as I sort out a way of getting more disks duplicated I shall make the game available in the Binary Zone Retro Store once again.

Thanks for reading, see you ... IN THE FUTURE!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com (16/04/10)

One Man & His NEW Mic

2010-02-24T02:35:00.000-08:00

Greetings once again Retro Chums!

Now that Armalyte is almost ready to be released for the PC I've been spending time working on some extra bonus goodies that will be included on the Armalyte CD-ROM. As I will soon be doing a second series of One Man & His Mic retro music podcasts I decided to make a special show devoted to Psytronik Software that will be included on the CD-ROM.

It has been over a year since I last did a podcast so my first job was to set up all my recording gear once again. One of the reasons that I haven't actually done a podcast in a while is because my old mic broke! This gave me the chance to try out my shiny new gold Behringer mic that I received as a Chrimbo prezzie (thanks Nan!) After a bit of crawling around under my desk to plug in various leads I was ready to rock and roll. But straight away a strange problem reared its head. I couldn't record any sounds internally on my PC! For some reason any internal recordings were really, REALLY faint and for a while I couldn't figure out why. But then I found the problem. My new mic is actually a USB device and when it's plugged in it takes over ALL the recording settings on my PC. Not really a problem - I only actually need the Mic when I'm recording my talky bits for the show so I unplugged it and I could then record stuff internally. Sorted!

Here's where the magic happens - in the recently re-painted Psytronik HQ!

My next task was decide what tracks to feature in the show. As the show is going to be about the history of Psytronik software I arranged the Psytronik releases chronologically and then chose two tracks from each game - one for the main track and one to use as a sound bed behind my talky bits. Once I had selected the tracks for the show I then recorded any of the tunes that I hadn't already recorded previously. I then dropped the tracks onto the multi-track editor in Cool Edit leaving a 30 second gap between each one for my talky bits. Each One Man & His Mic show is 1 hour long and luckily enough the tracks I had chosen from all the Psytronik games perfectly fitted into 1 hour! Here's the tracklist for the show:-

One Man & His Mic - Psytronik Software Special!

01. Sceptre of Baghdad Intro (DJ Skitz)
02. The Sceptre of Nu Baghdad (Kate Z).
03. Archetype - FZ vs JMJ Remix (FeekZoid).
04. Nukenin & The Ronin Title (TMR) [C64].
05. PsykoZone Intro (FeekZoid) [C64].
06. Sub Hunter Title (Maniacs of Noise) [C64]
07. Escape from Arth Title (FeekZoid) [C64].
08. Mayhem in Monsterland Title (Tonka) [PC]
09. Creatures Remix (Infamous)
10. Creatures 2 Redux (Infamous)
11. Joe Gunn in-game (Laxity) [C64]
12. Armalyte Loader (Martin Walker) [C64]
13. The Path Of Destiny - Knight 'n' Grail Subtune #2 (Project N.A.)
14. Knight 'n' Grail - Good Ending Orchestral Arrangement (Hans Axelsson)
15. The Last Amazon Title Tune (Richard Bayliss) [C64]
16. The Wild Bunch (Jon Wells) [C64]
17. Star Sabre in-game tune (Targhan) [Amstrad CPC]
18. Armalyte Title Tune (Infamous) [PC]

The next step was to jot down any notes and bits of trivia that I want to mention about each game and then record my links. I plugged in my new Mic and set to work waffling about each Psytronik game in turn. The sound quality of the mic was excellent - much better than my old mic - nice one Behringer! I always try to keep my talky-bits to around 30 seconds so you never have to wait for too long for the next tune to play when you listen to the show. I also try to record each link in one pass to give the show a kind of "live" feel - although some links took a few attempts when my tongue got tied in knots or when I remembered something else I wanted to mention. The links are then normalized and hard-limited to make them nice and clear and are then dropped into the editor between each main track. The soundbeds are then tweaked and arranged in the editor to play behind my talky-bits at a low volume.

My shiny new mic with the OMAHM show on the screen in the background.

Now the show is really taking shape! DJ Skitz delivered a very cool Sceptre of Baghdad intro jingle (complete with a loud mother-hubbard of a breakbeat) which I slotted into place at the start of the show. When I'm using the multi-track editor I can usually edit a complete One Man & His Mic episode using just four separate tracks. One for the main tracks, one for the sound beds, one for my talky bits and a spare track for any twiddly stuff or crossfades. The picture below shows how the edited show looks in Cool Edit.

With everything in place I then created a mixdown of the show which I test out in my mp3 player while I'm travelling to work. While I'm listening to the show I make mental notes of any sound levels I need to change or if I have any ideas for gags or extra audio snippets I can sneak into each show. The show is then finished off with me adding or changing any bits that I thought about when I tested the show. A final mixdown is then created along with a high-quality mp3 which will be included on the Armalyte CD-ROM.

I'm really pleased with how this show has turned out. It's nice and varied as it contains some cool remixes of music from Psytronik games (there's some real treats on there for Knight 'n' Grail fans!), a nice selection of Commodore 64 tunes (recorded from a REAL Commodore 64 of course) and I'm also happy that there's an Amstrad CPC tune included in the show which adds to the variety. As well as being included on the Armalyte CD-ROM the show will also be released online later this year as part of series 2 of One Man & His Mic - so keep an eye on www.binaryzone.org/podcast for details about series 2!

And that's it for now. Thanks for reading and I'll see you ... IN THE FUTURE

Kenz / www.psytronik.com.

Retrovision 2010

2010-02-07T14:13:00.000-08:00

Greetings Programs!

Firstly, an apology for the lack of blog updates recently. This has been due to various factors - some personal, some mundane (including repainting the Psytronik office which took a MONTH due to all the retro stuff that had to be moved around!) All this resulted in the Psytronik releases being put on hold for a while and, unfortunately, this meant the games I was hoping to release just before Christmas (Armalyte PC & Star Sabre 128) were not completed in time. But don't worry folks, work has now resumed on these releases and both games will soon be available.

So what has been happening with Psytronik Software recently I hear you cry. Well, I've just got back to the Psytronik HQ after attending the awesome Retrovision 2010 event and I thought I'd better type up a report of the event while it's all still fresh in my mind! So are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin ...

My epic voyage to RV2010 began on Friday February 5th 2010 with me pointing the Kenzmobile(tm) in the direction of Milton Keynes. I was being accompanied to the event by my good buddy DJ Skitz (of SlayRadio fame) and in order shorten the journey a tad I crashed at the SkitzHQ after some tasty pizza scoffage (a Dominos "big smoky" - for techno buffs who are listening).

Me & Skitz zzoomed off to Oxford on Saturday morning and arrived at the event venue (The Folly Bridge Inn) just before noon. We would have arrived a bit earlier had it not been for a slight navigational error. I noticed I already had "RV guesthouse" programmed into my TomTom but what I didn't realise was it was actually a different place we stayed at a couple of years ago - so I was expecting it to navigate me to the White House View Hotel opposite the Folly and we ended up somewhere else completely! Nyeeeeeuurrrrrr!

Dunnu-dunnu-dunnu-dunnu-BEERMAN!

Anyhoo, once at the Folly a quick recce revealed the main room to be pretty much set up and operational (and stuffed with an amazing amount of retro-tech, the most I'd ever seen at an RV event in fact!) Me & Skitz unloaded the car and got the Binary Zone / Psytronik stand set up and running. This was the first time I had taken three separate systems to an event so I had a bit more setting up to do than normal.

The Binary Zone table crammed with Psytronik goodies!
(Photo by VinnyM)

My table featured a Spectrum 128 +2 complete with audio CD loading system and supa-clear SCART TV lead, the Specadore 64 (I couldn't NOT bring that along as it always proves to be popular at these events!) along with my new addition to the Specadore family, the 1541 MK II Microdrive (okay, it's a 1541 drive sprayed black complete with Speccy stripes to match the Specadore!) I also took my PC with me in order to demonstrate the full PC version of Armalyte for the first time - and this proved to be VERY popular.

Armalyte on the PC complete with a packaging mockup next to the screen!
(Photo by VinnyM)

This was the first time the FULL version of Armalyte had been on show and it gave people the chance to play the later levels of the game - which caused some "ooo-ing" and "aah-ing" as the beautiful graphics by Smila went scrolling past. I also demonstrated some of the bonus goodies that will be featured with the game including the mix-e-load music demo, the artwork "making of" demo and the jukebox (although anything music-related was pretty much drowned out by all the other retro noises in the room!) The PC conversion of the game is now pretty much 100% complete, I just need to finish off some of the bonus items that will be featured on the CD-ROM. (The game will be officially released and shipped in April 2010 - in case you were wondering!)

Frank "Games That Weren't" Gasking blowing up stuff on Armalyte!

One of the great things about these retro events is that you meet various people from the retro scene and retro forums. It was great to see lots of familiar faces from the YakYak forum, some new faces from the Retro Gamer forum, people I've met at various events and people I've known for years thanks to my retro related shenanigans! The atmosphere at RV is always really friendly and there's always people you can chat too and play classic games with. The namebadges also help to put faces to forum ID's!

Alex Aris battles the H'siffian Empire

The rest of saturday was spent playing games (Trashman on the Speccy! Yayy!), drinking Guinness (double-yayy!), playing MORE games and drinking MORE Guinness! As well as being able to demonstrate the Psytronik releases on the screens I also took along some prototype artwork from forthcoming releases - some of which was exclusively unveiled at RV. The picture below shows the first ever Psytronik Compilation which was inspired by the famous They Sold A Million compilation released back in 1985. Despite not quite selling a million the Psytronik compilation features four cracking Psytronik games, will fill four disk-sides (or two tapes) and will be released in March 2010 - you heard it here folks!

The first Psytronik compilation COMING SOON!
(Photo by VinnyM)

A herd of us then ambled off for a curry at Chutneys (shouldn't that be "Chunteys", Speccy fans?) - who (after keeping us waiting for a yonk outside) managed to accomodate over 30 retro fiends and I was soon replete with a surprisingly hot madras curry which made me hiccup somewhat.

More Armalyte blastage - this time with Piku at the helm

The evening was rounded off back at the Folly with a bit more retro gaming before the racket from Rockband was starting to damage my brain (it was very hard trying to play Bugaboo the Flea with all that din!) so I ambled over the road to the hotel to entertain DJ Skitz with lots of curry induced windypops.

RV2010 - It was just a blur!
(Photo by VinnyM)

And then all of a sudden it was SUNDAY! The very nice people at the White House View Hotel (plug plug) laid on a scrummy cooked brekkie which energized me & Skitz for another day of gaming FUN! I always like Sundays at RV as it's a great chill-out type day. I spent Sunday alternating chatting with RV peeps downstairs in the pub and gaming upstairs. A deelish Sunday roast was then consumed before me & Skitz began dismantling the Zone for the long journey home.

The brill Armalyte artwork demo runs in the background while
the main game runs happily in Windows 7 on the laptop.

And so that was Retrovision 2010 - an excellent weekend! Before I go, I'd just like to do a few shout-outs to various peeps at the event. Due to brain addledness I can't remember everyone I chatted with but special menchies go to:- My most excellent travelling companion DJ "Zer0page" Skitz, Vinny "C64 Endings" Mainolfi (thanx for the photos!), Frank "Games that Weren't" Gasking (thanx for the VIC warez), StarshipUK, VintageMatt, PsychoRob (thanx for the great event!), Amy & Piku, Dungeon Dave & Dawn (I'll bump into you in Malvern ONE day!), the awesomely awesome Bog (good luck in the U.S of A, old friend), Markie (there was no way I was gonna let you miss an RV dude!), THE Jon (not just any Jon), Bane, Alex Aris, Beerman, Mayhem, Jools, MadHippo, Juice, Paul "RG" Drury, Rinoa, SirClive, Renegade Si, Dave Moore & the RS gang and the RCM posse (see you guys in May!) ... Special thanks also for the staff at the Folly Bridge Inn for looking after us (or should I say "putting up with us") and for filling us with copious amounts of lovely food and drink. Sorry to everyone I forgot to mention here - blame the guinness!

If you would like to see the complete set of photos that I took at RV2010 CLICK HERE!

And that's yer lot for now. In the next blog entry I'll be detailing the making of one of the extras that will be featured on the Armalyte CD-ROM. And just to whet your appetite I can tell you that a certain One Man will be setting up his NEW Mic in order to record something very special for the Armalyte CD!

See you ... IN THE FUTURE!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

More Psytronik goodies on the way!

2009-11-18T05:37:00.001-08:00

Hiya gang!

Things have been busier than the Mayor of Busyville on a busy day at the Psytronik HQ recently. I've actually been working on FOUR Psytronik releases simultaneously (eep!) which I'm trying to have finished and released by the end of 2009. The good news is two of the releases are now ready and are now available in the BZ retro store. They are The Wild Bunch (which I talked about in the last blog entry) and the superb VIC-20 RPG package Realms of Quest.

Realms of Quest for the VIC-20 - featuring swords, scorcery, dungeons AND dragons!

And on the subject of Realms of Quest, congratulations from the Psytronik team go to Peter Hamilton from Midlothian who has won himself a rather smart Commodore Computer Club polo-shirt as he was the first person to order the game. Well done to Peter for winning the shirt and our thanks go to the excellent guys at the Commodore Computer Club for donating the shirt.

There was a bit of a delay with the release of the disk version of The Wild bunch as some eagle-eyed gamers spotted a couple of minor bugs in the tape version of the game. These bugs were duly squished by Jon and I'm pleased to say the disk version of the game is now being shipped and the disk features the full and final bug-free version of the game. While Jon was busy fixing the game it gave me a bit of extra time to work on the game artwork. In the end I decided to have the Premium inlays professionally printed in full colour and the inlays also feature the game instructions printed on the inside in full colour too - coooool!

A still from the cool Wild Bunch intro sequence (exclusive to the C64 disk version)

A lot of progress has been made on the stunning PC conversion of Armalyte which is being handled by the heroes known as S-A-S Designs. I'm very pleased to announce that the main game itself has now been finished and is now in the hands of the beta-testers who will be giving the game a serious thrashing (oo-er) before it's unleashed into the universe at large. Smila has sent over a bundle of new screenshots from the PC version of the game for you to drool over:-

Firing some serious weaponry on the Alien-esque second level

Snaffling some power-ups while walkers stomp around beneath

Unleashing some laser-death torpedoes on an end-of-level baddie

Check out those gorgeous background graphics by Smila!

Rampaging through the shiny sparkling crystalline level

Not only will the CD-ROM contain the full PC version of the game but it will also contain some rather tasy bonus extras too. These will include a stunning MIX-E-LOAD demo (inspired by the famous C64 Delta mix-e-load), an Armalyte MUSIC JUKEBOX featuring the fab music from the PC version of the game and a really neat executable slideshow showing the development of the new game artwork.

The brill Armalyte PC Jukebox - just one of the bonus extras included with the game

The CD-ROM will also contain the original C64 version of the game in emulator-friendly form along with assorted other bonus goodies carefully compiled for your entertainment and enjoyment. To pre-order your Armalyte PC CD-ROM head on over to the BZ store.

The final Psytronik Software release for 2009 will be the awesome Amstrad CPC shoot 'em Star Sabre. The game itself is now finished and I've also produced the inlay for the Premium disk version of the game which you can see below:

At long last an Amstrad CPC title has been added to the Psytronik range!

The game will be available on original Amstrad 3" disks and will be compatible with the Amstrad CPC 6128 along with the CPC 464 (as long as you have a disk-drive and memory expansion!) Hopefully the game will be available in the BZ store some time in December 2009.

The Star Sabre loading screen complete with Psytronik logo - groovy!

One final tasty titbit of news for ya. Since I released the Psytronik Premium Range earlier this year I've been literally swamped with a couple of requests (heh!) from people asking if they can buy the plastic 5.25" disk cases from me. The answer to that question is now YES as I've made the replacement cases available in the BZ store (click here for ordering info!)

At last you can replace those busted C64 game cases!

And that's yer lot for now. Keep an eye on www.psytronik.com for more news and info on the latest Psytronik Software releases.

See you ... IN THE FUTURE!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

There's a snake in my boot!

2009-09-10T01:52:00.000-07:00

For a long time now my coding chum Jon Wells has been working on a C64 conversion of the Western adventure game The Wild Bunch. This was originally released waaaay back in 1984 by Firebird Software on the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad. I'm particularly fond of this game as it was one of the first budget titles I bought for my Speccy and I remember having great fun trying to round up members of the Wild Bunch, drinking and gambling in the Saloon and taking part in deadly gunfights (as you do).

Reach for your guns, you blue-faced varmint! (ZX Spectrum)

Jon is also a fan of the game and one of his early coding projects was a C64 conversion of the game. Work on the C64 version ground to a stop and for a long while it looked like the game would never appear on the C64. This was until Jon unearthed some disks in 2008 that contained his unfinished C64 conversion of The Wild Bunch. After an enthusiastic response from Frank 'Games that Weren't' Gasking, Jon decided to continue working on the game. A development diary was put online (which you can read HERE) and after another year of development the C64 version of The Wild Bunch was finally completed in September 2009.

Aaaarrgh! He got me! (C64)

So what does this have to do with Psytronik Software I hear you cry? Well, when Jon decided to finish off his C64 conversion of the game he sent me an email to ask if I would like to help out with the packaging of the game. As I'd had an excellent time working with Jon on various projects back in the 90s I jumped at the chance of working with him again. I produced a full colour tape inlay for the game along with authentic Firebird-style tape labels to go with it. I also put together a Wild Bunch soundtrack CD which contained music from the game (digitally recorded from my C64) along with various other C64 Western style tunes. 25 copies of the CD were then given away in a prize draw to people who pre-ordered the game from Jon.

An early pic of my Wild Bunch C64 inlay.

Once I had produced the tape inlay for Jon I then had an idea. As a bit of an experiment I used the tape inlay template and designed a full colour Psytronik Software inlay for Jon's game Sceptre of Baghdad (which was also the first Psytronik release). I was never happy with the black and white photocopied inlay that the game was presented with back in 1994 so it was really nice to see the game with a proper full colour inlay. When my C64 chums Frank Gasking and Vinny 'C64 Endings' Mainolfi saw the new inlay for Sceptre of Baghdad they urged me to properly re-release the game with the new artwork - and so I did! This led onto the re-release of ALL the Psytronik titles along, the re-release of classic C64 games like Mayhem in Monsterland, Creatures 1 & 2 and Armalyte and of the release of new C64 titles like Sub Hunter and Knight 'n' Grail! So it was the creation of the tape inlay for the C64 version of The Wild Bunch that led to the relaunch of Psytronik Software!

But our story doesn't end there. For the last few weeks I've been secretly beavering away on a special top secret release for Psytronik Software ... I'm very pleased to announce that a Premium Disk Edition of The Wild Bunch will be released by Psytronik in October 2009. Renamed slightly to Wanted: The Wild Bunch the Psytronik disk version will feature a new animated intro and end sequence (not included on the tape version) along with the complete game itself and a brand new bitmap loading screen (drawn in dynamic Kenz-o-Vision)! The game will be presented with full colour glossy artwork and the Premium Edition will also contain FREE copy of the The Wild Bunch soundtrack CD that I mentioned earlier!

The lovely PREMIUM Disk Edition of Wanted:The Wild Bunch!

You can pre-order the tape and Psytronik disk version of the game NOW from the Binary Zone Retrostore. You also order the tape and (very soon) a DIGITAL DOWNLOAD version directly from Jon Wells - click the banner below for details:

And that's yer lot for now, thanks for reading, pardners!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

VIC, VIC, Hooray!

2009-07-20T02:16:00.001-07:00

I've always been intrigued by the VIC-20 computer but had never really used one properly until recently. It was during the release of the VIC-20 game Carling the Spider on the Psytronik label that I finally fired up the XVIC emulator and started dabbling with VIC-20 games. And you know what, I was impressed! A bit of YouTube searching also revealed some fantastic VIC-20 demo releases - many of which were designed to run on an unexpanded 5K VIC! Check out these babies:-

We are the robots, doo doo dee doo!

It's not possible - it's Impossiblator!

WOW! I hadn't realised there was such an active demo scene on the VIC and as I just lurve demos I rapidly became a new fan of the machine. Emulation and YouTube videos are one thing - experiencing them on a REAL machine are another! So I recently took the plunge and bought a complete VIC-20 setup from eBay. As well as being able to experience games and demos on the real deal it also means I can properly playtest forthcoming VIC-20 Psytronik releases (and play Carling the Spider on a proper machine - yay!) :)

Hi-ho, Vic, hi-ho, hi-ho!

And talking of our little spidery chum Carling, I'm pleased to announce the game will be available on TAPE from Psytronik.com VERY soon (budget / premium disk & digital download versions are now available). Here's a pic of the tape version for you to drool over:-

Along came a Spider (being chased by BALLS OF STEEL!)

And I've got some MORE great news for VIC fans. The big Summer Psytronik VIC-20 release REALMS OF QUEST is nearing completion. Here's how the premium disk version is currently looking:-

"Let me tell you of the days of high adventure"

The complete Realms of Quest trilogy along with a host of
bonus games - all on one flippy-floppy!

If you look closely at the pictures above you'll see there's a Commodore Computer Club logo on there. This is because the heroes at the Commodore Club club have very kindly offered to sponsor this release! Many thanks guys. :)

The disk will contain the complete REALMS OF QUEST Trilogy of RPG games - including a special 16K DUNJON CRAWLER version of REALMS OF QUEST III. You also get the choice to play the new REALMS games with the original graphics designed by the games author Ghislain - or a special enhanced edition with fantastic graphics by Saehn of Style Designs. Check out the screenies below:-

Aaiieee! A skeletal warriour attacks!

Have at ye Kobold!

The REALMS OF QUEST disk also contains a fantastic selection of bonus games on the flip-side of the disk. These will all run happily on an unexpanded VIC-20 and the compilation includes conversions of classic arcade games + much more. The disk-only release will be presented with glossy full colour inlay art and a whopping 36 page manual!

REALMS OF QUEST will be available to order from Psytronik Software in September 2009. Keep an eye on www.psytronik.com for details.

Thanks for reading, keep it RETRO!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

New Psytronik website now online!

2009-07-01T04:56:00.001-07:00

Greetings blogonauts!

Since the relaunch of Psytronik Software things have gone a bit barmy - so much so in fact it got to the point there simply wasn't room on the Psytronik webpage to include all the info about the new releases. This is probably down to the fact that the Psytronik site began merely as a "history of Psytronik" page hiding within the Binary Zone Interactive website.

Anyhoo, rather than try to cobble info about new releases onto the history page I've been busy working on a shiny new website for Psytronik Software. The end result is now online and is hopefully a bit of an improvement on the old site! At the moment the new site contains all the info from the old Psytronik page - but this time neatly arranged with separate sections devoted to news, releases, history, and press etc. Some sections are still incomplete at the moment but the site will soon be bulging with retro gaming goodliness. Head along to www.psytronik.com to check out the new site.

The new Psytronik site - slicker than the mess dumped in the sea by the Exxon Valdez

So what else has been happening in the weird and wonderful world of Psytronik recently? Firstly, our Summer mega-game Knight 'n' Grail is now ready to be shipped at long last! The final version of the game has been approved by various reviewers and testers and I'll be busy bundling the K'n'G disks in the post in the next week or so. To promote the launch of the game I've put together a brand new promo video for the game which will be unveilled at the LCP party in Sweden later this month. Here's a picture from the promo vid for you to drool over!

Wok-wok-bligga-blogga! There's dungeon capers aplenty in Knight 'n' Grail!

I'm also very pleased to announce the first Psytronik release for the Amstrad CPC range has now been confirmed. It's the stunning 128K version of STAR SABRE which will be available as a premium 3" disk release soon. The game is an excellent sideways scrolling shoot 'em up in which you control a Sabre scout craft on a mission to defend a Xeno-archaeological site that is being attacked by vessels of unknown origin. Featuring excellent presentation, gripping shoot 'em action and funky 128K music this is yet another Psytronik release you should not miss!

Eat laser death you big blobbling red ... er, space thing!

And that's yer lot for now. Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

Psytronik PREMIUM Range Released!

2009-05-14T01:17:00.001-07:00

Greetings once again Retro Chums!

One of the most difficult things I've had to do since relaunching Psytronik Software is to find a good way to package C64 disks. The tapes were easy to do as people still use tapes and you can quite easily buy blank tapes and empty cases. Disks on the other hand were an entirely different matter. As soon as the first couple of Psytronik tape games appeared I received emails asking if disk versions would be available so it was obvious I needed to release the games on disk as well ... but how? I couldn't exactly walk into my local stationary shop and ask for some 5.25" floppy disk cases - I would have gotten some funny looks doing that in 2008!

My initial idea for the Psytronik disks was to package them in plastic wallets - the same as the ones US Gold and Melbourne House used back in the day. I thought as the packaging was quite generic something similar still may be on the market today ... I was wrong. After much trawling through the web and stationary catalogues I couldn't find anything even resembling the wallets. So I then moved onto plan B. I contacted a plastic manufacturing company and told them what I was after. They seemed to think they could help so I sent them a US Gold game case to examine. Good news! They had the equipment to produce similar wallets and sent me a sample which, although not perfect (their equipment would have to be calibrated to produce the proper sleeves) it was close enough. Enclosed with the sample was a price quote for supplying 200 of the wallets - it was almost 900 pounds!! This meant the disk wallets alone would cost almost £5.00 each (and that doesn't include the artwork, floppy disk, disk sleeve, disk label and instruction sheet).

C64 disk wallets - it's not cheap to produce these in 2009!

I abandoned that idea and resumed my search. As I had no luck finding plastic cases or wallets my helpful chum Dave (from Retro Software) pointed me to a site that sold cardboard packaging. I rather liked their white boxes and the internal measurements were just right to hold a C64 floppy disk. As the boxes were rectangular it meant I could use the same artwork that I used for the Psytronik tapes. With the boxes bookmarked I then searched for glossy labels I could stick to the boxes. I found some A4 glossy labels online but they were a tad pricey. As I was really keen on getting the disk range launched I took the plunge and ordered 200 labels. Fortunately, the labels were excellent quality. I designed templates that could be cut out and folded around the white boxes. There was enough room on an A4 page to also include a label for the back of the box, a Psytronik logo and the disk label! The Psytronik Deluxe Disk Range was born.

The Deluxe Range meant I could make disk games available at last.

The Deluxe range wasn't without its problems however. I hadn't taken into consideration how long it would take to produce each box. Every single box had to assembled, the artwork printed, cut out and applied to the front and back. Fiddly! The boxes were also a pain to package and post. They had to be reinforced inside so they didn't get squashed during transit - and I also had to include extra packing inside (along with loads of bubble-wrap) to protect them from the wrath of the Royal Mail. Still, the boxes looked cool though so I was willing to put up with the hassle of producing them ... but then disaster struck! In April 2009 the place where I bought the A4 glossy labels stopped trading. Aargh! A search for alternative glossy labels immediately ensued and I managed to find some A4 glossy vinyl labels. These were excellent quality, really nice to work with but were REALLY expensive. So now I had a decision to make ... do I increase the price of deluxe games or try one last time to find alternative packaging. I opted for the latter ...

With time (and glossy labels) rapidly running out I went back to searching for plastic cases. This was actually inspired by my office job in the "real world". We received an update for the accounting package we use and the CD came in a 5.25" plastic case just like C64 games used to use. "Aha!" I thought. If this company is using them then you must still be able to buy them. A more intensive search ensued along with emails to suppliers I used in my previous job ... One of my old contacts replied saying he could supply cases the size I required. I tentatively ordered a box of cases from him and waited for them to arrive. Not quite knowing what to expect I ripped into the package that arrived a few days later and my heart jumped when I saw what was inside. The cases I received were almost *identical* to the ones that C64 games were packaged in back in the day ... but these were brand new!!! Using measurements from an original C64 game sleeve as a guide I produced a template that I could use to adapt the existing Psytronik game artwork to fit on the new sleeve. A test inlay was printed and I was gobsmacked ... I has holding in my hand a *proper* C64 disk game in a plastic case! The Psytronik Software Premium Range was born.

You have no idea how long it has taken me to find these cases!

The last few weeks have been spent producing new artwork for ALL the Psytronik Premium titles. The good thing about re-doing all the artwork is I was able to *improve* on the game artwork in places ... It was fun adding little things like having the catalogue number on the spine, moving the Psytronik slab logo to BELOW the fist logo (I have no idea why it was above on the tape spines!), fitting FOUR screenshots on the back of the disk inlay and for the final embellishment - a nice gold (or silver) PREMIUM EDITION logo now proudly adorns the front of each inlay.

Psytronik Premium Disk Releases - Now that's what I'm talking about!

I'm really pleased (and relieved!) to have finally solved the problem with the disk packaging. The Premium Psytronik releases look exactly how I wanted the Psytronik disks to look originally - just like proper C64 games from back in the C64's heyday! You can now order ALL the Psytronik disk games in the Premium packaging (CLICK HERE) and don't worry if you've already bought budget or deluxe versions, you can upgrade your existing versions to Premium Versions! (CLICK HERE).

The new Premium range - it's all spiralling out of control! :)

Please note that I will be discontinuing the Deluxe Range as soon as I've used up my last few labels and cardboard boxes - so if you want any Deluxe titles for your collection you'd better be quick! :)

Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

Armalyte blasts off once again!

2009-05-04T05:38:00.000-07:00

Greetings once again fellow retro-beings!

Can you believe it has been over 20 years since we returned to Delta-space to do battle with the H'siffian Khanate?! Well, now here's your chance to re-live that epic battle as Armalyte has now re-launched for the C64.

I've spent the last few days finishing off the packaging for the Psytronik 2009 re-release and I must say it has turned out rather neat. One of the things I enjoy doing with the Psytronik releases is improving on the original release where possible. For example, I typed up the disk instructions using the original Thalamus instructions as a guide. When I reached the SCOREBOARD section I was surprised at how poor the illustration was that depicted the status panel functions. To remedy this for the re-release I used a screen-grab from the game along with red arrows to point out the various functions. Have a look at the pictures from each manual below to compare the difference!

The 1988 scoreboard pic - not gorgeous!

The 2009 manual - mm! gorgeous!

Another thing that I improved for the 2009 instructions was the SHIP ENHANCEMENT section that detailed the power-ups. The original version was text only and the generator power-up had been omitted completely! For the new version I included images of each power-up so you know what you are collecting and included the generator power-up in the manual. I know it's not really vitally important to include these things to the manual but it's nice to be able improve on things where possible ... :)

And talking of improving things, I received the completed disk menu from Jason 'TMR' Kelk yesterday. I really liked the disk menu that came with the original disk version of Armalyte (I loved those colour cycling rasters in the original) so I thought it would be neat to feature something similar in the re-release. As side 1 of the disk contains just the actual game there was no need for a disk menu there - but side 2 is a different kettle of fish entirely (who exactly keeps their fish in a kettle by the way?) Anyway, as side 2 of the disk contains lots of goodies (the loading screen + music, two Walkers Warbles music demos, three rare Armalyte game previews and a demo of the unreleased Armalyte 2) I asked TMR to produce a menu for side 2 done in the style of the original menu - and he did just that!

When I received the menu the first thing I did was prod number 1 to try out the loading pic. But nothing happened! So I tried all the number keys and nothing loaded ... umm! The penny then dropped and I tried moving the joystick - and the cycling colours moved! Pressing fire then loaded the desired program. I didn't actually realise you could use the joystick to select a file on the original C64 version - I've always used the number keys (and to think I've owned the original disk version for over 20 years! hehe!) Anyway, I asked Mr Kelk if he could also add keyboard select to the menu and he did just that, what a nice chap!

Anyway, now that the disk contents are ready and the packaging and instructions are complete the first wave of Armalyte deluxe editions are now ready to launch. Here's a photo of a few of them in all their shiny loveliness! These will hit the Royal Mail this week so if you've pre-ordered the C64 disk version you won't have to wait long now.

And now some exciting news for those of you looking forward to the PC remake of the game. Smila has uploaded a video featuring footage from the PC version of the game. I nagged him to include the Philip Glass music as it gave me goosebumps when I watched the video while listening to that music! Obviously we can't use this particular track in the PC remake of the game but I'm hoping the in-game music will be inspired by it!

You can order the 2009 C64 Edition of Armalyte NOW from the Binary Zone Interactive store (click HERE for details). You will be also be able to pre-order the PC version soon as well (keep an eye on this blog for details).

Until next time, per aspera ad astra!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

The quest for the Holy Grail

2009-04-26T15:23:00.001-07:00

Greetings once again retro chums!

A forthcoming Psytronik C64 release that I'm particularly looking forward to is Knight 'n' Grail. The game is being programmed by Mikael Tillander with additional graphics (and box artwork) by Håkon 'Archmage' Repstad and it really is shaping up into something special.

I've been playtesting the game recently and the more I've been playing it the more it has been impressing me. So much so in fact I thought I'd devote a blog entry to the game just so I can bring you some screenshots from the game. Before that though, here's a preview of the superb box artwork by Archmage to whet your appetites:-

The game features a brave armour-clad Knight on a quest to find the legendary Holy Grail. The game begins in a castle which you must explore. Scattered around are switches that open up new areas when you smash them with your sword. You must also find special suits of armour and swords which are important for your quest.

The game is made up of over 200 (!) screens split into different scrolling areas. During your quest your will encounter various monsters and an assortment of rather large bosses. Lets take a look at some screens from the game shall we?

The picture above is from quite early in the game. The Knight is wearing the the armour of water which he has just collected. This will make him immune from the water dripping from the ceiling. Using the elemental armour is an important part of the game - but that's all I'm going to say about that! :)

Another screen from inside the castle. The knight is battling some spinning stone nasties here. These guys are made of pretty solid stuff so it's better to dodge underneath them as they bounce up and down rather than waste time hurling your sword at them. You can use your sword to kill a lot of the enemies in the game and certain swords are more effective against certain enemies.

Here's a shot of the Upper Cave. The Knight has encountered a tall stone Golem who takes a quite a few hits to kill. One of the things I like about the game is how it uses scrolling. The areas you explore in the game scroll smoothly horizontally. This is very impressive especially considering how much colour is being displayed on screen.

Here you can see the Knight riding a mine-cart in the game! Wheeee! Not only do you use the mine-cart to travel along this part of the game but you will also need to stand on it to reach some objects high up on the screen.

Our brave night has found the well of wishes. This is actually a teleport that allows you to travel from one end of the map to the other instantly (which saves a lot of time as this is a BIG game!)

I love this section of the game - it really reminds me of the bridge section from Ghosts 'n' Goblins. The fireball that you can see in front of the Knight has actually burst through the ground from the lava below. I love the use of colour in this area - superb! One of the (many) things I like about this game is how it rewards you with some new gorgeously drawn background graphics, monsters or even a boss confrontation as you progress through the game. It really makes you keep wanting to carry on playing just so you can see the deeper levels of the game!

Here be dragons! This is just one of the awesome bosses that you will encounter in the game. This particular dragon attacks you with a hail of ice. Wearing the correct armour will protect you from that - but you still have to defeat the dragon itself!

Here's our hero battling through the lower temple. Not only has the Knight got to contend with claws bursting through the floor but an evil wizard is trying to Zzap! him with magic too. I guess you could say it's a hard days Knight (gnn!) Dig that shiny gold armour though - you will have to work hard to earn that (but lets just say it's definitely worth the effort!)

Knight 'n' Grail is really coming together nicely now and most (if not all) of the screens are now in place. I've just played a version that includes music for the first time and it works really well and adds lots of atmosphere to this beautifully constructed game (the title tune is reminiscent of the classic C64 theme from Ghosts 'n' Goblins - how cool is that?!) All being well the game will be available to order on disk for the C64 in June 2009 from www.psytronik.com so please keep an eye on the website (and this blog) for more details.

Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

Armalyte on the PC - oh yes!!

2009-04-19T09:03:00.000-07:00

Greetings once again gamers!

I've got some very exciting news for all you shoot 'em up fans out there. I'm very pleased to announce that the first Psytronik Software PC title will be released on CD-ROM later this year. It will be a PC conversion of the classic CBM 64 game ARMALYTE - complete with specially updated graphics, animation, music and sound effects!

The PC conversion is being handled by S-A-S Designs - a team consisting of Stuart Collier (code), Trevor 'Smila' Storey (gfx & design) and Infamous (music & sfx). These guys have been responsible for some superb PC remakes of classic games including Hunter's Moon and Bruce Lee to name but two. If you've seen any of these remakes you will know these chaps are seriously good at what they do!

So how did all this come about then? Well, it's basically a story of everyone being in the right place at the right time. After the Psytronik re-release of Mayhem in Monsterland proved to be so popular I decided to contact Dan Phillips to ask if I could also re-release Armalyte on the C64. He gave the idea the thumbs-up so I contacted the owner of the Armalyte IP (Andy Roberts) and he also approved the idea. Smila mentioned that he and Stu C were busting to do a remake of Armalyte for the PC so I ran the idea of releasing a PC remake of Armalyte commercially past Dan & Andy and the Armalyte PC version was given the green light!

As we didn't have permission to use the original artwork from the game Smila produced brand-new artwork for the game based on the original design. The fantastic picture Smila produced was ideal not only for the C64 re-release but also the PC version as well! I then produced a new logo for the game that was reminiscent of the original logo but sufficiently different to avoid any problems further down the line.

The PC version of the game will be presented on a CD-ROM in a white Wii-style DVD case. It will be available to pre-order from the Binary Zone retro store very soon and as a special offer there will be no extra charge for postage and packaging if you pre-order the PC version!! You will even be able to 'try before you buy' as the complete first level of the game will be available as downloadable demo very soon. Keep an eye on www.psytronik.com for more details.

Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

Massive May Releases!

2009-04-05T01:44:00.001-07:00

Greetings gamers!

It looks like May is going to be a busy month for Psytronik as there's a selection of MASSIVE titles lined up for release!! Here's some previews of the new game artwork to whet your appetites.

First up is Creatures 2 from Apex Computer Productions! One of the slickest (or should that be 'sickest!' hehe) C64 releases of all-time. Due to the nightmare tape multiload this release will be DISK ONLY and will be available in deluxe and budget disk flavours. The excellent artwork was produced by Trev 'Smila' Storey (which I reckon is even better than the original game artwork - ooo! controversial!)

I'm also very pleased to announce that Psytronik Software will soon be releasing a special C64 disk version of the legendary C64 shoot 'em up - ARMALYTE! Side 1 of the disk will contain the COMPETITION EDITION of Armalyte which was produced by Cyberdyne Systems. This special version of the game allows you to start on any level, alter the enemy bullet speed and you can even sit back and admire the scenery in a special DEMO mode. Side 2 of the disk will contain the loading picture, two Walker's Warbles music demos, some rare Armalyte game previews and an early demo of the unreleased Armalyte 2. The superb artwork was once again crafted by Smila (based on the original game artwork).

The long-awaited disk release of Joe Gunn will also be available very soon. This will be a joint Psytronik & Protovision release of the Gold Edition of the game. The disk will contain both the English and German versions of the game along with a new demo of the stunning forthcoming Psytronik release Knight 'n' Grail (which I will be talking about in more detail in a blog entry soon). The splendid box cover art was produced by ... you guessed it! Smila!

Another release that has been taking up a lot of my spare time recently is The Last Amazon Trilogy. I've been busy working on the bitmap loading screens for all The Last Amazon games and the good news is the loading screens for the Last Amazon Intro + Last Amazon 1 & 2 are now complete. All I need to do is produce a loading screen for The Last Amazon Special Edition and then my work for that release is done. The games themselves are all very nearly complete apart from Last Amazon 2 which is still being worked on at the moment. Here's a sneaky pic at the disk box which features superb cover artwork by Alf Yngve:

And that's not all! As well as the fine releases mentioned above there's a couple of exciting new releases in the works - including a special version of a brand-new C64 title and the first ever Psytronik Software PC release! But I can't tell you any more about those just yet ... Keep an eye on this blog for a special feature on the forthcoming C64 epic Knight 'n' Grail (along with a mouthwatering selection of new screenshots) + all the very latest Psytronik Software nooz.

Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

Along came a spider ...

2009-03-26T03:55:00.000-07:00

Greetings programs!

I'm as chuffed as Mr Chuffterton from Chuffsville to announce that the first Psytronik Software VIC 20 release will soon be available. The game is called Carling the Spider and is a new piece of software for the Vic programmed by Joe 'Polygon' Dixon. In the game you control a little spider (called Carling, obviously) who must negotiate various tricky screens and collect all the diamonds before heading for the exit.

Some rather evil ball-bearings make life difficult for Carling as they bounce around the screens killing our little arachnid chum on contact. Deadly spikes are also littered around the screens and will rob you of a life if Carling touches one of them. Sproingy black blocks are also cunningly placed on the screens which will cause Carling to leap high in the air if he lands on one.

One of the things I like about Carling the Spider is it plays a bit like Chuckie Egg (which I loved on the Speccy). Carling zooms around the screens at a decent pace and can be controlled in mid-air when he falls or if you hit fire to make him jump. Interestingly, the whole game has been crammed into just 4K so it will run quite happily on an unexpanded Vic!

The nifty tape artwork you can see above has been created by Trev 'Smila' Storey. The game will be released in the next couple of months as soon as it has been completed and mastered. Exact release-date and price TBC.

Keep an eye on www.psytronik.com for more details about the game.

Thanks for reading, see you IN THE FUTURE!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

Byte-Back 2009!

2009-03-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

Greetings once again retro chums!

I'm currently still recovering (and unpacking) from the awesome Byte-Back retro event but I thought I'd better type up my memories of the event into this blog type device before I forget them all! So without further ado, here we go!

The night before the event was a frenzied blur of preparation. I didn't get home from work until around 5pm so the next several hours were spent dashing round like a loon getting stuff ready to be loaded into the car. I was up until the wee small hours printing flyers and filling boxes with goodies but eventually crawled my way into bed as I knew I had a loooong day ahead. ZzZzZz ...

My horrible not-quite-tuned-in-properly clock radio woke me up just before 7am on Saturday morning and I jumped into the shower to try to wake myself up a bit. I then loaded the rest of the stuff I was taking to the event into the car which didn't actually take very long as everything was neatly piled up by my door. After a bit of last-minute brain-wracking to make sure I hadn't forgotten an essential lead or connector I was on my way! Stopping only briefly to clog a few arteries with a MuckDonalds brekkie - yummityyumyum. The rest of the drive to Stoke-on-Trent was uneventful and my Ozzy Ozbourne Tom-Tom voicepack soon informed me I had "reached my f**king destination" - which appeared to be the middle of an industrial estate! A bit of a drive further up the road and I spotted the Bidds sign - and pulled in to find oodles of parking space - YESSS!! I HAD ARRIVED!

"Aren't you a little short to be a Stormtrooper?"

Uh, oh - problems straight away - Imperial Troops! Fortunately I used an ancient Jedi mind-trick and managed to sneak past them into reception. I then collected my nifty Dig-Dug-style pass from a rather flustered looking Mat (Corne - show organiser) and went to have a quick recce around the event. My first impression of the main room was its size - it was BIG! I was more used to retro events being a bit more, erm, "cosy" so this was something new. I then headed on into the somewhat chilly executive suite to find out where I was setting up. I met up with DaveFromHell (he of www.stairwaytohell.com and www.bobwakelin.com fame) who pointed out what was where. I then busied myself setting up the Psytronik stand whilst chatting to some of my retro chums who had also appeared (Mayhem, Merman and Shaun "Micro Mart" Bebbington to name but three).

The Specadore 64 causing much mirth and confusion at Byte-Back!

The next few hours were spent demoing the Psytronik Software releases which were very well received. People were very impressed with the game packaging and kept fondling the boxes (oo-er!) The Last Amazon also impressed various folks - especially with its flashy new front-end and excellent Matt Gray style music (I pumped up the volume on my lil' telly so people could appreciate it!) My trusty Specadore 64 also received a lot of attention (as always!) I also got to have a nice chat with Bob Wakelin (he of the Ocean / Imagine artwork fame). He very kindly signed my spare C64 which I've lugged to many a retro event to get signed by various 8-bit luminaries (and loonies). And talking of which, I also had an "encounter" with one Joffa Smith who, despite not being in quite the same universe as the rest of us, was very friendly and amiable and he also signed my C64. He also purchased one of Merman's luvverly C64 books which Merman had left on my stand earlier (and which will also be soon available from the Binary Zone Retro Store, fact fans!)

Can somebody please give Joffa a prod?

Later in the day were some Q & A sessions - including the controversial Ocean Reunited one which suffered from a few technical glitches and other, erm, "malfunctions" (read all about it HERE). The Q & A sessions lured lots of people from the main room into the exec-suite so my stand got rather busy at times. The hours rolled past and I spent my time nipping into the main room to grab a quick blast on a retro game and manning the Psytronik stand. Later in the evening Chris "Boyo" Wilkins had the excellent idea of grabbing something to eat (I was having so much fun I'd forgotten to eat during the day!) so I jumped in the Boyomobile along with Martyn "Retro Gamer" Carroll and we followed more of the Byte-Back gang in another car to a nearby(ish) Harvester. A massive and lovely bacon burger soon arrived while me, Chris & Martyn chewed the fat(ty burgers) about various retro related shenanigans (ooh, the stories that were told THAT night!) I managed to slay Martyn at one point with my "put some pants on, Kevin Toms" line (you had to be there to appreciate that gag!) Anyway, that was much fun and the meal was an excellent way to round off the first day at Byte-Back (even though I couldn't eat all my "kicked-in crunchie" dessert as it was tooooo sickly!)

I headed back to Malvern soon after as my legs were falling off at this point and I was looking forward to crashing in my own bed. Fortunately there was hardly any traffic on the way back so I was soon tucked up in beddie-byes - recharging my batteries for ...

Byte-Back Day 2!

I had a nice and leisurely start to the second day of the event. There was no need to get up quite as early as I didn't have to pack anything - I'd just left everything at the event with a cover thrown over it. I did need to prep a couple of little things that people had ordered the previous day which I promised I'd bring with me today but that didn't take long. I was soon tootling along to pick up my co-pilot for todays event, my little bruv "Diddy" David. I picked him up en-route and another MuckyDees brekkie was consumed (a very nice one I might add as it was freshly cooked). A jaunt down the M6 then followed and we were soon once again at Byte-Back.

Diddy kicking alien vector ASS on the Vectrex!

I really enjoyed the second day at Byte-Back as it was much more laid-back (probably due to all the hangovers people were suffering from!) I spent much more time in the main room and managed to play a lot more games. Another highlight of the day was being able to play Shredz64 on my Specadore 64 (thanks to Merman & StarshipUK). This was a real crowd-pleaser and the site of a C64 running a Guitar Hero style game generated a lot of interest (and photos!)

Yes, that guitar really is connected to my C64!!

I also tried the "neural interface" which allows you to control a pong-style game on the PC using the power of your MIND! Unfortunately, my brain is so frazzled I failed miserably to control the bat - and was also disturbed to see my brain activity was off the scale! I guess I need to chill out, man! After lunch there was a charity auction which was very nicely hosted by Mat Corne. I was pleased to see the bundle of CDs I donated went for £35.00 - all for a good cause.

I received another great bit of news during the event from Shaun Bebbington. He read me the list of games that had won the Micro Mart Game Of The Year awards for 2008 and I was delighted to hear that Sub Hunter had won the Micro Mart 2008 Game Of The Year Award for the C64!! So hearty congrats go out to Richard Bayliss & Frank Gasking for their corking little sub-aquatic blaster. And that means I can add another nice award to the disk box artwork. *grin!* Unfortunately, Shaun didn't have time to spray a joystick gold and present it to me so I had to resort to photoshopping the picture below (note that you can see the bloke taking the photo of the joystick reflected in the pic - teehee!)

Here's one I made earlier!

And that just about sums it up for Byte-Back 2009. I had great fun at the event and well done to Mat "Witchfinder" Corne and the rest of the Byte-Back team for putting on such a great event. I had an excellent time chatting with everyone who visited the Psytronik stand, I look forward to seeing you all at Byte-Back 2010 (which WILL happen, right Mat?)

(Click HERE to see the photos I took at the event).

Thanks for reading, keep it RETRO!

Kenz / Psytronik

Busy busy busy!

2009-03-01T13:37:00.000-08:00

Greetings Retro Chums!

Wow, things are getting pretty darned hectic around here at the moment. I've been busy preparing for the upcoming Byte-Back event (which is now a mere 1 week away!) whilst juggling a couple of Psytronik project at the same time.

1 week to go - and I'm SO not ready! Gibber!

Firstly, lots more great things have been happening with The Last Amazon. I had the design for the front-end of the game in my mind so I had a go at creating an animated .gif so I could illustrate my idea to Richard Bayliss. I liked the simple front-end that was featured on the System 3 game Myth (which featured a logo with the credits text fading in and out) and wanted something similar for The Last Amazon. You can see the .gif I created below.

I sent this to Richard who did a great job converting my idea onto the C64. In fact, he managed to code the front-end so it looked EXACTLY the same as my design. Great stuff! Richard then went on to create a neat Game Over sequence, once again based on an idea I had of the Amazon being menaced by Cheetahs. You can read about how Richard coded the front-end and end-sequence in his blog.

Most of the work is now done on the first Last Amazon game - apart from the loading screen which I will be concentrating on after the Byte-Back event. The music for the game is also now in place and the game features a cool new Tusker-esque title tune by Richard along with the amazing Last Amazon intro tune by Tonka.

Another Psytronik release I have been working on recently is the disk version of Joe Gunn. Psytronik will be releasing the disk version in the UK and Protovision will also be releasing the game to cater for people in Europe. All the disk artwork for the Psytronik release is now complete and the game will be unveiled at the Byte-Back event (and then made available in the BZ retro store soon after).

As an extra bonus I wanted to include the preview of Knight 'n' Grail on the Joe Gunn disk and the author of the game (Mikael Tillander) gave me the go-ahead to do just that. But then things got even better when Mikael then delivered a brand new demo of the game to include on the disk! Good times!

One slight downer for this week ... I fired up my luvverly Xbox 360 to show my chums The Force Unleashed and was promptly greeted with the dreaded RED RING OF DEATH! Yup, after 3 years of faithful(ish) service my XBox has perished in a blaze of red-ringed glory. This wasn't entirely unexpected as it had been freezing up a lot recently and some games were acting a bit oddly (graphical glitches ahoy!) So it looks like the proceeds from the Byte-Back event will go towards getting the blimmin' XBox fixed (not sure why I have to pay Microsoft £80 quid for their defective goods) Ah well, them's the breaks. :(

How come my XBox 360 is doing this after just 3 years but my Commodore 64
is still working perfectly after TWENTY YEARS! Muttergrumblefume!

See you next time!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

The Last Amazon

2009-02-18T06:31:00.001-08:00

Hiya retro chums!

Now that Creatures is finally sorted and has been added to the BZ retro store (disk version now available, tape version coming soon!) it means I can move onto the next Psytronik project - which will be The Last Amazon! And there have been some very interesting things happening with this release recently.

Firstly, some back-story about the game. The Last Amazon game was originally produced back in 1993 by Alf Yngve for the Psytronik label. The game came with a cool intro sequence (complete with a stunning Matt Gray-esque tune composed by Tonka) and even a sequel game - called (unsuprisingly), The Last Amazon 2. Unfortunately, all the planned enhancements for the game didn't happen at the time and in the end the unfinished game was given away on the Commodore Zone covermount. It was a shame the game wasn't properly released as I really loved the two Last Amazon games - Alf had done a superb job creating the jungle setting for the first game (along with a more urbanised setting for the sequel) and he also created some stunning artwork for both the Last Amazon games featuring a very eye-catching heroine (who I always thought who I thought could be the "Lara Croft for C64 fans"). Here's a pic of the superb colour artwork Alf produced for the first Last Amazon game (which is available as a yummy poster or on a trendy T-Shirt from Alfs very own CheeseyCake Shop - pluggity plug!)

And so that was that was the end of The Last Amazon we thought ... But then in 2008 Psytronik Software was reborn!! The unreleased Last Amazon games have now been dusted off and I'm very happy to announce that the games will feature special power-ups installed by Shaun Coleman - who did a great job enhancing his own SEUCK game Laser Hawk.

Shaun has already added weapon power-ups to the first Last Amazon game. The screenshots below show how the weaponry progresses from a fairly weedy gun, to a shotgun, machine gun, right up to a laser blaster! That should give those baddies what for!

The Last Amazon starts her adventre with a weedy pistol.

Pa-bam! Eat shotgun shells you jeep-driving mutha!

Dagga-dagga-dagga! Die! Oh, there's nobody left to kill here!

Pcheoww! Zzap! The Last Amazon unleashes LASER-DEATH!

And there will also be some new graphical effects in the game including an animated river! Check out the piccy below:

Alf also found some more Last Amazon promo artwork he produced way back in 1990 and I was so impressed with the picture I decided to use it as the main cover art for the new Psytronik release of the game. Here's an early preview of the tape inlay cover:-

And that's not all! In the past couple of weeks Alf has been dabbling with Jon Wells' Sideways SEUCK editor. I sent Alf the sprites and background graphics from the first Last Amazon game and guess what he went and did ... ? He has created a brand new sideways scrolling Special Edition version of The Last Amazon game! That means there are now THREE Last Amazon titles which means I can release THE LAST AMAZON TRILOGY!

I was so excited to see the new sideways scrolling Last Amazon game that it inspired me to start work on the graphics for the front-end of the game. The front-ends for all the Last Amazon games will be produced by Richard Bayliss (he of Sub Hunter fame). Richard has also produced some great music for the games (done once again in Matt Gray style). Here's a very early preview of the front-end for the brand-new sideways-scrolling Last Amazon Special Edition!

I'm a big fan of the original System 3 releases for the C64 and the logo for the game was inspired by the System 3 game Tusker (in fact, I "borrowed" a couple of elements from the Tusker graphics - omm!) I absolutely loved the music Matt Gray produced for Tusker - which is why I'm really pleased the game music has been done in a similar style (both Tonka and Richard Bayliss have done a superb job with the music). I'm really looking forward to seeing the final version of this release even though there's still quite a lot of work still to be done on them.

The Last Amazon Trilogy will be available on tape and disk for the Commodore 64 later this year (exact release date TBC).

It's SNOW joke!

2009-02-08T05:59:00.000-08:00

Hiya gang,

A bit of a setback for the Creatures re-release I'm afraid. The game was meant to be unveiled at this years Retrovision event but unfortunately a load of snow was dumped on the UK this week which meant there was no way I could make the journey to RV. Here's a pic of the Kenzmobile taken the day before the event:-

As the bad weather has thrown my schedule (and the whole of the UK) into turmoil I've decided to move the official re-release-date of Creatures back a week to give me extra time to add all the details to the BZ store. I also plan to give the Psytronik studio a bit of a spring-clean so everything is nice and organized for the Creatures release. If everything goes according the plan the game will be available on February 14th 2009 on tape and disk.

I'll see you all when the UK has thawed out!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

The mind bloggles!

2009-02-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

Hiya gang,

Work on the re-release of Creatures continues apace - in fact, both the tape and disk versions are very nearly complete! The tape version features three files on side 1 - the main game remastered with a new loader, the intro sequence from the disk version complete with the Uncle Clyde pic as the loading screen and the Creatures 2 preview I mentioned in the previous entry. Side 2 of the tape contains the game data.

The disk version contains the complete 2-sided disk version of Creatures along with the Creatures 2 preview and a demo of Mayhem in Monsterland. I'm also very pleased to announce the deluxe disk version will be packaged with a free bonus music CD that contains the soundtracks from both Creatures 1 & 2 - digitally recorded from a real Commodore 64! Here's a picture of all the completed Creatures bits & bobs:-

The game will be added to the BZ Retrostore shortly after the 2009 Retrovision event (as soon as Apex have approved it all of course). :)

Moving away from Creatures (and the C64 in fact!) I received an email from Clive Brooker this week. He was responsible for the classic Mastertronic title One Man & His Droid amongst others. Clive has given me the go-ahead to re-release his Speccy titles which is exciting news for me as at last I'll be able to release a title for the ZX Spectrum on the Psytronik label. The first Psytronik Spectrum release will be a twin-pack that contains the games 'One Man & His Droid 1 & 2'. OMAHD 2 was never commercially released on the Spectrum so it's a nice little exclusive for Psytronik. Those games will be added to the Psytronik range in the next few months.

One last bit of nooz - I was very pleased to see the 15th anniversary edition of Mayhem in Monsterland has been given a glowing review in the latest issue of Retro Gamer (issue 60). The game has been awarded a whopping 94% in total which makes it the highest-rated Psytronik release yet! Nice one!!

Anyhoo, must dash now, I'll see you once I've recovered from Retrovision with a report on the event + lots of piccies!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

Ghosts 'n' Bloglins

2009-01-27T07:04:00.001-08:00

Now that work on the Psytronik release of Joe Gunn has been completed I can concentrate all my efforts on the next release - Creatures!! The disk mastering was my first task of the day and this turned out to be pretty easy as the Psytronik disk version will be almost identical to the original 1990 release (hey, if it ain't broke ... etc.) As an extra bonus I decided to add a Creatures 2 demo to the disk as there was a bit of room left on Side 1. The demo is the nifty one that was given away with Commodore Format (featuring the CF office in the snowy backdrop).

Once I'd sorted out the disk contents and tidied up the disk directories a bit I then set about producing a new instruction sheet for the disk version. This actually turned out really nicely as I designed it to suit an A4 sheet that is folded into quarters. When it's folded you get a nice cover pic (featuring Smila's excellent artwork) and all the Creatures instruction text fitted on the page perfectly. Job done! As I was in "instruction manual mode" I also finished off the tape inlay - making sure all the correct bits of text were in bold and that there we no spillong mistooks anywhere.

My final bit of Creatures work today was the floppy disk sleeve. I love having custom-designed glossy disk sleeves on the Psytronik games and the Creatures one turned out really nicely - once again Smila's excellent artwork makes an appearance and the predominantly white design works really well. Yet another job done. All that's left to do is the disk label now so you can expect to see a pic of the complete Creatures packaging in the next blog entry :)

Another interesting Psytronik development is a game preview that appeared on the Lemon 64 forum. The game is called Knight'n'Grail and it's a visually superb arcade adventure that is kind of like Ghosts 'n' Goblins with the graphical style of Draconus (one of my fave budget games). As soon as I saw the preview I contacted the author to see if he would be interested in releasing the game on the Psytronik label and he agreed! It looks like it will a disk-only release and Smila is already on-board to do the artwork so that's another cool C64 release to look forward to. The game is still being worked on at the mo so keep an eye on this blog for update reports. In the meantime, here's some screenshots from the game for you to drool over:

See you next time!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

The Mighty Blogg

2009-01-23T03:01:00.000-08:00

Greetings Programs!

Lots of cool stuff happening with Psytronik this week. Firstly, the cover artwork for the deluxe disk version of Creatures has now been completed. The final box art has been approved by Apex who said looks (to quote John Rownlands) "f***ing awesome"! John is actually off to Cyprus to visit Steve (Rowlands) this week so I quickly posted him a mockup of the Creatures box - here's a photo of it that I took before I posted it to John - at the moment this is the only one of these in the whole world, ever!

I received the tape mastering software for Joe Gunn this week from Richard Bayliss which works a treat. Trev 'Smila' Storey also sent me the last bit of artwork I needed for the tape inlay so I got that finished off and the game has now been added to the BZ store (click HERE for the product info). I'm very pleased with this release as it's a great little game (well, I say little - it spans seventy screens!) and the artwork all came together nicely with a nice 'Indiana Jones in Egypt' type theme - here's what the finished tape looks like:-

So that's the first Psytronik release for 2009 sorted out! It looks like Creatures will be the big release for February and I'll also be focusing on The Last Amazon 1 & 2 twin pack as I'm busting to get that one released. Keep your peepers peeled for more info on those!

And finally, guess who I received an email from this week? Graham 'The Mighty Bogg' Marsh, that's who! It's always cool to hear from SID musicians (being the massive SID music fan that I am) so a few jolly emails flitted back and forth and a copy of his CD was duly posted for him to check out. After reading the interview with him that appeared on c64.com I realized I actually had a copy of his 'lost' Christmas demo that he mentioned in his interview and managed to reunite him with the demo which he hadn't seen for 25 years! Neat eh?

Anyway, enough of this crazy jibba-jabba (the hutt)

See you next time!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

One Man & His Blog

2009-01-16T04:30:00.000-08:00

Hiya folx,

Here I am with my second ever blog entry - typed in dynamic Kenz-o-Vision (or something). Anyway, the last week or so has seen me doing battle with the Christmas order backlog - and I managed to blimmin' clear it too! So all the recent Binary Zone & Psytronik orders have now been sorted and the goodies are winging their way to lots of happy retro gamers around the world. Yay!

With the order backlog defeated I can now turn my attention to the new Psytronik releases for this year. I'm very pleased to announce that one of the first Psytronik C64 releases of 2009 will be 'Creatures' by Apex Computer Productions. This was originally published by Thalamus back in 1990 to mucho critical acclaim and earned itself a lovely shiny Zzap! gold medal. The 2009 re-release will feature brand new artwork by Trevor 'Smila' Storey - and you can see a preview of the stunning new design from Smila below. Neat eh?

And some more good news for C64 fans - a special collectors edition of the excellent 2007 game 'Joe Gunn' will soon be available! For this release Psytronik will be teaming up with fellow retro software publisher Cronosoft and we will be both be releasing the game on tape. I don't have set release dates for either Creatures or Joe Gunn as yet but I will post updates on the progress of the games in this here blog.

I've also started work planning a new website for Psytronik Software. As the 2008 releases were really well received and received some really great press I've decided Psytronik deserves its very own website rather than just a sun-section on the Binary Zone site. This will give me more room to include various sections in the website including the latest news, details of new releases, upcoming releases, press, history, this here blog, downloads, info on how to submit a game for release and so on. The new site is still being designed (mostly in my head) at the moment but I'll keep ya posted on the progress of the site in this blog.

That's yer lot for now. See ya next time!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

Captains Blog, stardate 02/01/2009

2009-01-02T07:34:00.000-08:00

Greetings retro chums!

Welcome to the first ever Psytronik Software blog entry - tapped in by the Captain of the USS Binary Zone - Kenz!

I've decided to keep a blog this year as a way to bring you all the latest Psytronik Sofware news and info as it happens. But what the hecky-flip is Psytronik Software some of you may be thinking? It's basically a software label devoted to retro gaming systems - new games released on old systems like the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum etc.

Last year was absolutely AWESOME for Psytronik. The initial releases received some excellent press and were really well received. The year climaxed (oo-er) with the Psytronik release of Mayhem in Monsterland - the only game to ever be awarded a perfect 100% score by Commodore Format magazine!

Things went a bit berzerk right at the end of 2008 with me releasing SEVEN C64 disk titles simultaneously. I'd had LOTS of requests for C64 disk versions of the Psytronik games (which were only available on tape up to then) so the disk versions were eagerly snapped up by C64 fans.

Unfortunately the overwhelming demand for the Psytronik disks resulted in a bit of an order backlog which I'm currently wading through as quickly as possible. A big chunk of my Christmas break was taken up processing orders and I'm hoping to have the order backlog completely cleared by next week at the latest (fingers crossed!)

So that's the very latest news from Psytronik Software - keep an eye on this blog for exclusive news and info about the Psytronik releases which will be posted each time I have news about the games.

Keep it RETRO!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com