Armalyte on the PC - oh yes!!

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!

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 ...

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!

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!

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

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!

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