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).