To boldy go ... Sub Hunting!

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

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

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).