(C) 64 ways to make your Android/MP3 phone better!

I think, although I'm not sure, that I can create links to the Commodore 64 ringtone files I made in Dropbox so that you can download them.  Won't that be great if it works?  So I'm going to try and do just that.  If it works, you can pick and choose from any you like the sound of, rather than waiting for me to e-mail you the whole batch.  Everybody wins!

Here's the "track listing":

Commodore 64 ringtones - Android/MP3 versions

The Complete Commodore 64 Ringtone Collection

Action Biker
Beyond Forbidden Forest 1
Beyond Forbidden Forest 2
Beyond Forbidden Forest 3
Beyond Forbidden Forest 4
Beyond Forbidden Forest 5
Beyond Forbidden Forest 6
Beyond Forbidden Forest 7
Beyond Forbidden Forest 8
Beyond Forbidden Forest 9
Bionic Commando
Citadel
Crazy Comets
Cybernoid
Delta
Dragon's Lair Part II
Driller
Dropzone
Finders Keepers
Firelord
Ghosts 'n Goblins
Green Beret
Hades Nebula 1
Hades Nebula 2
Hawkeye
Hunter's Moon
International Karate
Last Ninja 1
Last Ninja 1B
Lazy Jones 21
Monty on the Run 1
Monty on the Run 2
Monty on the Run 3
Mutants 1
Mutants 2
Nemesis the Warlock
Ninja
Novaload
Ocean Loader 1
Ocean Loader Early
Panther
Paradroid 1
Paradroid 2
Parallax 1
Parallax 2
Penetrator 1
Penetrator 2
Platoon
Rock 'n Wrestle
Sanxion 1
Sanxion 2
Spellbound 1
Spellbound 2
Thing on a Spring
UridiumFX
Uridium
Warhawk
Way of the Exploding Fist 1
Way of the Exploding Fist 2
Wizardry 1
Wizardry 2
Wizball
Zoids
Zybex

These are not complete tunes; rather, they're snippets that I reckon make for good ringtones.  I've edited them so that they loop around pretty neatly, and I think there are some really good ringtones here.  Oh, and they're not all tunes...

If you like these, please comment and let me know.  And by all means share this post wherever you think there would be an interest.  They took ages to make so they might as well be spread far and wide!  Don't go pinching them for another website though (at least not without asking)... that wouldn't be nice!

(C) 64 ways to make your iPhone better!

I think, although I'm not sure, that I can create links to the Commodore 64 ringtone files I made in Dropbox so that you can download them.  Won't that be great if it works?  So I'm going to try and do just that.  If it works, you can pick and choose from any you like the sound of, rather than waiting for me to e-mail you the whole batch.  Everybody wins!

Here's the "track listing":

Commodore 64 ringtones - iPhone versions

The Complete Commodore 64 Ringtone Collection

Action Biker
Beyond Forbidden Forest 1
Beyond Forbidden Forest 2
Beyond Forbidden Forest 3
Beyond Forbidden Forest 4
Beyond Forbidden Forest 5
Beyond Forbidden Forest 6
Beyond Forbidden Forest 7
Beyond Forbidden Forest 8
Beyond Forbidden Forest 9
Bionic Commando
Citadel
Crazy Comets
Cybernoid
Delta
Dragon's Lair Part II
Driller
Dropzone
Finders Keepers
Firelord
Ghosts 'n Goblins
Green Beret
Hades Nebula 1
Hades Nebula 2
Hawkeye
Hunter's Moon
International Karate
Last Ninja 1A
Last Ninja 1B
Lazy Jones 21
Monty on the Run 1
Monty on the Run 2
Monty on the Run 3
Mutants 1
Mutants 2
Nemesis the Warlock
Ninja
Novaload
Ocean Loader 1
Ocean Loader Early
Panther
Paradroid 1
Paradroid 2
Parallax 1
Parallax 2
Penetrator 1
Penetrator 2
Platoon
Rock 'n Wrestle
Sanxion 1
Sanxion 2
Spellbound 1
Spellbound 2
Thing on a Spring
Uridium FX
Uridium
Warhawk
Way of the Exploding Fist 1
Way of the Exploding Fist 2
Wizardry 1
Wizardry 2
Wizball
Zoids
Zybex

Now, iPhones are a bit fiddly, and have their own special format for ringtones.  They can't use MP3s for such purposes.  Luckily for you, I'm awesome, and I have converted these to work on your iPhone.  Just add them to your iTunes and drag them to your phone, and they will automatically populate the Ringtones section.  Simple!

These are not complete tunes; rather, they're snippets that I reckon make for good ringtones.  I've edited them so that they loop around pretty neatly, and I think there are some really good ringtones here.  Oh, and they're not all tunes...

If you like these, please comment and let me know.  And by all means share this post wherever you think there would be an interest.  They took ages to make so they might as well be spread far and wide!  Don't go pinching them for another website though (at least not without asking)... that wouldn't be nice!

64 ways to make your phone better!

Hey there!  It's my dad's birthday today... 65 today!  Congrats, fella!  And what better way to celebrate than for me to give YOU stuff!  I'm great like that.

In this case, I may be seen to be biased towards one side of my potential readership (sorry, Spec-chums!).  I have created, for your pleasure and enjoyment, sixty-four Commodore 64 ringtones!  Yes, some of the finest Commodore compositions have been hacked into bite-sized chunks by me, for the sole purpose of brightening up your life when you get a text or phone call.

SMILE! as the Crazy Comets bassline signals an incoming call.  GRIN! as your slacker mate phones to the sound of that famous tune from Lazy Jones.  SMIRK! when your girlfriend phones and the soundtrack to Penetrator plays...  LAUGH! at the sheer silliness of having Uridium's "Land Now!" siren blasts to announce a phone call, or even the sound of a Novaload's screech.  Yes, I've thrown a couple of left-field efforts in there, too...

Yes, I recorded the sound from this very screen.

I do enjoy making stuff like this for a bit of fun, and I hope you appreciate and enjoy them too.  You'd better, because it takes me ages!  But if you don't, there's no harm done.

Now for the tricky bit.  I haven't got any webspace at the moment, so you can only obtain these either by e-mail or through Dropbox.  Either way, just send me an e-mail to paul.e.morrison at gmail.com (you know what to do there) and let me know how you'd like to receive them, and I'll arrange it right away.

You can get these for either iPhone or Android (or any operating system that uses MP3s).  So I reckon that most people are covered here.  If you fancy spicing up your life, then get in touch!

Zzzzzzz.... wait, what?

Hi gang!

Things continue here at TWOG Towers, if not at as fast a pace as before.  I've got a new job which involves a year and a half of learning and exams... which is great, but it will certainly eat into my time or capacity for rational thought!

I'm adding little bits all the time, though, which isn't very interesting for anyone wanting to read a blog, but there you go.  I do have a few sections which I consider to be "completed", although I will naturally go back over them and edit them, and of course there's the presentational aspect to consider.  But the text and screenshots are there, so I can move on to other subjects.  No, I'm not going to tell you which pieces are finished!

The anatomy of a ringtone.

I'm writing a piece about Sensible Software's underappreciated classic Parallax at the moment... look out for that very soon.  I'm also working on a batch of Commodore 64 ringtones, which is also very time-consuming!  Great fun, though, and I think you're going to love them (if you were a C64 fan).

Anyway, there we have a brief update to let you know how I'm doing.  The project is alive and well, so keep checking in!  And do remember to follow me on Twitter and Facebook if you use those media... I post lots of little snippets there that aren't worthy of full blog posts.  If you only read the blog, would you prefer that I add stuff like that here?  I would consider it to be too "noisy", but this is about what you want...

Day 247 - Eeeeeeviiiiiiillll!

I haven't used this title purely because I've just watched the lost Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy episode with my youngest child.  Ooohhhhh, no.  I'm using it because that's what this post is about.  Pure evil.  And we (almost) all were guilty...

I was just digging through my retro stash (thanks again Mr. Reed), when I came across some of these:

Look at that.  The 80s equivalent of a bar of gold.

Surely everybody that owned a computer, be it C64, Spectrum, Amstrad, Dragon 32, BBC or Oric must have had a stash of these.  They were perfect.  You could fit almost any single-load game on one side, which negated the need for tediously hunting through tapes and writing down counter numbers for each game.  You'd just load up the game, play it, and when you'd finished you'd turn the tape over, rewind it the short distance to the beginning and load up the game on that side.  Brilliant!

Of course, the fact you were doing so meant that you were a filthy, stinking PIRATE!  But to be honest, I don't think many kids back then even knew what that meant or what the consequences were.  It wasn't something I even thought about.

That said, there can have been no other reason for these cassettes to be produced other than for kids to copy games onto.  They were dead cheap (anyone remember exactly how much?), ideal for kids with limited budgets.  And let's face it, how many of us actually wrote our own programs?  Well, I wrote one... a database of ZZAP! 64-style reviews.  But it only consisted or PRINT and IF...THEN...GOTO statements.  Hardly a complex work.

Erm... that's right, m'lud. My reviews database was called "Commando".  Honest.

And for all that, I owned tens of Boots C15 cassettes.  Boots even sold cassette carriers, which held ten or twenty of these things and had a handle... perfect for carrying your evil ill-gotten games to a mate's house.

Of course, there were times when a C15 wouldn't do.  Complex multiloads needed more tape room, for starters.  And then there was the fact that you could get up to ten games on a side of C90 cassette.  So if you didn't have a big enough supply of trusty C15s, then you had to break out the big fella.

I probably sound like a right scumbag now.  But to be fair, I owned over 200 original games for my C64.  The problem was there were just so many great games available, and kids of our age had a very finite amount of cash.  It was simply impossible to buy all the games we wanted, which is where blank cassettes came in.  But I know that I, and most of my mates, had a very impressive collection of original games.  We bought as much as we could, not necessarily because we knew it was right, but because we liked owning this stuff.

That's just WRONG, man!  Who would waste tape on Trivial Pursuit?

I'm much the same now.  I've never owned any copied games for any system beyond my Commodore 64 (except for inherited copies that have come with a second-hand system I've bought).  I'd rather buy and own a film than download it.  And although I will admit to downloading music on occasion, I will either buy it if I like it or delete it if I don't.  Although in this day and age, there are programs available that legally allow you to preview music before you buy it so downloading is becoming a bit of a thing of the past.

I don't really have a point to this.  I'm not staunchly condemning the evil pirate scum or implicitly advocating the purchase of absolutely everything you like.  I just thought it would be fun to write a bit about the old days, having found a box of treasures.  There's not much that's more fun than digging through the past.

Day 239 - snow means... Horace!

If you look at it, any good hardware manufacturer over the last couple of decades has had a mascot.  Sega has (had) Sonic, Nintendo has Mario, Microsoft has Master Chief, Sony has... erm, I dunno, who's Sony's mascot?  Sackboy?  Crash Bandicoot?  Kratos?  I dunno.

Anyway, it wasn't always like this.  Although there were tons of memorable characters in the 80s, not many of them were attached to a platform as a mascot.  Miner Willy, you could argue, might have been the face of the Spectrum.  But if there's one unofficial mascot that endears today, it's got to be the first blue character that did a lot of running (and other things)... Horace.

Om-nom-nom!  Horace fills his belly!

Although he made appearances on other computers, Horace feels synonymous with the Spectrum (which probably had a lot to do with the fact that, on the Spectrum, his games were published by Sinclair).  He only appeared in three games, but it was enough for Horace to stamp himself into pop culture history forever...

The first time we saw the bug-eyed blue fella he was feeling a mite peckish, in Hungry Horace.  A PacMan clone of sorts, it featured Horace running around mazes in a park and eating all the food from within those mazes.  As you would expect, he wasn't left to his own devices.  Vicious parkies patrolled the grounds and wouldn't hesitate to give Horace a good hiding if they caught him.

That parkie's not exactly a handsome lad, is he?

Luckily, Horace could fight back.  Bells were scattered around the mazes, and if Horace picked one up it appeared to play havoc with the parkies' inner ears, rendering them vulnerable to a Horace attack.  This respite was brief, though, and they'd soon be back on Horace's case.

In a slight twist from PacMan, Horace could move on to the next screen without having completed the screen he was on.  However, it wasn't possible to go directly back to that screen; instead, Horace would have to work his way back around to it.  This was an interesting way of providing an escape route, but was probably necessary as the screens were a little cramped.

Hmmm.  This level looks a bit tricky.

Hungry Horace wasn't (and isn't) a bad game at all, and served as a fine introduction to the legendary character.  However, it was his next game which would cement his legacy...

That game was Horace Goes Skiing.  In essence, it was incredibly simple.  Horace was minted up with $40, and fancied going skiing ("Why dollars?" asked a lot of mags at the time... well, remember, it was written by an Australian and that's their currency...).  All he had to do was hop across the road, hand over ten bucks for ski rental, get back across the road, and away he could go, down the slippery slope.

The traffic doesn't look much, but it moves at a fair rate!

In essence, this meant that you played a game of Frogger (or more accurately, Activision's Atari VCS game Freeway) to get your skis, and then played a simplified skiing game with no real goal other than to get to the end without crashing and breaking your skis.

That doesn't sound terribly thrilling, but back in those days it was pretty compulsive stuff.  Running across the road required little skill and more in the way of luck and judgement, but you did feel like you'd achieved something just by getting into that ski hut.

Ahhhh... just look at that.  Look at it, revel in it, drink it in.

Then there was the skiing.  It wasn't very taxing... you didn't go very fast and there weren't many trees to avoid.  Your only real punishment was losing points if you missed the gates, although if you crashed you might break your skis which would force you back to the Freeway.

None of that mattered.  Horace was now an icon, and Horace Goes Skiing destined to go down as a classic game title.  Despite its relative averageness (?), it's fondly remembered by all those that have played it.

Well done, Horace! Pluckier than Eddie the Eagle, and looks better on a T-shirt.

It wasn't the last time we would see Horace.  Rounding out his trilogy (and story) was Horace & the Spiders.

It could be argued that Horace & the Spiders was a very ambitious game.  After all, you have to remember that author William Tang programmed all the Horace games to run on the 16K Spectrum, and Horace & the Spiders had three different (albeit simplistic) game screens.

That spider's got some evil eyes on it.

The first saw Horace running and jumping over spiders in what was almost a simple Moon Patrol variant.  It was very short, and led straight into the next screen in which Horace had to swing across spider threads to get across a chasm.  Once a spider sensed you on its thread it tried to reel you in, and if you didn't get off in time you'd be bitten and poisoned.  Nasty!

Successfully making it to the other side meant that Horace would find himself trapped in a cave full of spiders.  The only way out was to STAMP THEM ALL TO DEATH!

How does Horace hang on without any hands?

That sounds a bit harsh, but in reality all it meant was that you were stuck in a level modelled on arcade game Space Panic.  Horace would clamber around on the webs, stamping holes in them at strategic points.  The spiders would hopefully get miffed at this and come down to repair the holes.  If and when this happened, the evil, heartless monster Horace could pounce!

This variety meant that Horace & the Spiders was a pretty nice little arcade game.  All the Horace games were high score games, which meant that repeated play was inevitable for the arcade-hungry kids of the 80s.  The fact that the games were all simple and straightforward to play pretty much guaranteed they would occupy the tape deck for lengthy spells.

THE SPIDER'S TRAPPED!  GET IT!  STOMP ON IT NOOOOOW!

I had a mate called Shaun, and it was on his Spectrum that I was introduced to the joys of Horace.  I would often find myself at his house after school, where along with the likes of Jet Set Willy, Kokotoni Wilf and Stop the Express he owned all the Horace games.  I enjoyed them all, but it's Horace Goes Skiing that has left the biggest mark.  It has that certain something that makes it stay in the memory when other games have long since disappeared.

Sadly, there were no more Horace games.  Apparently William Tang had health problems while he was developing the next, and he never finished it.  I don't know where he is or what he's doing now, but I hope that he's alive and well and knows how much he's appreciated by the now-grown-up kids of the 80s.  And if by some chance he or someone he knows reads this, please get in touch!

Day 238 - Meep! Meep? How's that for a Cliff Hanger?

I distinctly remember the first time I played the Road Runner arcade conversion at home.  It looked great, but I couldn't help but feel disappointed by the simplistic gameplay.  Controlling the Road Runner, you ran along a series of roads, avoiding the ravenous Wile E. Coyote who attempted to catch you in a number of mildly amusing ways.

I think the problem with that game was that you played the Road Runner.  You don't watch Road Runner cartoons for the Road Runner, after all.  The fun comes from Wile E. Coyote's misadventures, mishaps and catastrophes.  Why would you play a game that doesn't feature any of that?

See, I just wanted to let the coyote get the Road Runner.  Wile E. is great!

Luckily, none of that mattered, because may years earlier a company called New Generation Software had released a game called Cliff Hanger.  And it was the only Road Runner game you'd ever need.

I doubt I'll ever forget the first time I loaded Cliff Hanger on my C64.  It was buried in the middle of a C90 that I'd borrowed, and as I'd never heard of it before I'd primarily loaded it to get to whatever was next on the tape.  Those feelings appeared to be confirmed when a droning tune burst into life and a crippled looking character (Cliff Hanger himself!) appeared and hobbled across the screen.  The fact that his brother was called Coat almost sealed the deal...

I'm looking at this and thinking that a lot could go wrong...

Still, I'd spent five minutes or so waiting for it to load, and in those days we all had more patience.  So I decided to give it a go.  What would another couple of lost minutes be, really?

Of course, I had no idea what to do.  The first screen appeared, and my character stood in a desolate-looking desert backdrop, appearing to be as clueless as I was.  I pushed the joystick right, and accidentally walked over the ledge.  Wow... what a rubbish game.

Well, that could have gone better. But at least I'm still in one piece.

The game took me back to a title page, but I noticed it had a different name this time.  I pressed fire, and a different scene appeared.  And this time, something was moving!  It was getting closer... a bandit!  I hurriedly ran at the precariously-positioned boulder, knocking it off the edge of the cliff... and squashed the bandit!

OK, so it was a pure fluke, but in that moment I realised what this game was all about.  Set up like a film set, Cliff Hanger has you playing a series of outrageous scenes or stunts in which you, as Cliff, must stop the evil bandit from making his getaway.  Some are relatively straightforward, merely asking you to roll a boulder off a cliff and onto the fleeing criminal.  Others, though, are very complicated and lead to a bit of head-scratching as you try and figure out what you need to do.

Alright, now I'm a bit stuck.

Graphically, the game is very simple... which is perfect.  It helps to generate the look and feel of the Road Runner cartoons.  The simplistic desert settings, although not of the finest quality, could almost have been ripped from your favourite episodes.

Interestingly, the tables are turned in terms of how the characters work.  The bad guy is now effectively the Road Runner, with the hapless Cliff Hanger taking on the role of Wile E. Coyote.  That's why the game is so much fun... you get to act out all the crazy stunts.  When you first start playing, you're never quite sure what's going to happen.  Sure, there are sometimes clues in the title, but when you're faced with a sparse landscape and just a couple of objects, it's all down to trial and error as to whether or not you'll be successful.  And when you set off one of those traps, you're almost hiding your eyes as you do it, wondering how it might go horribly wrong...

Alright, who put that giant rock there?  Thanks, whoever it was!

Cliff Hanger is hilarious and a heck of a lot of fun.  I suspect it was overlooked when it was released, which would be a shame as a lot of people missed out on a great time if that was the case.  There's not much to choose between the Spectrum and C64 versions... for me the Commodore version edges it with its slightly more authentic backdrops and the fact that screens are a lot more randomised, keeping it fresher.  Either way, though, if you like Road Runner you'd love playing Cliff Hanger.

Cliff Hanger was programmed by James Day, who didn't write much else.  I'd love to get his thoughts on the game, and also from New Generation's Malcolm Evans and their other programmers.  New Generation didn't release a lot of games, but there were some genuine groundbreakers among them, and they deserve to be featured in this book.  One can only try...

Day 232 - any time is a good time for a High Noon showdown!

I'm going to do more posts about single games from now on... otherwise there's a danger of me only writing one post a month!  That doesn't guarantee the game I write about will be included in the book, so if that happens with any of them you can consider these bonus features!

One of the first Commodore 64 games I ever played, well before I even owned a machine of my own, was Ocean Software's High Noon.  I used to go to a mate's house and he had loads of games for his, even at that early stage.  Some of them might be considered quite obscure by now... for instance, I now distinctly remember playing Jason Perkins' Blue Moon, which I'd completely forgotten about until I started researching Jason Perkins!

Yee-haw, ya rootin'-tootin- varmint!

One game I never forgot was High Noon.  Back in those early days, the prospect of any new game loading was exciting.  This was a fairly typical early Ocean game, with the Novaload squeaking into life and then a basic loading screen, short repetitive tune and scrolling message popping up.  For some reason, even though I was used to the instant access of the Atari VCS' cartridges, the nervous anticipation of seeing a new game was there every time.

Once it loaded, High Noon was one of the best things I'd ever seen.  It may have had really chunky sprites, but it gave them charm and character.  And you could walk into and out of the screen!  This made the play area bigger, although you had to learn a whole new method of bullet dodging as a result!

You can never die with dignity in the Old West.

Speaking of charm and character, for a game where the focus is purely on gunning down as many bad guys as possible, High Noon has a nice sense of humour.  This is evidenced by the undertakers, "Rig + Mortis", who wander out after each kill and drags the still-warm bodies into their lair!  Oh, and this even includes your good self, so try not to get hit if you can...

Later levels ramp up the difficulty, with bandits on horseback throwing you off guard, and then there are the robbers with dynamite to keep a close eye on...

Ah.  So that's what that hissing thing does.

You have to keep your trigger finger warm and active if these guys aren't going to make off with all the bank's money or worse, all the saloon's women!  And while it does get repetitive, the difficulty curve is well-judged and the gameplay remains frantic enough to entertain.  I don't know who wrote High Noon... there is no in-game credit other than "Ocean Software Presents".  But it's a game I've enjoyed for almost thirty years now, and still well worth a little blast today.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to They Were Our Gods 2013!  I've seen in the new year with a nasty strain of flu... luckily it hasn't hit me as hard as other family members, but it's pretty evil nonetheless.

Still, it hasn't stopped me from being productive.  Those that know me might be aware that I have some good ideas now and again, and like to put my limited Photoshop-esque skills to use to attempt to realise those ideas.

This year, I thought it might be nice to produce a couple of calendars for my readers.  I've done it partly because it's fun and I like to, and partly as a thank you for sticking with me.  Oh, and partly as a promotional tool too, I guess.  If they're a hit and get shared enough, then my little big project might gain a bit more notoriety.

Anyway, as you might expect from a project like this, I've made two calendars, one with a ZX Spectrum theme and one with a Commodore 64 theme.  I've made two versions, one which would be great for printing (if you could afford the fifty quid in printer ink), and one which is great as smartphone wallpaper.  And they look like this:

If you like the look of these and quite fancy one (or both!), then it's easy to get one.  If you feel like waiting, I've teamed up with splendid retro website 80s Nostalgia, and they will be hosted there for download very soon.  But if you want them now, now, NOW!... then simply e-mail me at the address in the sidebar and I'll e-mail you whichever calendar you want as soon as I can!

How does that sound?  Good?  Great!  Stick with me in 2013 as They Were Our Gods marches on... I'll be in touch with a lot of our programming heroes this coming year, and will hopefully have a heck of a lot to report!

All the best,

Paul

Coming soon... a look at the games of 2012

Hey there!

So, what have I been up to, you might be wondering?  As far as the book goes, I've written about 30 mini-reviews and got some great screenshots for them all.  And I've got programmer quotes to go with a few of them, too!

The problem for the blog when doing that is, I don't want to write too much here so that it doesn't spoil anything that will be in the book.  That's where this is a bit of a balancing act... I do like to give out information and ideas on what I'm doing, but I want to be sure there will be plenty of fresh and interesting stuff to read in the finished article.  So forgive my recent lack of updates, but be assured, we're still moving forwards.  Yay!

Now that we're moving toward Christmas, I probably will put my work on the book on hold for a little bit.  Probably.  It's very easy to fire it back up at a moment's notice, and if I ever get bored of The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Great Escape, James Bond or the other traditional Christmas fayre, there's a more-than-reasonable chance I'll do just that.

What I thought I might do, though, is write a round-up of the new games I've enjoyed this year.  It will keep the blog rolling, and show that I'm a slightly more-rounded gamer than you might think! There were loads of fun games released in 2012, and although I haven't played a lot of the really big names, that doesn't mean I can't talk about my favourites.  So, keep checking back here, and have a mince pie and a cuppa at the ready.  It won't be a list or a rundown, but you can certainly compare my picks with your own, recommend anything I might have missed, or perhaps even find a gem you've been missing out on.  Incoming!

Christmas is coming... win stuff!

Hi all!

I'm working on some cool posts for the blog at the moment.  I'm also writing some nice reviews for the book (I promise to update the word count on the front page soon!).  In the meantime, though, if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, I'm giving away some games on Steam throughout the run-up to Christmas!  Why not be part of the action and maybe win yourself something fun for the holiday season?

Day 189 - CHIIIIIMEEEEERAAAA! CHIMERA!

When I were a lad, one of the main disappointments, if you can call it that, of owning a Commodore 64 was its lack of isometric 3D adventures.  The Spectrum had them in abundance, with Ultimate's offerings being particularly impressive.  I was a bit jealous of my Speccy-owning friends, and could often be found in their houses, pottering around Knight Lore castle in an attempt to rid myself of a lycanthropic curse.

I was delighted, then, when Firebird released, with surprisingly little fanfare, an isometric 3D adventure on the C64 called Chimera.  Set in the future, the game saw the people of Earth thrown into panic when an undoubtedly hostile alien craft was found to be orbiting the planet.  It had to be stopped, and the only way to do that was by beaming you onboard in a robotic space suit, with the aim of finding a way to destroy the ship from within.

This is how it started.

It wasn't a big game, but it was quite tricky and, crucially, it was fast and played pretty well.  It certainly scratched that isometric itch nicely for a good while.  It was also notable for some excellent Rob Hubbard music, and some quite frightening synthesised speech, with the game bellowing its name at you at the start and offering up a blood-curdling scream upon your death.  It was well-received on all formats, and rightly so.

Author Shahid Ahmad was responsible for a number of other games, including the C64 port of Jet Set Willy... which would be very interesting to discuss.  He also wrote the Spectrum and Amstrad versions of Chimera... the latter of those being done in just a week, with no prior experience of the machine!  Remarkable stuff.  There were versions on other platforms, too.

And this is how it looks now!  Which do you prefer?

I was very interested when I read last year that Shahid was attempting a remake of Chimera on the PC.  In fact, the project began in 2010, as his blog shows.  Have a read of it, there's some good stuff there.  There's no real reason for the remake, other than it was something he fancied doing.  Who needs a better reason than that, anyway?

Two years later, and it's finished.  Or, at least, the first playable version has been released.  You can download it on Shahid's blog page for either PC or Mac.  It's pretty faithful to the original, and quite basic as games go these days, but it's fun to potter around in that world again.  It has an appropriately spooky opening, with some random atmospheric sounds playing, and the famous speech makes a return.  Other than that, not much has changed... yet.  You still eat bread and drink tea and die because of radiators and try and make missiles to blow up the ship.

Hurray, I've created a missile! Hang on... where the hell am I?

And that's great, for version 1.0.  But it's just a stepping stone to more, promises Shahid.  There will be some updates to this, but it all appears to be leading toward a Chimera 2.0.  It should have lots more features and ideas, and be a much better game all round.  That makes me happy... it's great to have that to look forward to.  For now, though, have a go at Chimera 2010. It's a nice little piece of unashamedly retro gaming.  I hope to talk to Shahid about it, and of course his 8-bit games, for this book.

Tell you what, the first one of my readers to finish Chimera 2010 gets a free Steam game from me, from my stockpile of gifts.  How can you refuse?