It doesn’t take much to convince me that mixing things together is good. After all, I know this from experience: mixing toast and marmite together, for example, gives possibly the tastiest snack in the entire history of the world. Ever. Delicious foodstuffs weren’t on Markus Persson’s mind, however. Instead, he thought what a tremendous laugh it’d be to do a “mashup” of two classic 8-bit games, Bomberman and Gauntlet. The result? A brilliantly outlandish creation called Blast Passage which desperately needs the obvious tagline “Bomberman needs food badly!”

The mix goes like this: basically, the gameplay is identical to Gauntlet; run around a selection of levels collecting keys and dodging monsters as you make your way to the exit. Collect treasure to boost your score, food to increase your energy and see if you can get in the hall of fame at the end of it all. Here, replacing the Wizard, Elf, Warrior and Valkyrie are… Bombermen. Don’t ask why, but somehow it just works - dashing around dropping bombs to kill the generators off seems perfectly natural after a minute or so.

Everything in the game was created from scratch and is authentic to certain 8-bit limitations, such as using a Sega Megadrive colour palette and a sound system similar to the SID chip from the Commodore 64. It’s undeniably retro, and what’s more, you can play it online in your browser without having to download a single thing! Well, as long as you have Java installed on your computer, I guess. If you don’t - you’re missing out on all the fun!

Interestingly there’s also a 4-way online multiplayer facility included, but for whatever reason it didn’t work when I tried it just now. Shame, really; I can imagine that’d be quite fun. Still, the single player is more than enough to keep you amused for a long time. Another strong contender for some RRC prizes!

Links: Markus Persson’s homepage :: Blast Passage homepage
Download: from its homepage :: from the Retro Remakes competition listing

EDIT: No, I don’t know why I categorised this as Commercial, either. I blame the evil Wordpress gnome.

Hmm. Despite a lot of people saying that Saboteur! and its sequel were brilliant games for their time, they kinda passed me by. Playing Mini-Saboteur gave me a chance to see what I missed… or not, as the case may be

FatSeagal has become quite well known for his miniaturised remakes and he’s executed the idea well. As you may be able to tell from the screenshots [below], the layout of the secret base you must infiltrate has stayed pretty much the same except that everything is in small-o-vision and, subsequently, you have a much wider view of your surroundings. The graphics are small but perfectly formed, and the sound effects are unremarkable.

A selection of difficulty levels allows everyone to jump in and the improved guard AI will probably give even seasoned veterans a run for their money. However, their intelligence isn’t flawless: at one point I ended up with about four or five guards trying to take down my ninja (who was minding his own business on some stairs at the time), and for all their kicking, punching and grunting, they didn’t make a single scratch on my black-suited hero - they seemed to be just outside melee attack range. Perhaps this particular ninja saboteur has enemy-deflecting forcefields?

Unfortunately I can’t say that I found Mini-Saboteur to be much fun, but I think that’s purely because of my apathy of the original game. There’s too much running about and getting lost and wondering where the hell you’re supposed to go for my taste. If you’re a fan of the original, give this a whirl; you’ll probably enjoy it. Otherwise… well, “meh” just about says it for me, I think

Links: No homepage available
Download: from the Retro Remakes competition listing

Perfect! Just in time for all of us to have a nice, comfy playthrough before Christmas, the 2008 Retro Remakes competition entries are now available to download! A big congratulatory slap on the back must go to everyone who got something together during the three months of coding time, and special thanks to the RR staff for braving the piles of paperwork and getting it all organised.

A quick note, though. Keep in mind that RR’s bandwidth is limited and goes through the roof at times like this, so try to avoid hitting refresh every couple of seconds if the page isn’t loading for you. Go have a nice cup of tea, perhaps with some digestive biscuits (or even ginger nuts if you’re so inclined), then try again

Over the next couple of weeks, I hope to make time to have a proper hands-on with a few of the entries. Blast Passage, Mini Saboteur, The Kiwi’s Tale and Revenge of the Punched Tape immediately catch my eye - Retroman and Cosmic Prison Commando might get a look too. Bonus points for the most bizarre combination of two 8-bit games has to go to Tetroid, however… it’s Metroid, with Tetris blocks in it! What on earth is going on there?!

On a closing note, this is the second time that (for various reasons) I didn’t have chance to put an entry in for the compo myself so I’m a little sad, but come hell or high water it will be third time lucky when - indeed, if - the competition rolls around again!

Until next time… let’s retro!

Those nice people at Bit Blot have updated Aquaria to version 1.1 including lots of added goodness! It now supports widescreen and has an improved world map and cooking interface, amongst other things. Best of all, if you didn’t buy it already, there’s a price reduction - get Aquaria for Windows now in exchange for just twenty of your United States dollars!

Check out the full information on the Bit Blot blog.

I would have posted a video to go with this post but, unfortunately, the movie is so amazingly incredible that this puny excuse of a webpage couldn’t handle it. Er… okay, what I really mean is that it’s too wide to fit Still, wander over to YouTube or Vimeo to feast your eyes on the Aquaria trailer featuring extra high-definition pixels.

Update: As of the 16th, Aquaria is now available through Steam! Better still it’s being sold for a measly $16 until the new year.

This puts the last piece of the great Millenipede 1.2.0 puzzle into place! For everyone who is interested in it, you’re now able to get the source code along with the extra required BlitzMax modules from the Millenipede homepage. There isn’t a comprehensive guide to compiling the game yourself right now, but I will try to add one at some stage in the future.

Happy coding!

World of Warcraft’s second expansion - Wrath of the Lich King - is out!

The servers are trembling with fear as legions of Death Knights start tromping around the Eastern Plaguelands and boats from Stormwind and Menethil groan under the weight of thousands of adventurers heading out to the new continent, Northrend. The Horde’s zeppelins are loading up, too, though not quite so heavily here on Terenas-EU.

Yes, I’ll admit, I’m one of them…

Next stop - Northrend! Stormwind disappears into the distance as the Kraken leaves dock for the icy north

Good grief, it sure is chocka out there! There’s nothing quite like the first day of a major new MMO episode. The “buzz” is palpable - everyone’s excited about doing new stuff, finding new shiny loot and exploring cool new places. Literally. It gets cold in Northrend… damn cold

There are a few who are frustrated, or who just downright enjoy making trollish comments, but that’s to be expected. And truth be told the atmosphere just wouldn’t be the same without them. Getting to level 80 is going to be a fun ride, I think

Yes, I’ll admit that’s probably the worst post title yet to grace this blog.

In case there are any RSS subscribers out there, this post is to let you know that I’ve just added the Intel Mac download for Millenipede 1.2.0, so be sure to go and grab your copy now! Enjoy!

08/11/08 EDIT: Whoops! A repackaged Mac .dmg is now available which should fix a problem with the FMod dylib file and enable the game to run.

Waaaarrrgh! Bah, sorry. I guess the temptation to buy Warhammer Online is getting to me a little. Must… resist… Anyway. I haven’t done an indie round-up for quite a while so let’s see what has caught my eye over the past few weeks.

First we have Gravity Hook [pictured right] from Adam Atomic and Danny Baranowsky. Based on one of Arne’s prototypes, it’s an addictive rope-swing-climb simulation with a bit of a catch - the only objects your droid can latch on to are explosive! How high can you go? I could only manage 720m…

Continuing the colaborative theme, Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel worked together to produce the surreal Aether - help a lonely lad and his newfound alien friend solve puzzles in the stars before heading home again to Earth. (Note: if the Flash version doesn’t work very well for you, a standalone download is available that plays more smoothly.)

Fans of fast-paced shoot ‘em ups will probably find Techno Sylph by KBZ to be right up their street (since its homepage is Japanese, download it easily from this link). It’s not a bullet storm affair like a lot of recent shmups, but you should visit the IndieGames blog entry first to get an idea of how the controls work.

An extremely odd game took my fancy after watching its preview video [below]. Imagine being stuck in a world that was completely white, with no shadows to help you figure out where you where. That’d be really awkward unless, oh, you had some paint to throw around, or something. Well guess what! That’s exactly what The Unfinished Swan is about. A very eery atmosphere - check out the moving pictures to see what I mean…

As always thanks to Tim and the IndieGames.com Blog for being my source Oh yes, and a mention to the rather watchable Bytejacker, a regularly updated vidcast of game reviews. Sweet stuff. ‘Til next time…

‘Nuff said, really… 59 days to go!

2D Boy announced yesterday that the Windows version of World of Goo has gone gold! Yippee! There’s no word on an exact release date, but with this news it surely can’t be too far away. Mac, Linux and Wii versions are also on the ever-approaching horizon.

It’d be cool if there were a demo version, but perhaps that will appear at some point in the future. Meantime, should you feel like spending your hard-earned dosh in support of a clearly quite talented indie developer duo, there’s still the option to pre-order and get immediate access to an introductory chapter of the game.

Hmm… I wonder what would happen if any of that goo got into CERN’s new particle accelerator? Something even worse than a black hole, I reckon!