I’m a massive fan of Adam Atomic’s work in general, but Canabalt is easily one of my favorite indies ever. That’s actually horrible news for me, because it means I have to buy a Commodore64 to enjoy the latest version of Canabalt, C64anabalt.
Website RGCD has tasked its readers with creating a game in 16KB to fit a C64 cartridge for their annual competition. Develper Paulko64 has stepped up to the challenge. As one might guess, it’s a demake of Adam Saltsman’s hit Canabalt, aptly named C64anabalt. Paulko64 has a lot to consider, scaling down a game 800 times its size (Canabalt is a 13.5 MB iPhone game, not sure of the browser version).
Paulko64 has an eye for classic indies; he or she seems to have demade VVVVVV for a similar contest.
One grey area (palette pun) I’ve stumbled upon is in the contest rules:
8. The applicant owns their work, so therefore submitted games will *ONLY* be released for sale at an agreed price via RGCD if the coder expresses a desire to do so.
While the certainly owns all the code he wrote to replicate Canabalt, I would think the game wouldn’t even be up for negotiation of selling. Still, I am sure creator Adam Saltsman is more than likely flattered and will be interested, like us, to see how much of his game can be scaled down to 16KB by the contest’s deadline of November 30.
Snaaaake! It's a Snaaaake! Oooh, it's a Snaaake!
After bashing away at it for quite some time, prolific remakes n’ updates studio Ovine have just released their latest freeware game. If you grew up during the early days of personal computers, you’ll feel right at home here. The cheekily entitled Rocky Memphis & The Temple of Ophuxoff is a simple-but-huge exploration platformer in the style of early C64 games. The art style and the music are perfectly in key with the style, although the pacing is a little faster and more palatable for modern gamers.
