I
'd like to send thanks and kudos to icon64, the team behind Rocky Memphis - The Legend Of Atlantis. That's Stuart Collier, Trevor Storey and Saul Cross.
I'm a great starter of games but not a great finisher. The short list of games that I've become obsessed with through to the end include Portal 1 and Day of the Tentacle. I'll spend days trying to figure out a puzzle and I don't like too much pixel-perfect-platform-jumping or battling enemies.
Legend of Atlantis fits the bill perfectly. There have been similar games but for a native C64 game this looks and sounds so good and plays so well.
The puzzles are perfect. You don't want them to be too obvious and just go through the motions. Nor do you want them to be impossible or unfair. In LOA you collect items as you go along (which aren't too easy to find because you can't see them on the screen and have to search) and you have to work out how those interact with devices you find in the rooms. There are clues printed on tablets which can sometimes be helpful. There's a nice story which unfolds, most of it on tablets in one of the deep chambers.
Part of the reason that it looks so good is that there's some sorcery going on with the sprites for the main character. By my calculation he's two sprites high, the colour appears to be two multicolour sprites plus a (I guess overlaid) black outline two single-colour sprites. He's very well animated - runs, crouches, climbs, shuffles along hanging off ledges.
Making a map was essential. Without going into too many spoily details, later on it proved invaluable. I'm hesitant to publish the one I made because the joy of playing is the discovery but the completed map looks so good and pretty extensive (I believe there's a printed copy in the boxed edition). I count 61 screens (if I haven't missed any hidden /secret rooms) and some of them are really beautiful:
I did play some of it on the real hardware, but mostly I used Vice which allowed me to use my PS controller and save the game at any point.
I didn't count the hours. There was more than one frustrating evening spent just running around unproductively, but I am proud that I finished with no help and all 10 scrolls, and saw the end sequence assuring me that "my place in history is assured" - hurray!
Legend of Atlants
Legend of Atlantis fits the bill perfectly. There have been similar games but for a native C64 game this looks and sounds so good and plays so well.
Part of the reason that it looks so good is that there's some sorcery going on with the sprites for the main character. By my calculation he's two sprites high, the colour appears to be two multicolour sprites plus a (I guess overlaid) black outline two single-colour sprites. He's very well animated - runs, crouches, climbs, shuffles along hanging off ledges.
Making a map was essential. Without going into too many spoily details, later on it proved invaluable. I'm hesitant to publish the one I made because the joy of playing is the discovery but the completed map looks so good and pretty extensive (I believe there's a printed copy in the boxed edition). I count 61 screens (if I haven't missed any hidden /secret rooms) and some of them are really beautiful:
I didn't count the hours. There was more than one frustrating evening spent just running around unproductively, but I am proud that I finished with no help and all 10 scrolls, and saw the end sequence assuring me that "my place in history is assured" - hurray!
Legend of Atlants
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