Absolutely made up that one of my all time favourite games is playable and purchasable again. Zaga 33 is back on the app store (the Android version is currently up on Itch only but hopefully that’ll change soon, a PC version is also available)
Zaga 33 was in my thoughts a lot whilst I was writing the early versions of Death Ray Manta and its philosophy of keeping the scoring straightforward and immediately readable is one that I’d still stick with if I had enough noggin space to design something today. Perhaps one day I’ll get round to that but in the meantime, Zaga still holds up really well.
I’m definitely out of practice, mind. My current high score is a whopping 7.
I’ll confess I amused myself earlier reading over one of those terribly cringeworthy developer profiles people used to write around a decade ago that positioned Lexaloffle’s other virtual videogame console, Voxatron, as The Future, especially when combined with Also The Future Kinect. Well. That was certainly one future that never happened, bless.
Whilst Voxatron ticks along nicely enough in a post Kinect world, it was its lowkey alternative Pico-8 that videogames embraced wholesale. Turns out developers kinda like easy-ish ways to write games, fixed specifications to aim for, pretty colours and letting people play the end result without too much trouble. Who knew!
Over the past seven or eight years since Pico 8 got thrown out into the world there’s been just so much stuff made, it’s been truly fab to watch. Whether it’s something like Celeste or some of the stuff demosceners wrench out of it, it’s all kinda lovely.
It’s also been a lovely little corner for a bunch of people to go and remake old games in. There’s plenty to be found out there but a whole bunch of recent favourites come courtesy of chum of Punching Robots and all round remaking legend, Minion.
I’m not even going to pretend I’m unbiased here! For the past twenty years I’ve admired the stuff Min’s been quietly putting out there, a bunch of their old Dark Basic (one for the old people here) remakes were best in class by a few leagues and then some. It helps, also, that they’re an absolutely lovely human being.
Min’s Pico 8 remakes seem to have flown under the radar a little bit despite there being a bunch of corkers in there (I’m super fond of Manic Miner, been playing that a bit the past few days but Scramble is the all timer for me) so really, this is just a post to remedy that somewhat because here’s a fabulous bunch of remakes that deserve to be played.
So, erm, go and do that and you can thank me later.
I was unfortunately/fortunately cursed to have bought a copy of Underwurlde that would load one time in a gazillion and then crash anyway upon its release. Because of this for a fair few years I had kinda filed the thing under “The Ultimate game that got away”,
Of course, time passed and Speccy emulators existed (nobody tell anyone responsible for denying distribution of Ultimate games, this is our secret) and I eventually got to sit down and play Underwurlde for a good amount of time and sweet baby Molyneux on a bike, it’s bloody annoying, isn’t it? One second you’re trying to jump onto one platform, the next you’ve bounced 4 screens in the wrong direction and you’re cussing the Stampers with all the foul language you can muster.
Undrium takes a punt at making the game a bit more usable by humans and has a pop at removing the cussability of the game so the concept can shine. My favourite kind of remake! Sure, sometimes I want a fairly faithful reproduction and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a game being that, just I get way more excited by seeing folk building off the original, taking the stronger parts of the concept whilst trying to exorcise the rougher parts. It’s a tricksy balancing act because it’s really, really easy to lose the heart of a game whilst fiddling.
I’ve always considered Rich as a bit of a master at walking this tightrope well. His Skook Daze rework, Klass Of 1999, was for a long while the gold standard for me. It is evidently, obviously, Skookdaze still, it’s also Rich’s game. Nailed it, basically.
Undrium walks the same path – it’s instantly recognisable and proud of its roots, clearly respectful of the foundation it’s building on yet very much Rich’s game: 2023.
Or, in short: the good stuff.
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The online home of Rob Fearon, disabled videogame maker, games journalist, crap film watcher, gobshite and doodler. Rob’s been around games a very, very long time now and Punching Robots Club is their personal blog featuring whatever nonsense takes their fancy.
Sometimes it’s a sketch, a review, an article about videogames, a pointer to something Rob finds cool. Whatever, really. Expect anything, Rob’s tired of being a brand online and so it’s just stuff and things these days. Nice stuff and things, mind you.