Commodore Palette Tour De Force
And...a tame Mac emulator, Delphian on Next, follow-ups, downtime excuses
Beyond Nostalgia is back from a hiatus caused by trans-continental journeys, flu bouts, and other real-life shenanigans. Hope you can pardon the delay…
[C64] Musketeer, a slashalicious new AAA game for Commodore 64
Growing up beyond the Iron Curtain was a fairly curious experience for a child, because our access to Western products and media was severely limited. No Coca Cola or Superman for you, young’un! There wasn’t a blanket ban, though, and some things were allowed to be let in by censors. This mostly applied to works which were in some way critical of the “rotten West” and capitalism.
One of them was Zorro, the Californio folk hero who helped the poor and fought (and mocked) the rich and powerful. I think I did watch the Zorro TV series on a black and white TV sometime in the late Seventies. These very early memories are as delightfully and otherworldly foggy as the ones I have of the legendary Sandokan, or Les Shadoks. But some years later, I got to play the 8-bit video game incarnation of Zorro on my ZX Spectrum and remember it very well.
The other notable rapier-wielding heroes I grew up with were D’Artagnan and his cohorts, who came alive on the pages of The Three Musketeers. As a kid hungry for all sorts of adventure, and an avid reader, I devoured everything Mr. Alexandre Dumas wrote, multiple times. And, researching this subject now, I’ve also learned that this dashing dazzler, D’Artagnan, was an actual historical figure. So, don’t let anybody say that writing niche newsletters is a waste of time!
If you happen to be in southern France, you can visit the impressive country mansion which was D’Artagnan’s birthplace, pictured below.
Fast-forward to 2025: a new C64 game called Muskeeter appears and ties both Zorro and D’Artagnan together. This recent release is based directly on the adventures of the latter, and the gameplay resembles the aforementioned 8-bit title, Zorro. That influence is confirmed by the publisher Psytronik on its itch.io page, mentioning also The Goonies and Bruce Lee.
Name-dropping three 8-bit gaming classics even a picky curmudgeon such as myself rates very highly was a sort of challenge, and since Musketeer is quite a looker too, I went to itch and spent the required 3.99$. This price of entry is very approachable, particularly considering that the game oozes quality and, as the good people of Lemon64 forum stated, might be a C64 GOTY contender. And after playing it for a bit, I fully agree with this notion.
In Musketeer, you navigate the mean streets of 17th-century Paris in a quest to foil the plans of the Red Eminence, a.k.a. Cardinal Richelieu. That infamous meddler is trying to blackmail the Queen after stealing her jewellery, and while at it, he also imprisoned your comrades at arms. Yep, you guessed it: now it’s up to you to find all the trinkets and release the hapless friends.
Musketeer does indeed include gameplay elements found in the aforementioned trio of classic games. It’s quintessentially a 2D flip screen arcade affair with puzzle elements. So there are platforms to navigate, swordsmen to duel with, doors to open, and a horse to feed. That last one is a bit of a guess, since the lack of rapier-wielding skills kept me out of progressing far in the game. I suppose finding oats next to a yet-unaccessible horse can only mean one thing, though. The combat is easy to learn but rather hard to master, even though there are only three moves - hi & lo slash, plus defense. Or, in other words, I’m probably too slow for Richelieu’s lackeys (but, hey, they did defeat D’Artagnan’s friends too!).
Despite that, I had a swashbuckling time with Musketeer and, unlike most opther platformers that I only play for ~20 min, I feel compelled to come back and master it. The game is simply a gem, equal to one of the many diamonds scattered through its rendition of olden Paris. From the supreme graphics to the very smooth and enjoyable gameplay flow, it really shines and is certainly a worthy candidate for The Game Of The Year on C64 - or perhaps even across all platforms.
[Amiga] Revisiting the story of The Gold of the Aztecs and Kinetica
Back in July, I dedicated a whole BN issue to “The Case of an Esoteric Game Engine”. It covers a curious story of the later part of the career of Dominic Lawson (of Psygnosis fame) in his new company, Kinetica. He developed the flawed-but-great game The Gold of the Aztecs there, using a mysterious “GDS” engine.
Since then, the EAB moderator and publisher of the excellent Amiga Point Of Vision magazine, CodyJarret, pointed me to two interviews with other members of the Kinetica team, the graphic artists Ray Coffey and Jack Wikeley.
They provide further insights on the creative process involved with creating the Aztecs as well as other details regarding the studio. I particularly liked the anecdotes telling how Jack got the Kinetica job from a Job Centre (imagine that happening now), and how Dominic Lawson wanted their next (unreleased) game to be set in a spaceship graveyard and named it Saragossa, mistaking the fabled Sargasso Sea for a Spanish city.
[Mac] Macintosh emulator for dummies
When it comes to Personal Computers, I’m a DOS / Windows creature through and through, and have never really used an Apple machine. The price barrier and the lack of software/hardware openness being the main put-off factors here. But, it gradually dawned on me that their older models are in the retro zone now, most likely have catalogues full of interesting software, and so I should forget about these biases and investigate.
The wealth of software is particularly true in the case of Apple II, on which many groundbreaking games had been conceived in the formative Late Seventies - Early Eighties era. Emulating this machine is very easy and straightforward via the excellent AppleWin emu. There’s also a very decent Apple II core available on MiSTer, and perhaps other FPGAs.
When I tried to delve into the Macinotsh era machines it was quite an uphill battle, though. MiSTer has a decent Mac core, but it lacks sound and colour. As for emulators, there are quite a few, but when I tried to get into them a few years ago I failed miserably, getting lost in the maze of different system versions and incompatible disk formats. Quite possibly it was entirely my fault, a typical “user error”, but it did put me off from engaging with the old Macintosh world any further.
That was until a week or so ago, when I saw there’s a new kid on the Mac emu block, called Snow. I bravely ignored my previous trauma and decided to give it a try once again. And presto! 10 minutes later, I was staring in disbelief at a working Mac desktop.
All it took to get the emu running was sourcing Mac BIOS roms. Still, some sort of OS and content was needed to go with it, so I tentatively mounted a vhd file from the excellent MacPack collection created by meauxdal. To my great surprise (you have to change the prompt to All Files) it booted just fine.
So, if you have ever had a rough experience with the emulation of olden Macintosh, I heartily recommend Snow. I don’t know how it compares to other Mac emus regarding compatibility and features, but I do know using it is a breeze.
[C64] CityCat does wonders for the much maligned Commodore palette
“Walking simulators” are a rather divisive modern gaming genre on the PC, but we don’t see a lot (any?) of them in the retro space. OK, usually when a statement like this is made, somebody pops in with an “well, actually, there is…. released on…. in …..” so please feel free to do that in the comments if you can recall some examples. I’m actually curious now!
Anyhow, this preamble has been inspired by my discovery of CityCat: Prowl - a new Commodore 64 production available from polytricity on itch.io. So far, they have released a short WIP demo, self-described as “super pre-alpha!”, and this is why the walking sim angle comes from. You just wander around as a cat, but can’t really do anything aside from going from screen to screen and gazing at the scenery. But, the final product is supposed to be an actual game where you can do stuff, or at least that’s what I gather from their somewhat cryptic description on the linked page.
Our city cat is lost, he has amnesia... finding himself adrift on a boat on the Prowl, he’s looking for a place to call ‘Home’ .. the world is twisted and dark, like 2 worlds of the past have intertwined and become one... The old world of Japan and the New world of the big city! We find clues along the way as well as help others along our path home...Once we know what we are, we can become... our true self!
Normally, I’d wait for a project to become a bit more meaty, with actual gameplay, before writing about it. But in the case of CityCat, I just couldn’t resist sharing its outstanding art with you, using CRT-vision. Admittedly, my photos don’t do it justice, and the game looks even better in reality.
Its isometric style shouts “Last Ninjaaaa!”, and indeed some people asked the dev to just turn it into another LN sequel, but I think the “surreal catventure” angle can stand on its own. Here’s hoping that polytricity can combine their superior visuals with interesting gameplay. Ah, hell, I’ll play it even if it’s a real walking sim. After all, classy gfx which yet again proves that in capable hands good ol’ Commie can do so much better than just muddy browns & sickly greens, don’t appear too often.
[GBC] WhatIf OutRun on Gameboy Colour - update
In a yet another back-issue follow up, I’m happy to report that the beyond-cute WhatIf OutRun, (the Game Boy Colour demake of the classic racer) has matured enough to shed the “if” clause and is now simply called OutRun GB.
Shane McCafferty (aka Rocketship Park) did a stellar job on this port, somehow managing to transfer the essence of the arcade game to that venerable handheld. OutRun GB features all the original tracks and tunes and is definitely worth taking out for a spin.
[Spectrum Next] Delphian, a WIP game project from SJA
I first encountered the name of Sarah Jane Avory on the occasion of purchasing Zeta Wing, one of the excellent shoot’em ups she developed for Commodore 64. I was also very impressed by her ability to mix it up and completely switch genres by releasing Briley Witch Chronicles - a top quality J-inspired RPG.
But I never knew that apart from being a homebrew-wiz (well, a witch, really) she has a storied past in game development, going back as far as Amiga and beyond. She’s got credits on Thunderhawk and Fighting Force, some of my favourite retro games from the exquisite codeshop Core Design Ltd. Not only that, she’s also credited on the 2025 Tomb Raider remake…
With a CV like that, there are should be little doubt about Sarah Jane’s coding chops, but even so, her latest venture ventures into the jaw-dropping zone. What I initially took to be just a tech-demo for Spectrum Next is apparently going to be a full-fledged game after all.
Yes, it seems SJA has decided to shake things up again and jump from Commodore to the Next, which is a most welcome development. The game in question is called Delphian and is based on her unreleased C64 space-trading game from back in the days. It’s presented in a cockpit-view 3D, and the sprite based engine behind it is very impressive. I really dig this kind of look, it’s a welcome change from the usual vector-based three-dimensional shenanigans. Being a sort of space-sim is also quite refreshing in a release calendar mostly dominated by platform games. I will definitely keep tabs on this one and keep you posted.
That’s all folks! I hope we’re back to normal here at Beyond Nostalgia headquarters, regarding the publishing schedule, and the next issue will appear sooner than later!