MazingerZ-C64 Update
A hot and endless Summer is definitely not the right period to stay home and write about games, so the blog has recently been suffering a lack of articles in an unprecedented way (left aside the Summer of 2013). To get back on track I decided to present you guys with the latest update on Mazinger Z, a brand new C64 game by the very talented Carlos Zubieta (game designer and coder) which we already covered some time ago.
The last few months have been very rough for anyone, often spent in lock-down with kids and wife (or husband … LOL) but Carlos managed to get quite some work done. In particular (shame on me for not having noticed it before) the top border in this game is actually part of the game screen, a very cool feature that comes with the drawback of compromising the smooth vertical scrolling, so a virtual border had to be added. The trickeries needed to fix this and other problems are at the moment well beyond my understanding (god, how I miss the 8-bit coding!) but the results achieved by the developer and his fantastic team are, as usual, outstanding.
The main reason I decided to revive the blog by starting with this game update is well explained by the dev himself, so let’s hear what he has to say: “I also wanted to test the limits of the game engine so I created a special stage with 6 simultaneous enemies. The data for each robot is now banked in ROM so I can dynamically use any character in real-time. As you see in the video below the engine handles plenty of sprites really fine. The sprite buffer is able to handle double-buffered 24 sprites, supporting single (1×1) sprites, 1×2, 2×1 and 2×2 characters practically glitch-free. Currently, I’m working on the underwater level with different gravity, physics, etc. Mazinger Z struggled in the underwater fights as most of the weapons are not useful there, and I will try to recreate that feeling in the water levels.”
Having heard that, just enjoy the video below. Thank you for following us and please make sure to visit the official game website:
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