Been busy round here this weekend, hasn't it? Anyway I've got a few more bits of important news to share and I haven't got time to write a full-on blog post for each one. So, ladies and gents, listen up!
Long-term readers of this blog may recall that a few years back I (James) assisted with booking, organising and representing indies at Replay Events' PLAY Blackpool expo. Well, I've volunteered to help them again - but this time for their far bigger PLAY Expo at EventCity, Manchester (10-11th October). In fact, this time it'll be both Jamie and myself attending - RGCD will be present at the event with a playable/final build of our multiplayer battle game Pan-Dimensional Conga-Combat :)
If you're planning on attending as a visitor - or if you'd like to join us in exhibiting (booths cost £300) - then please get in touch!
Both Gravitrix and P0 Snake have reached the half-way mark in terms of sales, so if you're interested in picking up either a copy of 2014's compo-winning P0 Snake or Robot Riot's awesome gravity-based puzzle-em-up Gravitrix you'd best do it quick :)
Oh, and talking of stock - a few extra copies of C64anabalt, Super Bread Box and Bomberland have been added to our online store, so feel free to grab those too if you missed them before!
Over the years we've received loads of great photos of people playing their fave RGCD games on real hardware, and to be honest I'm pretty dreadful at photography, so these shots are super useful for helping us promote our games. I mean look at that one above from Arvid Weber - how awesome is that?
So what we're offering is this: between now and the 1st of September, send us your cool RGCD shots (with the understanding that we might use them for promo purposes) and in return we'll send a free game to whoever sends in our overall favourite photo.
To submit, drop us a line with the subject 'RGCD Photo Compo' or similar. Of course, if you want to just send us photos for us to retweet or whatever for fun, we're happy to do that too :)
Monday 27 July 2015
Sunday 26 July 2015
RGCD: From Mags to Riches – The Evolution of a Software Publisher
[This article was originally written by J. Monkman for issue #64 of the world-famous Commodore 64 disk magazine Vandalism News, and has been reposted here with permission from the editor. If you wish to read it in its original form, download Vandalism News from CSDB].
One of the things I have discovered over the past few months is that it is really hard to write about something you're both really passionate about and directly responsible for without sounding like a complete asshole. The chances are that I've probably failed here, so you'll just have to take my word that I'm actually an 'OK' guy, and not an egotistical, deluded idiot who believes he has single-handedly saved the C64 gaming scene by selling cartridges and running a game development competition. The part I play in all of this, although significant, is actually pretty small. To give a terrible analogy, much like a frontman of a typical rock band, without the rest of the musicians I'd be nothing - just a guy strutting about and shouting on a stage. So, the main kudos of course goes out to the large and ever-growing family of sceners I've collaborated and worked with since starting out on the C64, and regardless of how many interviews or presentations I'm asked to give about RGCD, this is a fact that I will never forget.
It's probably worth mentioning that I actually wrote the bulk of this article back in 2012 for a papermag version of Propaganda that sadly never materialised. Because of this there's a big chunk of the RGCD story missing that has been covered elsewhere in other interviews and blog write-ups (the release of Super Bread Box at GameCity 2013 in particular). Instead, I've decided to focus on the previously undocumented origins of RGCD, as well as briefly covering our present day activities and the future.
Topics:
retrospective,
scene
Saturday 25 July 2015
C64 16KB Cartridge Game Development Competition!
The fifth RGCD C64 16KB cartridge game development competition concluded on the 1st of April at midnight with 9 new games (and two cartridge re-releases) for the C64.
Topics:
C64,
competition,
retro homebrew
2014 C64 16KB Cartridge Game Development Competition Results
Ok, so today I figured it was about time to (finally) announce the next RGCD C64 Cartridge Game Dev Compo ... but then it dawned upon me - I still hadn't actually announced the final results from last year! Well, that's actually not entirely true, as the results were published over at CSDB, but somehow I had completely failed to update the compo page on this blog. Apologies to all involved!
Anyway, there's a story behind this. Earlier this year enthusi and I thought it would be fun to try something different with announcing the results, so we worked away in secret for a few weeks and used his excellent 'Above & Beyond' single-file diskmag format so that the entrants could view the judge's feedback on their own Commodore 64 (and 17 games judged by 12 people resulted in a LOT of text - over 18,000 words in fact).
I did initially intend to publish that text here as well, but let's face it - NO ONE is going to read an 18,000 word blog post! So instead, I've posted the final scores below (together with the original foreword) and packaged up the C64 results-mag disk with a copy of the VICE emulator (win32) so you can view and read it as was originally intended.
Topics:
C64,
competition,
retro homebrew
Sunday 19 July 2015
The Story of the Commodore 64 in Pixels (Tiger Claw Exclusive!)
It's been some time since we collaborated in a Kickstarter (last time being Sam Dyer's hugely successful Commodore 64: A Visual Commpendium), but I'm proud to say we're back again to help with another exciting book project, offering another exclusive game cartridge as a backer reward. But before we talk about that, let's look at the book itself :)
The Story of the Commodore 64 in Pixels is the 5th (well, probably 6th) book written by Fusion Retro Books head man Chris Wilkins, and is planned as a 236 book about the history and legacy of the Commodore 64, featuring a foreword by Jeron Tel, and over 25 memoirs from home computer heroes such as Archer Maclean, Jon Hare, The Oliver Twins, Roger Kean, Oliver Frey, Andrew Hewson, Tony Crowther and many others.
Full details of the Kickstarter can be read by following the link above, but the book is already funded and Chris is steaming towards smashing some of the stretch goals - and we want to help him make this project as successful as possible! So what are we offering?
You may recall a cute little 16KB fighting game from our C64 development competition last year called Tiger Claw. You know, the game that came second place, behind the awesome P0 Snake. Now we always hoped to release the game on cartridge at some point, but first we really wanted to tweak and enhance a few areas of the game - and with Matthias and Saul already with several projects on the go, Tiger Claw MK2 kept on getting pushed back. However, when Chris contacted me enquiring about a game cartridge as a backer reward, I rallied the team together and Tiger Claw is now back in the RGCD workshop, receiving the following:
- A larger, revised game map with several more screens/rooms (offering a fresh challenge).
- Revised controls and physics with more friction.
- Selectable difficulty.
- Loading screen and additional music missing from the 16KB version.
- A hidden additional game on the 64KB cartridge! :)
All of this is in addition to the original game's rooms, items, enemies, bossfights and full PAL/NTSC support (same gamespeed and musicspeed in PAL and NTSC)!
There's not much to share just yet, but we're on target to have the game ready to ship in two months time, packed in one of our DX cases complete with a double sided A3 poster/map, stickers and manual. Each copy will have a numbered sticker on the inside of the case insert with your name printed on, and the cartridges are exclusive to the Kickstarter - you won't be able to buy them from our online store!
To get your hands on this super limited release, back the project at the £70 level - or simply choose a lower backer tier and add £40 on to your pledge (that £40 includes worldwide shipping!) ... So what are you waiting for?!
(It's worth noting that fellow RGCD comrade George Rottensteiner and artist Trevor Storey are also contributing a game to the Kickstarter - so check that out too!)
Topics:
C64,
projects,
retro homebrew
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