Monday 5 April 2021

Coming Soon! Retaliate DX & Endless Forms Most Beautiful (Commodore 64)

It's been crazy busy here at RGCD for the past month or so. Not only have I been ramping up production of Monstro Giganto, but I have also been working on preparing a number of other games for launch, including Endless Forms Most Beautiful and Retaliate DX. Oh, and I've assembled and flashed 150 copies of Icon64's Arcade Daze for backers of the Zzap 2021 Annual Kickstarter by Fusion Books as well!

One of these games - Retaliate DX - I have covered in some detail before. Since the last update, apart from the usual pre-launch fixes and tweaks, the only significant change has been the addition of a SNES pad control option (using the TexElec adapter). We're just waiting for the manuals to come back from the printers and a new delivery of GMOD2 to arrive and the game will finally be available to buy in our online store.

However, I've just realised that this is the first time I have made an announcement about Endless Forms Most Beautiful for the C64, so really I need to rewind a little bit and explain what this project is all about.

As explained in this article here, back in 2012 RGCD worked with Locomalito to remake David Hughes' modern ZX Spectrum homebrew game EFMB for the PC. More of a re-imagining than a straight remake, Locomalito's version carried his distinctive 1980's coin-op style - and with it's two-player mode it was really more akin to games like Snow Bros or Bubble Bobble than original. Back in the days when CD releases were still a thing for the PC, Locomalito even released a limited edition physical version of the game (which I proudly have in my collection). In short, if you haven't already checked it out, I strongly recommend you do so.

Jumping forward to 2019, one of RGCD's regular customers dropped me an email asking if I'd seen this new game called Endless Forms Most Beautiful on the Commodore Scene Database. I immediately assumed that it would be a port of the ZX Spectrum game - after all, that would make sense. But no, here was a game that was actually a demake of Locomalito's remake - making it a C64 demake of a PC remake of a ZX Spectrum game!

The C64 conversion of EFMB is really impressive and succeeds in staying as true as possible to Locomalito's vision. In fact, I was so enamoured by the game that I contacted Locomalito and suggested that we work with the developers to create a physical cartridge release. And that's what we've done - complete with packaging that has remained as faithful as possible to Locomalito, Gryzor87and Marek Barej's PC CD release.

Both EFMB and Retaliate DX are in the final stages of production and should be available to purchase soon!

2 comments:

  1. That's really cool that RetaliateDx will get multibutton support for the SNES pad.. I wonder if it would be possible to also support the awesome PadSwitcher64 which also adds SNES gamepad adapter to C64: https://github.com/Hojo-Norem/PadSwitcher64

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  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2Knv5vfY2s

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