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186
 
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Last Login: 12/11/2008 19:22:58
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Okay, as 2007 has been quite an active year for home-brew development, I thought I'd start 2008 with a best of 2007 in home-brew terms. Catergories are:
Best overall game, best game by format, most original game and a special award catergory.
Forerunners are Joe Gunn Gold (C64) - best overall game and best game by format, Quantum Gardening (ZX Spectrum) - best game by format and most original game, YOOGOR (ZX81) - special award category, Cannon Bubble (ZX Spectrum) best game by format, Green Runner (Commodore 64) - best game by format and special award and Yoomp! (Atari 8-bit) - best overall game, best game by format and most original game.
All nominations are welcomed. The rules are simple. It has to be released on or after 1st January 2007 and no later than that 1st December 2007 (okay, not quite a year, but this is something that I hope to do annually, therefore games released after 1st December can be nominated for the best of 2008 awards) on an 8-bit platform as freeware, public domain or on real-media. A game only needs one nomination to be considered, and I have a whole host of games other than those mentioned that will be considered - basically everything that I have reviewed this year. So, if I've missed anything, let me know.
Thanks,
Shaun.
I forgot to say - the 2008 awards will include 16/32-bit releases as I'm going to phase in coverage of these machines too if people don't mind ;-)
http://www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk
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186
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Last Login: 12/11/2008 19:22:58
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186
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| Has the "Retro Game of the year" been shown in Micro Mart yet ? I find it had to locate a copy of the mag in the small market town that I work in.
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186
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 12/11/2008 19:22:58
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For those who missed issue 989 of Micro Mart, here are the results, starting with...
Best overall game
The three most outstanding games across all formats were Yoomp! for the 64K Atari XE/XL, Quantum Gardening for the Speccy and Joe Gunn for the C64. This is a close call, because all of these games are all superb and provide many hours of entertainment, but by a cigarette paper, the award goes to Yoomp! for its originality and playability, closely followed by Georg Rottensteiner's Joe Gunn which is a well thought out platformer-come-puzzler with an excellent game mechanic, and in third place is Quantum Gardening, by Jonathan Cauldwell, which reminds me of how great gardening games can be, like Llamasoft's Hovver Bovver or Gardensoft's Advanced Lawnmower Simulator.
Best game by format
It would be no surprise, as you've just read, that for the Atari 8-bit it's Yoomp! that stands above all throughout the world of Atari, and in second place is the Mario-esque cutesy platform game Crownland by Piotr Wisniewski. Third place, although owing virtually everything to the Speccy classic Jet Pac is the remake Jetboy.
Moving onto Commodore, the winner is Joe Gunn, beating the sublime and psychedelic Green Runner by Aleksi Eeben, which is in second and sneaking in for the 16K VIC-20 is Glenn Richard's Frogger '07 - hardly original, but great fun nonetheless.
Sinclair fans really had a good year, with the board-game-come-platformer Quantum Gardening beating the competition to first place. Hot on its heels is the puzzler BeTiled, by CEZ Game Studio, and thirdly is another Jonathan Cauldwell production in the form the Thrust clone Blizzard's Rift.
There simply weren't enough releases on the Amstrad CPC to decide a top three, so there is simply one winner for this format, the blasterama Star Sabre. Hopefully, home brew developments will pick up on the CPC. With other formats simply not getting a high number of releases, there are just two more categories to go.
Most original game
Plaudits must again go to Jonathan Cauldwell for his release Quantum Gardening, beating the psychedelic and manic blast-fest Green Runner for the C64, and in third place is making an appearance Yoomp! yet again.
Special award category
To balance things up a bit, this category is for games that have something a bit different about them. In first place is a 16K ZX81 game by André Baune. To get any sort of playability out of what was intended to be an educational tool, and a limited one at that, is quite remarkable, and Yoogor's plodding pace, good design and well thought out puzzles make it the winner. In second place is a game that can be played over a modern network on a C64, using net adapters such as the RR-Net. Pitting two players from different worldly locations is Leif Bloomquist's Artillery Duel. In third place is a Commodore 16 game that isn't; it's the port of Kik Start C16 to the C64, ported by Jason Kelk of Cosine, and originally by Shaun Southern.
So, let's hope that there is as much quality throughout 2008 then :-) I'm certainly looking forward to a year of homebrew.
http://www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk
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186
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Last Login: 12/11/2008 19:22:58
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Many apologies to Piotr Wisniewski and co... "Clownland" should read "Crownland", unfortunately, I didn't notice the mistake in my copy before submitting it.
Other than that, my choice for the best overall game of 2007 seems to have caused a little bit of controversy in some parts of the weird wired retro scene simply because it's a 3D game. Let me assure everyone that, in my opinion, Yoomp! is the best overall homebrew game of 2007 and not just because it uses some clever programming tricks to generate a 3D tunnel, but because of playability and general addictiveness.
This makes me think that there should perhaps be a readers award category for the 2008 awards; the reason I missed it out is because I thought it unworkable. For instance, there are so many different formats that I cover already, and whilst some games are available on real cassette or disk, most are downloadable, meaning that the free-to-download wares will be more popular than the ones that you have to actually buy. Then, you have to consider that generally ZX Spectrum fans are only interested in Speccy games, and Atari 8-bit fans XE/XL games etc... so it's going to be the best game that has the most downloads on the most popular format that wins, whereas I generally play through most homebrew titles as a part of the course, so I consider that I have a more balanced view on these matters.
So, I'll only have a readers award category IF people sign up to this forum and start talking about different homebrew games here. The compromise is to ask the Old School Gaming team (www.oldschool-gaming.com) to nominate their top three to get a general consensus from people who play homebrew games across different formats for 2008, when the time comes.
Many thanks,
Shaun.
http://www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk
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