I made this "fan" game as an exercise to learn what I could do with pico-8. Pico-8 is such a great platform, and definitely challenging. My next effort will be something original. Enjoy!
This feels very much like the original. You even nailed its controls!
Excellent!
Thanks for all the positive feedback. I think I managed to squeeze most of the important stuff I wanted in this game, but some things had to be left out. Overall I am very happy with it. It was a very educational process. The amount of detail in such a seemingly simple game surprised me. For anyone interested in learning game design, I would highly recommend dissecting a classic arcade game.
Thanks again!
YES. There should be more arcade ports! MORE I SAY!
(They don't all have to be from you.)
awesome! i don't know the original, but some googling revealed atari 2600's berzerk... but this has a more pacman-y touch... what's the original? EDIT: enhancing my google-fu revealed Wizard of Wor and god the sprites are identical!!
Did not play the original - but I think you totally nailed the arcade feeling. Nice job!
Thanks! I would like to spend more time creating my own 'retro' style arcade games. It is really nice to work on a small project that can actually be completed in a reasonable amount of time.
I don't quite know how you're handling score (haven't checked), but I suggest you do it like this:
- The minimum score you can get is 100, right? Take away those two zeroes in the code and refer to it as "1" instead.
- Tack on the two extra zeros when displaying the score.
Example:
print(score.."00",x,y,color) |
Again, I haven't checked the code.
The reason why I'm recommending this is that PICO-8 has a variable limit of 16 bits (32767), so doing this method allows for the maximum score to be 3.27 million.
But based on your work, you probably already know this small hint.
That's actually a much better way than mine. I did not really consider the score values being multiples of 100 at the time, and so I wrote my code to break each score into 2 values: thousands, and < 1000. I think I will change it to use your suggestion. Thanks! Every byte counts!
Hadn't really thought that it saves bytes, but I suppose it does.
That's a kinda crazy way. Tell me how many bytes you save, okay?
EDIT: Gotta praise the faithfulness to the arcade classic (sans the voice, but that'd be tough to do).
@Skyrunner65, after refactoring my code, your suggestion saved me almost 200 tokens. That's enough for me to add some extra details. Thanks!
No problem. Although I'm not a master programmer, I do what I can.
Excellent version of my favorite game on the C64! If you find the time (and memory) to add the sounds for enter/exit the door(s) and the rise sound for the player at the start of the level, this would perfect an already perfect game.
Hmm... I guess now that pico-8 has more code space I should revisit this game. Once I'm done with "highsteel", I will consider this.
Good to hear you'll be considering revisiting this game. I really like it and you did a great job! I'm working on a somewhat similar game, it's a remake of "Thunder Castle" for the Intellivision. It's kinda like a cross between Pacman, this game (Wizard of Wor) and Rogue (though it's not a Roguelike or Rogue lite, but it seems to borrow certain elements). I think all three were likely inspirations for it. Fun trivia about Thunder Castle: the dragon on level 1 of the game was very likely to be the inspiration behind Trogdor the Burninator from Homestar Runner (who subsequently also got his own Hearthstone card, "Troggzor the Earthinator").
Thunder Castle looks like fun. I didn't know about this game. I like how the maze changes shape. Oh, also, Trogdor!!! So funny.
I just completed a game called HighSteel. So now that I am free-ish again, I will play around with this cart some more. After a bit of a break.
Can't wait to play your game when it is ready!
Trogdor!!!
I played HighSteel and it's a ton of fun! Went right into my cart collection. Reminds me a bit of Lode Runner for some reason :P
I noticed you said on Twitter that it was inspired by Jumpman - believe it or not, I've never played Jumpman, but I can definitely see the resemblance from the screenshots I found of it.
So much fun! A real throwback to playing the original with my dad in the arcade when I was a little kid. I have WoW in MAME, but there's something about this that feels grittier and, in a way, more fun.
Very nice ! For those curious, this is based on WIZARD OF WOR (spelled correctly) from the arcade game of 1981, and is in fact is still one of my favorite games next to Strider, and Venture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D780JHlQxxs
Playing this I can tell you that the monsters speed up the less number there are. Try out the original on MAME or some other emulator to see what I mean. On level 7 or so, the critters speed up so fast it's virtually impossible to shoot them in time.
Check the special effects for shooting each attacker. The WIZARD when SHOT I know does this interesting static-type of pixeled effect on all dots of the maze.
The text for each level is on a BLACK screen with very large letters that are fat horizontally and skilly vertically - so there are divisions between the vertical pixels. You could scan the original default 3x5 letters of PICO and display those at a new size if you like.
If you really want a challenge, you might experiment with sound and see if you can get something that sounds like weird speech. It doesn't have to be intelligible, just a strange sound that is similar to the original arcade game's digital speech. I know they did this for some early NES games like the 16k BASEBALL.
Using only strange pitches and carefully placed white noise, you could hear the catcher 'yell' BALL, STRIKE, OUT, SAFE, and CHANGE. It really wasn't speech but a bunch of notes stuck together and played at a high speed so as to give the effect it was.
Just to add to the praise for this remake.
This was a family favourite for us on our ol' Atari 400 (along with River Raid).
Sadly, never got to play it in the arcades.
You've nailed the playability of the original (and the stress-levels!)
Well done! :D
Wizard of Wor was a staple in our old C64 collection. Great port, and your laser shot/hit sounds even better than it did on the SID chip. Awesome work!
Had to pop into this thread to mention that me and my 7 year old Nephew enjoyed this game for more than an hour in 2p mode, on my PicoPi just the other day.
I used to play Wizard of Wor in the arcade.
This is an awesome adaptation!
Thank you.
Playing this game again after a few years.
Ah, I shot the wizard but no cool B&W palette swap or flashy effects for minor boss ?
One of my favourite games on the C64 back in the day.
You really nailed it, including the SFX which really add to the retro feel. Well done!
@Gadzooka I just found this game, and damn is this a fine version of Wizards of Wor on the Pico-8! I love it!
Wizard of Wor was one of the first true killer-games in the early
phase of the c64, no matter of being played solo or mano-e-mano.
I love playing it to the very day and i also love this brilliant port.
Well done, Worrior!
My favourite PICO-8 game ever, hands down. I think I prefer Wizards Rule to WoW; which considering my love of WoW is very high praise indeed!
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