Blaster, Drelbs and Match Patch in the Zone

[Master484]

I have just put to the Zone screenshots, DBS and disk scans for three high quality PD games that are not yet listed on HOL: Blaster, Match Patch and Drelbs.

Hopefully someone can add these games to HOL, especially Blaster, which is probably the best Public Domain shoot'em up on the Amiga, and also one of the fastest shooters on the whole Amiga.

Here is some info on the games:

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Blaster

A superfast shooter made by J.R. Evans, I think this is the same guy who also made Beetle: http://hol.abime.net/5850

The amount of big sprites and bullets on the screen is amazing, and the game runs at a solid 50 fps most of the time. I don't know any other A500 shooter with this much action on the screen at once, running at 50 fps.

On one screen I counted 16+ enemy bullets, 16 player bullet sprites (each sprite showing the graphics of two bullets, giving the impression of 32 player bullets on screen) and 16+ enemies around the size of 32*32, with no signs of slowdown. Maybe some of you tech wizards should try to disassemble this game and look how it's made.

There is also a hidden sub-game called "Tetnus", which can be accessed from the pause menu. The pause menu appears when a mouse button is pressed.

And the in-game graphics were 261 pixels high, so this is why every screenshot is 320*261 instead of the standard 320*256.

Blaster was released on a Coverdisk: The One June 1993. I believe it was an exclusive release for this magazine, so it didn't appear on any other mags. The One issue in question has some more info on this game, and starting on page 28 there is a very interesting story on how they sent this game to some 20 game companies, and asked them for comments on the game and a job as a game programmer: http://amr.abime.net/issue_340_pages

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Match Patch

Another high quality PD game, with a Bubble Bobble inspired art style. This game is found at least on the Cu Amiga Coverdisk 22 December 1991, as part of the "21 Games collection".

Developer is unclear, the title screens says "Ideas and code by SD" and there is an year: 1990.

The Highscore table seems to have the authors name, but it's listed on the very bottom score entry. And the only way to get to the game display the highscores is to get a high score, which instantly pushes the developers name out of the table, as you can see in one of the screenshots.

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Drelbs

An unofficial Amiga conversion of the old classic Drelbs, made by Simon Chin. The original Drelbs was created in 1983 by Kelly Jones and published by Synapse Software to the Atari 800 XL. It was also ported to Commodore 64 and Apple II.

Magazine release: The One August 1994.

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Technical info:

Blaster - OCS/ECS, 1 MB of RAM. Although I have an ADF which has only this game in it, and it didn't always start with just 1 MB. But the coverdisk version surely runs with 1 MB, because I played it with a real Amiga back then.

Match Patch - OCS/ECS, 512K RAM

Drelbs- OCS/ECS, 512K RAM.

Also all are one player games.

[Predseda]

Notes:
Blaster Lemon crosslink ID is 3666
Drelbs Lemon crosslink ID is 3788

[hipoonios]

All games added! Let me know if you see anything that needs to be corrected.

Unfortunately I have no powers to link to the magazines on Amiga Magazine Rack or add your coverdisk scans. This is something that can only be done from AMR's side. So let's hope someone from the AMR Team sees this. Same goes for the Lemon Amiga links.

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by hipoonios

All games added! Let me know if you see anything that needs to be corrected.

Unfortunately I have no powers to link to the magazines on Amiga Magazine Rack or add your coverdisk scans. This is something that can only be done from AMR's side. So let's hope someone from the AMR Team sees this. Same goes for the Lemon Amiga links.

Email me your details and I will give you an AMR login if you wish.