P1XL Party - Retro Minigame Collection

We're pleased to announce that P1XL's latest game app has been submitted to the App Store!

P1XL Party is a pixelated celebration of the spirit of classic video games! Three games, with more to come in free updates, are included in this compilation. This first release includes Splatform (a platformer/jumper), Wanderers (an action-rpg), and Marz (a shooter/bomber game). Future free updates already in development include other classic genres: puzzle, racing, strategy, and more.

P1XL programmers/designers Sam Washburn and Robin Harbron bring you new games that would have been right at home alongside the classics in the arcades, or on your console or home computer in the early 1980s.

Here's the main menu:

 

Working through each of the games in the collection:

Splatform - before Doodle Jump, before Papi Jump, there was Splatform for the Commodore 64. Entered in the 2002 Minigame Programming Competition, Splatform took 1st place by a wide margin in a field of 62 new games for old systems. This addictive platform jumper was also adapted for the Atari 2600, and now you can play a pixel-perfect recreation of the C-64 original on your iOS device.

Here's a link to the original compo: http://www.cling.gu.se/~cl3polof/minigame/results.html

If you have a C-64 emulator, or a way to transfer files from the internet to your real C-64 system, you can download the original game here: http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=7183

A screenshot of the iOS port:

 

Retro Gamebox just launched 5 days ago too... what are the odds? I'm downloading it now, thanks for the info and for buying Minimae!

 

Okay!

Wanderers - The seven daughters of the King are lost, wandering the kingdom. Night is falling soon - you are the brave knight who must find and return the princesses to the castle, protecting them from the fearsome beasts that roam the swampy lands. Chests with improved armour and weapons, and potions can be found to help you in your quest.

Here's a screenshot:

 

And finally (until the first update):

Marz - Save your scout craft by bombing clear a landing area on the Martian surface. Authentic Commodore 64-style graphics mixed with classic "Bomber" gameplay and a couple new twists make this an addictive addition to the P1XL collection.

 

I bought and played Retro Gamebox today. I'm not really sure what kind of "retro" they're aiming for - most of the games look like shareware from the early days of VGA on MS-DOS machines, which is a phase I'd rather forget A few of the games were fun at least.

We're aiming for a real authenticity within each game; for Splatform I re-coded the game line for line from the original 6502 assembly language I wrote 9 years ago for the Commodore 64 version.

Marz doesn't exist as a real C-64 game, but a nearly exact port, graphics included, should be possible (just need to adjust for the different screen dimensions on a C-64).

Wanderers isn't modelled after any particular console or computer, but maybe the closest would be an Intellivision.

We hope to touch on every 8-bit genre as we add new games. We don't plan on directly cloning the classic games; instead we'll be making games that could have been made in that era, on a variety of real and imagined platforms.