Congrats Colin, nice one ! Here's to another 10 ;-) Do you have any plans to do H.A.T.E.? That was always one of my favourite Gremlin titles.
Saturday, April 30, 2005, 10:25:38 PM, you wrote: Colin> Well yesterday was a special day.... the 10th Anniversary of Quazar! Colin> For it was on the 29th April 1995 when I had a stand at the third Gloucester Colin> show, where I unveiled the (2nd) prototype of the Quazar Surround soundcard, Colin> marking the start of Quazar! Colin> And that was just the beginning of what has really taken up a heck of a lot Colin> of my time since then! As you may be aware a few new products are in the Colin> pipeline such as the Mayhem Accelerator, and issue 12 of Sam Revival is Colin> nearing completion and will be being sent out shortly. Colin> And here's some juicy tidbits of news taken from the next issue of Sam Colin> Revival to wet your appetites about a few other things I am working on when Colin> ever I get a few free minutes... Colin> Hydrasoft Games Colin> --------------- Colin> I have recently bought the rights to several old Sam games, and a pile of Colin> unreleased stuff from Pete King, formerly going by the name Hydrasoft. Pete Colin> had two games released back in 1996 and 1997 - Conquest and Mage Fire, which Colin> were published to a limited extent by Zedd-Soft (run by Michael Stocks / Colin> Zodiac Magazine). I was also involved with the two titles way back then by Colin> adding support for the Quazar Surround soundcard to both of the games. Colin> I had previously secured permission from Pete to use Conquest and Mage Fire Colin> on the Sam Revival coverdisks (and you'll find Mage Fire on the coverdisk Colin> with Sam Revival 12) but now with owning the titles I can go further with Colin> them and I am already planning a revamp of Conquest to update all the Colin> graphics and sounds. What I have to do now is go through a massive pile of Colin> disks to look at all the unreleased games. Expect more news soon! Colin> Gremlin Graphics Games Colin> ---------------------- Colin> I have received permission from Andy Davis of Alchemist Research to use old Colin> Gremlin Graphics games on the Sam. Now instead of just adapting the ZX Colin> Spectrum versions to run on the Sam under emulation (as was done on the old Colin> Blitz diskzine back in the late 1990's) it is my aim to create full Sam Colin> versions of some of the classic games for inclusion on the Sam Revival Colin> coverdisks. Colin> The first game I am looking at is 'Thing on a Spring', originally released Colin> back in 1984 for the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC only. Thing on a Spring is Colin> a bouncy and fast platformer and with some carefully planned scroll routines Colin> it should make the transition to the Sam with few problems. Colin> Now the music for any game is very important for me, and I am planning to Colin> feature the original SID based music (for use with the SID interface) as Colin> well as a new rendition of the tune for the normal Sam SAA1099 soundchip. I' Colin> m pleased to say that initial work on the game remake is underway, and the Colin> SAA1099 version of the music is already complete! The SAA1099 music track Colin> was carefully composed by David Suzuki-Sanders (who also composed the 'About Colin> as SID as its going to get' SAA1099 track on the audio CD with the last Colin> issue of Sam Revival.) Colin> The second game I am looking at converting is Colin> 'Harlequin', one of the first Colin> games I ever played on an Amiga, and one that Colin> immediately impressed me with Colin> its graphics, music and playability. Harlequin is another scrolling platform Colin> game, based in a fantasy dreamworld with very colourful graphics and a Colin> thumping soundtrack, and was released only for the 16 bit machines in 1992 - Colin> the Atari ST and the Amiga. Colin> So why should the Sam be left out of such a great game? No reason I think! Colin> So far I have converted over the graphics for the first level from the Atari Colin> ST (easier to capture via an emulator than the Amiga version), and for the Colin> main scenery and characters only 12 colours were used so this conversion was Colin> quite straight forward. My aim is to convert across the whole of the first Colin> level as a test, to see how well I can get the game engine to work. However Colin> as this game does involve full screen scrolling and some quite large sprites Colin> I will be writing it to run with the Mayhem Accelerator to give the Sam the Colin> speed it needs to move everything around. Colin> (Of course the magazine will have all the screenshots of work so far, and Colin> they will also appear on the new site at Colin> www.samcoupe.com at the end of the Colin> week!) Colin> And hopefully all going well, there'll be a few surprises of more new stuff Colin> throughout 2005 too....! Colin> Here's to many more years to come....! Colin> All the best, Colin> Colin Colin> ===== Colin> Quazar : Hardware, Software, Spares and Repairs for the Sam Coupe Colin> April 1995-2005 - Celebrating 10 Years of developing for the Sam Coupe Colin> Website: http://www.quazar.clara.net/sam/ and http://www.samcoupe.com/
