Supersonic Ball and IkarugaX
Posted by Ryan on 25 November 2013, 17:19 GMT
Continuing our double feature goodness, we have a couple of great z80 releases that appeared in our archives today. Both of them have a fantastic arcade-like feel to them, promising that your holiday season will be filled with honing your skills to perfection. Huzzah!
Kevin "DJ Omnimaga" Ouellet is an expert at creating games that look as great as they play. Supersonic Ball is no exception to this rule and is guaranteed to keep your thumbs buzy and eyes dazzled. The goal of the game is to get your bouncing ball to the end of each level. Sounds easy, right? Well, try doing that at supersonic speeds! You control the ball's speed and bounce height, attempting to avoid bumping into edges that will send you bouncing backwards, consuming precious time. The game is physics-oriented and features great animations, wonderfully smooth scrolling, and some great parallax scrolling. The game gets progressively more difficult and will certainly keep you coming back for more. Considering the amount of stuff on-screen, it's quite a feat of coding that everything moves as quickly and smoothly as it does. Great work, DJ O!
Afraid that you'll get bounced-out? That's alright -- you should take frequent breaks by switching over to another great arcade-inspired game, IkarugaX by Mattias Refeyton, an author whose growing library is getting pretty loaded with great calc games. For those who are not in the know, the original Ikaruga is an arcade shmup by Treasure and is regarded in some circles as one of the greatest games in the genre. The game introduced a novel "polarity switching" mechanic that is easy to learn but difficult to master, one that Mattias has faithfully implemented in his z80 take on the original. Danmaku shmups are notoriously difficult to pull off on z80 calcs due to the sheer amount of on-screen action; Mattias has taken an admirable run at this challenge nonetheless. The author wisely advises you to give the readme a good look-over before playing, which will help you get the most out of the bullet-ridden madness that your calc is soon to experience.
Great job to both authors! Both releases certainly live up to their creators' reputations!
