Thunder Castle for Pico-8
My Pico-8 remake of the glorious Thunder Castle by INTV Corporation (1986) for Intellivision, with some quality-of-life improvements:
- UI: shows the magic objects you're carrying; a progress bar at the bottom of the screen shows the duration of your energized state;
- Achievements: the top 5 high-scores are recorded as well as the maximum level reached; the time indicates when you’ve reached such level (not the total time at game-over), plus the final score of that Best Run;
- Anti-leeching system: automatically prevents scoring abuse which is the issue on the original regarding high-scores, e.g. see how World Record rules on Twin Galaxies try to discourage leeching.
Game Manual:
The vintage Manual is available in Downloads as PDF file
TL;DR
⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️ move
⭕️/❎ [Z,X,C,V] Action button
Touch the flashing creatures (bats, rat and skull) to energize your knight in order to slay all the guardians (Dragon, Sorcerers and Demons). Collect and use at your advantage the magic objects that appear (details in the [P]ause/[Enter] menu, choose "CHEAT SHEET" for a quick in-game help).
For all the details please read the manual above.
Thanks to:
@solar for his work on the tunes for a 2016 WIP on this game that unfortunately has been abandoned long ago; a precious reference for note sequences in two of the fanfares and life-lost tune.
thisismypassword for creating Shrinko8;
@Cowirrie and @morningtoast for testing and feedback
you for playing the game!
Download
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Comments
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Wow! Only watched videos of the original a while back, was surprised to stumble upon this, it seems to recreate the game spectacularly well! The animations and the music are very pleasant, just like the original game, while the level design feels like a well thought out port for the Pico-8's display.
Yes maze layouts had to be different, Intellivision had a wider but shorter rectangular screen, 20x12 blocks, while Pico-8 has 16x16. By the way to make a few layouts looking more familiar I recreated similar regions and corners, or -especially forests- making them narrower and adding more at the bottom.
Thanks for playing it!
I see and I like them - it feels akin to how ports were done in the 80s, sometimes having to vary the game a little to fit on the target. It sure feels faithful to the original as far as I had seen its gameplay :)
I can honestly say that until I saw this, I had never heard of this game. Of course, I had to do a little search on the web to find out a bit more about it. Thanks for putting it together. I think you did a great job. Certainly makes we wish I still had my old Intellivision.
Yes probably because this one had a troubled history and continuous delays until finally released in 1986 (when Mattel Electronics was no more) so yes other early titles like Night Stalker, Astrosmash, Lock'n'chase, etc.. might definitely sound more familiar and popular especially for the kids of that era who actually played the real thing.
But I played Thunder Castle a couple months ago -first thanks on my brother on a PS2 'intellivision lives' and the week later on the actual physical Intellivision console wow- and I though I absolutely had to make a Pico-8 remake; possibly trying to fix a few details that appeared to make the original game frustrating at times.
I'm still curious to know from people who played the original one, let's see...
Thanks a lot merx for playing! 🙏
Yup. I had most of those titles back when Atari and Intellivision were the only things around. Thanks for bringing it to life.