Beautiful "Nixy the Glade Sprite" jump'n run (Spectrum 128K)

[Otto]

To honour Sir Clive Sinclair's 80th birthday from yesterday, I'd like to point to this:

There's some nice reviews of newer retro games in the 2018 and 2019 issue of the 8-Bit Annual magazine. These two issues can be downloaded as PDF files from the magazine website. Many interesting games for our Amstrad CPC, Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore C64, Atari 8-Bit and also MSX are being reviewed. Also some of Reidrac's cool CPC games got a 93% score, plus an interview with him.

For fans of jump'n run games like Manic-Miner/Jet-Set-Willy, Metroid etc, the magazine reviewed the British retro-developer Andy Johns' perfectly polished game Nixy the Glade Sprite from 2018, interviewed the author and awarded his game with an superb 98% score. Well earned I would say. A must see.

Andy used the Arcade Game Designer, which I don't know. Would love to see a port of the Spectrum's Nixy game to our CPC. :-)  The Spectrum 128K's sound-chip is our beloved AY one from the CPC, by the way.

P.S. There's a normal Spectrum 128K version and one for ULA+ to download: this seems to be some palette enhanced hardware for Spectrum remakes and some emulators. Being at emulators: is there any chance to enable ULA+ in the Spectrum 128K emulation of MAME ?

[reidrac]

For fans of jump'n run games like Manic-Miner/Jet-Set-Willy, Metroid etc, the magazine reviewed the British retro-developer Andy Johns' perfectly polished game Nixy the Glade Sprite from 2018, interviewed the author and awarded his game with an superb 98% score. Well earned I would say. A must see.

That's a pretty game! I played it when it was released and I love the amount of detail.

AGD is a nice tool if you know how to push it to do what you want.

Btw, looks like the Mojon Twins are improving their framework for the CPC and, besides having to remake the graphics, it is reasonably straightforward to port games made with their MK2 for Spectrum. They used a similar approach to release Cheman and Sir Ababol NESOM (from the NES port of the game); and the engine is very solid.

I'd like to see more games made with that (not necessarily ports), or even with AGD. It is about graphics and game design, that's all you need.

Jet Paco for CPC incoming:
https://twitter.com/anjuelzgz/status/1288886838334238723

And they have Sgt. Helmet Training Day too (according to some screnshoots in twitter).

[Otto]

Thank you for answering, since it's always interesting to read from people who're developers and so know what they're talking about.

Indeed Nixy is a pretty game, as you say, with a great amount of detail. Much love put into it, and a very polished result.

I noticed there's now AGD v2 and it seems that next to the Spectrum it does add more target platforms, namely our CPC (and C64 etc). But AGD runs on Windows only, so not usable in my Linux environment.

Your mentioned Mojon Twins' MK2 sounds very interesting. I'm going to have a look at it. Because indeed:

"It is about graphics and game design, that's all you need."

[reidrac]

Thank you for answering, since it's always interesting to read from people who're developers and so know what they're talking about.

Indeed Nixy is a pretty game, as you say, with a great amount of detail. Much love put into it, and a very polished result.

I noticed there's now AGD v2 and it seems that next to the Spectrum it does add more target platforms, namely our CPC (and C64 etc). But AGD runs on Windows only, so not usable in my Linux environment.

Your mentioned Mojon Twins' MK2 sounds very interesting. I'm going to have a look at it. Because indeed:

"It is about graphics and game design, that's all you need."

I was wrong: it is their MK1 engine.

You have it here: https://github.com/mojontwins/MK1_Pestecera

(btw, I use Linux too; not sure what is MK1 support in Linux but you probably can make it run)

EDIT: it uses Z88DK!