Newcomer, a C64 RPG 20 years in the making! Here’s what the guys at Protovision have to say about their project:
“We work on a freely available role-playing adventure, called NEWCOMER, for 20 years by now – this project started well before our attempt to become a formal, commercial developer studio.
This game was developed for the Commodore64, a cult retro computer, and is still meant to be played on real 8bit hardware, with added support for modern C64 peripherals and Hw hacks, but also has dedicated support for running under emulation like a native app.”
Want a feature list? Here’s a feature list for you, then!
- 70-280 gaming hours for the 1st play-through
- 180’000+ words of in-game text
- 180+ character portrait GFX
- 130+ inventory item and gadget GFX
- 100+ cutscene GFX
- 50+ game areas
- 30+ level GFX sets
- Animated Intro and Outro
- Total game size of 2 MB
The history of the game, as the initiative itself, is fascinating, and I urge you all to read about it here.
Could we hope this to be the beginning of a new trend? Huge games, with modern design (but not dumbed down) developed for archaic game systems? Could something like this actually succeed with enough financial backing, hype and marketing? A future where games don’t have to prove themselves as technological wonders and just be good games sounds fascinating.
GMZ 
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