|
| 2011. Isn't it crazy that somebody's rewriting for the umpteenth time an oldschool, assembly-coded, hardware-hitting, card memory game for classic Amigas?!? Yeah, but he's having fun! And, while at it, he turned the game into a tribute to the Amiga games of the past and to the Amiga itself... |
|
Let's hear from the author's mouth how the full story goes...
I started the project 1996, inspired by the Memory Station mini game found in Deluxe Galaga. In a quite short time I had a fully playable version, which I used to enjoy with my friends.
Regrettably, at that time I was more focused on putting fancy effects (multiple-resolutions screens, dynamic color changing, screens/cards flipping, scrolling stuff, etc.) that would let me learn and have fun with the Amiga hardware, rather than on the gameplay; in fact, when I came up with the idea of adding a 2-player mode, I finished to screw up the already dirty code: the result was a horrible kludge that miraculously worked fine... most of the times. Anyway, despite being very simple, the game turned out to have a certain appeal to sick gamers like me and also to those who just wanted to play something not too demanding and enjoy some light-hearted, relaxing moments.
Later, at some point, I had the idea of proposing Vulcan Software to bundle the game with one of their forthcoming titles as a Christmas freebie. They were very interested, but after some nice talks they requested changes which I did not want nor had the time to do; in the end, we friendly agreed to fold the idea.
The first release was distributed through Aminet in 1997 and, unsurprisingly, I did not get much feedback (yet, I remember some nice chats with an Amigan from the USA, despite he could not get the game running on his NTSC machine/monitor at all!).
In the following years, I concentrated on totally different stuff, but every once in a while I made the program a bit more robust by improving the personal framework it was built on (this attitude of mine forces me to continuously maintain my old software, making me waste countless hours), although the updated versions never left my hard-disk.
In 2003, while doing the aforesaid maintenance activity, I could not help but feel disturbed at the sight of the original code... no, such a horrible code did not deserve to exist. Not from me. So, I decided to rewrite the game from the scratch. In a two weeks-long burst I had a brand-new version (hence the tag "Quick Edition"), even with new graphics (but without sound)! An effort that provided me with pure fun... and also an increased consciousness of my insanity. For some reason, though, the game was released only almost one year later.
Finally, 2011 came, and it brought one more radical rewrite...
