ASTEROID BASE DEFENSE IS READY
Our first finished game for the Commodore 64 is out today. It's called Asteroid Base Defense, it's an arcade game, and you can have it on your 64 in about a minute.
Where it came from
Asteroid Base Defense was made this summer as a game for the PC. It went up on the site yesterday, free to play in a web browser, and it still is.
But this is Comm-Adore, and a game like this belongs on a 64 with a joystick in your hand. So we ported it. Not a cut-down version: the whole game, written in assembly, fit to the machine.
What you're up against
Three cities sit at the bottom of the screen. Your ship slides along just above them. Rocks fall.
The big ones don't go quietly. A blue giant comes apart as three mediums. A large one splits in two. Every medium splits into two smalls. Only the smalls pay, so one giant is six smalls to hunt down before you've earned a thing.
Each wave is bigger and faster than the last. Comets and meteors join in. And when the sky finally clears, the boss arrives: one huge asteroid that picks a city and heads straight for it.
Spend it or lose it
Every small rock is worth $35, and you'll need all of it. Repair a city for $25 a hit. Arm one with homing missiles for $75. Save up $1,000 for a nuke that clears the whole sky, or $3,500 for wing guns on your ship.
The hard part is deciding. Fix the city that's down to its last hit now, or hold out for the nuke? You get to find out the hard way.
Fitting it into a 64
A few things changed on the way over. The PC game has four bases; the 64 has three cities, which gives the rocks room to fall and you room to fly. The giants come apart in three pieces where the PC's split in two.
Everything else is here: the comets, the meteors, the missiles, the cities' own guns, the nukes, three levels of ship upgrades, and a boss at the end of every wave. There's a hand-drawn pixel-art title page, three original tunes on the SID (one for the title, one for the game, one for the boss), twenty sound effects, and a top 10 that saves your initials to the disk.
It runs on PAL and NTSC machines. The game checks which one it's on and plays at the right speed on both. Our own 64s are NTSC, where every frame is shorter, so that's where we did the hard work.
Get it
It's $4.99 for the D64 disk image. Pay through Stripe, and you come straight back to your own download page. No account needed, and we email you the link so you can get the disk again any time.
You need a Commodore 64 (PAL or NTSC), a joystick in port 2, and a Kung Fu Flash, SD2IEC, Ultimate, Pi1541 or a real 1541. Or the VICE emulator.
It's a digital download you get the moment you pay, so all sales are final. If you're not sure, play the PC version first. It's free, and it's the same game at heart.
Get Asteroid Base Defense for your 64 >
Every copy helps us keep making new things for our Commodores. Thank you.