RED LEADER: FLY IT TODAY, ON THE PC
Yesterday we wrote about Red Leader, the vertical shooter on our workbench for the Commodore 64. Today you can fly it. It's on the PC, it's free, and it runs in your web browser.
The same game
We didn't write a second Red Leader for the PC. We carried the 64 game's own code over, routine by routine, and let it run at the 64's sixty frames a second with the 64's sprites, maps and numbers. What you see is what the 64 draws: 320 by 200, with the title and high score pages from the 64 version.
So the skiffs on the sand planet slide across where they slide on the 64, the walkers on the snow planet take the same four hits, and the fortress at the end of each stage has the same four guns and the same core that won't open until the last gun is down.
Six stages
Yesterday's post had four worlds. The PC version has all six stages: the sand planet, the snow planet, the forest moon and the cloud city, then space, an asteroid field and the long hull of the star cruiser, and last of all the trench.
Get through all six and it starts again at the sand planet, harder.
How to fly
The arrow keys or W A S D fly the ship, and Space or Z fires. Hold fire down and the bolts keep coming. A gamepad works too. The - and + keys turn the music down and up. You need a keyboard or a gamepad, so it won't work on a phone.
The top ten is kept in your browser, with your three initials.
The music
The tunes are John Williams's Star Wars themes, arranged for the SID chip by Commodore 64 owners in the 1980s and 90s with Compute!'s Gazette's Sidplayer, and played by the same SID player as our jukebox. The arrangers are named on the game's page.
And the 64
The Commodore 64 version is still the one we're building this for, and it's still on the workbench. Its page has the story, how everything behaves and what it's all worth.