A new arcade shooter for the Commodore 64. One fighter, four occupied worlds, and a fortress at the end of each one. You are Red Leader.
Coming soon from Comm-Adore. Can't wait? The PC version is free to play in your browser today.
The story
The Dominion took the Outer Reach in a single season. Four worlds, one after another: the sand planet first, then the ice, then the forest moon, then the city that floats in the clouds. On each of them it built the same thing, a walled fortress with four guns and a power core, and it left a garrison behind to keep it.
The Rebellion fought for every one of them, and lost every one. What it has left is a hidden hangar, a handful of mechanics, and Red Squad.
Red Squad is you. The others didn't come back from the last raid, and nobody has had the heart to take their names off the board. The call sign that goes with the lead ship is still yours, so that's what Command calls you now, and they call you often.
The plan is simple, because there's nobody left to make it complicated. A fortress with its core blown out can't hold a world. So you'll fly up each planet low and fast, through everything the garrison can put in the air and on the ground, break the four guns, and put your bolts into the core when it opens. Then the next world. Then the one after that.
Do it four times and the Dominion will have to send its star cruiser to see what happened. Command says they're working on a plan for that too.
Good hunting, Red Leader.
The game
Red Leader is a vertical scroller. The ground comes down the screen and you fly up it, seen from above, with the whole screen to move in. Fire shoots twin bolts straight ahead.
There are four worlds, and each one has its own ground and its own enemy:
- The sand planet. Dunes, rock outcrops, craters and a canyon. Sand skiffs slide across the screen from one side to the other, shooting as they go.
- The snow planet. Snowdrifts, crevasses and trench lines with guns dug into them. Walkers come down the screen on foot towards you. They take four hits each.
- The forest moon. Thick forest down both sides and a trail up the middle. Speeder bikes race down the trail in single file, much faster than anything else.
- The cloud city. Banks of cloud, landing pads strung together on walkways, and the city's towers standing up out of the cloud. Cloud cars patrol from side to side and don't leave until you shoot them.
Everywhere, the Dominion's fighters come down in formations: a line of four weaving down the screen, a pair crossing from the top corners, and divers that steer straight at you. On the ground there are gun turrets, and tower turrets that stand tall enough to hit.
The fortress
Every world ends the same way. First a heavy wave of fighters, one formation hard on the last. Then the ground stops, and you're at the fortress wall.
- You can't fly past the wall. The fight happens in front of it.
- The fortress has four guns. Each one takes three hits.
- While any gun is standing, the core in the middle is shut and your bolts bounce off it.
- When the last gun goes, the core opens. Now it shoots back, twice as fast as a gun, and the fighters come quicker. Sixteen hits finish it.
Break the core and the whole fortress goes up. You get a bonus for every ship you have left, and then it's on to the next world.
Clear all four worlds and you start again at the sand planet, harder: every fighter shoots on its way down, and the shots come faster.
How to play
One joystick, in port 2. That's all you need.
- Move: the stick flies the ship all four ways, anywhere on the screen below the score. Push left or right and she leans into the turn.
- Fire: the button shoots twin bolts up the screen. Hold it down and they keep coming.
- Start: fire on the title page.
You have three ships. The score is at the top left and the ships you have left at the top right.
What costs you a ship:
- An enemy shot. They're the small yellow ones, and they're aimed at you. Enemies shoot in every direction, so nowhere on the screen is safe to sit, and a gun you've flown past can shoot up at you.
- Flying into a fighter, a tower turret, a walker, a speeder bike or a cloud car.
What doesn't: you can fly straight over a gun turret and over a sand skiff. They're on the ground and you aren't.
A new ship can't be hurt for the first moment or two, so use it to get clear.
What everything is worth:
- Fighter: 100.
- Gun turret: 200.
- Speeder bike: 200.
- Tower turret: 300.
- Sand skiff: 300. Two hits.
- Cloud car: 300. Two hits.
- Walker: 500. Four hits.
- A fortress gun: 200 or 300. Three hits.
- The core: 5,000. Sixteen hits.
- Each ship you have left when a world is cleared: 1,000.
Something that takes more than one hit flashes white when you hit it, so you know it's working.
A few things worth knowing on your first flight:
- Keep moving. Shots are aimed at where you are when they're fired.
- Stay low on the screen most of the time. It gives you longer to see what's coming down.
- On the forest moon, don't sit on the trail. That's where the bikes are.
- At the fortress, take the two guns at the front first. They're tower turrets, and they're the ones in your way.
The high scores
When the game is over you see the top ten, and your own score below it. If you've made the table you put in three initials right there: push up or down to change the letter, and fire to take it and move to the next. The table is saved to the disk, so it's still there next time.
Built for the 64
Red Leader is written in assembly for the Commodore 64 and runs on any 64, PAL or NTSC, with no expansion, from one disk image. It checks which machine it's on and runs at the right speed on both.
The whole screen scrolls a pixel at a time, and around twenty things can be moving on it at once: the ship, its bolts, the enemies, their shots and the score. That's more than the 64's eight sprites, so the game shares them out down the screen as it's drawn.
The title page and the high score page are pixel art drawn for the game.
On the PC, too
Red Leader is on the PC as well, in your web browser, and it's free: the 64 game's own code, all six stages, with SID music. See the PC version >
Where it is
It's being built now, and tested on both PAL and NTSC as it goes. All four worlds can be flown from start to fortress, with the top ten saved to disk. The star cruiser, the run down its trench and the music are built too, and being tested now.
We'll post progress on the blog, and this page will say when it's ready and how to get it.
Keep it coming
If you like what we're doing and want to see more of it, your support helps us keep making new things for our Commodores: games like this one, Shack Attack, Asteroid Base Defense and Hazelwood, demos, tunes and more.
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