The Commodore 64 game, on the PC and in your web browser: the same six stages, the same fighters and the same fortress at the end of each, with a keyboard under your hands.
It plays in your web browser, with nothing to install. You need a keyboard or a gamepad, so it won't work on a phone. The sound starts on your first key.
The story
The Dominion took the Outer Reach in a single season, and built a fortress on every world. The Rebellion has a hidden hangar, a handful of mechanics, and Red Squad. Red Squad is you. Read the whole story >
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 six stages, and each has its own ground and its own enemy:
- The sand planet. Dunes, huts and craters. Sand skiffs slide across from one side to the other.
- The snow planet. Trench lines in the snow, and walkers coming down the screen on foot.
- The forest moon. Thick forest down both sides, and speeder bikes racing down the trail between.
- The cloud city. Landing pads on walkways above the cloud, and cloud cars on patrol.
- Space. An asteroid field, a picket of gun satellites, and then the star cruiser's hull, from bow to bridge.
- The trench. Walls on both sides, barriers across the way, and something coming up behind you.
Everywhere, the Dominion's fighters come down in formations, and guns on the ground shoot up at you.
Every stage ends at a fortress: four guns, then the core in the middle, which stays shut until the last gun is gone. Break the core and it's on to the next stage. Get through all six and you start again at the sand planet, harder.
You have three ships.
How to play
- Fly: the arrow keys, or W A S D
- Fire: Space or Z. Hold it down and the bolts keep coming
- Pause: P
- Music volume: - turns it down and + turns it up, from 0 to 10. Your setting is kept in your browser
- All sound off: M
- Back to the title: Esc
- Start: fire on the title page
A gamepad works too.
When the game is over you see the top ten. If you've made it, you put in three initials: up and down change the letter and fire takes it, or just type them. The top ten is kept in your browser, on the computer you play on.
How the enemies behave, what everything is worth and a few things worth knowing on your first flight are on the Commodore 64 game's page: they're the same here.
It's the 64's game
This isn't a remake. The PC version is the Commodore 64 game's own code carried over routine by routine, running at the 64's sixty frames a second, with the 64's sprites, its maps and its numbers. It's drawn the way the 64 shows it, at 320 by 200, and the title and high score pages are the 64 version's pixel art.
Two things are different. The top ten is kept in your browser instead of on a disk, and the formations in a heavy wave can come in a different order.
The music
The tunes are John Williams's Star Wars themes, as Commodore 64 owners arranged them for the SID chip in the 1980s and 90s with Compute!'s Gazette's Sidplayer. They're played here by the same SID player as our jukebox. The arrangements are by Dan Barrett, Harry Bratt, Mark Dickenson (AD II), David Strauss, Brian M. Szepatowski, Stampmagic, Terry and DC Starr, and two whose arrangers aren't named. They come from the Compute!'s Gazette SID Collection.
The sound effects are the 64 game's own.
On the Commodore 64
This is where it started, and where it's going. See the Commodore 64 version >
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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