The first proper shmup for the C64 in quite a while, so I made a longplay of it. A few slowdowns with all the power-ups, but I don’t care. Nice work!
I think the difficulty level is spot on! Don't let the video fool you, though, since it's a tool-assisted longplay (as mentioned at the end of the video description), made to quickly produce a longplay for YT.
I’ll definitely give it a try on my MEGA65 without any assistance, since I’m a fan of good shmups.
Ah, now I understand! 😄 I hadn’t read the full text in the YouTube description, so I completely missed that it was a tool-assisted longplay. That makes a lot more sense now! Thanks again for the video, and I’d be really curious to know how you find the difficulty when you try it on your MEGA65 without assistance. 😀
1 day ago(+1)
I tested the new version on MEGA65's C64 Core with REU and a second SID, and it works flawlessly. I noticed that when I swapped the joystick port (to Port 1), the SPACE key no longer works. So I would suggest keeping it Port 2-only, as with the vast majority of C64 games. I don’t own a controller with two buttons.
Yes, it's quite a different experience when playing without save states. So far, I've only made it as far as the boss in Stage 3. One suggestion regarding the game balance: I think it's fine to lose the weapon power-ups when you lose a life, but it would be nice if the speed upgrade only went down by one level. However, I'll leave it up to you whether you want to implement that.
1 day ago(+1)
I’m really glad to hear that the new MEGA65 core is working well! Regarding Port 1, I think you may be right — I’ll look into fixing that.
As for the game itself, I’ll admit that making it fairly challenging was a deliberate choice. I wanted it to feel like a real 1980s arcade game. That said, the patterns can definitely be learned with repeated play, so the more you play, the more manageable it becomes ;)