Hold me closer, Giant Dancer
Gaius
April 17, 2011
New Games, Old Systems: The Best (Playable!) Demakes in the World recommends our game! Still groovy after all of these years. Someone needs to tell them what a TRS-80 Model III is.
July 2009
I just discovered that ShadowBlade (whoever that sun blocking guy is) posted our video on GameTrailers.com. Between Sept. 2008 until June 2009 it received 41,000 views and 299 comments. Thoughts range from "looks stupid" to "no............ just..... no". Crazy and awesome!
Sept. 20, 2008
Jay Is Games scribe John Bardinelli chooses us as a favourite TIGSource Demake. In the comments, Hummus warns that our game "is FRUSTRATING AS HECK. Fun, though." John has amazing taste, and his blog is well worth reading. Thanks for the spike!
Sept. 19, 2008
PC World mentions our game in their article "Casual Friday: Free Game Remakes". Nice!
Sept. 18, 2008
Bytejacker played all 68 TIGSource demake games and picked their top 10. We made #10 by the skin of our teeth! YAY!!! They did a great job on the video talking about their top 10, it's well worth watching. I'm ashamed to admit that I was not aware of Bytejacker until now, count me as a fan.
Sept. 16, 2008
Ladies and gents, we have our first user made monster and it's a doozy! Half monster, half castle and extremely tall. Throw in a beard and 2 diving boards, and you have a strange classic. Unfortunately, he can only be approached from the right hand side, which means I need to change some code before you can play. E-mail me more creatures!
Sept. 16, 2008
Released v1.6. Kept all the previous changes, and added better clipping so only bitmaps that appeared onscreen will be drawn. On my test machines, this makes no difference. However, by having my code handle the clipping (as opposed to the GDI or graphic drivers), I leave nothing to chance on other people's machines.
Sept. 15, 2008
Kotaku is a great blog about all things gaming, I read it all the time. Imagine my surprise to find this post! "If Shadow Of The Colossus Were Released 25 Years Ago... it probably wouldn't have been that good." Not only is this an honour, but it sent the views for my YouTube video through the roof (25,000 views and counting). Be sure to read the comments, some are totally hilarious i.e. the character could look less like a box
Sept. 14, 2008
Warpzona is a blog written in Portuguese. Thanks to google translation, you can read what they said. My favorite translation: "These games, as well as others, are available to be downloaded so that farmers will update them"
Sept. 14, 2008
Resubmitted version 1.5. It turns out that I was storing my sprite masks as 32-bit color GDI bitmaps even though they're only black and white. I did this because I am stupid. They are now stored as monochrome bitmaps which takes much less room. Combined with the previous fixes, I expect that the game will finally work for everyone (fingers crossed).
Sept. 13, 2008
Astromono is a spanish blog that finds my demake the worst piece of s$*@ I've seen in quite some time. I like to think that's the google translator talking.
Sept. 9, 2008
Resubmitted version 1.2. This time ALL bitmaps (backgrounds, titles and monster) are composed of many 300x300 bitmaps. Added 2 more Monsters to compensate: Hydrus and Dinky. Fixes bug for more people, but many people are still having problems.
Sept. 8, 2008
Resubmitted version 1.1. The monster is now composed of many 400x400 bitmaps, rather than 1 giant bitmap. It's easier to get contiguous 400x400 bitmaps than 1 giant contiguous 800x2400 bitmap. Fixes bug for some, but many people are still having problems.
Sept. 7, 2008
Submitted version 1.0 to the competition. Unfortunately, many people experience technical problems.
Aug. 15, 2008
Started building the game for the TIGSource Demake Competition. Porting the utterly amazing PS2 game Shadow of the Colossus to a TRS-80 Model III. Need to take some liberties since the TRS-80:
a) has a resolution of 128 x 48
b) is black & white
c) lacks the RAM for large sprites, and the power to scale sprites
d) has very limited sound

The monster and player both honour the large pixels and bizarre aspect ratio of the TRS-80. Each pixel is 3 x 6, and the player and monster move in 3 x 6 chunks (not 1 x 1 pixels). As a result, I'm happy to report it "feels" like a TRS-80 game. Compare!