Episode: 2987
Title: HPR2987: World of Commodore 2019 Episode 5: New games from Double Sided Games
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2987/hpr2987.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 14:21:47

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 2987 for Tuesday 14 January 2020.
Today's show is entitled World of Commodore 2019 Episode 5, New Games from Double-Sided Games.
It is hosted by Paul Quirk and is about 38 minutes long
and carries a clean flag. The summer is
a presentation by Jeremy Maasine of Double-Sided Games.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code
HPR15, that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com
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Hello, good listeners of Hacker Public Radio.
This is Paul Quirk returning with my fifth episode of my World of Commodore mini-series.
By the time this podcast hits the feed, we will already be in the second week of January.
But the world of Commodore is the gift that just keeps on giving.
I truly hope you're enjoying this mini-series during the cold, dark days of winter in the northern hemisphere.
In this episode, Jeremy Maasine of Double-Sided Games is presenting
the latest games for the Commodore Line of Computers.
I think it's remarkable that we still have publishers developing innovative new games for these vintage machines.
We got to hear Jeremy in the first episode of the mini-series.
But in this presentation, he goes into great detail about the development process.
As usual, this presentation included visuals that are not available in this audio podcast.
I do have pictures of my personal non-commercial website at peakwork.com.
But you can also go to the Toronto Pet Users Group YouTube channel to see and hear this presentation.
That's Toronto Pet Users Group, spelled as one word without spaces and with the word users as plural.
A link to this YouTube channel will be available in the show notes.
And so, with no further ado, I present to you new games from Double-Sided Games by Jeremy Maasine.
I'm going to show you what's going to happen this year and what's going to happen this year.
And what's going to happen next year.
For those who don't know me yet, Double-Sided Games is publishing new games for all computers.
Since 2019, officially, but we started 2018, the first release game was Labidi Maas,
which is the only one to say properly, I think.
In 2000, in January, we started selling it in January.
In fact, it was a very good success.
I've made Double-Sided Games a proper company in May, so it's not a show owned company, registered at least.
And since the beginning, so since January 2019, we sold a bit more than 400, then 10 box copies.
So it's a bit more now because I bought a few today, so it's more like 420, something.
A bit more than 450 digital copies.
Knowing that a good chunk of them are Labidi Maas.
It's a good two third, I think.
So what happened in 2019 to get there?
So first was Labidi Maas, which I was talking about recently.
So for those who don't know the game, it's a platformer that was ported from a free game
that was made originally for the PC.
That looked like a crappy spectrum game, so we made it look good, like a 60-throw game should look good.
Two guys came to me with the problem.
I was so close and I'm talking to Sabona.
It took about six months to make the game.
And Antonio is a high-grade polar, so the physics, everything in the game,
if you don't know it, are on spot.
It's just unbelievable.
I mean, the controls are really, really on spot.
So I will state for, because everybody's asking me that, I don't have any more physical copies of the game
because I have an agreement with the original author of the game that made the game for PC
to not sell more than a certain amount.
I'm working on making more, but we need to work on copyright issues and stuff like that
to go overboard and make more copies because I've got many, many, many requests for read for cartridges for the game.
And also, I want to note that there are counterfeit cartridges going around on eBay.
We should be like press.
So mine is, I don't have a picture, I should have brought a picture of it.
It is transparent and it's got a flat sticker, a plastic sticker.
And the other one is black and it's got like a bamboo sticker on it, so please don't buy it.
Thank you.
It's not a real one.
They just copied everything, I don't know if it is, but they copied it.
And they are selling it for 30 pounds, which is a thief.
I would say anyway.
And it's selling them quite good, so I'm trying to make them go down, but it's not easy with eBay.
Next the game that came out was fire, so fire was offered to me by a German developer.
Right now, Capra, the game was finished.
We came, you know, offered it to me, so didn't have much to follow or to do.
The game was, we just tweaked a bit the part with the second level of the game.
So basically, you're a fire engine and you have to go on the streets and it's not cost-busters if you played it.
You have to go on the streets and put out the fire, so when you go to the fire then you switch to the road style mode
and avoid the cars until you get to the building and save the people that are jumping from the building.
And then when you don't, you go back here, but the game is slightly faster.
It goes faster and faster and faster for 60 levels.
And it's, I couldn't get over six or seven, so it's very, very fast at some point.
It needs a 3K room expansion, which is fairly common, so that's fine.
I still have a few bucks edition of this one, but it's mostly digital sales.
The next one was Gramps of Quest, so it's a full-blown RPG that uses 32K expansion.
It's on two-floppy, four sides, and it's a huge, huge, huge game.
So it's from Alberta, so it's a Canadian game.
It did everything by itself, which is crazy.
It worked two years and a half on it.
And so the box comes with cold stuff like a cloth map and a core in a very thick 60 pages manual
with everything detailed inside the roof of the game.
Many, many, many things.
It did everything by itself, which is crazy.
If you play like Ultima or all these SSI games, like all these RPGs from SSI,
yeah, it's the same kind of game.
It is, I'm proud to say that because it's true, it's the biggest game for the big 20 ever.
And I'm sure of it, because it's just crazy.
And just so you know, so first batch I made was version 1.0.
There was another batch made, the one I'm still saying is version 1.1.
He added more stuff and he's working on version 1.2, which won't have a physical version
but will be digital available and for everyone.
He's putting more stuff in the game.
There was not enough, you know.
More storylines, more people to meet, more things to do.
And next guy came up, was vegetables.
So it's a match 3 game, very simple, a candy crush.
But was also a great success.
It was inspired by, so Mike Richmond did it by himself or by himself.
Andrew Cashmore, which is the one that did the cover, the cover graphics.
The title graphics and then the cover graphics were made by Tenshu, my friends,
which only replicated what Andrew did.
So the good thing about that game, so almost at the end of the production of the game,
Mike told me, oh, I'm not as good as an Amiga version.
So I just started marketing everything.
But he didn't want to sell it as a proper edition because he thought it was not a side game he would do.
And it's just bundled.
So wherever our version you buy, the box or the digital version,
you will get the Amiga version as digital download with it.
So you can play.
It's the same game.
It's just got better graphics and that's for it.
So this one recently came out.
And the last one in date is Black Down Rebirth, of course.
So this one came out a week ago, six days ago.
So it's a sci-fi dungeon crawler, like dungeon master, eye of the builder, et cetera.
It was a long process to build it too.
It took about a year, I think, a little less than a year.
I've made Sean Waters, he's the designer and coder.
He did already seven episodes of Black Down back in the 90s.
They were public domain games.
And I've made it on Twitter in the conversation on indeed virtual news.
And we came across, he said, I used to do this kind of game.
And I just said, why don't you do another one?
There you go.
There you go.
So the music, as usual, so I did also patch stables, but he's a musician.
That's his first thing.
Tenshu did the graphics and Colleen helped with the intro code and the installer code for the game.
So again, just came out now.
But I have a small delay with floppy providers.
So the box is never seen in the manuals.
I don't have the floppy yet.
So people that we order are waiting for it still, but it should come out next week.
I go.
So a bit of the graphics of the game.
So you did, I'm running the game on my table.
Most of you, if you play, you only saw the first level, but they are.
Six different sets of graphics for the game.
This is in the final level.
So it's a bit of a spoiler, I'm sorry.
And this is like two third of the game.
This is just, this level is just after this one.
So got a couple of ugly monsters.
So what I'm about to do now is, if I can, I'm not sure I can.
And I will ask for your patience because I'm about to load a floppy.
If you want to, I can show you the intro of the game, which was really well done by 10 true again.
I'm not sure the sound will go out properly.
I hear some.
You hear the floppy.
So let's wait for it to load.
It's a one minute intro.
It's set out the story of the game and tells you what is going to happen.
And I even put the raster lines for you.
Can we push the sound up or is there a way to control it?
I'm looking for leaf.
The sound is coming from elsewhere.
That's the speaker.
I'm looking for leaf.
Oh, here you go.
Oh, so it's stretched out.
I don't know.
Hold that.
Yeah, emulation.
Emulation is difficult, so on the bottom.
Someone's playing hard type.
Of course, it's always rude to listen.
You get the gun.
Time should always put small things like that in these games.
But we hope that sets you in the mood of the game.
But there's more early enough stuff, but that's fine.
So only the intro took a good three weeks to do at least.
It seems easy like this, but it's a complex process.
Oops, what is it doing here?
What's coming next year?
First, we have winter day in.
Winter day in is first class and then we'll call it again, but it's a rook style this time.
All the levels are generated each time you enter the game.
It's a new level.
It's always changing.
So as any rook style game, you have to go further possible.
There's no not really an end goal, but you have to go as far as possible.
It's in early stages, very early stages.
But it's on IATUS even as we are talking now.
So I'm running down which started to code with SoCross.
I'm about to show you.
We did that in three weeks, I think.
It's like the game is already almost done.
But no, it's missing game mechanics and some rules and stuff like that, but it was very valuable.
So it will be on this soul and our cartridge too.
Maybe floppy, not sure yet.
I have no real estate for this one yet because it's on IATUS as I said.
But it should be here before the end of the year for sure.
Good thing is also you have mouse support so you can go around with your 64 mouse
and grab the stuff on the ground and stuff like that.
So here's a small video of it.
Good ones?
Yes, it runs.
So you fight monsters and you have that map with the fog of war.
It shows your map as long as you walk towards it.
And you can set up, so you have a limited equipment, of course.
You can add some stuff on your weapon.
These are your specs.
Each time you die, there will be a new character appearing.
It's a road game, so you never have the same person.
It's really fast.
464 games is just pretty amazing.
Next game, and I love the title.
So this game was, so Emiliano is doing that game.
I think he contacted me a month ago, not even maybe a month ago.
The game was already very advanced.
It's a puzzle game, and with a very nice twist, I find.
He's currently adding two pairs of supports, so it's not really working at the moment,
but I can show you a bit of screenshots and movie in video.
So the goal of the game, so, well, of course, a screenshot, I can download.
You have a fan here that you can move around from left to right.
You can see it better here, maybe.
And you have to push up the bubbles, and they have a countdown inside them.
You have to push them up until the countdown is down zero.
They, like, touch some of the squares where they blow up and use lives.
And you have some bonuses going down, and the goal is to make the highest score, of course.
The thing is, there's, like, some kind of energy.
It's a battery on the fan, and it goes down.
And the only way to pour it up again, you have to go on one side,
each of the sides are, like, a place where you can reach out to the energy
to why the bubbles are going down.
And he's currently implementing the two player mode, which you can play,
co-operatively, or once against the other.
So here's a small video about it.
It's a very fun game, I like it a lot.
And it's a bit frustrating at the same time.
So it's the same as vegetables, like Mike, Emiliano,
that's his first game, assembly game for the C64.
You need a great job, I find.
We see when, I don't like the idea already, because I recorded the video.
When you go there, you just flip it into life and go on.
And every time you change your level, you've got a different setting.
There are multiple levels.
I don't remember how many exactly it.
And some different options can pop down and help you get more scores
or make different things with the bubbles.
And of course, as long as you go, it's great to be harder and harder.
So this is also the next big game, I think.
So it's another RPG, but it's got its twist to it.
So Roy contacted me two months ago with me.
Well, Mike introduced me to Roy, in fact.
I like Richmond, Richmond again.
And he had that game very pretty well advanced again,
but he's still working with it.
It's a top-down RPG with very simple graphics,
but it's like I played it and was hooked up as, you know,
when I started playing it, I found it.
I don't know what's to it, but it's great.
It's hard to explain.
But the thing is, so I had to find the word,
because my English is poor, it's a bit racier.
So if you play leisure-superberry, you should be happy about it.
But it's not too much, but it's on top.
Knowing that you're in the game, you will encounter
very good-looking health and other types of people.
And you can collect, because when you meet them,
there's a full screen opening where you see a bit of graphics
of that person, and you can unlock them
like in a proper actual modern game.
So there are 20 maps to explore,
and 9 dungeons, and 36 types of monsters,
and interesting things that are really really implemented
are randomly generated weapons and armor systems.
You can have thousands of combinations.
You never find the same weapon, you never find the same armor,
just you take it, this random, you just find them.
Yep.
Are the pictures changed too, depending on what the weapons are,
or is it more like the stats that's randomly generated?
No, you will see the graphics change on the character,
but it's very small and very...
But...
So this is the game itself.
I will show you a video afterwards.
I read.
And all the...
I mean, he put some incredible efforts in the discussions
on the text, which is just amazing.
I'm laughing and playing the game and laughing, though.
You start the game dreaming about an elf that you were...
OK?
It was a kid here.
And...
In fact, when you wake up, you're eating a cat.
So the game starts like this.
OK.
And you go...
So the...
In fact, for the whole game, he's looking for that elf,
that elf in particular is trying to find her, or wherever he can.
But on the way, people are asking him to do that quest in favor,
so he has to do that, because...
Those people know where the girl is,
but they don't want to tell, until he does the quest,
because they're constantly running.
So, this is a fight...
When the fights are happening, you can see the options here
that you have, depending on the weapon you're carrying,
and the monster you've got.
For a few, this is actually a chicken you're fighting.
So...
And you see, the chicken can pick crow, rock, and peep.
First, before I come back, I will show you the video.
There's an any crow where you...
We choose it, which characters start, and then you can only choose one of the four,
and when the four are used, you can't find any more.
So, something is happening either you flee, or one of them is dead.
It's pretty well made.
And the combats are really fast, so you don't spend too much time doing them.
You've got your full stats here, inventory here,
it's a very small inventory of things, four by four items.
And this is a dungeon view.
So, this is your character.
At each time, there's a new piece of armor, helmet, whatever.
You see the differences in change.
Yes.
What's an ouch?
Sorry?
What's ouch on your life?
Oh, it's when you are played by something.
So, this is the bat.
He's drawn using a tool.
But, I intend to have that map on the plus map.
Like, we did four grams of quests.
You know that I have the...
You know that I know how to do it.
I have the providers for that.
And so, is there a quick video of the game?
It's just something.
I can't just...
It's just amazing.
So, you go around.
Somebody did an incredible job at the music tour is doing more.
It must be.
So, you can randomly search like shelves or places you can sleep if you need to rest for your life
when you find the bed somewhere.
It's pretty funny.
And...
Yeah, you go around.
You talk to people.
And it doesn't earn enough stuff, but they give you hints to where to go.
I'm going to do next.
So, I'm here.
I'm going to a fight with chicken.
Of course.
I'm so running after that because, you know, it's chicken.
So, I can talk about a fight about chicken.
So, you see, this is all the combat happening.
It's pretty fast.
Oh, sorry.
It's good to something else.
This is the old crown that...
She's not very nice.
I can tell you that.
And, yeah, I wanted to show you a quick view of the world when you move around in the world.
So, we might not show yet, but we might change the graphics a bit for that part.
But I find them okay, still.
But we might add someone we do the time.
Not sure yet.
But this game is pretty good.
So, it will be only on one floppy.
We don't intend to have a cartridge version because there is a save system.
So, yeah.
We could have an external floppy for sales, but it's not very optimized.
So, this is it for...
Yes, this is it for the C64.
Next game is for the Amiga.
So, this one nobody heard of yet.
It's again made by the Amating Tattoo.
And I can assure you that, but we are...
Oh, so, okay.
It's not again.
The game is made in Amos, okay.
Amos can't support ADA.
It's a non-fact.
There's issues with it.
You can't support it.
But there's a guy in France actually doing another version of Amos working with Francois
the guy that made Amos in the first place.
He's making an ADA version of Amos for everybody to use, which is great.
Because we were waiting for that to use more colors in the Amiga.
So, currently the game is about 70 colors, but it might be more like 200 colors when it's out.
But we're not sure yet.
So, I don't want to promise anything.
The colder the idea of the game is, Michael...
Well, I should say, because it's in France, but it's Michael Gibbs.
He's done some other project back in the days.
These are the graphics.
Wow.
So, it's an action platformer.
And most of the levels are sliding towards you all the time.
So, you have to move forward at all times.
There are different stages in the game.
There should be a more normal phase.
You can unlock that Super Metal Hero armor.
And when somebody touches you, hits you, you lose the armor, and you can get it back again.
And you can finish in your underpants.
It's another tension thing, like that.
So, the game is really great.
And it's running pretty good.
When he told me it was Amiga, I couldn't believe it.
Because it's really fast.
So, if there are some slugliness, it's because it was recorded on emulation.
We don't have sound for now.
So, I think he can't even die yet.
He's going around shooting people.
It's only for the show.
I love the cover.
So, it's very nice shooting afterwards.
Sorry.
It looked like she shot her bullet after she was like,
yeah, yeah.
It's a weapon.
She shot her bullet.
It stayed there after she died.
It started moving.
Okay.
Thanks.
Very close to Satsu, look on this one.
The bullet went to a venture.
We have fun, usually, when we work on the games,
because it's really things are happening.
So, you see, it's pretty impressive scrolling
for Amos.
Because Amos is really not done for that novel.
The dinosaur needs to have like lasers.
Yeah, yeah.
We need laser cats.
Yes.
Well, that's for the other game.
Yeah, the cat.
Yes.
So, the last one is Shadows of Sergoff.
So, I talked about it already last year when I came.
But things have moved forward in a different, somewhat different direction.
So, it's another dungeon crawler game.
If you recall, what I said last year,
it's a game that was originally on the Amstrad CPC computer
from European computer.
The game was amazing.
So, I wanted to pour it.
So, this is the only game that is at my initiative, in fact.
And this is when Colleen joined.
I'd ask him if we wanted to do it.
Tenshu joined again, Mike joined again.
But originally, Soul Cross was doing the graphics and the music.
And then he went on to other projects.
So, we had to decide if we could complete it.
I wanted to continue the game.
So, he was a Tenshu and Mike who placed him, in fact.
So, we read it everything.
So, it's not looking at all.
I showed you the things I showed you last year.
It's a completely new graphics.
So, this is what it looks like now.
So, it's more medieval.
The other one was a bit steampunk.
Slightly steampunk.
But the original game was medieval.
So, this is fully medieval game now.
It's pretty far advanced.
The difference, another thing that we have put for one,
and that we want to grow is that there will be a map editor with it.
And my intent is to build a community around it.
So, people can create their own maps or packages of maps
with new graphics and new whatever.
And then have a place to put them for everyone on my website.
So, they can download them and just use them, you know,
import them and use them as they go around the rest of your life.
Sorry.
You're too much to perhaps the rest of your website.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Because my idea was to have a separate workshop.
So, the game is pretty far in the development now.
I hope we can have it out for like maybe June or maybe a bit before.
It should be only two or three copies, I think.
But, yeah, the idea behind it is to have an open system
where anyone can jump in and make their own game.
It will still use the whole interface,
but you can do your own maps and whatever.
You can, so for Black Dawn and any of not the previous game,
but for Black Dawn shadows, the RPG, the RAC RPG.
Don't break the bowls.
All those games you can come to my table and try them.
I've got them all here.
So, if you want to, even try, just come to see me and I will put them on.
And even this one, I even have the editor if you want to try the map editor
to try it.
I've got everything here.
No, time for questions if you have some.
Because I've shown you everything I needed to show you today.
Any questions?
No, man.
Oh, I think we need to take my money.
No, shut up, let's take one of those.
Okay, so we are almost on time, so it's perfect.
So, if you don't have questions,
I just want you to make sure that you follow us,
so you know what's happening with us.
And also, I've got another project that was offered to me yesterday.
But I need to test it more.
But it's an incredible game for the Amiga, made by a Polish team.
There are six people working on it.
And it's a very, very advanced shooter.
So I might be able to publish that one too.
And they even have a version for the Atari ST.
I was looking for one game for the Atari ST.
How are you finding all these people with these, like, mostly finished games?
Because, like, I follow Indy Retro and all that sort of stuff.
And some of these are the first times I've seen, like, the names of these games and stuff.
Where are these people?
It seems like there's more people that are developing stuff than...
Many people are developing games, but they don't think...
I've come across many people that they don't think their project is good enough to be published.
Well, it's not the case.
We're longer talk about it on just, like, the sites that are, like, you know, promoting...
I know, but they are very good developers,
but they don't know to talk about their games.
So this is where it comes in usually to try and help them.
There are so many projects around here.
It's just amazing.
And you see, within the first year, I already have two guys
making their first game for the C64, which is crazy when you think about it.
And there were our C64 users back in the days, but they just realized they should do something about it now.
And so I'm waiting for more proposals because I have to do that
and help people unbox the editions of their games.
I have more questions that buy, OK, we'll go.
Always.
You have to buy them from our website.
I still have to add them manually, but I do it.
Like the next day, you should receive an email saying,
you did just drop down on this right now.
So you just go back to your account and you can download it.
Do you mind if the website is?
Sorry.
The address of the website?
Oh, it's double-sided games.com.
It's double-sided games.
Nothing fancy here.
It's just normal.
Do you get double-sided dot games as well?
Yeah.
Yeah, I could.
I think there's those domains are pretty expensive though, right?
I really, I've got a dot game file.
OK.
I thought they were AT.
What much?
20 bucks a year.
OK.
I thought the dot custom things were more than 17 years.
I think it depends.
It depends.
OK.
I know that Guru Amiga.guru was both too bad.
No more questions?
OK, so that's it.
Thank you.
I hope you enjoy Jeremy's presentation.
And maybe if you still have one of these classic Commodore computers,
maybe stop by his website at double-sided games.com and buy yourself a modern game for your classic machine.
If you're enjoying this series, please leave a comment at my personal non-commercial blog at peakwork.com.
And don't forget to tune in next week to listen to Greg's presentation entitled
Introduction to C64OS.
Until then, please drive safe and make sure to have fun.
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