Tower and Dragon has been released for the Commodore PET with only 8K!

by | Apr 18, 2023 | 1980s, 2010s, Indie, Indie Built-Retro Inspired

If you’re looking for another Commodore PET news story, then have we got something special for you! As thanks to a heads up by Jason Cook in our emails, we’ve just learnt of a new game that has been released for the Commodore PET called ‘Tower and Dragon’; as in the words of Jason ” Welcome to Tower And Dragon for the Commodore PET with only 8k. The game has also been written in assembly language”. Without further ado, make sure to check out the footage of the game and even more info sent via email below.

I don’t think that Frederick is going to make it out of this one!

Here is what was Jason Cook said in our emails about this brand new game. “Tower And Dragon is a classic dungeon crawling adventure with primary and offhand weapon, armor, quest storyline, moving walls, teleportation, and unique tilesets and monsters for each dungeon level. Your character starts out just after climbing down the stairs into an ancient ruin, discovered by following a dream. The game is a tribute to the game that inspired me to become a programmer: “Dungeon” from 1979. Like Dungeon, this game only requires 8K of memory”.

Since Tower and Dragon runs with only 8K, only simple audio is available while playing the game. That said, the BuzzKick engine being utilized on the splash screen is quite impressive.
“Tower And Dragon is by far the best game ever released for an 8K Commodore PET and is playable by disk drive or tape cassette on ROM1, ROM2, and ROM4 systems. You can play with more memory, but part of the design was to make sure the game would work on some of the oldest stock PET systems still around. Designing under these tight constraints was a monumental task where every byte counted”.
“The audio soundtrack on the splash screen uses Shiru’s BuzzKick engine, converted to the PET and gives Tower And Dragon a unique and distinct audio that new games will follow. He also converted the theme music to run under BuzzKick. While the splash screen utilizes BuzzKick engine, it is not used in-game due to lack of memory. Therefore, only simple audio is utilized while in-game”.
Game Instruction Screen

 

“Norbert Landsteiner has an excellent online PET emulator and just released version 2.0 that includes audio. His emulator can be found here: https://www.masswerk.at/pet/ This will make it easy for anyone to try the game, as well as other vintage games for the PET. His powerful emulator correctly works with “Back To The Pet”, “A Bright Shining Star”, and “Faulty Robots”. Lastly, to keep with the vintage theme, I recovered the data from maps in a game that I made as a boy in 1980. Those vintage maps are utilized in Tower And Dragon!”.
A few quotes from play testers:
  • Kimberly Cook (my wife) – “It was beautiful.”
  • Marshall Sutherland – “The thought that this whole thing runs in 8K just boggles my mind.”
  • Richard Suematsu – Reference Plot: “I like how you don’t understand what’s going on in the first 2 levels and then it starts to come into focus.”

Play Online Using Masswerk.at Emulator Here:

https://masswerk.at/pet/?run=dragon.d64/dragon&ram=8k&repeat=off&screen=white&sound=true

You Can Also Download It And Play Locally:

https://www.masswerk.at/pet/prgs/dragon.d64

Full 12 Minute Tape Cassette Version:

https://www.insanerocketry.com/personal/TowerAndDragonCassette10.zip

Note: On some systems you may need to invert the audio.

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