Game design and some assets for Pork King - Tutankham homage

[gorfcadet]

So I had been messaging Groovy Bee for a number of years and did graphics for some of his 7800 and Intellivision projects.  I hate that he dropped communication a few years back, but I hate more that I spent so much time designing sprites that would never see the light of day.  Even though he didn't post in the forums he would jump on to parse notes with me over games we were working on. I have  a proto rom of the Intellivision Hunchy game with my sprites in it but I don't feel good posting anything without GB's ok since it was his programming.  I will however post my design pdf for Pork King, the Tutankham homage.  I was so looking forward to it.  I thought the 78 really could have been a good home for this type of game.

If anyone is interested in using my sprites and actually programming it, I have my original assets backed up.  I had finished level layouts, sprites, and AI notes for the game.  From a design perspective it was as complete as it could be without reworking for Beta notes.

I think you can see my love for classic games and I included my 7800'ed homages to some of my favorite sprites from Parodius and a few other things retro gamers may recognize.

 

I cannot tell you how sad it makes me to look at these sprites again and thinking how excited I was back then to see my work on a real 78.

 

PORK KING DESIGN DOC.pdf

Edited June 9, 2023 by gorfcadet
add some pictures

[+Muddyfunster]

Seeing "Pork King" in the title, I had very different expectations compared to what I found  

 

Very nice sprites and a lovely design document. I hope someone picks it up.

[gorfcadet]

4 minutes ago, Muddyfunster said:

Seeing "Pork King" in the title, I had very different expectations compared to what I found  

 

Very nice sprites and a lovely design document. I hope someone picks it up.

Thank you so much.  I worked on it for months.  When GB ghosted me I was devastated.  I'm glad you like it. 

[+DrVenkman]

I seem to recall Curt Vendel posting occasionally about similar frustrations with GB when he walked out on the 7800XM project for a long time and wouldn’t give over his BIOS code and associated notes/files so someone else could more easily step in and take over. 

[Trebor]

7 hours ago, gorfcadet said:

Thank you so much.  I worked on it for months.  When GB ghosted me I was devastated.  I'm glad you like it. 

Was GB also working with you on Dream Princess Adventure?

Shame that never came to fruition either.

[gorfcadet]

Yes that was one I had been designing with him as well.  So much of my work just for nothing.  I had hidden sprites of my kids in it; that one going nowhere hurt a great deal.  

[gorfcadet]

My avatar is actually from a simple game I designed called Jet Pack Kitty that was intended to be a reimagining of the 2600 game HERO.  Other than that I had also done sprites for his Hover Bovver 7800 port and his Hunchy port for Intellivision.  Pork King was the most complete in terms of design, then Dream Princess which I had planned out on paper and most of the art done. Jet Pack and Hover Boverr had sprites and rough ideas though Hover was something he had done already and wanted me to reskin it basically.

 

I have sprite sheets for everything in Pork King.  If anyone is interested I can post the other large sprite sheets for the bosses and items, but they are also viewable in the design pdf.

 

If anyone ever needs some help with sprite work let me know.  I like to be involved.  Of course if anyone would like to try programming PK or DPA that would be amazing as well.  I don't know what happened to GB.  We had been messaging for a while after he went mostly radio silent on the forums.  

 

Finally got my "office" sorted, my 7800 is connected along with my SEGA stuff, my kids are old enough to not need me EVERY second, so I'm ready to dive back in to my favorite hobby.  I'm good just playing the amazing stuff everyone is putting out, but if I can be of assistance please let me know.

[Lord_of_Sipan]

Those sprites look amazing. I have been teaching myself 7800 basic over the past little while slowly by slowly but I wouldn’t want to take something like this on as my first “real” project outside of test stuff and coding exercises.

 

I am a big fan of Tutankham although my favorite ports are not the ones most people like in that I prefer the 2600 and Odyssey 2 versions of the game. I like the balance of strategy and twitch gameplay in the 2600 version and the O2 version is very different from the other versions with its flip screen gameplay and continuous map. Almost plays like Secret Quest crossed with Adventure but with a more action puzzle feel.