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To begin with, we have to
ask where did the idea for a
flying pig in a shoot-‘em-up
come from?
A couple of years ago, long
before I got into Master System
development, I helped out
another developer by drawing
a few custom sprites for his
Windows game. One of those
sprites was a top-down version
of the character Michael from
the Parodius series. The project
went into a different direction,
and the cameo was scrapped,
but the idea of a winged pig
flying over a vertically scrolling
landscape stuck with me.
I really like cute-’em-ups, as
they make us realise the cliches
the genre is built upon, while
backing up the weirdness with
actually solid level design. So
when I finally set out to make
my own shooting game, it
was clear that I wanted go
down that road. Everything just
fell into place, and from that
Pigarus was born.And what’s actually
involved in creating suchan impressive Master
System game?
Perseverance, first and
foremost. Development took
a lot of time, and sometimes it
wasn’t easy to stay motivated.
Making a busy game like
Flight Of Pigarus requires
some careful planning and a
good idea of how to distribute
the system’s resources.
Otherwise you’ll quickly end
up with copious amounts of
slowdown and flicker. The
Master System’s hardware
is very nice, but it does have
its idiosyncrasies. It’s always
better to design a game around
them and play to the system’s
strengths than constantly
fighting its limitations.What kind of feedback have
you received so far from
Master System owners?
The feedback so far has been
overwhelmingly positive,
both from the Master System
community and from fans of
the genre. In fact, I am aware
of several forums where
fierce high score battles arebeing fought. I am
really happy people
seem to be enjoying the
game so much.Looking at it now, is
there anything you would
have done differently
with hindsight?
It would have been nice to be
able to add some kind of speed
gauge to the HUD, but I didn’t
have any video memory left
to include one more sprite. As
it is, you can tell the player’s
current speed by watching
how fast Pigarus is flapping his
wings, but that’s maybe a little
too subtle.Finally, do you have any
projects coming up in the
future that our readers
might be interested in?
I haven’t decided on any
follow-up project yet, but I
have a couple of ideas I want
to play around with. The next
game is probably going to be
either a 32K abstract game or a
platformer/shooter hybrid or a
flip-screen action adventure.THREE,
FOUR, FIVE
A LOOSE
CANNON
Joyas started life as a ten line, BASIC-
powered ‘match three’ game but has
recently been expanded to offer a wider
range of features. As is usually the case with
these games, the objective is to line up three
or more of the same object; this group is then
removed from the playfield and objects above
tumble downwards to fill the newly-created gap.
The work seems to be ongoing at the time
of writing, but what’s there is fun to play and
we particularly enjoyed the timer-based game
modes. Kikstart.me.uk/joyas-a8 takes you there.It’s been around for a while, but our
attention was recently drawn to Open
Fodder as version 1.5 was released. It’s an
open source version of Sensible Software’s
Cannon Fodder and its sequel.
Open Fodder ships with some demo stages,
but to play the full game a retail version is
required to extract the level data. This can be
taken from a couple of sources including original
Amiga disks and the version available via GOG.
For more information about Open Fodder itself or
extracting the data, have a look at the link behind
Kikstart.me.uk/open_fodder_win.» [PC] Taking
Cannon Fodder
into the future
with one of the
provided demos.» [Atari 8-bit] Just
about to get five
waf fles in a row.Alexander Vormbrock is the mind behind porcine
blaster Flight Of Pigarus for the Master System. We
were interested to find out more about the process of
teaching pigs to fly and indeed blast enemiesf
» [Master System] Juggling all of the
elements required to keep a pig in the air.» [Master System] He’s really let being the
boss go to his head.modes. Kikstart.me.uk/joyasa8 takesyou there. waffles in a row.