/vr/ - Retro Games

Just finished PCG the Dusty World from 1983. Seems impossible to do that legitimately though as some stages cause the enemy to crash the game as it gets stuck in a one way path to a wall (it needs 2 tiles to turn) and the game panics, never mind a few stages that at the least require you to have an extra life as otherwise you physically can't move through an object, you need to cheat those unless the cassette version isn't glitched. It's also just hard to get through 100 stages on 3 lives.

PCG in this stands for Programmable Character Generator, an add-on for the first 2 models of PC-8001 (the 3rd one apparently had one built-in. It allows you to add/replace characters, this was largely just used to get in some extra graphics for games.

It's basically a reverse-pacman. You are a dust creature who tries to fill the maze with dust, a vacuum attempts to kill you and a roaming water bucket can stun you both. You get bonus lives at stage 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64 which allow you to get an extra life through another roaming dust creature, but if it dies before you get it you die too? The dustbin is a sort of homebase for both you and vacuum, it is where you respawn and the vacuum empties itself. You get stuck in it, but I'm guessing that's a bug as some levels will be incompletable.

Hit detection is mostly fine, but sometimes you or the vacuum just phase through each other without being stunned by the bucket.

After level 49, the levels just become kana characters. They spell out "The PC-8001 is immortal!!", "This is the end of the game!!!!!" and "You did well". The ending in picrel basically says "You must be a genius for making it this far. Like it says on stage 72, the PC-8001 is immortal. Let's all do our best, fellow users."

The developer actually made a video a short while back. Fair warning, it does flicker a bit (even moreso on my emulator) to get a desired effect for the "sprites".