New Psytronik website now online!

Greetings blogonauts!

Since the relaunch of Psytronik Software things have gone a bit barmy - so much so in fact it got to the point there simply wasn't room on the Psytronik webpage to include all the info about the new releases. This is probably down to the fact that the Psytronik site began merely as a "history of Psytronik" page hiding within the Binary Zone Interactive website.

Anyhoo, rather than try to cobble info about new releases onto the history page I've been busy working on a shiny new website for Psytronik Software. The end result is now online and is hopefully a bit of an improvement on the old site! At the moment the new site contains all the info from the old Psytronik page - but this time neatly arranged with separate sections devoted to news, releases, history, and press etc. Some sections are still incomplete at the moment but the site will soon be bulging with retro gaming goodliness. Head along to www.psytronik.com to check out the new site.

The new Psytronik site - slicker than the mess dumped in the sea by the Exxon Valdez

So what else has been happening in the weird and wonderful world of Psytronik recently? Firstly, our Summer mega-game Knight 'n' Grail is now ready to be shipped at long last! The final version of the game has been approved by various reviewers and testers and I'll be busy bundling the K'n'G disks in the post in the next week or so. To promote the launch of the game I've put together a brand new promo video for the game which will be unveilled at the LCP party in Sweden later this month. Here's a picture from the promo vid for you to drool over!

Wok-wok-bligga-blogga! There's dungeon capers aplenty in Knight 'n' Grail!

I'm also very pleased to announce the first Psytronik release for the Amstrad CPC range has now been confirmed. It's the stunning 128K version of STAR SABRE which will be available as a premium 3" disk release soon. The game is an excellent sideways scrolling shoot 'em up in which you control a Sabre scout craft on a mission to defend a Xeno-archaeological site that is being attacked by vessels of unknown origin. Featuring excellent presentation, gripping shoot 'em action and funky 128K music this is yet another Psytronik release you should not miss!

Eat laser death you big blobbling red ... er, space thing!

And that's yer lot for now. Thanks for reading!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

Busy busy busy!

Greetings Retro Chums!

Wow, things are getting pretty darned hectic around here at the moment. I've been busy preparing for the upcoming Byte-Back event (which is now a mere 1 week away!) whilst juggling a couple of Psytronik project at the same time.

1 week to go - and I'm SO not ready! Gibber!

Firstly, lots more great things have been happening with The Last Amazon. I had the design for the front-end of the game in my mind so I had a go at creating an animated .gif so I could illustrate my idea to Richard Bayliss. I liked the simple front-end that was featured on the System 3 game Myth (which featured a logo with the credits text fading in and out) and wanted something similar for The Last Amazon. You can see the .gif I created below.





I sent this to Richard who did a great job converting my idea onto the C64. In fact, he managed to code the front-end so it looked EXACTLY the same as my design. Great stuff! Richard then went on to create a neat Game Over sequence, once again based on an idea I had of the Amazon being menaced by Cheetahs. You can read about how Richard coded the front-end and end-sequence in his blog.

Most of the work is now done on the first Last Amazon game - apart from the loading screen which I will be concentrating on after the Byte-Back event. The music for the game is also now in place and the game features a cool new Tusker-esque title tune by Richard along with the amazing Last Amazon intro tune by Tonka.

Another Psytronik release I have been working on recently is the disk version of Joe Gunn. Psytronik will be releasing the disk version in the UK and Protovision will also be releasing the game to cater for people in Europe. All the disk artwork for the Psytronik release is now complete and the game will be unveiled at the Byte-Back event (and then made available in the BZ retro store soon after).


As an extra bonus I wanted to include the preview of Knight 'n' Grail on the Joe Gunn disk and the author of the game (Mikael Tillander) gave me the go-ahead to do just that. But then things got even better when Mikael then delivered a brand new demo of the game to include on the disk! Good times!


One slight downer for this week ... I fired up my luvverly Xbox 360 to show my chums The Force Unleashed and was promptly greeted with the dreaded RED RING OF DEATH! Yup, after 3 years of faithful(ish) service my XBox has perished in a blaze of red-ringed glory. This wasn't entirely unexpected as it had been freezing up a lot recently and some games were acting a bit oddly (graphical glitches ahoy!) So it looks like the proceeds from the Byte-Back event will go towards getting the blimmin' XBox fixed (not sure why I have to pay Microsoft £80 quid for their defective goods) Ah well, them's the breaks. :(

How come my XBox 360 is doing this after just 3 years but my Commodore 64
is still working perfectly after TWENTY YEARS! Muttergrumblefume!

See you next time!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com

Ghosts 'n' Bloglins

Now that work on the Psytronik release of Joe Gunn has been completed I can concentrate all my efforts on the next release - Creatures!! The disk mastering was my first task of the day and this turned out to be pretty easy as the Psytronik disk version will be almost identical to the original 1990 release (hey, if it ain't broke ... etc.) As an extra bonus I decided to add a Creatures 2 demo to the disk as there was a bit of room left on Side 1. The demo is the nifty one that was given away with Commodore Format (featuring the CF office in the snowy backdrop).


Once I'd sorted out the disk contents and tidied up the disk directories a bit I then set about producing a new instruction sheet for the disk version. This actually turned out really nicely as I designed it to suit an A4 sheet that is folded into quarters. When it's folded you get a nice cover pic (featuring Smila's excellent artwork) and all the Creatures instruction text fitted on the page perfectly. Job done! As I was in "instruction manual mode" I also finished off the tape inlay - making sure all the correct bits of text were in bold and that there we no spillong mistooks anywhere.

My final bit of Creatures work today was the floppy disk sleeve. I love having custom-designed glossy disk sleeves on the Psytronik games and the Creatures one turned out really nicely - once again Smila's excellent artwork makes an appearance and the predominantly white design works really well. Yet another job done. All that's left to do is the disk label now so you can expect to see a pic of the complete Creatures packaging in the next blog entry :)

Another interesting Psytronik development is a game preview that appeared on the Lemon 64 forum. The game is called Knight'n'Grail and it's a visually superb arcade adventure that is kind of like Ghosts 'n' Goblins with the graphical style of Draconus (one of my fave budget games). As soon as I saw the preview I contacted the author to see if he would be interested in releasing the game on the Psytronik label and he agreed! It looks like it will a disk-only release and Smila is already on-board to do the artwork so that's another cool C64 release to look forward to. The game is still being worked on at the mo so keep an eye on this blog for update reports. In the meantime, here's some screenshots from the game for you to drool over:


See you next time!

Kenz / www.psytronik.com