So, the third and final part of my random rambling about the CMD SuperCPU, and as promised, I'm going to quickly give an overview of the three best known Commodore C64 games that require this precious hardware upgrade. We'll start with the infamous Metal Dust, published by Protovision around 2005.
And now you are entering the Metal Dust
Metal Dust (MD) is probably best known as the only SCPU specific game for the Commodore platform. Except of course, that's not true, thanks in a large part to Mathias "AmiDog" Roslund (see below). It has nice presentation, and supports lots of CMD and higher capacity drives, which it had to. There was no way this would comfortably fit onto 5.25" floppy disks without being a worse multiload than Street Fighter II on cassette. The whole game is spread over four 1581 3.5" disks, two FD2000 disks, or one FD4000 disk, although all CMD floppy disks drives are 100% compatible with the 1581.
MD was the first time I saw a full screen FLI image without the ~16 pixel FLI bug. Beautiful 16 colour [static FLI] screens are presented whilst loading the game, and then between each level. It won't surprise you to know that the pastel shades of the VIC-II chip are quite pleasing in these images - the artist here did a good job.
After selecting your difficulty level, as well one or two players, you are soon greeted with the most difficult part of the whole proceedings if you are new to MD (and sometimes even if you are not), and that is getting through the first few screens worth of attack waves. Hint: if you can't shoot through it, it's not background and you should manoeuvre to avoid it. Fortunately, MD has a built in auto fire, so holding down the fire button and observing which part of your projectiles hit whatever is in front of you is the best way to learn this game.
I have poured hours into this MD, and could be the first person outside of Protovision to complete it, so I know it pretty well. The trick for a new comer is to listen to the title music for several minutes. If you do, two new difficult settings appear before you begin your game. "Boring" gives each player 99 lives per continue, and "Insane" has zero lives per continue. I recommend anyone to try it on Boring (it's not boring) as it gives you the best chance of learning each section and eventually each level. Don't be fooled though. It's not easier on "lower" difficulty levels, you are simply given more chances to complete each level.
Regarding how brutal this blast fest is, well that's open to interpretation. Despite what people say, MD is not impossible to complete. I emboldened the font there just in case anyone misunderstood. It's definitely tough, but honestly not the most difficult of shooters out there. Take Loins of the Universe for example. By comparison to Lions, MD is like a children's game.
Like a Boss!
With all of this extra processing power available on a SCPU system, does that mean bigger and better mid and end level bosses? I suppose that's down to interpretation again, but the ED-209 inspired mechanical beast on level two is particularly pleasing, but all are pretty epic. As you would expect the bosses have some good animation, and the whole game has a very stable sprite multiplexor. If there is any flicker anywhere, you won't notice it unless you have exceptionally keen vision.
Regarding each level, I always thought that they were ordered wrong, and have believed until recently that level two would have made a better introduction to the game than level one. I recently swapped the order of play around and my version now is two, one, three and four. I know now that I was wrong in my assumptions. Whilst learning the first level took a while, it's much easier to complete than the second.
The levels themselves are really quite something to see, and although there were some technical criticisms from some other developers of how things should have been, the road of a thousand miles starts with the first stone. And I haven't seen many other people rush to do things the "right" way. We may have a "Sonic" moment in the future when something is developed for the SCPU that makes it okay to develop for the SCPU (like it's now okay to develop for the REU), but that isn't likely to happen soon, which is a shame as clearly MD gives us but a glimpse into what is possible.
To reiterate, this game is not impossible to complete. It's just very tough. But is it worth playing, even for me who has completed it many times? I would say yes. Ultimately, it's fun to play and still presents a challenge for my aging reactions and fading memory.
Entering Castle Wolfenstein
Castle Wolfenstein first appeared on the C64 in 1983 thanks to Muse Software, although this was a 2D affair. After years of some people debating and deliberating on whether a Doom port would be possible for the C64 + SCPU (on places like comp.sys.cbm and others), AmiDog went ahead and ported Wolf 3D by id Software. It's really good too, especially if you use the "Apple II" colour palette option. Of course, the graphics still look like a C64, but the gameplay is fast and responsive (at around 10fps for 16 colours, and faster still with four colour display).
For those who don't know, the premise of the game is set during World War II. You assume the role of William "B.J." Blazkowicz for the Allies, and must escape from the dreaded Nazi prison Castle Wolfenstein, along the way picking up various weapons and rearmaments, and shooting Nazis and their trained four-legged familiars. I always feel sorry for the dogs and try to avoid them though, as daft as that sounds.
Whilst this game is pretty epic, and very playable, the same cannot be said for AmiDog's MIPs recompiled conversion of Doom. Although it's a great achievement, the playability and replay factor is quite low for some technical reasons.
At the very least, we can say that the SCPU passes the "does it play Doom?" test that applies to many devices these days. For all I know, there's a version of Doom that'll run on your washing machine. But this was really meant as a proof of concept more than anything to set the C64 gaming world alight. Yes, you can play it, but it's slower than many of the Freescape games are on an unexpanded C64, and there is no music nor sound effects. I'm sure that more gameplay could be achieved from this project, as there are likely to be further optimisations that can be applied to the source code, but I'm not in any way technical enough to comment further. There's nothing really more to say here.
For me, if you want a "Doom-alike" game, the best so far is Wolf 3D, and that's not likely to change soon.
Before I go, please consider the following resources:
Metal Dust available on itch.io.
Wolf 3D from csdb.dk.
Doom from csdb.dk.
I think I've covered everything that I wanted to about the CMD SuperCPU, but if you have any questions then please don't forget to add your comments. Many thanks for reading, and apologies for any spelling mistakes, typos, or general lack of any good grammar throughout these blog posts.
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