The best PD Game ever

[Rich]

Which game do you think is the best Binary Zone PD game ever to grace on the C64? I think 'Flubble & Squij' had to be the best PD game. It is a nice cute platformer, where you have to run across the platforms spinning like mad, at enemies, as well as collect squidgy things. I think I probably might have gone as far as level 8 Level 8's a tough cookie, even with infinite lives.

[Frank Gasking]

Well... maybe PD in general (But considering I only ever got PD from Kenz anywayz)

There are quite a few... the one u mentioned Rich and a few others:

Terminal City
Kernal's Chaos
Alf Yngve, Ryan Chenry and Shaun Pearson games

[merman]

I found a very old PD game called WEATHER CASTLE (or similar) - two castles made of keyboard graphics, blow the other one up with magic weather effects, like tornadoes and lightning.

Also, I agree with Frank - Alf and Ryan's SEUCK games kick ass!

(Oh, and FLUBBLE & SQUIJ is actually Shareware - not that I ever got a reply when I sent off my money )

[Matt]

merman, that's probably WEATHERWAR II you're talking about
that game was released by magic carpet software, you're sure that was a PD game?
for more details, check the gamebase. well yeah it's a very cool two player game indeed! I used to play this game a lot with my friends of the neighbourhood! aah the memories

cheers

[merman]

Matt, it was on a PD disk I got from a certain company whose name I will not mention. (Let's just call them America Straight, or Forging Something Seems Likely). ;D

[Rich]

merman said:

Matt, it was on a PD disk I got from a certain company whose name I will not mention. (Let's just call them America Straight, or Forging Something Seems Likely). ;D

That could have been Megatronics PD. It might have been submitted to the public domain being that the software was really old and wasn't worth selling.

I noticed games on the Binary Zone PD disks used to be commercially released on the crappy Cascade 50 great games cassette and also the Wicked Software 50 Great Games (Which most of them were'nt). These games were probably submitted by the original authors. Probably because of how old the games were.

[merman]

Richard said:

That could have been Megatronics PD. It might have been submitted to the public domain being that the software was really old and wasn't worth selling.

I noticed games on the Binary Zone PD disks used to be commercially released on the crappy Cascade 50 great games cassette and also the Wicked Software 50 Great Games (Which most of them were'nt). These games were probably submitted by the original authors. Probably because of how old the games were.

No Richard, it wasn't MEGATRONIX. It was a certain other company that used to advertise in Commodore Format, and may or may not have been based in the cathedral city of Pershore...
As for the Cascade 50 stuff, there are some good IDEAS among them, just poor programming.

[Frank Gasking]

Ah...

Shareware Plus...

I have fond memories of their disks, and their so called "PD" games

[Rich]

I noticed that 'Megatronix PD' had a wide range of PD software, but 'Megatronix' kept copying the same programs on to different disks. For example PD games disks, were named 'PD Games Mix', therefore the games must have been mixed.

I also noticed that Megatronix PD released a game called 'LA Drugs Bust', which was quite a cool game. There was also Invaders, and Colour Bind.

[Frank Gasking]

Sadly Megatronix was quite literally a rip off of Binary Zone PD...

In many ways...

[merman]

The Megatronix collections were a way to buy lots of disks quickly, rather than searching through the catalogue.

As for "ripping off" Binary Zone, yes, I noticed a few identical directory listings. But there were disks that Megatronix had that BZ didn't, and vice versa...

[Frank Gasking]

Yeah, I guess they had different disks, but Dean (Whatshisname?) started buying loads of PD disks from Kenz, and then suddenly started up Megatronix.... I can't remember the full story, but I remember Kenz not being none too pleased.

Ah well

[Rich]

Frank said:

Yeah, I guess they had different disks, but Dean (Whatshisname?) started buying loads of PD disks from Kenz, and then suddenly started up Megatronix.... I can't remember the full story, but I remember Kenz not being none too pleased.

Ah well

I noticed some of the disks were actually 'Binary Zone PD' disks, but deleted the disk menu. Megatronix had a more variety of programs, but it was annoying when Megatronix actually copied the same programs on different disks. But I guess that is why 'Mix' was the word used on certain disks.

Computer Scene (Scene PD) did some PD disks, but unfortunately not that many. No games, small amount of tools and loads of demos & logo collections.

[Rich]

merman said:

The Megatronix collections were a way to buy lots of disks quickly, rather than searching through the catalogue.

As for "ripping off" Binary Zone, yes, I noticed a few identical directory listings. But there were disks that Megatronix had that BZ didn't, and vice versa...

There were also some commercial games frozen and added to the disk, which are as follows:

Microdot (CDU)
Colour Bind (CDU)
L.A. Drugs Bust (Mayfair)
Deri Colours (CP Verlag)
Munch (Gam Studio) *
Clone (Bombamad) (CP Verlag)
Puzzle Shuffle (CP Verlag) *

The files labelled with '*' were files I had found hidden, when I used Dir Master V7.1. It was a bit of a shock to find that MTX used Commercial software on the disks. MTX PD no longer exists, since 1997.