Remakes — Tardis.dk Remakes

Pacu Pacu updated to v1.1

August 17, 2025 By Sokurah

I will keep things short, as there’s actually not much to say, except what it says in the headline.

I felt the game was a bit too easy – and I’ve had some good feedback on my attempts at increasing its difficulty – so the main thing in this new version, is that I’ve tweaked the difficulty so it’s a lot harder and a bit more unpredictable now 😅

There has also been made a few cosmetic changes and one relating to the scoring – all minor things, but also all that improve the game … even if they’re not super apparent.

Download the new version from it’s page here 🕹️

Filed Under: News, Remakes, Updates Tagged With: Pacu Pacu, Update, Z80 Assembler

One lost game … “unlost” – Speccies 2 for Sega Master System

August 11, 2025 By Sokurah

“Speccies 2”? … that’s not new, right? Well, both yes and no.

The other day I was listening to Simon Butler’s (Dinosaur Pie) podcast and he said he was working on graphics for a Sega Genesis game … and I thought “Didn’t *I* work on something for the Sega Master System once?” Well, the question was rhetorical, because I remembered that I’d done so, but I had no idea what happened to it. I certainly hadn’t posted about it here.

I had a look on my harddrive and I found it. A bit of backstory first: back in 2013 I coded a small 16K game called “Speccies 2” for the ZX Spectrum. Then in 2015 I coded a version of the same game for the Taito L System arcade platform. It seemed like a nice and small project to learn about a new platform.

And that was something I did again in 2018. A friend inspired me to try to code something for the Sega Master System and I decided to make the same game again for that console too. I found its source code and a version called “Final” from 2018, but had then added music and sfx in 2020 and entered it into a coding competition. I wonder what happened to that, LOL 🤷‍♂️

So here it is, exactly as I entered it into that competition 5 years ago. Gameplay wise it’s done, but as the readme file says “The music and few sounds are grabbed from various random places and it could use some better music and more sound effects” … but it is what it is – I don’t intend to work more on it again … unless someone comes forward and offers to help out.

Enjoy this 5 year old game. Click here for more information and the link to download it.

Filed Under: Competition fever, News, Remakes, Updates Tagged With: Sega Master System, SMS, Speccies, Z80 Assembler

Finally! … a new game: “Pacu Pacu”

August 7, 2025 By Sokurah

Logo

It has been a long time since I completed coding a game, but with this one I managed to have an idea that didn’t take too long to make 😅

Everyone knows Pac-Man from the arcade, right? Of course you do (at least if you’re as old as me, lol). Back in early 2024 Kenta Cho came up with a “Paku Paku” – a simplified “1D” version of Pac-Man. It’s a small, fun and addictive game, which due to it’s popularity, has since been converted to the ZX Spectrum, ZX Spectrum Next, Commodore 64, Playdate, Pico-8, Atari 2600 … and probably many other playforms that I haven’t found.

Well, I decided to bring this game back to the original hardware, so my version has been coded in Z80 assembler for the original Pac-Man arcade board. This means, that if you have an original Pac-Man arcade machine and an EPROM burner, then you can play it on that. Everyone else can still play it too, using an arcade emulator like MAME.

Oh dear, another year…

January 1, 2025 By Sokurah

First of all: Happy New Year to everyone still visiting 🥳🎉🥂 You’re a hopeful bunch. I hope I don’t disappoint you … another year 😜

The news is, however, that not much progress has been made since I posted last, exactly a year ago 😢

The Spectrum Next project that I was working on a year ago – and had 75% (ish) completed – hasn’t progressed any further. Well, perhaps a little, but I haven’t worked on it since mid-January (2024), so it’s can’t be much. I still intend to finish it though … but apparently I need a bit more time, lol. Hopefully it won’t be another year before I update this damn thing again, haha.

Me being me, I have started several other projects in 2024 … and not finished those either (well, except for one). I’m turning into another Mini0n (only few [RR] people will understand that reference). But because of the change in my job – which I mentioned in my last post – I don’t spend so much time on games development as I’ve done before … but I still love it and hope to be a bit more productive in 2025.

The one project I haven’t abandoned (yet, lol), is a small project that I started about 2 weeks ago, so it’s still early days on that one. It won’t be a “mega-game” and it will definitely not be popular with an IP-troll in the industry (so it can’t be sold), but I’m mostly making it to satisfy a personal itch, and so far I’m having fun with it. Stay tuned.

Now, the only thing I can claim to have finished in 2024, is an update to Dingo – my Spectrum game from 2011 (that also recieved an update in 2016). In this case I was contacted my Allan Turvey and asked if I wanted to re-relelase an updated version of it, for inclusion into his latest Midnight Brew Collection of games. That is an honor, as Alan is a solid and very capable coder with a sense for quality and what it takes to make a good game. So Dingo was updated and the new version (1.5) is now a 128K version that adds a bunch of AY music to it. It will still run on a 48K machine though, just without the new music.

For now this updated version is exclusive to the Midnight Brew Collection 2024 and can only be obtained by buying that, but that will also get you 4 other fantastic games, so it’s a great purchase indeed.