The 1991 Game Boy title Bill & Ted’s Excellent Game Boy Adventure has made its way over to the Commodore 64 and has taken fans by total surprise! It’s free and available to download right now.
The game’s conversion underwent some changes and challenges. The person responsible for this game conversion, known as Roman Werner has explained that some adjustments have been made to give the game more of a modern edge. You have more control over the characters when jumping, game states are saved after each adventure, you can press run/stop at any time and revert to the last save state. Werner had some obstacles with the dimensions of the game and stated that:
“The Game Boy has a resolution of 160×144 pixels. While 2×160 fits nicely into the 320 pixel width of the C64, the 144 pixels height does not (288 vs 200 pixels). Easy would have been to accept the 160×144 pixels dimension but for this game I wanted a full screen experience on the C64. My solution to the problem was to scroll the screen vertically which adds a nice challenging twist to the gameplay (you can’t see the top or bottom baddies anymore).”
The game’s itch.io page includes further details of the game provided by Werner:
“No way! Yes way. This, my friends, is the conversion of the legendary Bill & Ted Game Boy™ game by LJN/Beam Software to the Commodore 64.
“I used to have this cartdrige in the 90’s with my Game Boy and really enjoyed the fast pace and simple but addictive game mechanics. Also the music is great. And you can play as Keanu Reeves – what could be more awesome. So I remade the game from scratch for the C64. SID music was done by Nordischsound. Enjoy! It’s free!”
Werner also provided some neat bits of trivia one of which mentions how the enemy “De Nomolos” was misspelled in the original instruction booklet as “De Nomolous” with Ed Solomon’s (writer and producer) being spelled backwards. The game is also available to play on Windows/MacOS/iOS/Android as long as you have a C64 emulator and you’re good to go!
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