Not technically a C64 game, but kind of a tribute in certain ways.. and a game which certainly could have been a C64 game.
Johan Boije from the Swedish Royal Academy of Arts made a game for their final exam in free art in 1996-97. The game was throughly made and produced in an arcade cabinet and shown complete with a real colour box, manual in an art convention in Sweden. It was a nice artistic connection to the early computer era, and for the C64 and other sources…
The game was inspired by an old arcade “Breakdance”, and by old TV and computer games… especially highly inspired by C64 games, and Activision :)
Nothing to play, and game was finished, though hopefull Johan will get the game onto the internet one day. But you will never see it on a C64.
Contributions: Johan Boije, Mikael Backlund
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Creator speaks
Johan Boije speaks to GTW about work on Breakdance 2/Streetbeat…
“This happens to be the game that I and my good friend Mika made and programmed for the final project at Beckamns School of Design -97. So I guess I am the one to answer your questions :-) First of all both you (and the magazine that you got the info from) got it a bit wrong, the name of the game wasn’t breakdance or breakdance 2 it was StreetBeat (from the breakdance film Beatstreet, a film that inspired us).
Also this was not a C64 game although higlhy inspired from commodore graphics it was actually a mac game made in director. So the game console that we made was a bit “fake” in the meaning that we just put a macintosh inside of it and connected it to the console screen. But it looked really convincing. The game was a real success and we got a lot of cred for it. People still talk about the game despite the fact it was made four years ago. There was also some companies that approached us and wanted to buy the game. But we didnt think it was worth the effort to finish the game (it would need some more programming, more caracters and the game used loops that we didnt have rights to so we would have to compose new music also) because they wouldnt pay us enough. Then both of us also had started to work (me in advertising and mika as a graphic designer) so we sort of forgot the game. We have on occations lent the game to clubs or exhibitions. But now the console is taken into peaces and rests in my attic.
The software is still playable though if you have a mac that is. The controls are a bit odd because it was specially made for the console, but as I said you can still play it. I’ve also tried to port it to shockwave so you could play it online. I haven’t been totally succesful, my programming skills are a bit bad. But I don’t think it is impossible to do this with a little bit of help. It would be quite large though mostly because of the music, I think maybe 2-3 Mb. Uncompressed the game is about 20 megs. Anyway It was fun to se that the god ol game is still alive and that you noticed it. If you have any more questions I would be happy to answer them.”
Johan Boije.
