RetroChallenge

Tomb Raider on the Commodore 64? Four nights. A hundred prompts. A Tomb Raider that actually boots on a Commodore 64 Ultimate. Dave Izon’s Raider 64 is the kind of thing the C64 scene argues about before it finishes loading. He had the idea years ago — Lara-style rooms, climbing, traps, enemies — then parked it, because the graphics in his head never made it onto the screen. This month he handed the art problem to Astra, the model he says finally produced sprites he was willing to use, plus a custom character set he says was better than anything he would have drawn himself. He kept going. Gameplay pieces, a Tomb Raider-flavoured tune. Four nights and well over 100 prompts later, the prototype looks like the game he had been failing to finish by hand. He is blunt about what it is not. He says this is not programming a C64 game, and that people who say so are right. He knows the 6510, the charset limits, and the SID budget. This pass was a test of the toolchain, not a claim that the machine got easier. The needs a RAM Expansion Unit. The 6510 still only sees 64K; the REU is a DMA bank the CPU cannot address directly, so frames get copied into main RAM. I played through on my Commodore 64 Ultimate, the download is still an impressive release. Custom charset rooms, platforms, ladders, hazards etc. It is a prototype / demo that is fully playable and looks amazing. This was my first time playing so just like the OG Tomb Raider I had to nut out the puzzles, and I have to say this is really good. Just 4 days and Dave and his Ai friend produced this. Impressive. So the question worth answering: if the idea is good and the author cannot draw, compose, or finish coding on their own, is a game that exists because of Ai, better than a game that never exists? Or does the scene only count when a human fought the VIC-II for every frame? Is this the future of Commodore 64 games? (For further updates follow Dave's YT Channel and download the playable demo from the links in the comments below).