There are currently two different homebrew conversions of Dark Side available for the Commodore 16/Plus4 – one by Tarzan, and one by Csory. Both are shown here.

Both are very good attempts, although Csory‘s conversion is generally regarded to be the better one to play. It certainly runs faster than Tarzan‘s version, although I did have some issues with the controls not working properly and had to switch emulators. Also: the music in Csory‘s version is pretty awful. It sounds like 8-bit chiptunes music gone wrong – like you’re being bombarded by sound effects… I really didn’t like it.

I always thought that Dark Side was much more interesting to play than Driller, and – with the introduction of the jet pack – opened up more vertical exploration. In reality: the jet pack doesn’t have enough fuel to do anything more than a couple of short sorties, so it doesn’t have a big impact on the gameplay.

Dark Side on the Plus4 is a worthy game – worthy of playing now to be honest. Which is why people make homebrew conversions like these in the first place.

More: Dark Side on Wikipedia