Category Archives: Homebrew

Video games that are created at home by enthusiasts.

Santron, Commodore 64

Santron is a Christmas-themed vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up created by Sarah Jane Avory and first released for the Commodore 64 in 2019.

Sarah programmed the game and created all the graphics and sound herself, and it is very good. Santron is actually a variation of Sarah‘s previous game, Neutron.

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Neutron, Commodore 64

Neutron is a vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up created by Sarah Jane Avory and first released for the Commodore 64 in 2019.

It was created for the 2019 RGCD C64 16KB cartridge game development competition, and is actually a re-coding of a game Sarah created in the 1980s but that went unreleased (because the publisher she was tied to at the time went out of business, before the game’s release), and was eventually lost (she regrettably threw away the disks with the source code after moving house years later).

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Ghosts ‘N Goblins Arcade, Commodore 64

Ghosts ‘N Goblins Arcade is another 2015 release from Nostalgia that re-makes the original (flawed) Elite port of Ghosts ‘N Goblins, and it features completely new graphics, sound, and gameplay features that bring it more into line with the original Ghosts ‘N Goblins arcade game.

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Commando Arcade, Commodore 64

Created by Nostalgia in 2015, Commando Arcade is a reworking of the original C64 Commando port by Elite, but with completely new graphics, sound, and levels. So, rather than it being written from scratch, the game was built around the framework of an existing game.

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BB4CPC, Amstrad CPC

BB4CPC (meaning: “Bubble Bobble for the CPC“) is a superb modern “homebrew” remake of Bubble Bobble in 48K for the Amstrad CPC by CNGSoft. It was coded by Cesar Nicolas Gonzales and released as freeware in 2014.

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Pier Solar and the Great Architects, Megadrive/Genesis

Pier Solar and the Great Architects is a famous homebrew Role-Playing Game released in 2010. It was developed by a team called WaterMelon and was initially released on cartridge exclusively for the Sega Megadrive.

Since then, though, it has been ported to a number of different platforms, including HD remakes for Dreamcast, PlayStation 3 & 4, Wii U, PC, XBox One, and Android.

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Atic Atac, Commodore 64

Wow… This is arguably the best modern remake of an old video game that I’ve ever seen!

This beautiful 2020 homebrew rendition of Ultimate‘s classic Spectrum game comes courtesy of three individuals: the code was written by Tomaz Kac of Nostalgia, the graphics were created by Steven Day (aka Ste), and the music by Saul Cross.

All three of them deserve some serious credit.

After 37 years the C64 finally gets its own version of Atic Atac,” says Tomaz Kac, “I hope we did the game justice. We tried to make it very special, not just by getting as close to Spectrum version, but by expanding it quite a bit. We hope you like it!

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Defender of the Crown, ZX Spectrum

A very good 1989 homebrew conversion of Cinemaware‘s classic Defender of the Crown, programmed by The Cat, from Hungary.

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Castle Master, Commodore 16/Plus4

A 1992 homebrew conversion of the fourth Freescape game, Castle Master, coded by Tanacs Attila (aka “TGMS”), with additional graphics by P. István (aka “abcug”).

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Total Eclipse, Commodore 16/Plus4

A 1990 homebrew conversion of the classic Freescape game, Total Eclipse, by the Hungarian coder Soós Ferenc (aka “SF”). It requires 64K of RAM to run.

And Total Eclipse an excellent conversion – pretty much identical to its Commodore 64 parent (from which it was converted).

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