Merciless aliens are overrunning a small planet, they
took by surprise to all the army. Now the last remaining defense is the Mecha
Research's Lab and its unique two mechas, the most powerful!
Mecha Eight is an original game that I wrote for MSX
computers in my free time, by January 2012. This time I wanted a pure arcade
game choosing a vertical scrolling style with mechas, ships and lots of
bullets, heavily compressed in 32K. Some features are:
Five different and long levels.
Lots of enemies and bullets.
Giant bosses and minibosses.
Three power levels and three speeds.
Underlining story.
Today there exists several thousands of
MSX fans
and even there are competitions for creating demos and games,
one of them is MSXdev, an annual
contest for new MSX games, where
I sent Mecha Eight for the
2011 edition contest.
It got good reviews from MSX users and reached fifth
place over nine contestants. Some people says that it is what Aleste (a famous
MSX2 game) would have looked in MSX1. :)
Downloads
Download Mecha-8 MSXdev edition
(link at MSXdev'11 website), right-click and select 'Save As', it sizes up at
240 kb. Includes ROM, cartridge sticker and PDF manual.
Download the file into a folder (by
example, My documents) and uncompress it, and install one of these suggested
emulators for the MSX platform:
BlueMSX, after installing click File
- Cartridge Slot 1 - Insert, select the ROM file.
Meisei, after decompressing click File -
Media, select ROM file for cartridge slot 1 and press Ok + Reset.
OpenMSX, after installing
launch Catapult and click Browse for Cart A, select ROM file, then
press Start.
If you're the fortunate owner of a MSX then
I strongly recommend you to buy the improved cartridge version ;).
Enhanced version
Matra's box, graphical design by @star2024.
Matra at Spain and
Bitwise at Netherlands showed
interest to manufacture Mecha Eight cartridges playable in real MSX computers.
I've expanded it to 64K and greatly improved it with smooth scrolling,
difficulty level selection, an extra level and its own boss, new graphics,
music and enemies, an alternative ending, support for FM synthetizer, Spanish
translation and a lot of other enhancements. It was available
at the 42th MSX user's meeting in
Barcelona, Spain.
Each cartridge includes a full-color booklet with a gorgeous
graphic design, to order it please write to
matracorp@gmail.com (Matra)
or bitwisewhq@gmail.com
(Bitwise.)
Video of the cartridge version, uploaded to Youtube by
courtesy of Konamito.
Colecovision version
After Luc Miron from
Team Pixelboy at Canada saw a
preliminary video of the enhanced Mecha Eight, he got interested in
getting the rights to publish it in Colecovision, so we came to a deal.
Because Colecovision only has 1K of RAM, my
port of Mecha
Eight had to use a 128K ROM to compensate it
Also it includes support for the Super Game Module
from Opcode, that enhances background music. Plus new enemies and several
graphical enhancements. It was published in Christmas 2013
