It was close to Christmas 2015 when Collectorvision approached
me with a project about a new game for Intellivision consoles, it was called
Sydney Hunter and the Sacred Tribe.
After being shown the sprite set for the game and the whole map
designed for it, I found it really beautiful and I accepted to tackle on the project.
A lot of big events happened in my life thru the 2016 year and the
project went very slowly till it was finished in October 2016. Several development
screenshots and animations were published in a thread in Atariage.
Sydney Hunter and the Sacred Tribe for Intellivision
The game went to physical copies at Christmas 2016 and it sold out pretty fast, and most
importantly the Atariage Intellivision community voted it as the best game of 2016. Collectorvision is going
to re-release it as a standard edition game (the first version included a map and some other goodies), yet
to be available.
Intellivision video
Colecovision/MSX version
Given the good success of the Intellivision version, Collectorvision asked me to port it
to Colecovision and MSX with improved graphics, I said yes and took me 4 months to finish the port. It will be
published under the Exidy trademark, acquired recently by Collectorvision. Soon to
be available in physical cartridges.
Sega Master System version
And once we are in the run for a Z80 port, Collectorvision asked if it was posibble
to tackle on Sega Master System given the similarities, this port took me 2 months and will be under the
Acclaim trademark. Also soon to be available in physical cartridges
Sydney Hunter and the Caverns of Death
In 2018 I accepted to do Sydney Hunter and the Caverns of Death for Colecovision and MSX. This
game is the original one where the Sydney Hunter character appeared and already available for SNES, also Electricadventures
is doing the NES version.
Sydney Hunter goes after a diamond in Mount Doom and gets trapped inside! the challenge
is to escape from the volcano through 10 maps solving the labyrinth and puzzles, while avoiding the enemies using your
boomerang.
This a big game, beautifully designed and animated, it should be available in physical format in 2019 and as a pack-in game for the Colecovision Phoenix console.
Curious facts
The Intellivision version uses one of the biggest ever cartridge size: 42K words or 84K bytes. As a technical
curiosity, Sydney Hunter is made up from 6 MOB and the enemies from 2 MOB, using ALL display capabilities.
The Colecovision/MSX version will be a 128K cartridge. Sydney Hunter uses a tricolor sprite there.
The Sega Master System version is also 128K cartridge and with FM support. It's the version with the most
detailed graphics.