by Snow-G
A vertical shoot 'em up for the Commodore 64
Clear the Obsidian Sky of the dark fleet. Fly over an asteroid field, a space station, an alien mothership, a nebula, a gas giant and a war zone, down to the edge of a black hole, and bring down the giant boss waiting at the end of each stage.
OBSIDIAN SKY is a brand-new vertical shooter written in 6502 assembly for a standard PAL Commodore 64 with a 1541 disk drive, in the tradition of the late-1980s arcade shooters. The whole 40-column playfield scrolls smoothly at a steady 50 frames per second, with an original SID soundtrack and a hi-score table saved to the disk.
Features
- 7 stages, each with its own scenery, enemies and music: ASTEROID FIELD, SPACE STATION, ALIEN MOTHERSHIP, NEBULA, GAS GIANT, WAR ZONE and BLACK HOLE
- 7 giant bosses, built from up to 18 sprites, each with its own phases, attacks and weak points: BASTION, a twin-hull siege ship; WARDEN, a spine sentinel with six eyes to shoot out; a tentacled eye whose tentacles tear off; LOTUS, a pod that blooms round its eye; MAELSTROM, a storm-drinking hourglass that dives at you; IRON WYRM, a chain of war modules that sways row by row; and the OBSIDIAN HERALD, a carapace that opens on an ancient face. Shoot their parts off for 500 points each, and take 5,000 for the boss
- Two weapons, three levels each: the red fan (3, 5 or 7 bolts) and the piercing green beam (1, 2 or 3 columns). Carriers drop the items: P for power, R and G for the weapon, S for speed (four steps) and B for a bomb
- Lightning bomb: a bolt from your ship to the top of the screen wipes out every enemy and every enemy bullet on screen and takes a bite out of the boss. You start with 3 and can hold up to 9
- Fair play: enemies never fire from beside you or from point-blank range, and a new enemy waits a moment before its first shot
- Flicker-free enemy bullets, drawn into the scenery with an outline, and a HUD in the opened top border
- Original SID soundtrack: 12 tunes (a title theme, seven stage themes, the boss theme and three jingles) and sound effects. The music keeps playing while the next stage loads
- Extra ships at 50,000, 150,000, 300,000 and 500,000 points, 3 continues, and after the seventh boss the game loops with denser enemy fire
- Hi-score table with initials, saved to the disk
- Enhanced on modern hardware, detected automatically, one feature at a time: with a REU (1764/1750, C64 Ultimate, Ultimate 64) a file loaded once comes back from it in a tenth of a second; with a second SID (at $D420, $D500 or $D700) the sound effects move to it and the music keeps all three voices. Experimental and still untested: the Ultimate's 4 MHz turbo for the game logic, and the MEGA65 in C64 mode. A plain C64 plays exactly the same game
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