Nebulus (video game)

Nebulus, in North America Tower Toppler, even subline (Italy ), Castelian, Kyorochan country is a Jump 'n' Run game from the year 1987. Was released for home computers and game consoles. The original developer was John M. Phillips under the umbrella of Triffix Entertainment Inc. and the publishers Hewson Consultants and U.S. Gold. The game is still available, for example through the C64 DTV or as a download for an emulation in the game console Wii. Furthermore, there are some free clones.

Exceptional is the movement of the game: The player character is always in the center of the screen, while the tower is moved up and down or rotate around itself. The converted during the rotation of the tower 3D effect represents a graphically outstanding feature of the game

The original version of the game was praised by critics, with the C64 version is here specifically to mention that was awarded by the British magazine ZZAP! 64 the gold medal. In the 90s, followed by 2 Nebulus on the Amiga and the Atari ST a much lesser-known sequel.

Game action

Hero of the game is a character named Pogo, running and may perform short jumps. Furthermore, she is able to shoot down some of the barriers.

The aim of the game is to climb each of the projects out of the water towers within a respective predetermined time. In the original version, this eight, were at two different missions. Points are primarily for the gained altitude during the ascent of the tower, for the firing of obstacles and while the submarine ride to the tower for the capture of fish. For points scored, there are new life.

The towers are surrounded externally by step plates on which to get around. Some of these platforms are unstable and break if you step on them. Others can be shot down, for example, to free the path, or they lead a life of its own - Pogo gets on them to slide uncontrollably. There are also elevators, with which you can drive up and down. In many places, transitions which lead through the tower.

In addition to the traps and difficulties offered by the tower in itself, there are numerous other obstacles that you have to avoid, such as jumping balls. In case of contact of such an obstacle Pogo loses his balance and tumbles a few floors down, or if he has bad luck, directly into the water. A fall in the water leads, as well as the expiration of the time specified, the loss of a life.

A particular obstacle represents an emergent from time to time object that flies coming from the left or right across the screen and not there follows the rotation of the tower, making the Dodge is often difficult. In some places you have to exploit this property to get by targeted falls to otherwise inaccessible places of the tower.

Publications

• The relatively early home computers were supported ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and Acorn Archimedes. There is also an unfinished version for Atari XE / XL.
• In 2004 the game for the C64 Direct-to- TV was republished.
• On the 20th ( or 13th ) June 2008, the C64 DTV release has had their return to the European gaming by the Wii 's Virtual Console download service. For North America, this happened on May 4, 2009.

Anecdotes

• Due to an oversight of the developer, the game got the name Castellian. Actually Castellan was intended, which means as much as " the keeper of the castle ".
• Was published in the same month, the game was planned a demonstration in the magazine zzap! Lay per data cartridge at 64. Due to an error when creating the template the full version on the disk landed so that all readers got this full version for free.

Derivative works

The name of the startup file of the game Perestroika was toppler.exe and also the design of the associated character closely resembled that of Tower Toppler.

There are clones of the game for example, Linux or iPhone.

A technically markedly improved clone version that the free license GPL v2 is that of Andreas Roever. The variant had seen the light of day assignable and saw her last official release in July 2007, since at least February 2003. Spite of the lack of current binaries and the withdrawal of Röver from the project development and bug fixes could involve moving forward. The basis is an independently developed code base, a collection of graphics and sounds as well as a level editor. The entire project is now based on the games library SDL and has been successfully tested on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and BeOS. Several Linux distributions have received the package in their media and their update system. The development itself is on the platform SourceForge under the heading " toppler " ahead, with several times for the self-designation " Tower Toppler " is troubled.