Awesome Slam Siblings Infinite – A Super Smash Bros Tribute coming to the Commodore 64 and it still looks super!

We always try to get the best in retro gaming updates on Indie Retro News for our readers, as we’ve just found out while looking through the Commodore 64/128 Facebook group, that Søren Trautner Madsen is not only still working on his upcoming Commodore 64 Super Smash Bros tribute game of ‘Awesome Slam Siblings’, but as of today there’s some new footage of the REU-only level of the game contained within the new name of ‘Awesome Slam Siblings Infinite’. As in his words “Actual Gameplay vs AI on the REU-only Ghosts’n Goblins level.”

Here is what the creator says about the game via the video description. “A complete unedited match between a human player and an AI opponent in Awesome Slam Sibs Infinite. – and Yes, I have changed the game title slightly to make it even more insane”.

“For the longest time I did not want to make an AI for this game, since I always find that fighting games only REALLY work when it is human vs human. And especially for a Smash Bros-like game. The Single Player in Smash bros is just immensely boring while playing 2-, 3- or even up to 8-player is some of the most fun gaming I have ever had. But that is a bit unfair, since I recognize that it can be quite difficult for us c64-enthusiasts to convince all the normal people to come play with us :-D. So I will try to do my best to give you an AI opponent that is as interesting (or at least: “As non-boring”) as possible…” 

“Apart from showcasing the current state of the AI, this video also showcases my newly created Ghosts’n Goblins playfield. Thanks to Robert Wilson for the graphics for that. (Though I drew the mountains myself).”

“The screen actually consists of 2 seperately scrolling screens, each using their own character set in Extended Color Mode (ECM). One screen for the mountains and one for the rest. To achieve the parallaxing effect in 2 dimension this level needs to use the “Ram Expansion Unit” (REU), since the entire screen pretty much needs to be redrawn each frame, and that can only be done with the super fast memory-copy facilities of the REU. As an interesting note, though, it is only the vertical scrolling that causes the need for all this data copying. It would absolutely be possible to make a purely sidescrolling parallax effect with the mountains without the REU, if the scrolling was slow enough to allow for a few frames of preparation. So something very close to this effect would be achievable on a “vanilla” commodore 64.”

And that’s all we have on the game so far, so watch this space for further updates!