Continuum
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| Author: | The Wilson Brothers |
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Interesting game, kill everything in the maze to finish the level with your little space ship. But be aware, some walls are very bouncy and in later levels they can kill you. Be patient.
This is Mini vMac developer Paul C. Pratt's favourite game.
A Commodore 64 port was published commercially under the name Magnetron, but the Wilsons weren't happy with how it turned out. Since Brøderbund still hadn't published the original Mac version, the brothers reclaimed the rights and gave it away as "beerware": "mostly a joke about how shareware never works, but we actually got some beer in the mail which was very nice of people. We even got a bottle of Sake all the way from Japan!"
The game's working title was "Gravity Well".
A great game! Ok, as one of the two authors, I suppose I'm biased.
If anybody wants the source code (or the binary), it can be found at my website: http://www.ski-epic.com/continuum_downloads/
- Brian Wilson
CompatibilityYep, another one that causes me to wane nostalgic... many hours dropped on this innovative and challenging little gem.
- Andy Polack
Architecture: 68k
Runs without sound in Basilisk II
Runs well in Classic.
Getting Continuum 1.04 working on a modern Intel based Macintosh:
1) Install an emulator that runs old Macintosh 68000 binaries on your new Intel Mac running Mac OS X. Here is one example: http://basilisk.cebix.net/
2) Get an old Apple ROM image for the above emulator. Explanation: The above emulator has a legal problem -> it cannot ship copies of Apple's ROMs, so you must somehow find a copy of an old Mac Plus ROM from 1985. Try Google'ing for "vMac.rom" and
then chase it down. It should only take you 5 minutes to find one this way. I'm no lawyer, but I think to legally run this, you must own a Mac Plus.
3) Get an old Apple System Software 6 or 7. Same sort of legal problem as above ROM. Interestingly enough, I think Apple ships free versions of it's old System 6 here: http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates...
4) Hobble it all together, make sure you can boot your System 6 68000 based emulated Mac and browse around in the finder.
5) Save Continuum.bin into your new 68000 based emulated Mac. Put Continuum Galaxy and side by side with the Continuum.bin.
6) Double click on the "Continuum" binary inside the emulator and run it.
Comments
So I've added an archive with user made galaxies for Continuum dating back to the late 80s / early 90s. Didn't do any quality testing, so this is up to you. But should keep you busy with this gaming classic
I spent some time playing and talking about Continuum and a bit of its development during a 1980s Mac games livestream on Twitch (at twitch.tv/mossrc) this weekend in support of my new book. Pulled the clip out as a highlight and exported it to YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIk8SmzeEqw
Fantastic game, definitely one of the best games available for B&W macs
Smooth coding to be sure; I thought of it as the best meld of Berserk and Gravitar.
I loved this game, kept me frustrated for hours.
One of my favourites too. Great action and smooth on old hardware.
Oh man, me and my brothers loved this game!!! But it was such a long time ago I couldn't remember the name... Not even sure I knew how to pronounce the name at the time.
(Hence why it's been so long.)
Thanks for sharing this!
Got this running on my Macintosh Classic. Works great. Top game.