2000 Fatality
Platform: Game Boy Color
Our next entry was due for release on the Game Boy Color around 1999-2000, and has a working title of F19 Stealth Air, and an eventual title of Mig 21. We’re not sure if it was a homebrew development or intended as a commercial release, though it seems to be leaning towards the prior.
Searching through some of the online homebrew archives, we haven’t been able to find anything that matches its description. There has been a suggestion that the game was a competition entry for BUNG, but we haven’t found it yet. Thanks to Stefano Castelli, we now know the game was released in the homebrew community as Mig-21 and was by a developer group known as “Fatality”.
Additionally – it has been flagged that the game is a demake/conversion of Raptor: Call of the Shadows. The question is whether it was a proper intended conversion or riffed for the competition. If you know anything more about the title, please do get in touch.
The game itself is a vertical scrolling shooter with a large F19 jetfighter that has an array of weapons which can destroy various craft that heads towards you, but also hit targets on the ground as well. It’s a neat early preview with just a single level and a few attack waves.
Once you finish the level, it starts to go into the game’s code, showing corrupted graphics. Sometimes it will also crash when you make certain collisions – which is understandable given how early the build is. Whatever the intention was for the game – its a shame it was seemingly never finished, or is there in fact a full version out there waiting to be saved?
It’s been confirmed by both Stefano and also Bjorn (via Mastodon) that the game was released as part of the Bung 2000 competition and came 3rd overall. There is also an old Fatality page which has the following about the game:
“Mig-21 is a classic air war game released for 3rd Bung compo. There’s just one level with main menu to demonstrate our coding quality. In this project we have given attention specially to game design and have attempted to add some demo effects into release, such as intro part, main menu, start level, pause mode, game over, congratulation.
Demo parts doesn’t eat a lot memory, for example star intro have just a 4K code size, all graphics are being calculated. Becouse we had some graphics difficulties, we found idea to use in this project 3D-calculated objects located with some simple but fast packing. Also we have applied cursor interface in main menu and subparts.
Game engine differs palettes reloading, animated background, big animated exploders. We have tried to provide good playability and visual impression.
Short instruction “How to play”
After run you will see Fatality’s firm intro and then scene intro with game credits and some information. Press any key to skip intro while decrunching or push START key while intro. Use cursor keys and A button to select menu item. Firstly, you need visit aero shop to buy at least one life. Also you can buy some weapon if you have enough money. Remember that you can sell your weapon for price lower than original. Select arrow pics to next/previous item and back to return to main menu. Then you can start game.
Game keys are: A – to shooting, B – to fire missile or to use shield, START – to select weapon. Press also
SELECT to pause mode. You need destroy air-, sea- and land targets to clear level and to eat maximum cash. You can collect some prizes such as money and ammo and also you need free prisoners.Good luck in the great battle!
CREDITS LIST:
Design,code,gfx,sfx…………Freeman/FTL
Music………………………..Mast/FTL
Intro code…………………….Ars/FTL”
The demo was published on their website in the hope that they would find a publisher for it – but sadly it seems they didn’t. We’re not sure if the demo ever progressed further than this, and if there were any other levels made.
The music is a cover of Second Reality’s “UnreaL” tune, but sped up a lot. We hope to learn more about this title in the future and will update this page once we know more.
With thanks to DeusIX and Durinde for the Raptor linkage, Stefano Castelli and Bjorn for the release details and Haroldook for the suggestion it was indeed homebrew.
Download
Video
Gallery
