TGC

Title: Sprite Castle 014: 720
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2015 17:00:31 +0000
Link: http://www.SpriteCastle.com/?p=335

Description: Get ready to SKATE OR DIE with this 2-for-1 episode! On episode 14 of Sprite Castle we discuss not one but TWO Commodore 64 ports of the Atari classic arcade game 720, released in 1987 by US Gold (in the UK) and 1988 by Mindscape (in the USA). If you would like to play along, […]

With 720 on the brain I decided to cover the C64 versions on Sprite Castle as well. I still don't really understand why Atari licensed the game to two different companies, but they did. I cover both versions on this episode.

Hm, that is weird. It would be interesting to know other examples of two ports of the same game on the same system. Off the top of my head, I know that Mario Bros. got two ports during the Atari 8 bit's life.

Mario Bros for the 400/800:


Mario Bros for the XL/XE series:


This isn't quite the same as the 720 example because the XL/XE version wouldn't run on earlier systems, but as far as I know it was the only updated port of a game to appear in the XL/XE series.

I'll have to poke around a bit and find official ports that were done twice. There were a ton of unofficial ones (Pac-Man, etc). I do know that there were two different ports of Crazy Kong to the C64, although I think one was a port of the arcade Crazy Kong and one is a generic port of Donkey Kong that just happened to be named Crazy Kong.

Frogger on the 2600, by Parker Brothers and Starpath.

The Tetris ports from Tengen and Nintendo for the NES is an infamous double-port.

This was a good podcast; something unique about the game (in this case two ports) keeps the interest level up.