The fun + fabulous GGLabs from Sunnyvale, CA brings us a free new C64 game based on Studio Ghibli‘s 1988 masterpiece My Neighbor Totoro. Totoro64 is free + open source. You can clone the sources on GitHub.
You can play the game in any of the popular C64 emus such as VICE. We also recommend an alternative emu called Denise.
If you’re a vintage Apple II or C64 owner, also check out some of GGLabs’ really cool expansion products such as modern RAM + other cards. They’re also now getting into making some great Arduino add-ins for retro computers.
Once you clone the sources, to build the game you’ll need the CC65 compiler and GNU make. Build instructions are on the game page.
You can also play the game online.
Pretty cool.
Development
For those wanting to dive deeper into 6520 assembly, there are plenty of free resources around the web (the C64 was actually based on the 6502’s younger brother, the 6510). There’s a nice little 6510 pinout page at the University of Waterloo in Canada.
There’s also a nice C64 resource page over at c64os.com, which includes a page with the complete 6510 instruction set.
“A fun way to introduce coding to kids is game development. Vintage machines are ideal to introduce many low level concepts without the complexity or the abstraction of modern, more powerful systems. The game is a classic vertical catch game featuring characters from Hayao Miyazaki’s movie “My neighbor Totoro”. The goal is to catch the required number of acorns before the time expires. Poisonous berries, bonus apples and Totoro’s spin top add some variations to the basic game. The game is written in C and assembly and fits on a standard C64 16KB cartridge”.
LINKS
https://github.com/gorlik/totoro64
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Neighbor_Totoro