game news 40 years later he resumes the development of his role-playing game and this time he wants to finish it
A videographer resumes development of his 40-year-abandoned game after finding old floppy disks.
Who hasn’t dreamed of creating their own video game? It was the case of Mike Brixius, who started the project in 1984. He started programming an RPG on the Commodore 64 called Digital Dungeon Master. Inspired by his favorite games, he wanted to combine the dungeon crawler genre – like Telengard in 1982 – with a party of adventurers and a world map like Ultima IV in 1985. For this he wanted to use the universe of Dungeons & Dragons.
Decades later he discovered floppy disks, pages of handwritten notes and printed lists of comments on the completion of the project, which he had abandoned around 1989. Obviously, some data was corrupted, but others could be recovered (For images of his work, see the YouTube video below). Although he switched from BASIC coding to Kick Assembler (KickAss for short) to make his job easier, He decided to complete Digital Dungeon Master by staying true to the vision he had for it as a teenager.
“I have parts of the project at different times during its creation, but they don’t all work together as you can see from the font corruption in my tests so far.” Brixius in his YouTube video
A chain of enthusiasts
Mike Brixius’ YouTube channel is called RevenWolf Retro Tech. He has been collecting vintage technology for over 30 years.
His YouTube channel is all about showcasing restoration projects, old tech, and vintage gadgets. Also tutorials on assembling and disassembling old machines like Commodores, old Macintoshes and even oscilloscopes or laser printers from the 80s.
It is thanks to people like Mike Brixius that the legacy of video games continues to be preserved. He also often gets involved in the “homebrew” scene, independent games or fan-made applications that don’t fit into the traditional commercial circle. The idea is to keep bringing old consoles to life, like the Commodore 64 here.
