Mutants From The Deep

Mutants From The Deep is a submarine schoot-em-up for MSX1. Choose your character, enhance your gear and fire your weapons in 8 directions as you swim into the dangers of the deep. Mutants or not, this game gets release as we speak.

There are stranger things that nobody had seen before in the depths of the sea. They emerge from the abyss to conquer everything. Mutants From The Deep is an underwater schmup where you play as Marcelo the diver to solve what looks like an industrial sabotage or play as Marila the mermaid to save your town from an unknown menace.

Originally written for Windows computer, Mutants From The Deep was coded with MSX1 limitations in mind. A retro game on a modern platform with the look-and-=feel of an MSX1 game from the eighties. The project was finished in 2018, but soon after a few well known MSX scene members ported this MSX-looking PC game into an actual MSX game. And they put it in a 64k cartridge.
Release date will be May 13th, 2021.

Horizontal and vertical scrolling shmup for MSX (raw retro) and Windows.
Play as Marcelo the diver or Marila the mermaid. 2 characters, 2 stories and 1 special ending.
A game by: Locomalito.
Music & sound: Gryzor87.
Promo art: Jacobo García.
MSX version by Manuel Pazos and bitvision2010.
7 levels with different scroll directions.
A single health bar for the entire game.
Stores to upgrade your gear.
Around 25 minutes of game length (once fully mastered).

For the MSX version, the minimum requirements are MSX1 with 32kb of RAM.

This game is going to be downloadable for MSX as a 64K .ROM this week as freeware, keep an eye on Locomalito his web-site. Two weeks later it will be available for PC (Windows), as MSX-mimic format. On top of that, Retroworks has plans to produce MSX cartridge as well. More on that later, perhaps.

Relevant link: Locomalito's Twitter
Relevant link: Locomalito's website
*update* Relevant link: Get the game for free at Retroworks

Media browser (2)

Comments (41)

By valkyre

Paladin (698)

12-05-2021, 07:58

Is this getting a cartridge release?

By Guillian

Prophet (3528)

12-05-2021, 10:25

valkyre wrote:

Is this getting a cartridge release?

Yes, probably in 1-2 months

By ro

Scribe (5057)

12-05-2021, 13:42

Congrats Manuel, it already looks AWESOME.
Next time, make it 16K and drop it in MSXdev

By santiontanon

Paragon (1830)

12-05-2021, 17:14

Looks very nice! Excited to try it out, and very happy that there is an MSX version!

By Manuel

Ascended (19676)

12-05-2021, 18:56

PC version is done using an emulator? Which? blueMSX?

By Guillian

Prophet (3528)

12-05-2021, 19:25

PC version was done using Game Maker. Then the game was ported to MSX.

By DTensoMSX

Rookie (28)

12-05-2021, 22:50

Great, it looks wonderful

By Pbk71

Expert (101)

13-05-2021, 07:45

Guillian wrote:

PC version was done using Game Maker. Then the game was ported to MSX.

GameMaker is a very nice tool for Windows to create games in an all-in-one environment. I especially like the option of multi platform publishing (Windows/HTML5/Android/...). The original version was made by Dutch professor of computer science Mark Overmars (no, he's not the famous soccer player from Ajax ;) ) . See here for more: Wikipedia (Dutch Page)

I am a teacher and have also used GameMaker in education. Great tool to get started with programming.

I've always wished there was something like this for creating MSX games... an integrated, visual environment for code, sprites, sounds, tiles, levels, ...

By Guillian

Prophet (3528)

13-05-2021, 12:02

The game is out. Enjoy it!
http://www.retroworks.es/php/game_en.php?id=19

By tfh

Prophet (3424)

13-05-2021, 10:20

Guillian wrote:

The game is out. Enjoy it!
http://www.retroworks.es/php/game_en.php?id=19

That is a very nice mix of styles and MSX Games. Elements of Penguin Adventure, Nemesis, etc... Great fun!

And for the lazy penguins: Play Mutants from the Deep online!

By Pippo

Hero (521)

13-05-2021, 11:19

Very, very cool!, Locomalito!
The manual and posters are also very beautiful!
Congratulations for your great games collection too!
RetroWorks, you are wonderful!

By tfh

Prophet (3424)

13-05-2021, 11:52

And don't be fooled by the "slow" scroll. You need some pretty quick fingers. TFH has already died many deaths!
It's really fun: Thanks for the great game Locomalito, Manuel Pazos, bitvision2010 & Gryzor!

By ro

Scribe (5057)

13-05-2021, 12:03

Guillian wrote:

The game is out. Enjoy it!
http://www.retroworks.es/php/game_en.php?id=19

Thanx Manuel, it is a real great piece of MSX work! I've updated the news post to include the download link. awesome

By Guillian

Prophet (3528)

13-05-2021, 12:28

Thanks! I hope you all enjoy the game.
It seems a bit difficult the first time you play it, but buying extra items and selecting the right weapon, you will progress more and more.

By wimpie3

Champion (436)

13-05-2021, 14:00

Congrats! Nice game, fantastic music!

By santiontanon

Paragon (1830)

13-05-2021, 16:15

Wohoo!!

I just gave it my first try, it is indeed tricky!! Very cool, I'll be playing more of this tonight after work! What are you favorite weapons? I only played on game, but in the first stage, the triple weapon was the one I was feeling most comfortable with, but then in the second, since the reach is short, I felt I was overwhelmed going left and right to reach the enemies on both sides of the screen, and maybe I should have changed weapons (I died there haha).

By ToriHino

Paladin (925)

13-05-2021, 16:55

Looks very nice indeed! What's really tricky (at least for me) is that the direction you shoot follows the way you are moving, which is quite different from games like Nemesis. But it also gives a nice twist to the game play

By Guillian

Prophet (3528)

13-05-2021, 17:28

Please, download the ROM again. I have fixed a bug in the ending texts.

@santiontanon. The "best" weapon depends on the stage or enemies. The bombs are quite strong for final bosses. I recommend to buy ASAP objects for increasing the speed, life, fire power...

By ~mk~

Champion (340)

13-05-2021, 17:48

Congratulations!
I love this kind of scrolling games (slow) similar to Knightmare/Space Manbow/Andorogynus.
Already tried on emulators and works perfectly.

By Pencioner

Scribe (1609)

13-05-2021, 19:21

That's brilliant - the look and feel is beautiful, so is music, and a lot of fun to play! Congrats!

By AxelStone

Prophet (3199)

13-05-2021, 20:30

Very nice game, it's like Forgotten Worlds underwater version!

By Udderdude

Supporter (13)

13-05-2021, 22:45

Great stuff.

By Giangiacomo Zaffini 2

Champion (300)

14-05-2021, 11:09

I love when things act together and the result is brilliant. Bravo!!
Passion and knowledges at finest.

By santiontanon

Paragon (1830)

14-05-2021, 18:02

Btw, what are "diamonds" for?

By Guillian

Prophet (3528)

14-05-2021, 18:46

You need seven diamonds in order to get the good ending.

By santiontanon

Paragon (1830)

14-05-2021, 19:37

oh!!! Time to search for them then! I'm assuming one is hidden in each level

By defdanny

Scribe (391)

16-05-2021, 00:14

Respect! What a beauty in many aspects.

By gdx

Enlighted (6426)

16-05-2021, 10:45

Thank you for this nice game!

By valkyre

Paladin (698)

16-05-2021, 11:40

The amazing soundtrack sounds even better with darky plugged in!

By ren

Paragon (1947)

16-05-2021, 18:47

Nice stuff again from RetroWorks, cheers!

I really like the artwork/illustrations in the manual, that's all original work? Does Jacobo García have a website so I/we can check out more of his stuff?

By Guillian

Prophet (3528)

16-05-2021, 19:47

Thank you all!

Here you can find more drawings from Jacobo García: https://www.deviantart.com/jacsketch

By AnsiStar

Master (144)

16-05-2021, 20:14

Cartridge please!!!

By Alejperez

Supporter (12)

18-05-2021, 10:53

And better if available for Nijmegen 2021

By tapp

Supporter (3)

23-05-2021, 18:53

Hi, I'am trying to ROM the game from an SD 512 (8bitsforever), but LinearC type rom is detected, and an incompatible device error is shown. Any idea of what's problem?
Thanks!

By Guillian

Prophet (3528)

23-05-2021, 20:59

Probably SD 512 can't run a 64 kB ROM. You need a MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD, Carnivore 2, Flash Jacks or similar cartridge.

By tapp

Supporter (3)

23-05-2021, 21:49

It's strange, because I run much bigger ROMs like Sword of Ianna (768KB) and many others, for MSX1 and MSX2. This cartridge uses Nextor + Sofarun. The only HW not supported is SCC and FM sound (as far as I know).
Does this game need this king of "extra" hardware?
Thanks!

By Briqunullus

Paladin (757)

23-05-2021, 22:37

It's a 64 kB plain rom. The others are megaroms.

By Pencioner

Scribe (1609)

24-05-2021, 10:13

tapp wrote:

That issue is not rom size related, but that megarom is kinda rom mapper implementation which uses ram instead of flash while this 64K game doesn't use mapper but uses all 16 bit of address area so it is just different. You have to ask 8bits4ever to clarify, if it is supported or not (i don't own this device so have no idea)

By M-A-D-M-A-X

Expert (128)