Sunball (partially found Commodore 64 top-down maze puzzle game; 1991)

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Sunball1-300x192.gif

Image of the demo version.

Status: Partially Found

Sunball is a top-down puzzle maze game that was being made in 1991 for the Commodore 64. The game is known to have music composed by Markus Seibold while the coding is claimed to have been done by Stefan Albes, albeit without proper evidence suggesting that.[1] The preview was made available by a cracking group known as the Doughnut Cracking Service a year after it was supposedly made.[2]

Gameplay

In the game, you play as a spinning geometric sphere with a red ball(supposedly the titular "sunball" itself) orbiting around the sphere. You move around a big maze, trying to find the exit and you have to make sure that you avoid touching the space background as it'll drain the power of your shield (reportedly the armor of the geometric sphere). Along the way, items can be collected, such as other "sunballs", little yellow coins, black upside down copper hats, gray spheres with black triangles sandwiching it and bombs. The bombs can be used to clear out enemies that should otherwise be avoided at all costs. Interestingly enough, while the demo is only for 1 player, you have to plug it to joystick 2 in order to play the game properly, otherwise you can't do anything in the game.[3]

Availability

So far, only the demo version of the game has been found with no full version in sight. Interestingly, it seems that 2 dumps of the demo exist. One of them features the crack intro from Doughnut Cracking Service while another is just the demo with no cracktro, likely stolen from an unknown promotional game event instead of simply being stolen from a modified development kit from the programmers of the game themselves. While Markus Siebold is rather well known within the Commodore 64 scene making music for multiple games as well as being interviewed once, Stefan Albes is only known for making the intro to Turrican 2: The Final Fight for the same computer and hasn't been interviewed nor seen since then. Games That Weren't owner, Fred Gasking hasn't updated the page on the game since 2012, but with the years going by, there is still a chance for the full game to be found.

References