Neadeital by Matt Birch

[flatduckrecords]

Maybe it’s an anglicisation of an Irish word? Tir Nan Nog (Tír na n-òg) is “land of the young”, and a dun (dún) in English is a “fort”. I can’t find any references to Neadeital (or similar) though so I’m not sure!

I’m more familiar with Scots Gaelic but based on those assumptions I’d guess the pronunciation is something like “nee-ah-jay-tuhl”, maybe!?

The trailer looks terrific anyway!

[ketmar]

It looks great ... but it also looks so close to the original games that it feels more based on the source (as in: disassembly) of those and not something built from the ground up.
Does anyone know?

i don't know anything for sure, but i believe that writing such engine from scratch will be faster and easier than disassembling one of the originals. i mean, the second case will at least double the work -- first, make sense of disasm, and second, rewrite the existing code for your needs. doing it all from scratch seems to be easier.

[Ralf]

i don't know anything for sure, but i believe that writing such engine from scratch will be faster and easier than disassembling one of the originals

I agree. We must also remember that Tir Na Nog is an early game from 1984. It was very impressive for its time but still early games never used all possible tricks so today you can certainly do a better, more efficient engine

[Section2art]

Having just read Matt Birch’s article in the Crash 2021 annual, the original name was Neodeital. This sounds a lot like Neonatal.

Neo - definitely means New
Dei- definitely refers to Gods, as in deity
Tal - may mean dew or claw, or just finishes off the end of “deit” and makes it rhyme nicely with neonatal.

The connection to neonatal suggests the idea of the birth of new gods, and the idea of “dew” can add to this theme...

Another idea I had was that it is an anagram of “one idea”, but I prefer my component-translation...

[R-Tape]

I just assumed it was an anagram of

Spoiler

alienated!