This first came to my attention back in February, when I was asked to drop Rob a line asking if he would be interested in attending the show, little realising that I'd actually met him briefly at last year's event. He mentioned his current project and his aim to have it ready in time for the show so, because the RetCon crew love to have something special to show - and particularly now a couple of other GCC members have acquired SAMs - I offered to promote it ahead of time, and he provided a handful of early screenshots:
While not exactly 'involved' in this project, I did notice that the Vaus II pod in the Atari ST version is taller than the arcade sprite (9px tall, not including the shadow, vs 8px in the arcade original), and offered to put together a more arcade-accurate version. Since he'd already had to refer to the arcade game for some of the enemy sprites that weren't quite right on the ST, and vertical space was already somewhat compressed due to the SAM's smaller screen, he was happy to accept.
It's being coded with mouse control in mind, rather than keyboard or joystick, since that's the most precise control method available... and it's also great to have more software that actually makes use of a mouse on the SAM. The couple of very early builds I've seen look very promising. Keep an eye on wubsoft.org and his YouTube channel for more - there are a couple of videos specific to Arkanoid II already.
