Watch This Great Remake of Flywheel on the TRS-80

While digging around my site’s SEO this morning, I ran across these great videos from Jim Gierrie. Both depict his remake of Flywheel on a a TRS-80 MC-10. He had shared in a comment on my site, but I’d missed it given how busy last year had been. I love that Jim took the concept and made it his own, exactly the purpose of this site.

Doing Fly Wheel his way.
Jim’s first video depicts the game play quite well. Immediately, you can see the differences. First off, there is color—something not available to me at the time. It starts with a choice between three tracks. A nice addition to the game, the original was just random curves.

It is also quite a bit faster. The tail lights fly at you and, unlike mine, you can move a bit off the road without crashing. Speaking of the road, because he uses a line drawing routine, he provided more curve options. A great addition. Check out the video below.

Differences are different.
One thing I noticed was that the graphics flicker. I’m assuming that is due to the way everything is printed to the screen on the TRS-80 MC-10, but it is distracting. I won’t say worse, as the ZX81 had its own challenges. Yet, it is a noticeable difference. Given I have no experience with the MC-10, I can’t comment if this is correctable.

I do like the larger sign at the start of the game. But, I noticed it said “Finish” as you start out. A minor nit pick, but would be good to get that fixed. As Jim shared the code on GitHub, I suspect it would be pretty easy to update if one was so inclined.

Here is a another run through of the game.

Not Jim’s first inspiration.
I should note that Jim has recreated one of my other games a few years ago. He did a great job porting Joust to the MC-10, giving it the color treatment and fixing a number of things broke in my version. It plays better, too. As a bonus, here is that video as well.

I highly recommend checking out his other videos. They are steeped in nostalgia and retro goodness.