Solar Fox 2: Space Evaders

The early arcade game Solar Fox, and especially its streamlined Atari 2600 port by CBS Electronics, was a speedrunner's delight. Your only hope for success was to duck into each stage, grab a big handful of energy cores, and run out before you were caught in a tangle of laser fire. Victory goes to the swift in Solar Fox, with especially nimble players getting an opportunity to skip stages and jump straight to the "challenge racks." Deviously set clusters of energy cores and a tight time limit stand between you and another letter in the code word known to only the best players.

Solar Fox is a great game, at least when stripped down to its core as was the case on the Atari 2600. There's none of the extraneous content that cluttered the gameplay of the arcade original... your only goal in CBS's port is to claim all the onscreen energy cores while weaving through thick streams of gunfire. 

Considering the popularity of speedrunners on Twitch and YouTube, it felt like the right time to bring back the speed-focused style of gameplay first explored by Solar Fox. This is an early build of Solar Fox II: Space Evaders for the ColecoVision. It's got all the addicting gameplay of the Atari 2600 game, with visuals that push the more potent ColecoVision hardware to its limits. It really DOES play, and look, and sound, like an arcade game.

There's just one component missing from the game to make it complete. Those are the fireballs thrown from the sidelines, and while there have been, ahem, technical difficulties, I'm confident that I'll be able to add that important feature before the end of August, the game's scheduled completion date.

Here's an early build of Solar Fox 2, along with the cold open (in a friggin' ColecoVision game!) that will be merged with the gameplay at a later date. It's possible to lose lives, but without fireballs, you'll have to try pretty hard. This early build doesn't cost anything, but please, spread the word about this game. I could really use the publicity!

EDIT: The first early beta of Solar Fox II is available, for both ColecoVision and SG-1000! It's still rough; firewalls are here but it takes effort to actually collide with them. I'm considering a coordinate check instead of just reading the tiles under the player's ship. It's much more done than undone, though!

EDIT: We have a release candidate! Solar Fox II, a professional quality ColecoVision game, was completed in less than three weeks! The game's even got an ending now, although you'll have a heck of a time reaching it.

The game will continue to be free for, oh, two weeks? Then I'll start charging five dollars for it. The current plan is to distribute a physical version through CollectorVision, an indie publisher for older game consoles.