C64 Uridium = NES The Last Starfighter?

[@retrocoda]

The NES version of Uridium that became rebranded / repurposed as the Last Starfighter was a US sub-licensing deal - you can read the story in the Fusion Retro Books 'The Graftgold Story', which I highly recommend.

[@8_Bit]

Thanks, I'll see if I can get a copy of that.

[@FeliciaByNature]

Halfway through the video I was all like "Well heck, you could just compare the disassembly" and lo and behold, Robin gets an expert in the field to do just that. Brilliant.

[@TheSudsy]

I remember for my 'A' Level Art thesis i did a critique of computer generated art in films and games. My research included the Last Starfighter and the Cray supercomputer. This was in 1985/6, and I precidcted in that thesis that this new medium would catch the imagination of people not normally into art and design , which will in turn lead to a raft of new and exciting opportunities. My teacher refused to submit it as he said it was too "technology" focused. I just tell everyone i was ahead of my time.

[@EdwardianTeaChest]

Uridium was one of the games on the C64 DTV, a plug-and-play gaming device that Robin worked on.

[@8_Bit]

Yes, and it was also on at least some variations of TheC64.

[@DerekLippold]

@@8_BitWHAT. I didn’t know that!

[@areyoukeepingupwiththec64]

What a fun rabbit hole! I spent the first 10 minutes hoping that you would payoff the fact that the NES game was a port of Uridium, only to get that by a factor of x1000. Great video as always. I never thought about the idea of hacking bytes to create variations of levels. I might have never experienced the outside world at all had I discovered it back in the day. ;)

[@R.B.]

You will know when it is time to turn the page... How many times have I heard that? Enough that I matched the tempo and intonation perfectly.

[@Somelucky]

I've always considered the Atari 800 Star Raiders II to be the "official" The Last Starfighter game. Back in the mid 80s I remember playing a game that I thought was titled Star Raiders II but with The Last Starfighter intro. This was on a US military base in Korea by a guy running and renting time to people for a room of 30 Atari 800s with all the latest games of the time on copied floppies and cartridges. I don't remember any of the games having crack intros. I guess even though they thought the movie was a flop, the game was actually quite good for the time and that's why it was released under a different name. Sure, the graphics weren't anything close to what was shown in the movie, but as you explained not even modern arcade machines were capable and rendered animation had to be shown.

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Excellent video! I had never played the NES Last Starfighter but as soon as you showed it, I instantly could tell it was Uridium. Awesome work showing that it was indeed a C64 port!! Also did I hear a Lode Runner burn sound when you were showing the assembly code comparison?

[@8_Bit]

That sound effect was from the Spectrum version of Uridium but I do hear the Lode Runner similarity :)

[@CallousCoder]

I am glad that your table looks like mine ;) I thought I was the only one that had such a "rustic" :P table top. Oh and in 2008/2009 there were talks to do a series to the last starfighter. The TV production house that I was attached to, was trying to get the rights and turn it into a series. Unfortunately it didn't land. I have no further details, as productions there were very compartmentalised, probably to prevent leaks.

[@mosaton]

13:55 I had that Starfighter joystick!! It was the best joystick in the house. It had a satisfying click to the movements. Wow, I hadn't thought of that in years.

[@awilliams1701]

I love this movie a lot. I remember renting it when I was a kid. This would have been in the 90's as I think we got a VCR in 1992. I really liked it, but I couldn't find it and eventually forgot about it. One day in the past 10 years I remembered it and got it on blu-ray. I've also bought it on amazon video. And I just finished (more or less a few things to glue in) a 3d printed gunstar. It's the biggest 3d print I have and one of the most expensive. The model was $25 or so. The filament has cost me at least $80 as I've used 3 spools of silver and a lot of blue and black.

[@retroCombs]

Watched the Last Starfighter a few months ago. Every couple of years I get a hankering for the film. Your video was a great blast from the past with some surprises. Never knew an NES version was released but loved playing the Star Raiders II. I only recently became aware it was the abandoned Last Starfighter game but that explains why I probably liked that game so much. I'd already started "adulting" in '91 and had moved on to PCs for my work and believe it or not, never owned an NES system. Didn't come back to video game systems until the Playstation 1. Thanks again, Robin. Always look forward to your videos.

[@xotmatrix]

It's a shame Atari didn't release The Last Starfighter for Atari 8-bit computers. It was leaked of course and I played a lot of it. It's virtually complete, fun, and quite sophisticated for the day. As kids we had a good time trying to work out the rules and commands without the benefit of instructions. It was eventually retooled as Star Raiders II which is almost the same game with a couple of thematic and gameplay changes. I'm glad Atari had the sense to release some version of it because somebody worked very hard on that game. It was definitely not typical licensed shovelware.

[@ralfvanbogaert3451]

They did something similar with Turrican II by making it a Universal Soldier game on Gameboy and Genesis

[@PeteFinn]

What a great movie!!! I must have watched it a hundred times. The CGI was so amazing at the time…and so was Catherine Mary Stewart! 😊

[@DavidYoud]

Ah, she's a Canadian. The pieces are starting to fit together... ;)

[@wembleyford]

Hope Braybrook earned some royalties for that.

[@DavidYoud]

That settles it, I'm watching The Last Starfighter this week. :) Thanks for joining us at CRX again this year. Loved the storytelling -- great episode!

[@8_Bit]

Thanks again for the huge help with this video!

[@granitepenguin]

I have to now, too. It's been waaaaay too long since the last time I saw it.

[@kspen72]

Uridium still has big playback value. Great vid

[@aresaurelian]

This was interesting. I remember these. Thank you for this extensive explanation, and the ghidra thingy was next level info.🤗😏

[@FruitMuff1n]

I can't believe how much the picture book added to this video ahahaha!

[@Rick_Todd]

Now all that is needed to do is somebody change the C64 version to match up all with all the Nes text and change the main c64 sprite to the Nes version . Thus creating The Last Starfighter on the C64.

[@TheSudsy]

Paradroid (before Uridium) was / is one of my favourite C64 / Amiga games

[@londongaz2]

This storyline feels very familiar. I think I read a book along these lines back when I was a kid.

[@xxj75]

Maybe Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett?

[@MrAtarifreak]

I just watched the movie again yesterday 😊

[@tommyovesen]

This was super interesting. Great video!

[@BeerAndWarcraft]

Last Starfighter was a great movie!

[@DerekLippold]

I never knew there was a game released in any capacity! I remember hearing they didn’t make a game and we were all disappointed- back in the days before the internet, of course. I feel like the game could have done better than the movie did 😂

[@m7hacke]

Yes, this movie did use the amazing Cray Super Computer. What you did not mention was that this movie was the very first movie to render computer graphics to portray something that was supposed to exist in reality. For example, Centari's car. Also, the soundtrack was composed by the great Bill Conti who composed the music for the Rocky and Karate Kid franchises, and The Right Stuff.

[@shapes2000]

Have you asked Andrew Braybrook, he is on Twitter/X?

[@oneofthenorth]

I came to say the same thing. I’m sure he’d give a definitive answer

[@8_Bit]

I had asked a week or two ago but didn't get a response at that time, but he's now replied that yes indeed it was officially licensed and that he did give them the C64 source code to port.

[@oneofthenorth]

@ it makes a lot of sense. Pretty much identical in so many ways. Good to get the clarification though!

[@shapes2000]

@@8_Bit That's great. I found your whole video fascinating, thank you!

[@BlitterObject]

It's gonna be a sparklin' day! Sparklin'! Robin released a new video! (TLS is also one of my favorites, for exactly the same reasons.) 🙂

[@MangoPango1973]

I noticed more than a decade ago, that there were several classic C64 games ported to the NES and some under different names. Uridium / Last Starfighter is one of them, but also Nebulus renamed to Castelian and also a Cybernoid version.

[@The_Real_DCT]

And Myth was changed to Conan for the NES

[@cdrugly]

Can I get some love for the 1964 film The Starfighters? MST3K did it in season 6.

[@stevethepocket]

I think this is the first vintage game I've heard of that had support for the Commodore 128's native mode. Does it do anything special? Finding other games that support that mode, and what they do differently in it, might be a good subject for a future video. Also, I've definitely seen footage of this game before, but I can't recall where. Now I'm curious how they got your ship to cast a colored shadow onto the... let's just call them freighters, in the background, that's perfectly masked by their edges. My first thought was that the blackness of space must actually be part of the tiles' foreground, and that the shadow sprite is set to render behind that. But I'm pretty sure that, in high color mode, sprites set to render behind the tiles only overlap the screen's solid background color (#D021), and it's overlapping at least two colors: the solid "fill" and the white highlights.

[@NuntiusLegis]

I think Uridium has the best tune in a computer game ever. But I prefer the slower, original PAL version.

[@Cats_Are_Scary]

Hey great video man! Also where did you get that Commodore Security sticker at? I’d like to add one to my car.

[@8_Bit]

It's actually an embroidered patch, and it was given to me by DLH who runs the bombjack dot org website. He had a bunch made up based on an original patch that actual Commodore security staff wore.

[@MacMelmac]

The explosion sprite when your ship crashes looks a lot like the explosion in Paradroid. Perhaps even ghe sound effect.

[@retro_noix]

Uridium on the c64 was released in 1986 at the time, I find it is a better version compared to NES Last Fighter. The c64 version had better graphics, sound affects and music (thanks to the amazing SID chip).

[@da5idnz]

Very cool. I had the TRON record and storybook.

[@simonscott1121]

Why just ask Andrew when you can disassemble code :D

[@8_Bit]

It's nice to have independent confirmation :)

[@rager1969]

First time seeing this/these games (clearly ported Uridium as Last Starfighter) and my first impression was the ship looks like a stylized guitar.

[@R.B.]

I wondered why I never saw the arcade game. I would have put a lot of quarters in it at the time.

[@Neffers_UK]

So, did they use the ship render engine for the large text scroller for the intros? They are just "ship tiles" that they used to make text out of? The intro text being a level of sorts.

[@TheUtuber999]

47:42 "Look at this - my college loan has been turned down... I'll never get out of here!" 😆

[@michielboland628]

I used to have a (cracked) version of Uridium that did not have the sound effect when a new enemy attack formation appears, maybe that is another one of these subtle differences between two Uridium versions.

[@StuartCGadgetRev]

Super interesting!

[@elbiggus]

Star Raiders II is *awesome* - I have both it and the prototype Last Starfighter, and there's honestly not a lot of difference between the two, and as an approximation of the game from the movie it's about as close as you could hope for given the hardware.

[@wembleyford]

You finding Uridium slightly easier because it's running more slowly? The scrolling text looks slower... though I thought PAL games ran faster on US NTSC machines.

[@csbruce]

23:36 With a relatively small file, you could just brute-force the search for matching 32-byte segmens. Any software from the same developer is probably going to have lots of matching library code.

[@justice4g]

I was never as good with any joystick after the starfighter and slik stik, they were so much better than analogue and microswitches

[@videogamebookreviews]

The gameplay was tweaked a bit in Uridium+ over the first release. It's a long time since I played the two but if I recall, you didn't have to wait as long to land your ship in Uridium+.

[@8_Bit]

Yes, I believe you can immediately land if you wish.

[@OscarSommerbo]

Heuristics = informed guesses, but guesses nonetheless 😁

[@DavidBrant]

Did Andrew Braybrook / Hewson sue them ? Ironic if not considering how litigious large corps are esp. Nintendo.

[@pjcnet]

Naughty naughty, that's definitely been ripped off from Uridium, Andrew Braybrook should had sued them for copyright infringement.

[@jeffrey44]

Do you have proof that it was definitely ripped off rather than licensed?

[@jtsotherone]

It couldn't have been made more clear in the video that it was licensed from Graftgold/Hewson. No 'naughty naughty' here at all.

[@m0nde]

I love Uridium. And, I never knew this game existed for the NES. The explanation of the code comparison was very understandable and I'll definitely be subscribing to David's channel.

[@JohnChrysostom101]

I played the fan game you mentioned

[@awilliams1701]

Initially I'm like this looks like Psycastria!.......oh.....that means it's probably based on Uridium. lol I've played psycastria. I've never played Uridium. BTW it's one of the hardest games I've ever played.

[@PeranMe]

Fantastic! ❤

[@Kris_M]

I've had another game with very similar gameplay and a ship that turns around in the same way, Psycastria.

[@ag9hj]

Lasse/Cadaver might have grest insight regarding the reuse of C64 code on NES based on his releases on both platforms, like the Metal Warrior.

[@granitepenguin]

Hah. I didn't catch on right away that it was the audio book at the end until I heard the chimes 🙂

[@TygonBC]

Couple of other C64 games that were converted to NES but retitled are Nebulus (also by Hewson), which was released under a few different names depending on the platform, eg. Tower Topper and Castellian, and Myth: History in the Making which was an excellent game on the C64 and other home computers, but was ported to the NES and renamed Conan: The Mysteries of Time, which unfortunately is a pretty lousy game.

[@iCQ_www.SPCL.tk_]

brilliant share chef!! and wow nice game very iridium look and feel but better and a bt more hard 🙂 but sir i expected a bit better score from you starfighter noob 😛 thank for the video love you man greetings from holland!!!!

[@ridiculous_gaming]

I did play this game as a cracked copy on my 8 bit Atari computer back in the day starting with the cool intro like the movie arcade game. At the time, it was visually fantastic! The NES version is garbage simply using the movie title.

[@tvstevie624]

Investigation of the protection resulting in reset would be a great video!

[@granitepenguin]

I vote for this, too 🙂

[@awilliams1701]

well I don't see LJN, it might have a chance. lol

[@Zhixalom]

The Last Starfighter is truly one of my favourite '80s movies, if not THE absolute favourite. I'm quite sure this is where my weakness for arcade machines originates from. I didn't know about the link between The Last Starfighter game on the NES and Uridium. I didn't even know that it existed on the NES. So Robin, when you briefly mentioned the relation, while asking me if I could grab some footage, I deliberately avoided inquiring any further. I wanted to save all the reveals for this video... and it was definitely worth the wait. Just brilliant! ❤ - But you do realize what this means, right? - Now I have to get good at Uridium, simply because of the lineage between those two. 😅 - Oh, I did notice another thing: there is no death blossom sequence at the end of each level on the Speccy version either.

[@ScoopexUs]

A clear ripoff. I hope Andrew got compensation!

[@JimLeonard]

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