k, so here is another classic. Are there any C64 players out there that don't remember the gory blood spurt in the beheading scene? Or the small sniggering Orc that kicked the head off the screen ?

On the other hand, the graphics look really dated these days, don't they ? I felt like adding a touch of heroic fantasy to the backgrounds, so that the player believes he's fallen into some sort of Conan-like movie. Notice the slightly oversized sun and the tooth-shaped mountains.

I also pushed a bit burther the concept of the piece of parchment, with a slightly more realistic color set and a more impressive gradient in the text, which by the way matches the looks of the one in the Barbarian 2 advertisement.

At first, I planned an oriental city far below, with the stone bridge running between 2 tall towers, but in the end I decided to go for a much simpler lake, so that the player would not be distracted by the view and could concentrate on the action.

Come on! Who am I trying to kid ? I just chickened out and went for the easy solution.  :o)

n the left the original C64 screen, and on the right my own version.

he original picture is basically a full screen multicolor picture. Only the two fighters are made of muticolor sprites. My picture should also be a valid multicolor picture, I think.

Well actually there is a small infidelity here... In the game, only the center part of the picture is replaced between fights (by a forest landscape, for instance). For my picture to look right, you need to replace a part of the screen that is 16 pixels wider and 32 pixels taller than before. That would take an extra 100 bytes for each background scene. I don't really know how many of them are packed in the game, but I hope the increased size could be handled.