Newcomer Revealed, The “Ultimate” C64 RPG

German distributor Protovision is gearing up to release Newcomer, a first-person, party-based RPG for the Commodore 64. Yes, you read that right. Twenty years in the making, those of us who still have an old C64 lying around will actually be able to fire up another old-school role-playing game on it. They just don’t make feature lists like these anymore:

Newcomer is part classic adventure game and part roleplaying game: It contains situations and encounters like those found in adventure games and tabletop roleplaying. The game interface and controls are similar to oldschool computer “RPGs”.

In Newcomer the emphasis is on interacting with a large and diverse cast of characters, exploring the game world, developing a wide range of in-game and real life skills, and solving complex puzzles and mysteries.

Features:

‘¢ 180+ characters you can interact with, each with his/her own portrait graphic
‘¢ 10+ people who may join you, to make a team of up to 6 members
‘¢ …or try it on your own, in the extra challenging Solo game mode…
‘¢ 50+ different areas to explore, created with 30+ different graphic sets
‘¢ 100+ cutscenes/situational graphics in-game, that make you feel like you are there
‘¢ 180,000+ words of ingame text, mostly interactive conversations
‘¢ No random encounters
‘¢ Thousands of puzzles and situations to encounter and solve
‘¢ Complex, non-linear gameplay with multiple levels of endings
‘¢ Months or weeks of immersive gaming until you “complete” the game…
‘¢ …but there will still be a thousand situations, resolutions and encounters you have not seen yet, and 2 more game modes to complete!
‘¢ Animated intro and outro sequences
‘¢ Game controls changed for more comfort for emulator users on PC/Mac keyboards
‘¢ VICE fully supported, extensively tested, no virtual floppy disk swapping, works like a native PC / Mac / Linux game
‘¢ Much faster disk I/O in the 1541 version, compared to classic or Enhanced Newcomer
‘¢ Less floppy disk swapping needed optimized data layout, area sorting and duplication for all multiple floppy disk versions
‘¢ 1541 version: 11* floppy disk sides
‘¢ 1581 version: 3* DD floppy disks
‘¢ CMD FD2000 version: 2* HD floppy disks
‘¢ CMD FD4000 version: a single ED floppy disk zero disk swapping
‘¢ IDE64 version: 2 MB installed, “instant I/O”, playing from HDD / CD / DVD / CF / remote filesystem (ethernet, USB, or User Port PCLink, via ideserv IDE DOS v0.91 or newer required for this feature) supported, different data and save devices supported
‘¢ PAL and NTSC Commodore 64/64C/128/128D/128DCr systems auto-detected and supported
‘¢ 6581 and 8580 SID chips auto-detected and supported
‘¢ C128 2MHz CPU mode auto-detected and supported much faster unpacking for all storage devices
‘¢ SuperCPU 20MHz mode auto-detected and supported instant unpacking for all storage devices

20 years in the making, there has never been anything comparable for the C64.

Quick examples of what you can and should do in Ultimate Newcomer:

‘¢ Persuade, bribe or force people into joining, respecting, obeying, or submitting to you
‘¢ Find someone to teach you how to pick locks or detonate doors, or to do it for you
‘¢ Choose the right clothing, disguise, or armour, as the situation demands
‘¢ Collect information all the info you can get, and then more
‘¢ Explore the wilderness and various caves
‘¢ Get equipment for use or sale
‘¢ However, solving the game will be much easier if you make friends with everyone who is not a complete b*tard!

Thanks, Rock, Paper, Shotgun by way of GMZ.