Bill & Ted's Excellent Game Boy Adventure (C64)

No way! Yes way. This, my friends, is the conversion of the legendary Bill & Ted Game Boy™ game by LJN/Beam Software to the Commodore 64.

I used to have this cartdrige in the 90's with my Game Boy and really enjoyed the fast pace and simple but addictive game mechanics. Also the music is great. And you can play as Keanu Reeves - what could be more awesome. So I remade the game from scratch for the C64. SID music was done by Nordischsound. Enjoy! It's free!

Joystick Control:

• Joystick in Port 2
• Press fire to jump (short press does a smaller jump)
• To pick up a bonus item stand still and press the fire button
• To activate a bonus item press down, then fire button

Keyboard:

• 'P' pauses the game
• 'Run/Stop' takes you back to the menu/title screen
• 'Space' changes the colour theme
• Also use keys to enter your high score name

Instructions

A scan of the orignal Game Boy manual can be found here.

Note: You will most likely have to play a quest a few times before you learned the best way to master it.

Modern Game Design Considerations

To make the game more enjoyable for today's standards I made the following adjustments...

• More control over Bill and Ted while jumping
• Jumps and landings do not need to be pixel perfect
• Smooth transition from platform to ladders and ropes
• The ten adventures can now be played in any sequence
• Game state will be saved after each adventure (à 5 quests)
• If you are not happy with the progress you can press Run/Stop anytime and start again from the last save state

Technical Details/Design Challenges:

The Game Boy has a resolution of 160x144 pixels. While 2x160 fits nicely into the 320 pixel width of the C64, the 144 pixels height does not (288 vs 200 pixels). Easy would have been to accept the 160x144 pixels dimension but for this game I wanted a full screen experience on the C64. My solution to the problem was to scroll the screen vertically which adds a nice challenging twist to the gameplay (you can't see the top or bottom baddies anymore). The permanent visible status bar (Life/Score/Time) is made out of 7 Sprites positioned in the opened top border. Same for the "Nintendo Game Boy" logo in the bottom border. Overall it took me about 5-6 months to make this game

Trivia:

• I tried to make Bill & Ted look more like Bill & Ted. Especially Ted did not do Keanu Reeves' distinctive hairstyle justice
• I also made the representation of Jean d'Arc a little less lush
• The Pterodactylus in the fifth adventure looked more like a flying manta ray. I fixed that
• The phone number of the first adventure gives a hint on Keanu's birthday (I had to choose a number ;))
• The bad guy in the original Game Boy game and instruction booklet is misspelled "De Nomolous" intead of "De Nomolos". We know now that "De Nomolos" is the name of writer and producer "Ed Solomon" spelled backwards.
• The instruction booklet also mentions a jumping dog whereas the animal in the game is clearly designed as a cat. Which makes sense since there are cats in the second Bogus Journey movie ("Aim for the cat, dude!"), not dogs.
• I rewatched all 3 movies to better understand the references in the game. To be honest, the "Bill & Ted Face The Music" movie came much later (2020), so I watched it for my own pleasure, not for research :)
• The alien species called Station did not appear in the original game. They do now. Somewhere :)

Game Requirements

• C64/C128 (also works on THEC64 Mini and THEC64 Maxi)
• 1 Player
• PAL system only
• Looks best in VICE emulator with Full Border Mode (VICII setting)
• Sounds best with a SID 8580
• Loads and Saves fastest in VICE Emulator with 'True Drive Emulation' off and 'Virtual Device' on.
• Also playable on Windows/MacOS/iOS/Android (C64 Emulator required)

Alternative Versions

• Switch
• Playstation