This is going to be story about love. What's more, love that lasts - at least 15 years, which is longer than any of my relationships so far. The story begins in '93...Long time ago, in a
galaxy country far far away (Poland), there was a company called xLand. Now, you probably haven't ever heard of it, but the chances are that if you are a gamer, then you know Epic Megagames, the publisher of Unreal (among other things). XLand made three classic games, Electro Body, Robbo and Heartlight PC, and it was Epic who published them.
Electro Body (known as Electro Man in the West), a sci-fi shooter, was my very first original computer game. It shipped together with a casette containing game music and
Covox interface, for those who didn't have a proper soundcard - thus making it the precursor of all Limited Editions. Robbo was a logic-action hybrid, starring a cute little robot (duh) and it was the favourite game of my Mum, who still uses a catchphrase from the game( "
poor Robbo") up until today. But in this note I shall concentrate on the last, often underappreciated, game of the trio -
Heartlight PC.
At first, it looks like yet another
Boulder Dash clone, but give it a try and you'll find cute animation, interesting level design and sweet retro graphics. The main protagonist is a little Dwarf (dare I say
Gnome?), who must collect all the hearts for the sake of his love (awww). I really can't quite put my finger on why it hooked me so much, but there must be something more to it than your average action puzzle game, because it plays equally well fifteen years later. Yes, fifteen, from 1993 to 2008. Doesn't it say something about gameplay?
Oh, by the way, I have forgotten to tell you why I have dug it out and went nostalgically misty-eyed all of a sudden. The reason why I re-lived my early teenage years is that coder MK2k ported Heartlight to PSP (you can find it
here, together with a short description), so now any PSP user with Custom Firmware may enjoy this game for free!
What's more, it is totally legal. Some time ago Maciej Miąsik, former xLand's designer and programmer took the path of
libertarianism and one of the results of it was the decision to share xLand's titles free of charge. He has contacted all copyright owners and Epic as well, so you can play these games 100% legally - details of how it came to be can be found in
this post on his website, although unfortunately available only in Polish. Download recompiled version of these three little jewels from
this webpage. The licence in question is
Creative Commons which allows both sharing and adapting the work, which means that the PSP port is also entirely legal. Also, you will need
DosBox to run the games under Windows and Linux, but it's dead simple to use, so don't worry.
Now, let's get the names out of the way and add an interesting little detail to game's description. Published as
Heartlight Deluxe outside of Poland, the game was known as Heartlight PC here, so it is not just my clever naming trick to distinguish it from its PSP port. Why was it even explicitely annoted as PC game, I hear you ask. Well, it was called so, becaue...
Doesn't this screenshot resemble the one above?...the first iteration of the game actually appeared long before the golden PC era - on nothing less than Atari itself. Yes, Heartlight was originally an Atari game, hence the official
Heartlight PC title of the PC version. You can find reference to it on
Atarimania and download it
here.
Since there exists a working
Atari emulator for the PSP, as well as a
DosBox port (which I intend to write about since
last December...) and the native Heartlight PSP, this means that you can actually check all three versions - the new one, the classic PC one and the prehistoric Atari one - while waiting in the queue at the dentist's office or on the metro. Not sure how many people are so retro-inclined to actually ever do it, but I couldn't resist the temptation.
You can see
the speedrun through the first twenty levels of Heartlight PSP game on YouTube (yes, I know looks like it's being played in Windows, but that's just the unofficial remote play) and if you want to check the gameplay yourself, there exists
an online Java version too - unfortunately without music.
Speaking of which, if there is one thing that prevents me from calling the PSP port perfect - it is the background music. Instead of the original tune, which you can hear in the DOS version above, developer has decided to include different music - and personally, I don't like it. Perhaps this is the result of long hours I have spent listening to the same tune looped over and over again, the Pavlovian game treatment that has already associated good times playing Heartlight with that original music - I don't really know, but for sure I prefer the classic version.
Other than that, the port is great and I highly encourage you to give it a try, or better yet, to try the eternal original. Truly, the best games don't age.
Obligatory Lenghty Post Scriptum
On a related subject, I happen to work with one of the programmers of xLand studio, who was involved in making Electro Body and other games. He has a running and playable version of their last unpublished game, Excessive Speed. Had it been published in its due time, we would have Excessive Speed Underground and umpteen other sequels now instead of certain other game with the word "Speed" in its title. Yes, it was that good. Unfortunately, the said man doesn't want to share even a single screenshot with me. I don't know why, but unless I hack his computer or he changes his mind, you won't be seeing it. :(
