TRANSFORMING TOKI
<intro> Davide Bottino was disappointed with Ocean’s C64 conversion of Toki – and now he has set out to make it better </intro>
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Davide Bottino has fond memories of 002 TAD Corporation’s Toki. “In the summer of 1990 my 003 friends and I went crazy for Toki and played it at our local 004 bar,” he recalls. Although Davide saw the C64 cartridge 005 advertised in ZZAP! Italia, he didn’t play that conversion 006 until many years later. “There are several flaws. The 007 sprites aren’t particularly faithful in design and in many 008 cases, are quite ugly,” he tells us. “I was particularly 009 disappointed with the main character. The last level 010 background is of a lower quality than the others. The 011 soundtrack is nice, but it’s just one piece for the whole 012 game and is not played along with the SFX, which are 013 quite poor anyway. Playability is decent, but problems in 014 the control system and unforgiving collisions make the 015 game too difficult and frustrating.”016 Having made PC homebrew, Davide got the urge 017 to do pixel art again. “I use Paint.net, a free tool with 018 a minimal learning curve. I thought it would be nice 019 to redraw an existing game lacking in the graphics 020 department. I almost immediately thought of Toki: just 021 changing the sprites without rewriting the code would 022 result in a game more like the original, and only a few 023 fixes would be needed to make it more playable.”
024 Davide realised he’d need help to achieve this. “I 025 began posting online looking for programmers willing to 026 collaborate,” he continues. “Mariano Cigliano contacted 027 me, and a few days later Pasquale Sannino joined. A 028 fantastic surprise came a few weeks later when Aldo 029 Chiummo (composer with his brother Gaetano of the 030 soundtrack to A Pig Quest) unexpectedly sent me his
031 excellent version of the first level music! He converted 032 the entire soundtrack for the game shortly thereafter. 033 Pasquale got the first results in reverse engineering the 034 cartridge; Mariano wrote custom tools to replace the old 035 sprites with the new ones, starting from spritesheets 036 prepared by me. We were able to create the first 037 updated build and validate the whole project!”
038 Euan Gamble also joined the team. “I have been 039 quoted as a ‘C64 reverse engineering expert’. I use 040 Retro Debugger (C64 Debugger) a lot, and I built my 041 own Python disassembler – my script speeds up the 042 process.” Euan found the task far from simple. “Toki is 043 complex, constantly switching assets in and out during 044 the game and dynamically making a set of sprites to
045 show,” he explains. “Davide has specific ideas about 046 how the sprites should look (almost arcade-exact) and 047 that requires repositioning, changing hitboxes, etc. 048 Finding the sprites, finding how they are loaded, and 049 then finding the sprite properties is quite challenging.”
050 Davide is pleased with the end results and hopes 051 others will follow suit. “I invite anyone who has some 052 familiarity with retro systems programming and wishes 053 to deepen their knowledge while having fun in a 054 challenging project to join our passionate team: the retro 055 gaming community will be grateful to you for reviving 056 one of their favourite games!”