It'll be great! Thanks for suggesting this! 😀

If you make a Groo C64 game, you have at least one guaranteed sale right here. (assuming Sergio is cool with it which he seems like he would be)

Hey David! Thanks for checking out the video. :)

Yes! Where was this video 35 years ago? ;-)

Groo is a parody of sword and sorcery comics like Conan the Barbarian, obviously. He wanders from village to village with his trusty dog Rufferto (who adores Groo, BTW), trying to find work suitable for a warrior. The thing about Groo is that he's exceptionally stupid. A lot of people try to exploit Groo, but these plans usually backfire in hilarious ways, while Groo is being oblivious to what is actually happening around him. Usually, Groo leaves the village in a state of complete chaos. Recurring themes are Groo getting angry for hearing called certain names, Groo being hungry, Groo defeating anyone he faces with almost no effort, Groo doing the opposite of what the one who hired him had actyalky intended, leaving Groo saying: "Did I err?“ There are some recurring characters, like Sage, a wise man who often tries to talk some sense to Groo, Minstrel who sings songs about Groo, Weaver and Scribe, who write tales of Groo's exploits, Captain Ahax, a pirate captain who always loses a ship when Groo is around. Sergio Aragones created the character, but for a long time, the comic book has been done by a team of Aragones together with writer Mark Evanier and letterer Stan Sakai. Sakai himself is the writer and artist of Usagi Yojimbo, the character Samurai Warrior on C64 is based on. Weaver and Scribe are based on Evanier and Sakai. Also, Evanier is known as a writer for several TV shows, like various incarnations of Garfield on TV. Groo has changed publishers several times, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, to name a few, but the core team has remained, the rights remaining with the creator Aragones.

My wheels are spinning. A fan game could happen. 😀

Thanks a lot! Hope you come back to see some more! 😉

Wow! You’re right, many similarities! I was always the kid in school drawing, but I didn’t study art in school (or continue to practice and push myself) instead I relied on natural ability… which only takes one so far. 😀 All my Commodore stuff is original (I’ve got too much, really) but a friend has the U64 Elite and it seems really good. I still prefer creating on the C64 to playing games. I like making custom character sets and sprites, PETSCII art and programming (6510 ML) 😀

Wait… Amiga 1200? I would have loved a 1200. I had an A500 that I used all through university. I loved making short animations with DPaint! How I wish I had my old Amiga hard drive. 😀

Thanks Michael! I agree with you on the retro video scene. I love watching people make new things with their old stuff too. 😀 NFT Ha!

It would be such fun!

Yes. Spent a lot of time with Koala Paint as a kid... even in school we were allowed to “play” with it. 😀

Lots of graph paper here too. A good substitute when the C64 wasn’t available. I made lots of custom character sets and sprites.

Groo är ingen talesman, Groo är en handelsman!

I have no clue what that means. A Swedish friend told me it is untranslatable. 😀

@@GrooTube yes, it would not make much sence to translate, right now it goes over my head, loong time since i read groo, but probably have something with the translation of the swedish magazine. act first, think later, maybe?

Ha! That’s great! I didn’t know any other Groo readers when I was a kid either, so, it was just me too. 😀 I’ve got another C64 + Sergio Aragonés video in the works. Keep a look out for it in the next couple weeks. 😀

I wouldn’t be surprised if Koala Paint with a joystick was an after the fact hack, or at least an after thought. Thanks for popping over for a watch! 😀

Oh yeah! Yi Arr Kung Fu might have been that game. And Way of the Exploding Fist had that loud scream on the title page. I was really in to Bruce Lee.

Glad to hear you're still holding on to the retro computers! But you didn't finish. You're not sure, what happened... to what?! 😀

@@GrooTube To that one machine I used to have...it miraculously multiplied...;-) I'm also a big fan of Petscii art, but because I'm more of a programmer than an artist, I recently wrote a converter that runs on a PC and converts any image into Petscii. The limitation to one background color really hurts here. You can get decent results, but you have to tweak the source image somewhat for that in most cases.

We had a Koala Pad (tablet thing) at school. But I find using a joystick and plotting individual pixels to be less aggravating. Lots of jittering with the Koala Pad. 😀

@@GrooTube definitely joystick. I didn’t even know the pads existed until years later. And I always ran into trouble with pixels changing colours when I added too many different colours to one area. I didn’t know about the limitations until Robin explained it to me a while back.

Thanks Joseph! 😀

Thanks Michael! I had lots of fun making this C64 Groo art! Glad you’re watching through some of the old videos too!

Thanks Mats! Me too obviously! I’ve got another Groo and the C64 video planned too!

@@GrooTube Awesome, looking forward to it!

Thanks. I’d love to get better, so I guess that means keep at it. 😀

Thanks Doc! Glad you stopped by! 😀

There have been plans on and off over the years. Last year’s announcement seemed pretty promising. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. 😀

I have another Groo + Commodore video in the works! Be sure to keep a lookout for it!

@@GrooTube AWESOME. look forward to it! Tks for the headsup. liked & subscribed!

Thanks! I wrote my first C64 assembly game a couple years ago. So... who knows? 😉

@@GrooTube well I don’t have my Commodore 64 setup but maybe an emulator would work. I do have my Atari set up tho 🤓

@@luckybrandon Check out my Atari hidden sitting behind my C64 at the 13:42 mark. 😀

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the video, and hope you find the other vids entertaining too! Maybe you’ve seen my hands on Robin’s channel before? ✋🤚

@@GrooTube I will check, because I have been watching every episode of it for a year :)

Making a New C64 Game: 1NVADER kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ibBoZLx1nqvGlZc.html

Unfortunately I don’t think any of these comics are available digitally. 🙁

You’re not allowed to play the Groo card game without being a Groo comic reader! 😀 Well I suppose you can play the game. But it’s a travesty for those who aren’t Groo fans to keep those precious few copies of the game away from the devoted followers of the Wanderer. 😉

@@GrooTube lol I've been wondering ever since whether someone was kind enough to scan the cards for us mere mortals who can't pay the exorbitant prices of the few remaining copies of the game... cause it was a lot of fun :D

You and me both. 😀

We’ll, some say they’re both part of the MCU, so it could happen. 😉 I don’t say that though. 😀

Joystick! Get a short throw Epyx 🕹 or something. 😉

Thanks Isaac! It’s been a while since I’ve had Koala Painter out, but I had fun with it. This was my first project using Doodle, and I has a few false starts. I want to work on a Groo run cycle with sprites and see where that leads. 😀

@@GrooTube What sort of game were you thinking? The only Groo game I'm familiar with is a card game where you don't actually play Groo. You try to build towns and Groo is a "hot potato" walking disaster that hampers your efforts. Of course, we'd rather be playing Groo himself. I'm imagining an overhead game where you basically just turn into a whirl of blades and stuff when your sprite touches enemies and they go flying off on contact. The game has inertia physics like an overhead Marble Madness, and the goal is to try and wipe out all of the enemies in a screen as fast as possible. You ideally dodge arrows from archers, but if you get hit they just slow you down rather than seriously kill you.

That’s a neat idea for a Groo game. I haven’t out too much thought into it. Perhaps a side scrolling, one-button affair. Just get as far as you can into the fray game. It could almost be a parody of the Usagi game. Or, in a totally different direction, an overhead strategy game, along the same line as the card game, trying to defend against Groo.

@@GrooTube Yeah, a simple one button game is good because it would be straightforward to develop and get right into simple mindless fun. Are you familiar with D.R.O.D., or Deadly Rooms of Death? The main character is very Groo-like, and when you really get a fray going he starts grunting with each kill with a lot of satisfaction. However, D.R.O.D. is quintessentially a precise puzzle game, which punishes you for the slightest error in thinking. This _feel_ is utterly opposite of Groo. It works in D.R.O.D. because it's a funny ironic tension between the mindless muscle-headed character and the player who must use razor sharp wits. So that's really the design challenge - the game has to be fun but NOT involve particularly intellectual thinking. I mean, Groo is actually kinda clever in his own way, so it's okay for it to be more than just mindless button mashing, but still ...

For sure! If you’re doing it manually, just use ,1 (tape) instead of ,8 (disk)

I use a web-based PETSCII art program: PETSCII.krissz.hu

@@GrooTube blown away by that web editor. Wow.

There are a few good online C64 drawing sites, if you want to give it a try before setting up emulation or hearing real hardware. 😀

@@GrooTube thanks for your response. At present I don’t have an original c64, but do own a c64 mini and c64 maxi and also have used vice on pc and also purchase Commodore 64 forever. I am interested in programming in basic and machine language, and would also like to be able to draw and write some simple games go the c64..regards

Sounds like you’re pretty set! Look me up on Twitter @DarrenFoulds and let me know how your C64 adventures go! 😀

Robin stays in my good books for another week then! 🤪

Nope, I was using the joystick version of Koala Painter. 😀

@@GrooTube wild. That must be somewhat difficult. How do you do fine precise movements with a joystick?

It might be hard to see in the video, but after I draw the basic shape (often with lines and circles) I do most of the work zoomed in.

I could do both the A500 and A600. 😀