One Man and His Droid (C64)

One Man and His Droid

Platform: Commodore 64 Year: 1985 Developer: Mastertronic Limited

One Man and His Droid is an action puzzle game created by hobbyist Clive Brooker on his ZX Spectrum 48K up to September 1985. He demonstrated it to video game publisher Mastertronic, who quickly named it and hired people for this Commodore 64 port, which adds more colorful flashes and background music.

You are a droid (herding dog) who deals with ramboids (dim rams on planet Andromadous). Each of the 20 levels consists of two parts:

1. Make your way past over 200 ramboids.
2. Fence all seven ramboids into a teleport, at least four in a given order. In later levels, you must dig tunnels. After the 7th ramboid, you get additional time, but not 9999 again.

The game reviewed well, but is still slagged off by gamers who don't understand it.

Screenshots

The loading screen. The title sequence. Up against the stream. Small instructions. Doesn't hurt... I hope. I nearly got 6400. :-(

Music

Rob Hubbard was already known, and Mastertronic a good client. Besides an evergreen that HVSC voted 50th favorite top SID, Hubbard delivered 14 sound effects, eight of which are used.

As usual for him at the time, he arranged by typing hexadecimal numbers into his driver using Mikro Assembler. Each sound effect consists of two voices which drown out the melodies, leaving only bass and drums.

Recording

The music was recorded:

1. on a real C64C PAL with an 8580 R5 4091.
2. in VICE 3.2 with C64C NTSC. It is tuned at 457 Hz.

#	Title	Composer	Length	Listen	Download
101	Maintune	Rob Hubbard	5:57		Download
102	Space Game	Rob Hubbard	1:31		Download

#	Title	Composer	Length	Listen	Download
201	Maintune	Rob Hubbard	5:00		Download

(Source: Hubbard's demo.)

Credits

• Ripper: HVSC
• Recorder: Professor Chaos
• Game Credits:
  • Not Credited Composer: Rob Hubbard
  • Not Credited Arranger: Rob Hubbard
  • Not Credited Foley Artist: Rob Hubbard
  • Not Credited Programmer: Rob Hubbard

(Game lacks audio credits. First known sources: ZZAP! 64 No.11 from February 9, 1986, comparison with Monty on the Run (C64).)

Game Rip

Format	Download
	Download (Info)

Audio Devices

This game uses the computer's built-in SID chip and sounds the same on every one of them.

On NTSC C64s, everything is 19% faster and 4% higher. On old NTSC, it is 22% faster.

Releases

UK Title: One Man and His Droid Platform: C64/128 Released: 1985-12-?? Publisher: Mastertronic Limited     France Title: One Man and His Droid Platform: C64/128 Released: 1985-12-?? Publisher: Mastertronic Limited     Spain Title: One Man and His Droid Platform: C64/128 Released: 1985-12-?? Publisher: Mastertronic Limited     Italy Title: One Man and His Droid Platform: C64/128 Released: 1985-12-?? Publisher: Mastertronic Limited     Germany Title: One Man and His Droid Platform: C64/128 Released: 1985-12-?? Publisher: Mastertronic Limited     USA Title: 2onONE: One Man and His Droid/Nonterraqueous Platform: Commodore 64/128 Released: 1986-??-?? Publisher: Mastertronic, Inc.

Links

• mobygames.com/game/c64/one-man-and-his-droid - MobyGames.
• gamefaqs.gamespot.com/c64/577800-one-man-and-his-droid - GameFAQs.
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Man_and_His_Droid - Wikipedia.
• csdb.dk/release/?id=128996 - Hubbard's demo.

View One Man and His Droid
One Man and His Droid
One Man and His Droid II
Notable Songs	Space Game - One Man and His Droid (C64)
Notable Personnel	Rob Hubbard
Notable Companies	Mastertronic