Mountain Panic

= Mountain Panic by Dave Footitt with artists Roger Coe and Chris Hogg =

Licence
Freeware



Introduction
In 1931, horror and sci-fi author H.P. Lovecraft completed his novella At the Mountains of Madness which went on to become one of his most influential tales, and has excited and disturbed readers in the decades since. 77 years later, and one of Retro Software ' s first BBC Micro projects was revealed - a wholly original 8-bit side-on arcade adventure inspired by Lovecraft's story, entitled Mountain Panic. After a mammoth five years of development and rare glimpses at retro computing shows around the country, Mountain Panic was finally launched on 5.25" DFS disc and emulator image at the Play Expo 2013 event in Manchester.

This eagerly-awaited adventure set in the early 1930s sees you cast as Bill, an intrepid Antarctic explorer who awakens to discover his expedition teammates missing after a violent storm, requiring you to venture out into the blinding snow to discover what has become of them ... Left with only a scrap from a colleague's notebook which mentions four pieces of a mysterious broken sign, Bill must navigate many treacherous caverns to escape.

With a rich set of screens to explore, there are eerie creatures to avoid and plenty of objects to discover and make use of, such as a rope which can be used to further progress through otherwise inaccessible locations. Mountain Panic features some of the most intricate gameplay graphics ever seen on the platform, created by a modern team of professional artists from Papa's Gong, alongside a specially commissioned cover art and loading screen.

Read more about Mountain Panic at the Papa's Gong website.

Features

 * Mode 2, full, rich, colour graphics
 * Multiple screens to explore
 * Adventurer can fire and climb his rope to reach higher platforms
 * Items to use along the way
 * HP meter depicts player's health
 * Enemies include penguins, elder things and the shoggoth
 * Nice loading screen and cover art!

BBC Micro
Original by Papa's Gong Programmer: Dave Footitt Artists: Roger Coe and Chris Hogg

Downloads
As of June 2017, Mountain Panic is now freeware!

Download BBC Micro DFS Disc image v1.2 (.ssd)

Author Dave Footitt has also made the Source code available via Github.

Physical copies are no longer available however second hand copies occasionally appear on eBay.

Here are some early demo builds of the game: [[Media:Mountainpanicdemo1.zip‎|Mountain Panic early work-in-progress Demo #1 - .ssd Acorn DFS disc image]] - 2009-09-18 [[Media:Mountainpanicdemo2.zip‎|Mountain Panic early work-in-progress Demo #2 - .ssd Acorn DFS disc image]] - 2009-09-18

Play Online
It is possible to play Mountain Panic online in your browser via the Complete BBC Games Archive which uses the jsBeeb emulator (Firefox is recommended as there can be control issues under Chrome, Safari etc).

Development Environment
Mountain Panic is developed in 6502, using BeebAsm and Emacs. The graphics are created in Photoshop then run through an exporter written in C# which converts them to a format the game understands. It is tested on real hardware via the RetroClinic DataCentre, and the title page is converted using Francis' BBC Image Converter.

Poster Artwork
You can find out more about our own Dave J / Kecske Bak's conversion of the Mountain Panic cover art into the A2 poster displayed at Byte Back 2009 and the even more massive 3m x 2m artwork used in the Retro Arcade at Eurogamer Expo 2013 (see photo above) here.

Reviews
2013-06-29: Dave Edwards' Acorn Electron World BBC Micro 5.25" DFS disc review