Newcomer

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Newcomer

Game No.	430
Voting	8.24 points, 17 votes
Developer	Zoltán Gonda, Csaba Fóris, István Belánszky Original András Lay Original & Enhanced Zsolt Kajtar Ultimate Mihály Szemeti Ulimate
Company	Cinematic Intuitive Dynamix
Publisher	Protovision, Valhalla Páholy, 576 KByte
Musician	Zoltán Gonda
Release	1994 (original), 2001 (enhanced)
Platform	C64
Genre	Adventure, RPG 3D
Gamemode	Single player
Operation
Media
Language	(original), (enhanced)

Description[edit | edit source]

Intro.

Game.

Newcomer is a RPG by Cinematic Intuitive Dynamix. The development time was 10 years and it is 7 disks long. Major sections of the game have lengthy animated cut scenes. The Game engine is very powerful and pushes the C64 to its limits.

Newcomer has the destinction of being the largest C64 game in terms of total disk count at the time of its release and may have had the longest development cycle of any professionally produced game.

The game is so huge that it can take weeks or even months to "beat." Even then you've only experienced one of several possible endings.

Story

Neil is a newcomer to a prison island. Why is he here? Confusion, blurry images... jealousy! Now he remembers — he killed his unfaithful wife and her lover in a fit of rage. He is arrested for the crime. But something is wrong, as he wakes up on the island and not in a holding cell.

Original and Enhanced Edition[edit | edit source]

PAL only.
SpeedDOS and JiffyDOS supported.
In the game you can meet more than 120 other characters. Each has its own portrait photo.
Over 50 different areas with a total of 30 different graphic sets it to be explored!
The game play is non-linar and there are no random encounters.
Countless puzzles and problems that can be solved in several ways each!
You can build a team of up to 6 people to muddle through this together on the island — or try to go at it all alone.
Over 80 great illustration images in the game capture the imagination.
14 disk sides, each 40-track format, with compressed data, which are extracted during the game.
A fast and intelligent charging system ensures short recharging time and little disk change.

The Enhanced edition fixes a few glitches with the original version of the game. Nonetheless, Newcomer is beset by some compatibility issues. The most obvious is that it is designed around a PAL system's timing to the exclusion of NTSC. Second, the game code not only pushes the C64's 6502 CPU and the VIC-II graphics chip very hard — as many modern C64 games and demos do — but it also pushes the SID sound chip to its limits. While this will not damage a perfectly good SID sound chip, a partially failing SID with a few burned out registers has been known to cause the game to crash. Unfortunately, modern storage options, such as the SD2IEC are not well supported by the game out of the box. Newcomer is completely incompatible with the SuperCPU.

Ultimate Edition (not released)[edit | edit source]

Intended az a re-release of Newcomer, dubbed "Newcommer Ultimate Edition" began development shortly after release. The Ultimate edition of Newcomer is being developed mostly to address compatibility issues with the game on NTSC machines, to auto-detect common hardware, and provide full support for modern storage and CPU solutions. This is intended to include:

NTSC and PAL support.
6581 and 8580 SID chips auto-detected and supported
C128 in C64 mode auto-detected and 2MHz mode used to unpack data very quickly.
SuperCPU 20MHz mode auto-detected and supported. Data unpacking is essentially instant on a Super CPU equipped system. No word on Turbo Chameleon 64 support.
Support for modern storage solutions: CBM 1581 drives, CMD FD series drives, IDE64, SD2IEC, etc.

Additionally, there will be a Hungarian language version of Newcomer Ultimate along side the English language version.

The project has started in 2010 and it is still listed as "in development" by its distributor. But, the latest update on the development status of the Ultimate Edition dates from 2016. This may indicate the Ultimate Edition is vaporware.

Design[edit | edit source]

Newcomer is partly classic adventure and part RPG and contains situations and encounters that occur in these genres. The focus is on the interaction with a large and varied number of characters, exploring the game world, the development of a wide range of skills within the game as in real life, and solving complex puzzles and mysteries.

Intro: Neil arrives at the island.

Flashback: a brutal double murder

Flashback: Neil gets arrested and is charged with murder.

We are welcomed by a hobo called Waarden,

Having a talk wit hPater Murdock

Stepped on a mine - game over

Fight against a drunk punk

On the road

A patrol blocks our way.

You can earn some money in the Agro area.

At the rocker quarters

The rockers won't let you pass without a proper outfit.

A looter

Hints[edit | edit source]

... another gamescreen can be put in here

Solution[edit | edit source]

Maps

The maps were taken from C64spiele.de^[1]

Cave dwellers

Dungeon

Rocker quarters

Colonel's quarter

Cellar

Cheats[edit | edit source]

Currently, no cheats are known.

Voting[edit | edit source]

Voting of the C64-Wiki-User (10=the best vote):
8.24 points at 17 votes (rank 68). You need to be logged in to cast a vote.
C64Games	10	22. April 2019 - "highlight" 20862 downs
Lemon64	8,3	22. April 2019 - 143 votes