Seven years of development finally paid off for programmer Rhodri Williams this month when he finally unleashed Bitman Fighter on the Freeware gaming community. With over ten extremely violent and amusing death moves plus an array of hidden moves and cheats, it'll keep you going for weeks.
Bitman Fighter draws it's inspiration from games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, allowing you to enter countless one-on-one fights to the death. As you progress through the game your progress is monitored by the infamous "Grand Master Bitman" who you will ultimately face in the ultimate battle to decide who really is the ultimate Bitman Fighting Champion.
The Kirun Network could hardly believe it when the legendary Bitman
Fighter first arrived. Pushing QBASIC to it's limits whilst still keeping the
program size down to a tiny 66k, this is a breath of fresh air in the days of
200Mb 2Gb installs. Not being paid per line of code (or at all) meant that he was
not motivated to flesh out the code. And don't think that Freeware means a drop
in quality - this is as good as most DOS shareware programs, and no beat-'em-up
shows the originality this game oozes.
Grand Master Bitman says...
_______________
/ \
| \\== ==// |
| ( o ) ( o ) |
| O |
| _______ | - Download Bitman Fighter now
| / \ | and show your worth.
| \_______/ |
\_______________/
| |
o O
(1) [8]
/ \ / \
You're the little runt on the left..See him? Thats you.
So what do you want to do?
Do you want to (a)go right (b)wait or (c)attack
? _
Actual game screenshot. Screenshot would be from a different version, but we've only made one so far. For best results, set your browser's fixed width font to one also used for DOS. You can achieve 100% accuracy.
If you've got an older version, then the author's e-mail address might say rhodri@ferncliffe.demon.co.uk. This address is now dead. It should be rhods_w at hotmail dot com. Don't forget to mention Bitman in the subject line, and to send him money (he'd really appreciate it :)
Restrictions:
-Distribute freely, but don't change the
code
-Send money to the author(s) if you want (This game is Guiltware
:)
-If you play the game more than 10000 times then you must voluntarily
admit yourself to the nearest psychiatric hospital and get help!
Linux users! Don't feel left out, Bitman Fighter works with DOSbox!
Bitman Fighter is the undisputed champion of the text-based beat 'em up. Rhodri handed out the source to a select few a while back, to see if we could make any enhancements. Having learnt BASIC on the BBC, not the PC, he didn't know the right commands. Having messed about with ANSI codes a lot, I knew about colour on the PC. I tried making an ANSI version of Bitman. It failed. Not being one to be defeated, I fought QBASIC until it relented and I had a way of running the animations in colour. And you can pick the colour of the fighter's costume without rewriting the code while having other things fixed colours (not as easy as it looks).
Univerity and other reasons have held up development for virtually ever. It's still a good idea to send Rhodri guiltware fees, though. It may make him pester me to actually code something. Despite some work that's been done, I haven't found a "nice" platform to put the game on. I may learn SDL at some point, and do it that way.
Bitman Fighter New Version Progress Meter:
0%
[=================.......................] 100%
World Exclusive! First screenshot from the NEW Bitman
Fighter!
Those of you that have played the original will
recognise this move, and appreciate the vast improvement in visuals. Those of
you who haven't played are missing out: Download it now!
Bitman Fighter 2 - ©1992-1999 Rhodri Williams and ©1999 Kieran Leigh. Bitman colour layout engine and markup language by Kieran. Move graphics by Rhodri. Some moves you can't see here done by me, and "critically assessed" (made to look more painful) by Rhodri. Message to programmers: commenting your code is a good thing. Rhod's spaghetti logic was fairly impossible to understand (but as the code was 90% move graphics it was a little easier :)
0-10 X 11-15 X 15-17 X 18+ X Rated by Bitman Studios to it's own high standards.