Brunilda (MSX2)

SAN ARTEIXO DE MONTALVO

The first time I came to this village and met its inhabitants, I realized that something strange was haunting their minds. That evening, the air was so cold that I could even feel it inside my bones. Everybody began to return to their homes, locking their doors tight for the night, hoping not be surprised defenseless against their most horrifying terrors.

It seemed that these people had no soul, that they had turned away from God, abandoned themselves to superstition.

I tried hard to forget that feeling, but my partner could not. He was younger and not yet mastered his terrors. However, my main concern was to find a place to spend the night. I wasn't worried about monsters nor demons, but the cold: another night sleeping rough and my bones would be rankling all the way to Santiago.

WAVERING BETWEEN FAITH AND SUPERSTITION
The thin line between these two concepts is very easy to cross. Both are blind beliefs, without fundaments. Everyone can choose between believe or not believe, and that makes faith and superstition being so far apart and yet so close.

I remember talking to the people of this town gave me bad vibes. Their fears passed through me and, sometimes, unless I was able to keep calm, I began to see the same things as them, to be able to pass through where I couldn't before, to wake up at a cave entrance without knowing how I got there.

The best way to forget everything was praying in a holy place, reinforcing my faith and taking myself away from those thoughts. Then, reality shown before my eyes, and I clearly felt that there was no strange places nor otherworldly beings.

But I always feared of completely losing my faith and my sanity, let me be deceived by that collection of pagan beliefs, myths and characters, abandoning forever everything that could link me with my previous life.

I'll not tell you what happened until I could control myself, because I'm still doubting about what was real and what was merely a product of my imagination.

CONTROLS

JOYSTICK 

Start game ... Fire button 

Walk ... Joystick direcctions

Fire .... Fire button

KEYBOARD

Start game  ... Space

Walk .... Cursors

Fire ... Space

MORE CONTROLS 

"Fire" control lets you interact with objects or characters in front of you. To get objects, simply walk over them.

CONTINUING THE GAME

Finishing the game can take a while, so we've divided the story into chapters, and each one will give you a password to resume the game later. Press R at the MAIN MENU of the game and choose one option:

• RESTORE A SAVEGAME stored in the cartridge previously.
• ENTER PASSWORD from other gameplays.
• EXIT to MAIN MENU.

Brunilda just holds a single game into the cartridge memory, so a new savegame will overwrite a previous one. The savegames are saved and overwritten into the cartridge when the Chapter screen is displayed. Your language selection will be stored on the cartrige every time you do that. So if you boot again your MSX, last language will be displayed as default.

THE HISTORY OF THE GAME

Since its premiere in Retromadrid 2014, BitVision wanted to have Brunilda in MSX, the physical edition fell in love with him but it took several years until he downloaded the original code as a result of a video of Araubi with the walkthrough of the game. When he had the engine running with something visible, he passed it on to Manuel Pazos, who helped him contact Retroworks to complete this MSX2 version. 

CREDITS

• Original script: Benway 
• Adaptation and game design: Pagantipaco y Benway 
• Coding MSX: Bitvision
• Additional coding MSX: Manuel Pazos
• Original coding ZX Spectrum: Benway
• Graphic art and cover: Pagantipaco
• Original music: Benway, Mikomedes and remixes by WYZ
• Music adaptation to MSX: WYZ

This program uses the following routines: music player "Wyzplayer" (Wyz), decompressor "Exomizer" (Metalbrain, Urusergi and A. Villena), text decompressor "PenText" (Benway and Metalbrain).

Testers:

• Rubén “Araubi” Sanchez Barros
• José Andrés "Konamito" Gil
• Joaquín "Retroabuelo" Neira
• Pablo "Pablibiris" Pallarés 

Tools:

• Assembler sjasm on Linux 
• OpenMSX, Gimp, Tiled, WyzTracker

DEDICATION

BitVision: The game is dedicated to my beloved fiance Helena, who has been supporting me with all this great MSX stuff and specially with Brunilda development. Thanks to the whole Retroworks team for still creating such great games like Brunilda and providing me all the help I needed to face porting the game.  And thanks to the whole retro community, specially the MSX scene, for being so stubborn and not allowing time to erase our childhood dreams.