Alley Cat Remeow Edition
Alley Cat is a game created in 1983 by Bill Williams (rest in peace) and published by the company Synapse Software for Atari 8-bit and later IBM PC’s and compatible computers. With quite simple, but pretty original arcade mechanics at the same time, it is one of the first computer games that I played as a child. Years ago I started to program a remake of the game (it does so many, in fact, that the initial version was for MS-DOS). The intention was to use the same graphics of the original and add some new details, but the project went through so many different stages and was parked on countless occasions. Finally, after taking time here and there in a rather intermittent development, I managed to finish what I would like to see as a tribute to the original game and its author.
This version offers the possibility of playing with graphics and sounds redesigned trying to simulate how an arcade machine version could have been, but also maintains the possibility to play withçoriginal versions of Atari and PC. Five new stages have been added, as well as a couple of multiplayer game modes so that up to 4 kittens can meow up their favorite alley at once. As an extra detail – and because another project I have is building an arcade cabinet – I added the possibility of configuring it for being able to play on an arcade cabinet with all the options that it may require, so that it integrates perfectly as another arcade game on your favorite frontend list.
The remake has been programmed through the old Allegro libraries, since as I said, the development started in MS-DOS. Currently it is only available for Windows (it should be compatible with any version). I would have liked to be able to port it to Linux and Mac, but I have not been able to compile the libraries and get a working environment in those systems. If anyone is interested in helping me do it, please, contact me!
Below you have a couple of links; a YouTube video to be able to take a look before downloading it and the link with the game. There is no need to install it, just place it in the folder it suits you better, unzip it and run the game. For more information about the game modes and all the functions the game supports, I refer you to the User Guide. And if you want to know more about the remake itself and its development, you can take a look at the section More where other things are explained or try your luck to see if any questions that you could have by chance may have been already solved in the FAQS section on that same page 😉
