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You mentioned glitches on attack indicators but from a player's point of view I don't seem to notice anything excessively wrong.

Every attempt seems to go farther, my last one is 113:

The only visual glitch I notice is sometimes at the very beginning of a round there is some diagonal 4 bullets being silently shot by some turret which is quite near the bottom (just like some bullet/animation from the queue of the previous end of round?).

New record 102 months. 2 big red dragons coming = game over 😅

I've posted a relatively quick gameplay on YT:

Oook now we're getting someplace:

Fullscreen: yes at first the fullscreen button (with the ICON only) wasn't of much use since the game canvas was still small in an empty page.
But(!) I noticed there was a kind-of hidden actual white button with "Fullscreen" on it that appeared for a second at launch and then it was pushed down out of the iframe: but if I gave the focus to the description and pressed shift TAB (or even simpler, drag the fullscreen icon and then press TAB) I had the focus on the white "Fullscreen" button that worked perfectly for me, Chrome on Win10.

I see the update to 1.1, still need to figure out the additions. I've noticed the souls count at game over, the signals at the top as you use swaps (hints on the columns that will be hit by tough dragons?).

Then, I can't see the Fullscreen button anymore?

Whoa a great game at last: I survived 52 months and encountered the huge dragon 🐲

Totally addicted, I played it almost the whole day 😅 I'm so curious what's your top duration at your own game? (My best so far only 41)

Yes maze layouts had to be different, Intellivision had a wider but shorter rectangular screen, 20x12 blocks, while Pico-8 has 16x16. By the way to make a few layouts looking more familiar I recreated similar regions and corners, or -especially forests- making them narrower and adding more at the bottom.

Thanks for playing it!

Brilliant game 👌 the one I wish I had on my c64 at the time. So addicting, after numerous attempts, my best so far is 38 months.

Yes probably because this one had a troubled history and continuous delays until finally released in 1986 (when Mattel Electronics was no more) so yes other early titles like Night Stalker, Astrosmash, Lock'n'chase, etc.. might definitely sound more familiar and popular especially for the kids of that era who actually played the real thing.

But I played Thunder Castle a couple months ago -first thanks on my brother on a PS2 'intellivision lives' and the week later on the actual physical Intellivision console wow- and I though I absolutely had to make a Pico-8 remake; possibly trying to fix a few details that appeared to make the original game frustrating at times.

I'm still curious to know from people who played the original one, let's see...

Thanks a lot merx for playing! 🙏

Nice I managed to escape at last! I always bumped right on the sleeping(?) spider on every single attempt and now I wonder if that's avoidable :)

The fact that this game is roughly inspired by Atari 2600's E.T. -which is considered one of the worst game of all time😆- makes your pico-8 game even more valuable! 👌

So soo good I'm a fan!
I was "doing great"... I failed shortly after :)

So far 50%/780

the original game had a weird sense of "difficulty curve", it immediately starts off hard, yes there are later on 3 or 4 harder levels but the rest is basically average difficulty when you've played a bit.

But yes it is convenient to train on each level  (and it wasn't possible in the original) maybe check your progress in the achievements, even just to improve total/average timings if beating the whole game seems too hard.

Hey merx! Yes I loved that design too! The coloured stripes layout worked very well in the game (as a frame for the extra illustrations, as mentioned above to Alice) 👍

Thanks Alice, I was actually a bit hesitant to push on the aesthetics since the project started as a "raw" Intellivision/Atari graphics so yeah I've tried to keep the 3 games quite simple in gfx (with a little exception on the Pitfall background maybe) and then used the rest of spritesheet for the extra "Illustrative/cover" art. Thank you for playing!

So cool, 110% Atari 2600 vibes 👌 

I scored 66 but I'm in mobile (shooting should be easier on pc, can't wait to try) also I seem to recognise one of the "Berzerk" sprites, isn't it?

Great job 👏 

Done, check all files in Downloads now 👍

Absolutely right! Going to fix it very soon

High score today: 54760

reached 6th level, it's fundamentally impossible to beat lol

A detail I didn't notice in the first plays is when at higher stages the 'perimeter guy' goes after you in your version he is literally chasing you; in the original it was a little less of a nightmare and more controllable because he just "followed your steps".

Oh and I still suck at the hyppo stage 😅

Getting better, high score 23610.

It's curious how the first two waves are the hardest / probable cause of losing a ship.

About the tune I'd like to help (fixing those couple issues), send me a msg at the Pico8 discord in case.

So cool! Great choice for pico8 remake, it was one of my favourite arcades at the time, the docking feature was absolutely brilliant. I think you did an awesome job, everything feels exactly like the original (I'd juuust tweak a lil bit the start-game tune but the rest is perfect)

Awesome remake! I'm a great fan of the original, played a lot on Mame as well recently. No surprise my first ever sample cart for Pico-8 (first steps learning pico's Lua) is a "trainer" of the pig bonus stage with increasing difficulty (Amidus on lexaloffle).

About the bonus stage I wasn't definitely prepared for the odd bonus Hyppo stage (not in the original) is it your own addition or was it in some other remake/ports?

It's so soo good 👌 excellent remake!
(so far 3rd stage pts 19790)

Yes! Somehow I've found it before the woman asked for it, unless it was the intended sequence.

Finished in 67 minutes lol, I wouldn't really call it a speed-run 😆

Excellent implementation of instant 3d, the contour of hidden houses on front was a classy touch 👌 Great job!

Ah the choice of this remake is basically due to my curiosity in using the speech library (Speako8 by bikibird) I wanted to see how it could work in a full game, not only a demo or test (and it's been quite a challenge actually because it uses up a lot of chars). Thanks a lot for your comment!

Thanks a lot! Yes I tried to keep the in-game graphics as faithful as possible (for pico8's low-res) to the original arcade... then spent all the resources left for the menu screen (the original had just a wooden sign so I've tried to put the nice art of the actual cabinet). It's been very fun I admit!

Cool, I had missed this one from Taito.
So -curious about the original- I've played it on Mame as well and it appears to have some kind of hidden trick for your rocket to block alien lasers; at least no trace in the instructions/description. I've just noticed it in a YT longplay where the guy was stopping the shots somehow?!? And trying on Mame I see you can push up on contact: although 80% of the times it's stopped a couple frames but I'm still hit shortly after.
Glad to see others remaking oldies for Pico8 👌 

It was indeed one of the most brutal and hateful game of the C64 but for some reason I have fond memories of this challenging game.

It's even a pity because the layout of the 30 levels is well planned, too bad 95% of the players probably never managed to go past stage 5 (and I'm in that 95%).

Yeah what a curious choice to introduce a game to the new players 😆

I tried to reproduce this but no 'crash': it simply picks from the market, immediately picks the piece moving on the map area and that's it (at least for me).
What kind of crash exactly? It froze or ended the program on command line?

So glad! I've probably spent more hours inspecting details of the original arcade than actual programming time. I've discovered tiny details I've never noticed in decades even small quirks and imperfections like: if you watch a gameplay video in slow-mo (or frame by frame) you'll notice the sprite animation of barrels rolls in the wrong direction in the original 😯

Due to Pico-8 limitations the game uses 60fps flicker for a variety of effects (eg. semi-trasparency, font antialias, colour blending to have colours like cyan/teal not in pico8 palette), but in the web version the browser and/or busy pc could skip several frames making it noticeable/annoying. 

In that case you can turn the flicker OFF in the menu pressing Enter (you'll immediately see the blending effects disappear -the ladders will turn blue-, crispy font etc..).

Thanks for playing! 

Nice, it's tiny, cute and colourful. I particularly love Processing Plant.
One thing I noticed is you use pixel collisions on blocks (keys, plants etc..) while the original -as opposed to pixel perfect collision on creatures- used box/block collisions on items. I keep missing keys lol

Glad you finished your port now because it was in my todo-list (I was considering 8x8 blocks and scrolling but tiny as you did is probably the best option).

Great job indeed 👍 the gfx very cute and clean, good choice of soft music and classic sfx 👌

Hey! Thanks for your post! On the original machine... err I'm afraid I'm missing the required skills 😅 Well, I used to make games for c64 as a kid but in plain basic only, no interrupts/assembly. Although I know brave ones who still do this today.