MSX Turtles

TURTLES!

All the action and excitement of the superhit Odyssey² game, now on the MSX!

The turtles need your help to find their baby turtlets and carry them safely home. But you never know when your turtle is going to be bugged by a beetle! And the longer the beetles are on the screen, the smarter and more dangerous they get! There are lots of reasons why TURTLES has been one of the most popular Odyssey² games of all – and they’re all here!

MSX Turtles is a fan-made recreation of the 1983 Odyssey² cartridge, rebuilt for MSX home computers. It is a free, non-commercial homebrew project.

Features

• A flawless remake of the Odyssey² original, with every room, beetle and bug bomb right where you remember them!

• Compatible with MSX1 or better.

• Enhanced color palette on MSX2, MSX2+ and MSX turbo R.

• Highly optimized Z80 assembly code delivers a steady 60 FPS!

• PSG sound effects recreate every beep and zap of the original.

• Runs on real MSX hardware and emulators.

How to play

Welcome to the Turtle Towers Hotel! Your turtle starts every floor in the lower right corner of the maze and moves in whatever direction you push.

1. Each room in the hotel contains a question mark. When your turtle touches one, it reveals a baby turtlet or a beetle.

2. A baby turtlet climbs onto your turtle’s back, and a house appears somewhere around the edge of the screen. Carry the turtlet safely to the house without getting bugged.

3. Beetles grow up as they age! They always start off blue and blind, wandering the maze at random. When they turn yellow they can see your turtle along straight lines, and when they turn red and deadly they can actually see around corners. The longer it takes you to bring all the turtlets home, the more dangerous the beetles become.

4. A turtle touched by a beetle is zapped on contact. Fight back with bug bombs, which stun beetles in their tracks (see below). You have three turtles per game, plus a bonus turtle at 5,000 points!

5. When every turtlet on a floor is safely home, your turtle climbs up to the next floor of the Turtle Towers Hotel. The higher you get, the meaner it gets: more beetles, fewer bug bombs!

6. The game ends when you run out of turtles. Press fire to play again.

Bug bombs

Your turtle starts each game with three bug bombs. Drop one in a beetle’s path and it will momentarily halt any beetle that crosses it. These bug bombs are so powerful that your turtle can travel straight through a de-bugged beetle without worry. A bug bomb will even make a dangerous red beetle turn blue and blind again when it recovers.

Only one bug bomb can be on the screen at a time. Pick up extra bombs by sending your turtle over the X at the center of the maze whenever it’s flashing. A turtle can carry up to 99 bug bombs. An alarm will sound when you have run out, so listen for it!

Scoring

• Discovering a baby turtlet: 100 points

• Carrying a baby turtlet to a house: 150 points

• Discovering a beetle: 80 points

• Stunning a beetle with a bug bomb: 50 points

The status bar at the bottom of the screen shows, from left to right: turtles remaining, bug bombs, current score, turtlets rescued, and the current floor.

Controls

• Joystick in port 1: move the turtle. Fire button: drop a bug bomb.

• Keyboard: cursor keys to move, space bar to drop a bug bomb.

Requirements and how to run it

• Compatible with MSX1 or better.

• Available in three formats. Pick the one that suits your setup:

 .rom (recommended): 32 KB cartridge image, requires 16 KB RAM. Use it in any MSX emulator, on a real MSX with SofaRun or another ROM loader, or to burn your own physical cartridge.

 .dsk: disk image, requires 64 KB RAM. Recommended if you want to write the game to a real floppy disk. Also works in emulators and with floppy replacements such as a Gotek.

 .cas: cassette image, requires 64 KB RAM. Recommended if you want to put the game on a real tape. To load it, type RUN”CAS:” and press RETURN, then start the tape.

Credits

MSX version by André de la Rocha.

Original arcade game: TURTLES, © 1981 Konami. Odyssey² version © 1983 North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp. The instructions above are adapted from the original Odyssey² Official Rules booklet.

MSX Turtles is a free, non-commercial homebrew tribute made out of love for the original. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Konami or Philips. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.