A sixth new game has arrived for the Einstein 256, and it comes from a machine none of the previous ones did. Tiny Quest is a 2020 Commodore 64 platform game by Digital Monastery, and Simone Voltolini of Outsoftware has brought it across to the 256 as what he describes as a 1:1 conversion.
Simone is clear that this is somebody else's game, and the credits are worth reading out in full. The code is by Andrea Schincaglia, who works under the name Wanax. The graphics are by Federico Sesler, credited as RFX. The music and sound are by Gaetano Chiummo and Stefano Palmonari, credited as GC and SP. It was published by Digital Monastery in 2020, and the game puts all of that on its own title screen, which is where we took it from rather than from any second hand source.
Simone's five earlier ports came from the ZX Spectrum and the MSX: Skool Daze, Back to Skool and Contact Sam Cruise from Microsphere, Everyone's a Wally from Mikro-Gen, and Westen House from Brain Games. Tiny Quest is the first he has brought to the Einstein from the Commodore 64, which is a meaningful widening of the net. The 256 has spent forty years with almost no software written for it specifically, and every new source machine is another shelf of games that could plausibly follow.
The disc is built for the Einstein 256 and will not run on a TC01, where it drops straight into the MOS monitor. In MAME use the einst256 driver. It boots directly into the game with no DOS needed, though give it a little time on the loading screen, since there is 168K of game data to read off the disc before the title appears. A joystick works, and so does the keyboard, using Q, A, O, P and Space.
As with his previous ports, the loader says openly that the conversion was produced with the help of ChatGPT and Codex. We have written before about why we think that is worth stating rather than hiding.
The port is free, as all of Simone's have been. The most useful thanks is to play it and tell him how it holds up, and his profile page has his contact details. If you own a 256 and a Gotek, this is another disc it has been waiting for.
