Team Pixelboy Official Web Site : The Black Onyx

Only the best of adventurers can hope to find the Black Onyx!

For generations, warriors and adventurers have been drawn to the town of Utsuro to challenge the dangers of its underground tunnels, in hopes of finding the legendary Black Onyx, a stone said to give eternal youth and great wealth to its owner. Your small party of adventurers has just arrived in this town of many mysteries, and already you can smell the danger lurking at every turn. Buy equipment and hone your fighting skills, as you will need them to survive and gain experience during your quest. Prepare to engage battle with many monsters, each one more blood-thirsty than the last. Can you beat the odds and find the fabled magical stone?

PROJECT STATUS (updated October 20th 2009):

Software	Port of SG-1000 game is about 95% done. Just needs to have its password system replaced with a savegame chip read/write routine, in addition to some beta-testing and minor bug fixing.
Box	No work done so far. I have acquired a boxed copy of the MSX version of The Black Onyx, and I plan to use the MSX box art for the ColecoVision version.
Manual	No work done so far. I do have scans of the manual of the original SG-1000 version, so that should help tremendously for the preparation of the ColecoVision version's manual.
Cartridge Casing	This game will be offered in Activision-style cartridges, since it will use an EEPROM savegame chip to save the player's progress.
Cartridge Label	No work done so far, but once the box art is ready, it will be reused for the label.
Completion Status	45%

PROJECT STORY:

The SG-1000 version of The Black Onyx was ported to the ColecoVision back in 2007 by Bruce Tomlin. Not only did he do a great job on the port, he also went through the trouble of translating all the japanese texts to english as well! And he also reworked the password system to use alphanumerical characters instead of japanese symbols.

However, some unfortunate events led Bruce to abandon the project, but he posted his source code on the AtariAge forums so that anyone else could compile his port into a usable ROM file. Since then, releasing this port in cartridge format with a proper box and manual has remained a personal desire of mine. The port is pretty much done, aside from some minor bugs (which Bruce may have fixed before dropping the project, I'm not sure at this point).

In the summer of 2009, a new element came into play where The Black Onyx is concerned, namely my Activision PCB project, to be used with the lot of Activision-style ColecoVision cartridge casings I acquired on eBay. Now there is a real opportunity to replace the annoying password system of the original SG-1000 game with a more modern savegame feature that lets the player save his progress in a split-second onto the EEPROM inside the cartridge. This is infinitely more desirable than writing down a password for each of the characters in your party, isn't it?

Bruce Tomlin has stated very clearly that he will not take any further part into the ColecoVision port of The Black Onyx, so someone else needs to pick up the torch and finish the work he started, so that this great RPG can finally be released in cartridge format and enjoyed by ColecoVision fans.

For what it's worth, Bruce, great job, and thanks for your efforts!

CONTRACT SPECIFICATIONS (Updated October 20th 2009)

I am offering 400$US, as well as a couple of free copies (with box and manual) of the finished game, for the execution of the following alterations to the existing ColecoVision-compatible source code of The Black Onyx (which is available for download at the very bottom of this page):

Replacement of the password entry interface with a simple savegame selection menu. The EEPROM used will have a size of 128 bits (1/8th of a kilobyte), which should be more than enough to support at least two savegame slots, if not three. The visual contents of the savegame selection interface will be discussed and determined at the appropriate time, with respect to the available ROM and RAM space. The savegame selection interface will contain an option to erase the contents of a savegame slot.
Replacement of the original password generation display with a routine that will save the current status of all the player's characters in one of the savegame slots on the EEPROM chip. This routine will be called whenever the player selects the "GAME SAVE" option from the main in-game menu, and will allow the player to select which savegame slot is to be used for saving the current game session data.
Correction of certain software bugs which Bruce Tomlin noticed and documented at some point back in 2007. The list of bugs to fix will be made available upon request. Some of these bugs may have already been fixed by Bruce Tomlin, this will need to be determined.
Addition of "PUBLISHED BY TEAM PIXELBOY" on the main title screen.

A socketed prototype of the 32K+EEPROM cartridge PCB (with all available technical documentation) will be provided to the executor of the tasks listed above.

Please contact Pixelboy if you are interested in acting as executor of this contract. For more details about the ColecoVision port of The Black Onyx, you can examine this thread of the AtariAge forums.

AVAILABLE MEDIA AND MATERIAL:

Latest version of Bruce Tomlin's source code
Latest available binary file
Scans of the original japanese box and manual are available upon request.