Drilling Billy


What is it?
A Lode Runner clone (arcade) running in 800×600, 1997, DOS/SVGA and OS/2.
What computer or emulator will it run on?
A Pentium with 8 resp. 16MB RAM.
Similar Games
Bang, Tetris Pro, CRTetris.

Drilling Billy was the brainchild of Piet Kargaard, the programming was done by Troels Nordfalk, music and sound effects by David Filskov (who now maintains a sort of official website for the game). Piet Kargaard then created the Hugo series of games for ITE Media, based on a popular TV show, again with music and sound effects by David Filskov. For Troels Nordfalk, I found no evidence that he was ever involved in another game project.

OS/2?

Yes, Drilling Billy was available in an OS/2 version as well. In 1996, Piet Kargaard told the OS/2 e-Zine:

To be honest with you, the OS/2 version came about as a coincidence. When I looked for a programmer for Drilling Billy I had only the DOS version in mind, but as it turned out that programmer was an OS/2 fan and he argued strongly for an OS/2 version. As a coincidence I'm an old Amiga fan myself and I can see the wisdom in releasing software to a devoted but neglected market like OS/2.

There was even an OS/2 demo, which can still be downloaded from Norloff's OS/2 BBS, but you need a subscription. For the full game, there was a seperate OS/2 executable which you could use after doing a DOS install. It didn't work all too well, mainly because OS/2 wasn't a good platform for games that were intended to run fullscreen. Read the OS/2 e-Zine review for details.

Links

Related changelog entries: 2010-09-28 2010-05-08