Typhoon Thompson
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Game
Click the screen to capture the mouse; Esc releases it.
Display
Graphics
Enhanced redraws the background and every sprite separately at up to 4× with a pixel-art upscaler, and moves sprites smoothly between the game's ticks. Gameplay is unchanged.
Sound
How to play
You are Typhoon Thompson, skimming the sea of a remote ocean planet on a hover craft. The mouse steers; the buttons fire.
The story
On a remote ocean planet, a shipwrecked infant is adopted by sea sprites who won't give him back.
Piloting deadly flyers left by a vanished race, the sprites send rescuers to a watery grave.
Local spirits will guide your battle for four artifacts which can free the child.
From the game's own story pages.
Controls (the game's F2 screen)
| Steer | Mouse (click the game screen first) |
| Jets | Right button |
| Laser cannon | Left button |
| Scatter bombs | Hold left, press right |
| Sprite magnets | Hold right, press left |
| Freeze bombs | Space bar |
| Pause | Esc (or the Pause button) |
What to do
Blast flyers to release sprites. Grab all sprites in a village to exchange them for an artifact.
Bring the dagger, the hammer, the balloon and the pacifier to the spirits, then rescue the baby. Watch out for the bumper, forcer, womper, bubbler, spitter, sucker and zapper; the cast list shows them all.
Behind the scenes
The game here is the original 68000 machine code, run by an emulator written for this project, and also translated to JavaScript so it can be rewritten piece by piece while playing identically. That makes it possible to pull the game apart: every sprite and animation, the music as notes, and experiments in redrawing the graphics without changing how the game plays. Ideas welcome.
Cast list
Every character and object in the game, named from its own text, with where each sprite appears.
Animations
All 135 scripted animations, played from the game's own data at its tick rate, plus every sprite sheet.
Music lab
The game's music as notes: piano roll, swap the instruments, hear the sound effects.
Style tests experiment
AI video models restyling the animations. Not good yet: the sprites are too small for them to know what they show.
3D tests experiment
The round flyers spun into 3D models from their own sprite outlines, viewed from the game's camera.