Davide Bottino — a pixel artist, game creator, and retro journalist for Zzap! Italia — is behind the remaster of the port and has recently been sharing some incredible new footage of it in action over on his Twitter, posting a first test featuring some of the newly updated character sprites.
Bottino has been working on the remaster now for 20 months and originally announced his plans to work on a remaster of the Commodore 64 version back in February 2023 on the Lemon64 forums.
At that time, he called the original port from Ocean Software "a decent and above average conversion for the C64" but claimed that it also left "a lot to be desired" in regards to its "crude" sprites, particularly for the protagonist and the game's bosses. As a result, he claimed it was always his dream to see whether he could do any better, so he set out to redraw and recolour the game's sprites, to produce a version that is much more similar to the original 1989 arcade release.
In addition to updated visuals, the remaster will also apparently include new music and sound effects, bug fixes, and improved controls, according to the website IndieRetroNews, which has been reporting on Bottino's progress over the last year. The plan seems to be to eventually release the remaster of the game in 2024/2025, with players being able to get their hands on it for free.
Here is the original game, for reference:
Toki's Commodore 64 Port Is Getting A Fan Remaster, And It Looks Great
The remaster hopes to improve some of game's "crude" character sprites
www.timeextension.com
