Little Big Planet C64 – exclusive interview!

10th April 2019

If you follow the C64 world on Twitter, you’ve almost certainly seen something very special of late. Blink once, blink twice, and you’ll still see LittleBigPlanet‘s Sack Boy running around in what appears to be the beginnings of a Commodore 64 game. Two days ago, a new video emerged:

The Tweets came from the British games developer Mark Healey. He’s the co-founder and creative director of Media Molecule, whose first game for PS3 was…yup, LittleBigPlanet. Mark’s also very well known for his love of the Commodore 64: his first published game was KGB Super Spy for Codemasters, and you’ll also find his work in stuff like the Fun School series and Ocean’s Hook.

So could it be true? Could the guy behind one of Playstation 3’s most iconic games be bringing Sack Boy to his beloved C64? Commodore Format spoke with Mark to find out.

“Yes, it’s real! It’s a hobby project of mine – a slow labour of love and finding time is difficult, so when it would be ready to unleash I can’t really say. As soon as there is something that can pass as a game I guess – obviously I’m not planning to do a full port of all of LBP, more a Sack Boy spin-off.”

So what’s the story behind such an exciting project?

“It’s pure self-indulgence really – working on it is like a time machine for me, I spent many happy years making stuff on C64 back in the day, it’s burnt into my soul. It’s nice sometimes to switch from working in modern game dev in a large team with the pressures that come with that – and go back to when it was purely a hobby.”

As for those C64 days, we asked Mark what his proudest moment is.

“KGB Super Spy – not because it’s a brilliant game, but it was my first released one, which felt like a big personal achievement for me at the time. And Hook, I did all the graphics for in a very short space of time – about a week I seem to remember.”

Time’s on Mark’s side as far as his Sack Boy spin-off goes, but we can’t wait to get our hands on something playable. Keep up with Mark’s progress @marcoshealey, and we’ll hopefully get to chat with him again around the time that the game surfaces. CF