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Paul Machacek

@paulmach.bsky.social
212 followers 45 following 120 posts

Game & Teams Builder 1980s onwards. Superhero Battletoads BanjoKazooie DonkeyKongLand MrPants VivaPinata SeaofThieves and many many more….

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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Well i wasn’t expecting that this morning. To b clear, not much was carried over from Battletoads, some support functions but the engine that drove VRAM downloading was the main bit, though heavily modified for DKL. The player movement & controls were from scratch, emulating DKC but to fit GB screen
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
You’re welcome
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Reposted by Paul Machacek
DK Vine @dkvine.com · 31/01/2026
Oh, and I also got to eventually interview @paulmach.bsky.social about all of the wild, mysterious Donkey Kong Land renders that wound up in this issue… like this li’l freak! www.dkvine.com?p=podcasts&s...
Ram Bunkshus, a scrapped Animal Buddy with massive horns from Donkey Kong Land’s development.
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
I absolutely loved working on VP:PP, it was such a fun game to make, we had a fantastic team, development went extremely smoothly and I must say it’s a game I really enjoyed playing afterwards
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
Much appreciated
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
You’re most welcome, love that someone still enjoys it 30 years later. Apologies for the minimal / poor congratulations ending, my dad was seriously ill at the time and i had to take a few weeks off work, and when i returned there just wasn’t time to do anything better.
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
Yep, bad timing
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
Rare always tried to create magic, and in the early days it was possible to do things with hardware that could push boundaries of player experience. SnS was in that vein. The attitude to my SnS demo wasn’t “that’s 8100dy stupid” but rather “wow, how shall we exploit that?”. Happy XMAS folks
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DK Vine @dkvine.com · 23/12/2025
Legendary Rare designer Gregg Mayles has posted the full Stop 'N' Swop document for Banjo-Tooie! This includes plans for Donkey Kong as a playable character in Banjo-Tooie's multiplayer, how the Ice Key would be passed from Banjo-Kazooie to Donkey Kong 64 to Tooie (and beyond!), and much, much more.
dkvine.com
DK Vine • News • Gregg Mayles Reveals Donkey Kong Was Planned for Banjo-Tooie Multiplayer via Stop 'N' Swop
We finally know the original purpose of the Ice Key, Gold DK Bust, and other treasures in Banjo-Tooie.
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
You’re welcome
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
It never ends
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
If you’re waiting for Godot it may take some time (sorry, couldn’t resist)
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
I hope you enjoy it
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
That ship may have sailed (I’m so on-message lol)
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Reposted by Paul Machacek
Retro Gamer @retrogamermag.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
The latest issue of Retro Gamer is on sale now and features. Banjo-Kazooie Operation Wolf Th Great Escape Lumines: Puzzle Fusion Steve Jarratt kill.switch 8-bit jobs Magicland 2 Sonic 2 Burning Rangers And more Grab it in shops or directly from us. www.magazinesdirect.com/uk/single-is...
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
My son was asking about this recently and i stopped him after a brief check:
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 06/07/2025
You’re welcome
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 06/07/2025
Yeah someone “got lucky”!
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
Glad you’re still playing 😀 It’s crazy but DKL was the article of the day on Wikipedia yesterday, however they got the launch dates wrong. I handed over the final build somewhere around late June or early July and it would have taken some weeks to manufacture and ship to stores. Have Fun
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
Well we’re hiring www.rare.co.uk
rare.co.uk
Welcome to Rare
Official website of video game studio Rare, part of Xbox Game Studios and developer of Sea of Thieves
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 18/01/2025
Hey folks, please support for a good cause www.instagram.com/reel/DE7mVMu...
instagram.com
Login • Instagram
Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
Happy New Year everyone. It’s funny but this time a quarter of a century ago people were fearful of the possible consequences of the Y2K bug, social media wasn’t a thing and you had to take roles of film to a shop to get your 24/36 pictures. Good luck with the next 25
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
“A nebulous release” LoL. Happy New Year Hyle :-)
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
…Banjo Kazooie said that he burst out laughing quite noticeably in the barn when he read comments i had left for Chris Sutherland in the codebase. I’d written them ~17 years earlier but recalled them clearly when he related them to me. He said he had found it interesting how we had coded things BITD
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
One the the great things that happened was the fun discoveries that the newer members of Rare, people who had grown up on these games, had when they examined the source code. For some this was a holy grail, but full of the unseen side of Rare creativity and comedy. One engineer who was working on…
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
…and rediscovered a ton of stuff we’d forgotten about. So there was a WW1 biplane dogfighting idea called “Fokker” that re-emerged. Wrestlerage on SNES that @kevbayliss.bsky.social & i noodled on in 1992 inbetween Battletoad games resurfaced as well. Super Battletoads finally came back.
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
There was also a huge effort to get the games back. Seriously, we found 3.5inch and 5.25inch discs in wet cardboard boxes in a shed at Rare that had not been touched since the 1990s or even mid 1980s. We bought old PCs and drives from eBay to read the. We’d got back 95%+ of what we had…
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
We had a wall at Rare with a marker on it for every single game from Ultimate/Rare. They had to be whittled down. The conversations included “That’s a classic”, “That one is a reskin of the 1st”, “That one we can’t do as we don’t own it”, “that one is not worth it”, “those two are a bit 5h1t3”. Lol
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
It was a fantastic experience for so many reasons; the love the team had for the catalogue of games, revisiting some of my Ultimate Play The Game Favourites, the technical challenges of bringing these games back and the love for presenting them and bringing something new, a true homage
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
Now that we’re here, that Mr Pants video was part of the video archive we produced around the Rare Replay project; 30 games from 30 years for 30 dollars. We were working on that loving compilation 10 years ago and it released in 2015, so we’re running close to 10 years since launch.
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
And just as a reminder this is what we thought of it youtu.be/CLJAVWMI1F4?... Always loved Justin’s 1st bit where he realised that he’d have to justify the madness for the world to see
youtu.be
Rare Revealed: The Making of It's Mr. Pants
YouTube video by Rare Ltd
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
Going from a playable demo that i knocked out in a few hours in 1999 to it’s final “release” 5yrs later (with other stuff happening in between) was tortuous but I’m glad we did it. Rare; bringing the world games it doesn’t have. The folks who worked on this are very proud of it. Happy Birthday Pants
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Rare Ltd. @rare.co.uk · 25/12/2024
Happy holidays, whoever's seeing this! Hope you're closing the year out in style and, as it's the day of fine gifts and finer food, here's our offering - a delicious png for you to enjoy! Right, we're off to eat a Patagotitan's hypothesised weight in sweets. 'Til 2025!
A character in a yellow cloak stands near a deer-like creature. They're both looking towards a tree decorated in lights, where another creature and character stand. Strands of light are seemingly moving towards or away from the tree. Words read "Happy Holidays from Rare".
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Yesterdecades! But very generous sentiment all the same.
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
God i miss the 1970s youtu.be/z-QidYXYpig?...
youtu.be
Renaissance - Northern Lights (1st TOTP appearance, 1978) HD
YouTube video by tony713elo
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Go for it folks. I did my best here but it’s getting harder to recall stuff we did a long time ago. Retro Gamer is a great mag so please go and support
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
You didn’t have to think back almost 20 years to answer Darran’s questions for this article, lol. Honestly folks it’s getting harder. Many years and many games to recall
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Give me a single image of a film that immediately makes you hear the song from the soundtrack in your head
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
The irony is not lost on me
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
Ok, apologies, got busy & had a bit of a break from this thread, will try to pick it up again soon. I was going to move from Dawnssley to an earlier game i wrote call Darkwurlde & touch on the influences that Ultimate & early Genesis albums had on me at this time.
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
….my software to ensure the map didn’t scroll too fast both because the screen was blurry but also to ensure background characters could load to VRAM in time. So i think i put an artificial scroll speed limit in & if DK accelerated down too fast with gravity then he’d go off bottom of screen IIRC
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
No, maps/graphics all held on ROM cart and streamed to VRAM as fast as it could to ensure a quick seamless scroll, exactly how it was also done on NES & SNES. Thinking about it more now (sorry, vague, 30 years ago) there would have been a “max scroll speed” imposed by software…..
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
Erm, looks like it may be a bug. Sorry. It should have scrolled the screen quickly and you should have landed ok in my opinion today
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Also, the game doesn’t look the way we wanted it on that original blurry LCD screen. The sharpness here makes it look too bitty.
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
It pains me to look at that platform control
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
The platform size is relative to the screen size, not too big too fill, not too small to be hard to land on, but also it’s made of sprites and there are a finite number on GB. So the answer is “a bit of both”
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
You’re welcome and thanks for the support. #KeepPlaying
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Paul Machacek @paulmach.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Funnily enough i thought those were the worst levels. The gameplay was clunky and i was never happy with them
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