Nebulus
Alternative title: Tower-Toppler  (US title)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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You play a small green frog like creature who needs to blow up eight towers, because their presence is somehow poisoning the water of planets which could potentially be ideal colonies. Unfortunately you need to get to the top of these towers to blow them up. 

You make your way up to the top of the tower via walkways around the outside of the towers. You need to jump over, kick, and run from various enemies in your journey to the top. Most vertical movement is achieved by jumping onto moving ledges at the right moment. 

The game was considered revolutionary in its time for its graphic technique. As the main character walked around the outside of the tower, the character was fixed in the middle of the screen while the tower itself rotated. This gave it a pseudo-3D effect.

Towers are linked together via a voyage through the sea in your trusty MK.7 submarine. This plays out as a side-scrolling collect-'em-up in which bonus points can be obtained.

Alternate Titles
"Nebulus" -- European title
"Kyorochan Land" -- Famicom title
"Castelian" -- GB/NES title

Trivia

John Romero actually did the Apple IIe port of Tower Toppler but Epyx canceled the port along with all their other game ports when they were strapped for cash because they were pouring all their money into Atari Lynx launch title development. The Apple IIe version was in 16-color double-res and used page-flipping. Romero showed it off at the 1989 AppleFest in Kansas City.

The game was also ported to the Atari XE Game System, but never released. Copies of the cartridge surfaced in the late 90s, and it turned out that the XE version ran in black and white on PAL systems, except on poor display systems, where the black and white patterns turned into colours due to cross-talk on low-bandwidth colour signals. On any NTSC system the game would run in full color, looking pretty close to the 7800 version. Since the prototype uses the Tower Toppler name it probably was intended for US release, so the developers would be expecting the game to display in color and not black and white. 

 In Japan, where the game was released as Kyorochan Land, the green colored frog was replaced by Kyorochan, a parrot-like cartoon bird who serves as the mascot of Moringa & Co., a confectionery company.

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Description from the packaging  (Tower Toppler US release) :

The head honcho over at Destructo Inc. headquarters has sent you to this alien-forsaken planet, Nebulus, to do what you do best. Destroy stuff. Like towers taller than the Empire State Building.
What the bone-head also neglected to tell you is that there are eight of these monuments hidden in the middle of a toxic ocean. And that to get rid of them, you've gotta work your way to the top of them. Plus one more itty bitty detail: The more towers you topple, the tougher the next one gets.
Embark on you MK.7 Mini-Submarine and give it a whirl.
Or rather, let the towers give you a whirl. You see, as you twist and wiggle your way up (hopefully) each of these colossal columns, they turn with you. So the vantage point of the action shifts, too. Which you'll need when you come up against the myriad of obstacles standing between you and the top of the towers.

Like indestructible mutant molecules. Crushing boulders whose very touch'll send you sailing back to sea level. Dark tunnels, and ledges that have a nasty habit of disintegrating the instant you set foot on them.

You'll want to take full advantage of what little help you have. Like emergency elevator lifts. And a snowball gun that'll freeze the stuff standing between you and immortality.
Yeah, yeah. You knew you'd have to fight your way up the corporate ladder when you started alright. But nobody ever said it'd be this tough.
Eight deadly towers to scale. Each with their own set of surprises.
Encounter indestructible mutant molecules, crushing and bulldozing boulders, dark tunnels, and slippery and disintegrating ledges.

Towers rotate 3 dimensionally giving a new sense of play and view of the game.
Hop into your trusty MK.7 Mini-Submarine.
One false move sends you into sludge sea.
Conquer all the towers and be the hero.


http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/tower-toppler
