Twinz Pro version 3 was the third version of this game to be made. It was originally started back in 1996 and was written on the Commodore Amiga using AMOS Professional. It was aimed at PAL Amiga systems back in the day (being that I was using a PAL machine) and the screen resolution was 320x256 pixels. All graphics used the same sized tileset, which only consisted of 32 colours! Man, those were the days =) People are so spoiled to have 24-bit support nowadays in games, they forget the hard work and effort that went into creating a solid palette that made every one of your tiles look somewhat good ;)

The game idea was very simple, all you had to do to complete the level was pair off all of the game tiles by uncovering them two at a time. If the pair matched each other, they would stay open. If they didn't match up correctly, then they would cover themselves up again. The skill involved was memorizing where on the game grid the tiles were that had already been exposed. Bonuses were offered if you uncovered multiple tiles in sequence of each other.

Other bonuses were not always as rewarding. You would on occasion get the bonus icon that would cause the board to be re-shuffled, which would really mess up your groove when it came to memorizing where all the pieces were. You could also uncover extra playing tiles, that sort of thing. Bonuses were not added until version 2 and above of the game.

One of my favourite pieces of the newer versions of the game was the additional bonus levels. If you were able to complete the level within a set amount of time, you could compete for a random challenge to try and earn some extra points. There were several different levels that were randomly selected, and you had 30 seconds in which to score as many points as possible. The same bonus rules applied, so if you were good you could easily rack up a few thousand extra points especially if you were able to solve the puzzle in time. The most popular bonus round was the level that featured the electrical resitors. They were the same identical picture, with three ribbons of colour which would change from resistor to resistor. At time of writing this, I only know of three people who have been able to complete the level in it's entirety in the allotted 30 seconds.

The graphics in version one were very simple, some simple images I had gathered from various places on my hard drive and cropped down. I had a lot of empty space to fill, so I actually drew about 30% of the needed tiles myself using Personal Paint. They looked quite tacky, though most of the tiles did anyways being that the resolution was so low. These tiles mainly consisted of very simple shapes. I had also used a selection of tiles from my friend Paul Burkey, who at the time was working on the Amiga version of PilesOTiles Mahjongg. As the revisions of the game got newer, I started using more digitized images, until eventually about 85% of the entire game tiles were digital. I spent many many hours tweaking the palette to make them all look good with 32 colours!

This game is currently being re-developed by F1-Software and should be available to download by the end of January 2008. The game will be available for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and PocketPC. The game features full photo quality images, saveable high scores, and lots more ideas and suggestions to supersede the original. There were a few things we wanted to do back then but couldn't due to system limitations so this gives us an opportunity to do some of those things! It even supports the original resistor bonus level to really get the grey matter working! For more information, see the Twinz section on the main website.

The original Twinz game was developed on the Sinclair Spectrum by Theo Develegas as part of his 'One Game A Month' strategy he was working with Sinclair User. Theo did many great speccy games throughout his career. Theo's website can be found HERE. Theo wrote me an email a few years ago after discovering Twinz on my old Amiga website =)

See the Twinz Pro image gallery!