Maldita Castilla gets a playable Amiga AGA demo

Homebrew developer MainakeProject has released a playable Commodore Amiga AGA demo for Maldita Castilla, bringing Spanish indie creator Locomalito's 2012 action-platformer to 1990s computer hardware. The demo is available on itch.io as a free 6MB zip archive and covers the complete first stage, from the opening village and graveyard hazards through its boss fight.

While the port is an unofficial fan conversion, MainakeProject built it with Locomalito's full blessing and support. The studio used the authorized original sprites, backgrounds, and chiptune soundtrack by Javier García (Gryzor87), and explicitly notes on the release page that no generative AI was used during development.

I'm curious to hear how Gryzor87's music translates to Commodore's four-channel Paula audio chip, since the original score leaned so heavily on simulated Yamaha YM2203 FM synthesis to sound like a dusty arcade cabinet.

Spanish folklore by way of Capcom

Maldita Castilla originally launched as freeware for Windows in December 2012, before getting an expanded commercial edition called Cursed Castilla (Maldita Castilla EX) across Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC starting in 2016. Locomalito designed the game as a love letter to Capcom's Ghosts 'n Goblins and Ghouls 'n Ghosts, trading generic fantasy undead for European folklore and Spanish chivalric myths.

Players step into the armor of Don Ramiro, a knight dispatched by King Alfonso VI of León in 1081 to clear demons out of the cursed lands of Tolomera. Like Arthur before him, Ramiro commits fully to every jump arc, meaning hasty button presses usually end in an immediate skeleton pile. At least Don Ramiro gets to keep his dignity instead of running around a graveyard in heart-patterned boxers.

A stock Amiga 1200 won't cut it

MainakeProject, previously known in the homebrew scene for projects like Amiga Man, built this conversion using Erik Hogan's (Earok) Scorpion Engine. Commodore's 16-bit computers never lacked arcade platformers back in the late '80s and early '90s, though faithful Ghosts 'n Goblins ports and homages were pretty rare on the hardware (Elite Systems' official 1990 Amiga conversion of the original Capcom coin-op struggled with sluggish scrolling and missing audio). Over the past few years, Scorpion Engine has fueled a modern renaissance for AGA homebrew, letting small teams push smooth 68000-series 2D action that rivals late-era commercial releases.

Running Maldita Castilla requires an AGA-equipped machine like the Amiga 1200 or Amiga 4000 with a Motorola 68020 processor, 2MB of Chip RAM, and an extra 2MB of Fast RAM. Because Commodore shipped the base A1200 in 1992 with only 2MB of Chip RAM on the motherboard, an unexpanded stock unit won't run the demo without a trapdoor Fast RAM expansion card or accelerator.

Right now, the itch.io download comes strictly as a directory install rather than a bootable floppy or pre-built hard drive file. Responding to players asking about alternative formats in the release comments, MainakeProject said an ADF or HDF disk image is "definitely something we could look into later," though the team is currently swamped with several other projects and hopes to circle back to disk images when time permits. Stage 1 already looks right at home on 1992 silicon.