Zapped to the Past podcast (C64)

[squirtle]

As to whether I would recommend anyone play this version, no, I would not. Play the original, of course.

[Unofficial Who]

3 minutes ago, squirtle said:

I can only speak to my experience playing it, and to that end, I did garner some enjoyment out of the C64 version. Graham compared this to my reaction to Out Run, which I really got no enjoyment out of and that was the difference for me. Now, whether this is a good conversion of the arcade game is another question and on that level, yes it is lacking, but did I enjoy my time with this game? Yes, yes I did. I think that is an important distinction to make here. I was critical of its shortcomings, but I cannot deny that I had some fun with it. Comparing it to things like Galivan and Mag Max which are similar in design, this was much better, even if it does not have its arcade parent. Also, at this point, I had not played Zybex, which is probably better, but also has some issues of its own making.

 

I think that's a fair call and I suspect that part of my coldness towards it is down to playing the arcade version pretty recently. It's weird that I've had the inverse experience where I kind of enjoyed played the C64 port of Out Run (and did back in the day as well.)

 

I forgot to mention, some other platforms had much rougher versions of Side Arms. Check out this Amiga version!

 

 

The Amstrad version.

 

 

Weirdly enough the Spectrum version appears to have maintained the screen high bosses.

 

[Unofficial Who]

Zzap had a good hit rate but sometimes they would get a review badly badly wrong. I, Ball II:the Quest for the Past is one of the ones I remember. I sort of enjoyed the first game, a shooter / racer hybrid with a pulsing score and great speech.

 

 

The same can't be said for the sequel, a platform game made up of single screen challenges.

 

 

No music. Poor controls. And annoying speech. It feels like an early failed prototype for Cauldron 2. The game is rock hard and slow with some screens requiring you to wait 30 or 60 seconds for time based triggers to drop elements into place. I can't see why this got a Silver Medal or why it got  over 90%. I borrowed it from a friend and returned it the very next day.

 

Recommended for those who find Cuphead and Super Meat Boy too easy.

 

The only good thing about this game is the amazing review in the podcast where Graham and @squirtle mock the repeated speech samples used in the game.

[Unofficial Who]

For some reason over the years I'd somehow combined Little Green Man and I, Alien in my head. At least I could get somewhere with I, Alien!

 

 

You start off under a cold shower and you end...well if you're as crap as me you end up in the first or second pit whereupon the Little Green Man gasps "Bye!" in his dying breath.

 

This is awful. The person responsible would go on to do great things on the Amiga with the Alien Breed games.

 

Come back Side Arms! All is forgiven!

[squirtle]

Yeah, it's bloody awful. Just... Why did it get released? What were they thinking?

[Unofficial Who]

Osmium

 

This was a little better than Zip.

 

Not much though.

 

 

@squirtle, did the landscape judder up and down uncomfortably for you as well? I might be judging this on a poor copy.

 

The only thing to note here is how this led to Graham and @squirtle on the podcast rightly railing against the publisher for releasing games like this that would waste the pocket money of the children who would have made up the bulk of the market for budget releases. It reminds me of how rightfully harsh Zzap and later Amiga Power would be on the publishers of really bad games. And I do mean bad, outside of a couple of bad apples now quality control seems to have improved in leaps and bounds over the past couple of decades. 

 

Zzap gave this 33% which was generous. By way of comparison Commodore User gave this 6/10!

 

Quote

Yes, Osmium is a horizontally scrolling progressive shoot 'em up. Actually, make that regressive. As you fly over the instantly forgettable landscapes, shooting the aliens and collecting extra weapons via Delta-esque icons, the screen wobbles up and down. What a laugh. (...) No, Osmium isn't a good game. But it's the best laugh I've had in a long while Don't miss it.

 

Don't miss it? A laugh? It's fine to laugh at a poor game when you're a reviewer who got this in a sack full of tapes along with classics like The Eidolon. Less so if you're a punter.

[Unofficial Who]

My mother was a huge Garfield fan so I was pretty much across all the characters from the strip. There's some weird parallels here between this and Andy Capp in terms of design and also in terms of excellently capturing the look of the comic in digital form.

 

I borrowed this from a friend and was pretty excited at the prospect of playing this. I've talked about this before but as someone who loved Adventure on the C64 pre-Maniac Mansion arcade adventures were my go to genre. I loved exploring digital spaces (and still do) and working out connections between various objects. In truth the puzzles in these game are all locked door / key puzzles with the door and key being disguised as puzzles.

 

 

The non human characters have a lot of life in them, the human characters like John just kind of sit there which...well... it's in line with the comics.

 

 

It might not look it from above but the colours are pretty bold once you get outside. I wanted to love this game. But it has issues. One is the twin meters, one for hunger and one for food. They really work against each other and I think they were added as a complication to juggle to stop one from completing the game in five minutes.

 

There are other issues involving some poor collision detection on platforms (the walk through below illustrates that in various places) and the logic doesn't seem stright forward. That and a messy map just put me off and I returned this to my friend unfinished and uncopied.

 

There really isn't much to this game, it's about finding the critical path to freeing your girlfriend from the pound and juggling your hunger and health. It's interesting to contrast this with my current playthrough of Echo Generation on the PC which is pretty much similar in terms of puzzle design. But there's satisfaction in the puzzles in that game with most object / location combinations making sense. Here though, I mean the walkthrough below has notes talking about some of the issues.

 

So it's a bit of a miss, worth loading up to see the great graphics and animation although the Amiga / ST version looks even better!

 

And at least you don't get the existential dread you get from Andy Capp.

 

 

Anyway spoilers for 30 year old game below. Worth watching if like me you wanted to finally put this game to bed.

 

 

 

[squirtle]

2 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

Osmium

 

This was a little better than Zip.

 

Not much though.

 

 

@squirtle, did the landscape judder up and down uncomfortably for you as well? I might be judging this on a poor copy.

 

The only thing to note here is how this led to Graham and @squirtle on the podcast rightly railing against the publisher for releasing games like this that would waste the pocket money of the children who would have made up the bulk of the market for budget releases. It reminds me of how rightfully harsh Zzap and later Amiga Power would be on the publishers of really bad games. And I do mean bad, outside of a couple of bad apples now quality control seems to have improved in leaps and bounds over the past couple of decades. 

 

Zzap gave this 33% which was generous. By way of comparison Commodore User gave this 6/10!

 

 

Don't miss it? A laugh? It's fine to laugh at a poor game when you're a reviewer who got this in a sack full of tapes along with classics like The Eidolon. Less so if you're a punter.

Massive shaking of the screen. Awful.

 

Oh, and if you didn't get the reference for the cold jokes...

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

New episode is up here at https://zappedtothepast.com/

 

Games covered this episode

 

-IO

-Masters of the Universe – The Movie

-Fruit Machine Simulator

-Sidewalk

-Zybex

-Point X

-A Question of Scruples

-Battle Valley

 

Some pretty solid efforts this episode with some questionable choices.

[Unofficial Who]

IO.

 

Into Oblivion. You can't accuse this game of false advertising. Just give me a moment to have a quick go...there....dead already. 

 

(Rocks back in frustration.)

 

 

Anyway I had this back in the day thanks to the big box of discs I was given and this was and still is one of the best looking games on the C64. It really makes a great impression when starting. That musical sting "da da da da da da whoosh!" as your drop ship drops you into the first level.

 

 

Oh, and you're already dead, hemmed in by two gun emplacements and a dazzling array of impressive looking craft.

 

And this is the big missed opportunity here, it's just too hard for mortals. This is the Cuphead of the C64, a game that for some would really benefit from an easy mode. It looks amazing. All four settings are impressive.

 

 

Each level has a unique trick (my favourite is the eggs in level 2 that spawn facehuggers.)

 

 

And the bosses are some of the most impressive looking bosses in a C64 game full stop. They still look good now, back then with pixel bleed on a CRT they looked amazing!

 

 

There's even an endgame animated sequence which I won't spoil here. I only saw it back in the day thanks to the disc I was given having an invincibility cheat. A cheat that renders the game pointless but one that does allow you to enjoy the art on display.

 

This game is such a missed opportunity. With some tweaking this would have been one of the all time C64 greats as it is one can only appreciate it as a slideshow of graphic and technical talent. Unless you're someone who finds Dark Souls games just a tad too easy or if you're a bullet hell aficionado with the skills to avoid a storm of objects then this is a miss...

 

Unless you use this one neat trick. Some unofficial releases of the game post the commercial life of the C64 contain cheats that change the balance of the game. Trying one of these I chose only the following two options. Rapid fire on (because I'm getting too old to hammer a fire button over and over.) And Always Start with all the weapons.

 

These two tiny changes turn what is an overly hard grind into a difficult but fair challenge and completely transform the game. Some people rail against user set difficulty settings but I've had a load of experiences over the past two years where games like Control and Hades which were for me too hard at their default settings could be changed into something that was still challenging and rewarding. These two tiny changes open the game up to mere mortals and I've gone from recommending this as a miss to making it easily my pick of this episode. For me this really makes the case for accessibility options, it's not a walk in the park even with these two cheats active. But it feels much less punitive and hateful allowing you to recover from at least two mistakes per life. Give it a try if you bounced off it back in the day.

[Unofficial Who]

Thinking a little bit more about IO now that I've played more with the tweaked version. It's a really impressive piece of work. It's obviously inspired by R-Type and Gradius but unlike the slew of clones we'll be seeing this year (some of which hew so close they spawn legal action) they've taken advantage of not needing to adapt pixel by pixel a game designed to run on cutting edge hardware and have used some of that design as a foundation for something that suits the hardware.

 

I remember IO being a very colourful game but when you look at it carefully they're keeping with the limits of three colours for sprites and four for objects.

 

 

And the bosses do a great job of suggesting movement when to all intents and purposes they're backdrops with only one or two moving parts.

 

 

There's a lot of clever ideas and technical excellence masked by that awful difficulty. Playtesting and tweaking became much more of a thing in the 16bit era, in part I guess as a reaction to the tight design shown by competition like Nintendo. This really needed at least a week of playtesting from someone other than the coders.

 

Do we know when playtesting became a thing in the UK? I know it was definitely a thing by the Amiga era.

[carleton]

1 hour ago, Unofficial Who said:

This really needed at least a week of playtesting from someone other than the coders.

 

Do we know when playtesting became a thing in the UK? I know it was definitely a thing by the Amiga era.

 

Well games were tested and tweaked as you coded them but obviously the developer themselves had lots of blind spots. The publishers would often come up with suggestions as well. That said I'd never worked with (or even heard of) a games-tester (latterly QA) during all my time working on the C64. When I started at Tiertex in '93 we had two full time QAs and it's as you'd imagine they were pretty helpful in finding lots of stuff. They also played in a totally different way to how a coder would in that they try and break the game with unusual behaviour. Whereas I'd check the bit of code I wrote worked as intended, often in limited circumstances and move to the next bit.

To this day it's hard to watch somebody new play your game. Everything you take for granted is right out of the window in the first five minutes. I watched a VOD of something playing one of my games on Twitch and it took all my effort to not shout at the screen.

Back to the episode and there's a few I've heard of for once. Battle Valley had an amazing tune and Zybex was an excellent budget game. I think the coder of that did quite a few "tributes" to arcade games of the time, often with better results than the official conversion.

[squirtle]

It doesn't surprise me that there was no testing back then. It's a shame because so many games are almost there and it's clear with some testing and tweaking, they would have been so much better.

[merman]

Zybex is an amazing game, love it so much because it was budget price and played better than many full-price shoot 'em ups.

 

Case in point: IO. It's incredible from a technical point of view, looks and sounds fantastic - even that little starting piece with the ship being dropped off looks amazing. And then the difficulty hits you.

 

The big problem was that the people making the games were the ones testing them. And they became so good at playing them, they set the difficulty artificially high (or made them tough to get the better of reviewers like Julian Rignall, famed for his gameplaying ability).

[Unofficial Who]

I was a big fan of He-Man as a kid but I totally skipped out on the movie that led to Masters of the Universe : The Movie : The Game because I wasn't very inspired by what I saw as a cop out with setting the movie in downtown New York instead of Eternia. There seemed to be a slew of these sorts of movies at the time with Biggles being the prime example of dropping a fictional character into a contemporary city.

 

 

I'm almost tempted to watch it now as it looks like pure 80's cheese!

 

Anyway the reviews made this look rather dull and I kind of forgot this even existed until this episode.

 

First impressions are great with the big logo and the massive sprite.

 

 

But the main game itself? It's well programmed but it's just so dull.

 

 

It feels like a SUECK game. That's no slight on Chris Shrigley, SUECK is incredibly well programmed. This feels smooth with nary a flicker in sight. But it feels soulless and worse than that the navigation in the game is so confusing using a similar method as was used in Andy Capp and Deathwish 3 where you are reoriented in every screen. It feels so pointless with me going around in circles in what seemed to be a dull shooter / find the things game. Is this all there is? Seriously?

 

Well no, there is more. I had a look at a walkthrough and found narrative interactions

 

 

A shooting gallery.

 

 

There's even Highlander style fighting sections and an end game animated sequence! I'll link the long play below. All this is for naught if you can't find those bits, I got bored long before I got anywhere despite giving it a good old try.

 

I suspect that the twin pressures of time and having to consult constantly with the rightsholders prevented this from being greater.

 

Chris Shrigley was asked about making this back in 2016 and touched briefly on the challenges. https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/chris-shrigley/

 

Quote

Masters of the Universe: The Movie was based on the camp 80s He-Man film starring Dolph Lundgren – Is there any difference when making a movie based title as opposed to an original game?
 

The process and mechanics are essentially the same. The project goes through the same phases of design, pre-production, production, testing, etc.  The main differences are around how much control and creative freedom the team has with the game. Usually, on a movie tie in or IP that a third party owns, everything has to be approved and go through some sort of external process.  Sometimes that external process can involve people that don’t really now about games or understand the project.  Lawyers, marketing people, the producer’s kids. That sort of thing (sounds lovely… – Ed).

 

The takeaway I got from this was that the core game loop was slick but dull with a confusing map. I can't in all fairness speak to the other elements in the game since I couldn't find them. 

 

Do check out the longplay though.

 

[Unofficial Who]

Fruit Machine Simulator

 

Yeah, no interest back in the day and no interest now. I can't think of anything worse.

 

[squirtle]

44 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

Fruit Machine Simulator

 

Yeah, no interest back in the day and no interest now. I can't think of anything worse.

 

You're not wrong.

[Unofficial Who]

I had Sidewalk thanks to the big box of discs that had been given to me. It's an interesting game in that it feels like the precursor to visual novels. Unfortunately it suffers on several counts.

 

 

The graphics feel really grainy. It's almost as if the elements were digitised, something that works on higher res machines but looks messy on the C64. The city navigation just like Andy Capp, Deathwish 3 and Masters of the Universe is difficult to deal with. The viewpoint changes without any indication of compass points.

 

The fighting sub game is just awful.

 

 

And the depiction of women is...well...of its time.

 

Spoiler

 

I found this dull as a teen and 30 years on it feels depressing and sad. I'm not sure why they chose dark grey rather than black for the contrasting colour, it makes the game look more washed out than the other versions. A brave attempt at something different and maybe it was met with more enthusiasm in 80's France. But there's not much to recommend here.

[Unofficial Who]

On 11/10/2022 at 21:50, merman said:

Zybex is an amazing game, love it so much because it was budget price and played better than many full-price shoot 'em ups.

 

So earlier when I was talking about IO and how clones of games have the advantage of taking what's great about a released game and making it into a new thing that works better for the platform?

 

Well Zybex does that with the Sidearms concept. Take the jetboy from Sidearms, lock him facing right, have autofire and then use fire to switch between weapons? Brilliant! Then sell it at a budget price? Bargain!

 

There's not much to this game. It's classic shoot or avoid waves of baddies and be tempted by pickups. It moves along at a fast clip and if I had any complaints it would be that it can be almost impossible at times powered down.

 

 

Zeppelin didn't have distribution in my country but I was able to get my hands on this in 1991 thanks to a covermount on Zzap (so for me it was even more of a bargain). And even in 1991 I was impressed. Sadly at the time I couldn't convince anyone to play it with me and I suspect you only really have a chance if you have two players but this has to be the bargain of the episode. As @merman says it puts a lot of full price games to shame and US Gold/Go! must have been really annoyed seeing this released the very same month.

[merman]

The weapons system in Zybex is really clever.

There are five weapons, and each can be upgraded five times (increasing their size and strength).

Dying downgrades the current weapon by one step (although you will always have the starting weapon at strength 1).

Fire cycles through the weapons you currently possess, giving you plenty of strategy to choose the right weapon for what’s coming up.

 

Enemies and bosses drop extra weapon icons. You might have to wipe out a whole wave of enemies, or target particular ones.

And best of all, there’s no “speed” upgrades.

[Unofficial Who]

2 hours ago, merman said:

Enemies and bosses drop extra weapon icons. You might have to wipe out a whole wave of enemies, or target particular ones.

And best of all, there’s no “speed” upgrades.

 

Speed upgrades always feel awful.

 

It's always "you don't move well until you fill up on these." But then there is the troll move of "you powered up too much, good luck not slamming into a wall now!"

[Unofficial Who]

I was sure I'd played Point X before but it turns out I was thinking of a somewhat worse Xevious clone.

 

And that is what this is, a clone of the Namco classic with a few changes to gameplay (an energy bar instead of lives) and graphics (though I doubt changing the main sprite to the ship from Galaga would have protected them in court.)

 

Very much a case of

 

 

And it's solid. It lacks most of the features that make Xevious great but it's big selling point is it's more playable than the official port and....I guess that's it?

 

 

I mean taking out ground installations is a lot of fun and I can tell a lot of thought has gone into the enemy waves but I can see why Zzap was so harsh on this. It's good budget fare, but full price when at this stage you could probably get Lightforce on budget is too much.

 

I'm surprised that no-one has hacked this into a straight out Xevious clone in the intervening years.

[squirtle]

I enjoyed my time with Point X. I should have mentioned that the best game inspired by Xevious is still Black Hawk, but as straight out clones go, this is ok. Would have been great at budget prices.

[Unofficial Who]

I couldn't find a working copy of A Question of Scruples

 

To be honest I didn't try that hard. The rush of social board games conversions post the moderate success of Trivial Pursuit reminds me a lot of the current flood of Among Us clones. In both cases Among Us and Trivial Pursuit took a social game, added a few things to make the computer version interesting but importantly kept it simple enough anyone could understand it to great success.

 

And anyone trying to follow things up is left with the only way to make your game different is to make it more complicated. Thus losing any appeal.

 

Oh, and in both cases playing in single player is a waste of time.

 

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

Which leaves to last the excellent Battle Valley, a game I finally got my hands on in 1992 thanks to Commodore Format's cover tapes.

 

 

This feels like it was inspired directly either by Action Force or Rescue Raiders on the Apple 2. In a tight time limit you have to use helicopters and tanks to take over other bases within a tight time limit. I never got too far with this sadly, I could never get the hang of finding the sweet spot to remove hut roofs to use as makeshift ramps so it's always been a game I've admired for its design and technical achievements than for fun. 

 

It's an impressive game if you can get the hang of it with the amazing bouncing tank and the Scramble like helicopter (that changes engine pitch depending on your altitude, a nice touch.)

 

Recommended even if I can't get past some of the control issues.

 

[squirtle]

59 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

I couldn't find a working copy of A Question of Scruples

 

To be honest I didn't try that hard. The rush of social board games conversions post the moderate success of Trivial Pursuit reminds me a lot of the current flood of Among Us clones. In both cases Among Us and Trivial Pursuit took a social game, added a few things to make the computer version interesting but importantly kept it simple enough anyone could understand it to great success.

 

And anyone trying to follow things up is left with the only way to make your game different is to make it more complicated. Thus losing any appeal.

 

Oh, and in both cases playing in single player is a waste of time.

 

 

 

I've got a copy that works if you want it...?

[squirtle]

39 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

Which leaves to last the excellent Battle Valley, a game I finally got my hands on in 1992 thanks to Commodore Format's cover tapes.

 

 

This feels like it was inspired directly either by Action Force or Rescue Raiders on the Apple 2. In a tight time limit you have to use helicopters and tanks to take over other bases within a tight time limit. I never got too far with this sadly, I could never get the hang of finding the sweet spot to remove hut roofs to use as makeshift ramps so it's always been a game I've admired for its design and technical achievements than for fun. 

 

It's an impressive game if you can get the hang of it with the amazing bouncing tank and the Scramble like helicopter (that changes engine pitch depending on your altitude, a nice touch.)

 

Recommended even if I can't get past some of the control issues.

 

Budget games for the win, this week.

[Unofficial Who]

11 minutes ago, squirtle said:

Budget games for the win, this week.

 

And for those prepared to wait (or those that had no choice) it was even more of a win years later. I lived for cover tapes with games like this back in the day.

 

[Unofficial Who]

On 15/10/2022 at 07:11, squirtle said:

I've got a copy that works if you want it...?

 

That sounds like it could be included as a question...of Scruples!

 

"You're offered a pirate copy of a game long out of print so you can make an accurate summary of it in a post. It's one of the worst C64 games ever made. Do you accept?"

 

The answer of course is

 

[squirtle]

Just now, Unofficial Who said:

 

That sounds like it couple be included as a question...of Scruples!

 

"You're offered a pirate copy of a game long out of print so you can make an accurate summary of it in a post. It's one of the worst C64 games ever made. Do you accept?"

 

The answer of course is

 

I challenge!