Zapped to the Past podcast (C64)

[Unofficial Who]

41 minutes ago, squirtle said:

If you speed the emulator up, it plays better. I liked it because it's design is so pure, and as both you and I mention, the core of this has been seen in so many games - how many crates have we pushed around to get to a higher ledge? - it's worth recognising it's legacy.

 

I think the issue I have with this is the same issue I had when watching The Godfather for the first time ten years ago. Total classic but I'd seen all the elements from The Godfather in so many other movies that it seemed tropey and predictable if only because I'd come to the original too late. (Whereas I played Pipemania a lot before seeing elements of it in the hacking mini games of Bioshock.)

 

Good call with upping the clock speed! I think some of my frustration was seeing the solution and then spending a long time enacting it.

[squirtle]

3 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

I think the issue I have with this is the same issue I had when watching The Godfather for the first time ten years ago. Total classic but I'd seen all the elements from The Godfather in so many other movies that it seemed tropey and predictable if only because I'd come to the original too late. (Whereas I played Pipemania a lot before seeing elements of it in the hacking mini games of Bioshock.)

 

Good call with upping the clock speed! I think some of my frustration was seeing the solution and then spending a long time enacting it.

Yeah, I can understand that. It's hard not to see Fat Tony and Don Vittorio from the Simpsons when watching The Godfather or Goodfellas, or hear Homer make the tune on the glasses. But I'm a sucker for these kind of puzzle games and the commitment to the presentation in this with the lift and everything just entertained me no end.

[Unofficial Who]

For those who really want an easily playable almost infinite online version of Sokoban there's https://www.sokobanonline.com/

 

Sokoban is being used for AI research because of it's complexity.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokoban

 

Quote

Sokoban can be studied using the theory of computational complexity. The problem of solving Sokoban puzzles was first proved to be NP-hard.[5][6] Further work showed that it was significantly more difficult than NP problems; it is PSPACE-complete.[7] This is of interest for artificial intelligence (AI) research because solving Sokoban can be compared to the automated planning required by some autonomous robots.

Sokoban is difficult not only because of its large branching factor, but also because of its large search tree depth. Some level types can even be extended indefinitely, with each iteration requiring an exponentially growing number of moves and pushes.[8] Skilled human players rely mostly on heuristics and are usually able to quickly discard a great many futile or redundant lines of play by recognizing patterns and subgoals, thereby drastically reducing the search effort.

Some Sokoban puzzles can be solved automatically by using a single-agent search algorithm, such as IDA*; enhanced by several techniques that make use of domain-specific knowledge.[9] This is the method used by Rolling Stone,[10] a Sokoban solver developed by the University of Alberta GAMES Group. Festival[11] was the first automatic solver to solve all 90 levels in the standard benchmark test suite. However, the more complex Sokoban levels are out of reach even for the best automated solvers.

 

[squirtle]

[Unofficial Who]

The latest episode is up at https://zappedtothepast.com/ and there's some corkers in there this week!

 

Games covered

 

-The Train

-Magnetron

-Rollaround

-Black Lamp

-Stratton

-BMX Hyper Biker Simulator

-Firefly

[Unofficial Who]

Sometimes I question what I'm doing here. I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot. It's either a game I've played before and I wax lyrical about something only a few are interested in. Or it's a bad game I didn't play back in the day and I don't have much to say.

 

But it's always my hope that writing about the games covered in the magazine and the podcast will reveal to me a hidden gem, long forgotten or missed in the day.

 

Today is that day with The Train:Escape to Normandy.

 

 

I missed this back in the day. On release I didn't have a drive. After release it was no longer in the stores and I didn't have a dodgy copy either. But I'd played Ace of Aces and Desert Fox, both of which were good but...well the review score in Zzap was OK but it looked a bit too grey and too military for my liking.

 

The plot is simple. The Nazi's are trying to ship stolen art via train. You and another French resistance member get wind of this and hijack the train.

 

You start by providing cover fire for your companion. Here is where I first died treating my gun like a rifle. It's not, it's a machine gun so you can rake the buildings. (You can also use space to duck for cover Time Crisis style!)

 

 

Second try I took the station and as mentioned in the podcast the first clever touch reveals itself where you choose your difficulty by using the points system to choose your route.

 

From there you board the train and if you're like me you'll screw up (I ran the train backwards off the tracks for my second game over. Oops!)

 

 

This is where you'll spend a lot of the game controlling the train by various levers and switches. It looks like a lot and reading a wiki at https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/The_Train_–_Escape_to_Normandy didn't fill me with confidence. But after a while I got my head around how everything worked.

 

 

If you can run the engine in the FAR games you can run this, it works off similar principles. And once you get your head around how the train works it's immensely satisfying adjusting various controls and shovelling coal when the temp gets too low. (And I love how the light shines off the controls when the furnace is open.) Your companion will alert you to issues before they become a problem as well as alerting you to strafing runs by aircraft which you can take out Beach Head style using front and rear mounted guns on the train.

 

 

Otherwise it's all about planning your route using the map

 

 

Stopping at enemy held bridges to use an on board cannon to take out enemy gunships

 

 

And stop at stations to capture them

 

 

Once captured you can read intelligence reports about military movements, rail maintenance as well as using the telegraph to contact the resistance to ask them to take other stations, bridges or organise repairs up the line.

 

 

It's a simple gameplay loop but you can tell that a lot of thought has gone into the design of not only the game but the interface. Like a lot of Accolade games on the C64 it gives the impression of a lot happening graphically. In reality it's mostly static screens with only very small areas of movement or with reduced detail. Being set at night helps a lot, you expect the views to lack detail but for a C64 game it's all impressive. Like a lot of US games the sound effects are serviceable and the little music that is there isn't brilliant. Unlike this game. I'm amazed this wasn't received better, this feels like the Beach Head follow up that a lot of C64 fans wanted.

 

I'd not played this before tonight and I lost almost three hours trying to complete it. And while I succeeded (on easy) I'm looking forward to making more time over the next month or two to play this more. I've no idea why this didn't get a Gold Medal, I'm not sure concerns that the tape version would be lacking was a fair factor to bring into play for the disk version. (There is multiload but it's pretty quick and painless.)

 

Unless any of the other games are a massive surprise this episode this is the pick of the bunch for me. Game of the episode, C64 game of the year, underrated gem and easily up there with many of my favourites. I really wish I had this back in the day, I would have loved it.

 

Play this.

 

 

[squirtle]

Yeah, brilliant game, and the culmination of what Accolade had been making up to this point. I never played this back then, but this has gone into my favourite games on the C64 list. 

[squirtle]

Also, @Unofficial Who, don't give up on this thread. I've loved reading your views on the games as we've gone through them, and your commitment to playing as many of them as you can stomach keeps us going through those dark moments of Heli Drop despair.

[Unofficial Who]

2 minutes ago, squirtle said:

Also, @Unofficial Who, don't give up on this thread. I've loved reading your views on the games as we've gone through them, and your commitment to playing as many of them as you can stomach keeps us going through those dark moments of Heli Drop despair.

 

This game has renewed my vigour, I'd even put it in as one of the best games I've played all year and it's the sort of game I would have skipped if not for the podcast. (Military theme, lots of C64 grey).

 

I'd put aside a mere half hour to play this tonight and ended up spending three hours, if I didn't have an early work meeting tomorrow I'd probably spend another couple trying to do an intermediate run.

 

Looking forward to playing some Rollaround later this week.

[drnovocalcords2022]

As a long-time lurker on this forum, thought I'd chip in and say @Unofficial Who thanks so much for your posts on this thread and I also hope you keep doing them. Your mini-reviews are honestly the main reason I regularly log in here, and that I've recently gone back to some of the games you (and @squirtle's podcast) have highlighted. I had a C64 growing up but with such a huge library I feel like I missed out on most of the notable games that have been covered (possibly because I only knew Spectrum owners so didn't benefit from swapping/piracy and could only afford to buy a few full-price games or usually mediocre budget fare). 

[merman]

I own an original of Soko-Ban on C64 disk. I remember reading the review at the time, but I didn’t get it until I first got a disk drive in 1989. It was a bargain too, five quid from a mail order company.

[Unofficial Who]

Thanks for the kind words. Not that I'd stop at this point but I think I was surprised at finding a game that I hadn't played before being so good! There's always new gems to discover and it's what I love most about making these posts.

 

The podcast asked about Magnetron, who wanted this game? I can answer that. I did as it represented an alternate take on my favourite C64 game and one which was denied me due to geography.

 

We all remember Paradroid, an incredibly clever game despite the simple look of it.

 

 

This was a game that played to the strengths of the C64. A machine that could throw around a lot of sprites at once while smoothly scrolling a multi-directional background.

 

There was a version made for the Spectrum But it was very different. It combined Marble Madness or Crystal Castle style isometric landscapes with Paradroid and I wanted to play this badly. Just one problem, it was made for the Spectrum. A cheap computer in the UK. A rare import only computer in Australia. So I could only imagine what it would be like to play.

 

 

A port was never made and to this day I've never seen a Spectrum outside of a museum.

 

However a follow up came out in 1988 and being a big fan of Braybrook and wanting desperately to play Quazatron I decided I'd get this. Fortunately I never saw this on the shop shelves. I say fortunately after playing this tonight. But I can see how this happened. First a shot. Here's how it looks on the C64.

 

 

There's a few problems here. One is the complexity involving magnetic polarization and even grappling with the basic grapple game replaced by this.

 

 

But I think the central problem is they've taken a design from a classic C64 game. Redesigned it with Quazatron to work to the strengths of the Z80 platform. The 3D landscape not only gives the game a more interesting navigational focus it also slows down movement. So far so good.

 

But then they've taken that redesign back to the 6502 based C64. And it's just not as good at isometric 3D as the Spectrum. There's less resolution than the Spectrum (256x192 on the Spectrum and 160x200 on the C64 making it harder to read.) And they've made the game more complicated to boot.

 

I've never played Quazatron so I can't comment on it but a lot of the joy of Gribbly's Day Out, Paradroid, Uridium and AlleyKat was the joy of movement in those games. I feel like Morpheus is the point for a time where the systems bogged down the player. I just felt heavy and clumsy in this.

 

I gave this a good try but I found it confusing and overly difficult (some games I would be overwhelmed immediately) and heavy. I'm sure it's clever. But it just wasn't fun. I think Zzap got it right, an elegant, almost timeless version of this already exists in Paradroid. This takes a version ill suited for the C64 and then overburdens it with extra systems.

 

I went in really wanting to like this.

[merman]

See, I always preferred the atmosphere of Paradroid to Quazatron.

I did play a lot of Magnetron though, best run saw me clear a couple of satellites. While it can be frustrating, the various systems can be learned.

[Unofficial Who]

Looked forward to Rollaround after the praise it got and was disappointed in myself. I'm not sure why it left me cold!

 

It's slick like most Mr Chip games. And I think it's good value for money. It's like an isometric open version of Pac-Man.  Maybe I couldn't get into the mindset of this one?

 

(It looks a lot better in motion, trust me.)

 

 

@squirtle, help us out here. Sell this game, tell the rest of the readers here what I'm missing.

[squirtle]

For me, it was all about getting the controls and understanding that this game wanted you to learn as you played it. The premise is simple - as we alluded to, it's a flat Crystal Castles type affair - where you have to collect as many crosses from the appropriate coloured squares as stated in the UI at the top. From there, you are open to attack the nine rooms that constitute each level exactly as you see fit. This starts off fairly simply, but you soon have to plan your routes through the rooms in order to make sure you don't screw yourself over. For example, in level 3, you only have to get five white tiles but you are presented with a room full of them once you flick the switch in the middle to turn them all over. So it seems easy enough, but you have to look a the full map as well, as there are other rooms that you have to collect 5 purple and so on. Collecting one more than the allotted number turns the square into a hole and you plummet to your doom. So now you have to consider the best way to make it round all nine rooms, only collecting the number you need (so the last one you have to collect must leave you by the correct exit as you cannot backtrack through the room) in order to leave yourself at the last room where you have to collect everything on screen. Factor into this slow moving enemies that are just annoying enough to be a hindrance but not too annoying to put you off and you have a really clever puzzler that requires co-ordination across multiple screens, and route planning, in order to pass through the levels. And that is just the first three levels. It then builds from there. You also have no inertia so it's a simple hop to the next square, but you also have the jump which moves you quicker, so allows you to get away from enemies and only activates when you hold the fire and then push in the direction you wish to move, so control of the character never feels like it is against you. I just found it, for £2, an absolute gem. I was playing this for ages and have been back to it since. Oh, and although a password system would have been nice, you can start on the level you died at whilst you keep playing it. 

 

For me, it does that thing that great puzzlers do, being that it is a game where the mistakes are your fault and not the game's.

[Unofficial Who]

Thanks for that @squirtle. I've tried it again and it's still left me a little cold. I'm not quite sure why, perhaps I played too many isometric puzzlers back in the day? Given the enthusiasm you and Graham showed for it on the podcast it deserved a better write up then me shrugging my shoulders and going "meh." It's well worth a try if only to see which camp you end up in.

 

The next game is one I had back in the day in that big box of discs I was given and this was loaded up many times. Black Lamp.

 

 

And with good reason. Once you get past the impressive loading screen by Dokk (with some clever use of white as a contrast) you are presented with one of Tim Follin's masterworks. A "hey nonny nonny" folk piece that plays around in tempo before moving into prog' rock territory. The in game music is a shorter piece but is very evocative and the jazz piece that accompanies the high score table is possibly out of place but polished. Great stuff and better than the music in the 16 bit versions.

 

Hang on though? What about the game? Is that as good?

 

No. Nope nope nope.

 

What we have here is a simple arcade adventure where you need to fetch nine magical lamps including the Black Lamp one by one returning them to the starting location.

 

 

I really like the sprite and background work in this game, it's a good facsimile of the 16 bit versions although not as impressive. Zzap for some reason used an Amiga screenshot in their review.

 

 

I might even like the C64 version more in the looks department as it looks a little less garish.

 

 

The problem is there isn't much "game" here. And so to compensate they've added a boatload of constantly respawning enemies which regardless of what you do will get hits in. Especially when you move into and out of the screen through doors or climbing ladders. To compensate for this you're given an energy bar as well as lives but even with energy pickups (which due to the respawning of enemies is always a losing proposition to climb to versus the energy you lose) this feels like a hard and pointless game. There is no skill involved that will help here, only learning critical paths and luck.

 

Load this up for the music, some of the best on the C64. But there's little game here to play. I don't get Jaz's love for this in his review and it's a good case for having more than one reviewer here with the other two having much more measured takes. Apart from the sound and graphics the review score is a lot above where it should be.

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

Another CRL game and at the point the reviews were so consistently bad that I was avoiding their games out of habit.

 

It's timely we talk about Stratton because it's let down by the same issues that plagued Black Lamp. It's attractive but plodding and you're constantly beset by randomly spawning things that make it feel like a losing war of attrition. Why the difference in total review score? It must be down to the difference in music that pulls Black Lamp up by comparison. Maybe have a look to check out the attractive main sprite and animated backgrounds but otherwise not worth pulling yourself away from better games for.

 

[squirtle]

I wonder what @carleton thought of Rollaround, seeing as it's from the guy who made Big Mac.

[squirtle]

Stratton was a load of rubbish in very fine trousers.

[Unofficial Who]

21 minutes ago, squirtle said:

Stratton was a load of rubbish in very fine trousers.

Their next two games (not for CRL) aren't actually too bad!

[squirtle]

4 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

Their next two games (not for CRL) aren't actually too bad!

Slayer, Steel, and Shanghai Warriors. What fascination do they have with the letter S?

[merman]

10 hours ago, squirtle said:

Stratton was a load of rubbish in very fine trousers.

 

What is interesting about it is the fact it plays differently on the C128...

[squirtle]

1 hour ago, merman said:

 

What is interesting about it is the fact it plays differently on the C128...

Yeah, but as we couldn't find the 128 version anywhere, and it only got 2% more for that version in Zzap, we couldn't really say much about it.

[Unofficial Who]

9 hours ago, merman said:

 

What is interesting about it is the fact it plays differently on the C128...

 

Is there a specific 128K version of is it like AlleyKat in that it automatically detects what hardware it's been loaded on?

[Unofficial Who]

If one wonders why Stratton got a score in the 30's and Black Lamp in the 70's it was probably because of games like BMX Hyper Biker Simulator.

 

Which I couldn't find a copy of anywhere. However the podcast and the magazine seem to suggest that this is a re-release of 1984's Hyper Biker.

 

 

I'm just going to trust this one was bad as my wrists aren't up to playing a Decathlon derivative at my age. Re-releases like this would make the most average game look good.

[Unofficial Who]

Given the above disappointment I thought I'd move forward to the one I'd been looking forward to the most, Special FX's Firefly.

 

I really wanted to play this back in the day having played a few of their games via covertapes. And the presentation is certainly top notch. Just check out this loading screen.

 

 

The music is great although it didn't have as much impact as it might have had coming at the music fresh as Special FX re-used the soundtrack for a Defender clone freebie that was cover mounted around the same time. (Hyperactive mounted on an issue of Commodore User if my memory isn't failing me.)

 

The grid / map screen is very attractive, much more than Hunter's Moon.

 

 

It's worth putting out there that the art is by Karen Davies Downey, veteran of several companies and apart from a couple of bad titles her artwork has always been striking from Gift of the Gods on Spectrum to Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Shadowfire on the C64.

 

The main gameplay area also looks great.

 

 

Your ship and the enemies look fantastic, the blue flame that pushes out the rear of your insect ship is a nice touch. The backdrops are somewhat bio-organic and squishy. But gameplay wise it feels like Mutants and Hunter's Moon but not as good. A little "spongy" if that makes sense? What let's the game down is the sub games where rather than denying you bonuses will reset your progress.

 

 

These are simplistic but way too fast and ruin the game making it more about luck than skill. It's such a silly thing to bring down the game. I can't really recommend this over Mutants or Hunter's Moon. It might even be preferable to seek out the Spectrum version of Firefly which is reportedly easier than the C64 one if not as good looking.

 

[squirtle]

5 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

If one wonders why Stratton got a score in the 30's and Black Lamp in the 70's it was probably because of games like BMX Hyper Biker Simulator.

 

Which I couldn't find a copy of anywhere. However the podcast and the magazine seem to suggest that this is a re-release of 1984's Hyper Biker.

 

 

I'm just going to trust this one was bad as my wrists aren't up to playing a Decathlon derivative at my age. Re-releases like this would make the most average game look good.

Yeah, you didn't miss much here. It's bloody awful.

[squirtle]

5 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

Given the above disappointment I thought I'd move forward to the one I'd been looking forward to the most, Special FX's Firefly.

 

I really wanted to play this back in the day having played a few of their games via covertapes. And the presentation is certainly top notch. Just check out this loading screen.

 

 

The music is great although it didn't have as much impact as it might have had coming at the music fresh as Special FX re-used the soundtrack for a Defender clone freebie that was cover mounted around the same time. (Hyperactive mounted on an issue of Commodore User if my memory isn't failing me.)

 

The grid / map screen is very attractive, much more than Hunter's Moon.

 

 

It's worth putting out there that the art is by Karen Davies Downey, veteran of several companies and apart from a couple of bad titles her artwork has always been striking from Gift of the Gods on Spectrum to Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Shadowfire on the C64.

 

The main gameplay area also looks great.

 

 

Your ship and the enemies look fantastic, the blue flame that pushes out the rear of your insect ship is a nice touch. The backdrops are somewhat bio-organic and squishy. But gameplay wise it feels like Mutants and Hunter's Moon but not as good. A little "spongy" if that makes sense? What let's the game down is the sub games where rather than denying you bonuses will reset your progress.

 

 

These are simplistic but way too fast and ruin the game making it more about luck than skill. It's such a silly thing to bring down the game. I can't really recommend this over Mutants or Hunter's Moon. It might even be preferable to seek out the Spectrum version of Firefly which is reportedly easier than the C64 one if not as good looking.

 

This could have been an absolute classic if not for those mini games which are stupid. It's easier to get into than both Hunter's Moon and Mutants but killed stone dead by those mini games. Such a shame as it looks, sounds and plays great aside from them.

[Unofficial Who]

1 hour ago, squirtle said:

This could have been an absolute classic if not for those mini games which are stupid. It's easier to get into than both Hunter's Moon and Mutants but killed stone dead by those mini games. Such a shame as it looks, sounds and plays great aside from them.

 

I'm wondering if I dug around enough I might find one with an "autowin" trainer for those games. It might just open the game up like some trained versions do for IO.

[squirtle]

6 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

I'm wondering if I dug around enough I might find one with an "autowin" trainer for those games. It might just open the game up like some trained versions do for IO.

Maybe. I mean, I really like that your bullets are those orbs rotating around you in various patterns, so you can fire up to eight times, but then need to wait, so it forces you to pick your shots more wisely. That's a great idea.