Zapped to the Past podcast (C64)

[Unofficial Who]

I quite like puzzle games but when I saw the screenshots for Oops! my reaction was just "no." And I'm sorry, I know you enjoyed this one @squirtle, and I can see why. It's a solid tile based game. But I just found it hard to read the screen.

 

 

Others might find it easier but whether it was the colour choice or the sprite shapes I found myself losing my bearings with the elements on this one. And judging buy the reviews scores at the time (highs in the mid 70's and lows in the 40's) I suspect one's enjoyment is down to whether or not this game works with your eyes.

 

A miss for me but others might find it a solid puzzler.

[squirtle]

4 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

I quite like puzzle games but when I saw the screenshots for Oops! my reaction was just "no." And I'm sorry, I know you enjoyed this one @squirtle, and I can see why. It's a solid tile based game. But I just found it hard to read the screen.

 

 

Others might find it easier but whether it was the colour choice or the sprite shapes I found myself losing my bearings with the elements on this one. And judging buy the reviews scores at the time (highs in the mid 70's and lows in the 40's) I suspect one's enjoyment is down to whether or not this game works with your eyes.

 

A miss for me but others might find it a solid puzzler.

You're not wrong. A simpler colour palette would have been preferable here, but I think in the sea of shite we've been swimming in recently, this was something decent to cling on to. I think we said that in the podcast, too.

[Unofficial Who]

Aquanaut. An average but unremarkable horizontal shooter. It's OK but playing this makes me want to play Seaquest on the 2600 instead.

 

[Unofficial Who]

Is 10% for Crazy Paving mean?

 

 

Not at all. This is a slow unexciting arcade adventure that feels like it fell through a portal from 1984. Even at a budget price this is awful.

[Unofficial Who]

I never played Shackled in the arcades at the time. Data East always had a bit of a knack for taking a game and making some interesting changes although the results always seemed to be a bit ugly.

 

Shackled is Gauntlet but it involves rescuing prisoners that then add their powers onto yours. In theory this should lead to you quickly leading an army of the rescued. But the implementation of this looks grey and dull and the feel is a bit messy with the game suffering from some massive lag and slowdown in parts. This was an idea that really pushed the arcade hardware it was running on.

 

 

And so it's no surprise this ends up as a mess on the C64. Push scrolling that requires you to be near the edge of the screen giving you no way of seeing what's around the corner, slowdown and very muddy controls makes this one that should not have been ported.

 

 

I feel for the people who were tasked to get this into running shape on the C64, this was a thankless port of a game few were looking at buying.

[Unofficial Who]

Let's fast forward to the last and the best, because you've got the weekend and this deserves some of your time. The first time I saw Bruce Lee was in a spoiler screenshot map in C&VG which laid out all 20 of the screens in the game. A few years later a friend loaned me his copy and I was hooked. Because this was, and still is one of the best platform games on the C64.

 

 

It's not a C64 original, it's ported across from the Atari 400/800. And the concept isn't that original either. Think Manic Miner but with combat. All you need do is collect lanterns while jumping ducking punching and kicking your way through a fort to get to the final lantern guarded by a powerful wizard. So far so average. But here's where it gets interesting.

 

 

Most screens will spawn in a ninja and then a second or two later The Green Yamo (a sumo wrestler painted in green.) They will harass you trying to knock you out in every screen. But they can hit each other. They can also be hit by the same traps you can. My favourite are the exploding bushes, run over a trigger and a second later a bush will explode upwards impaling anyone too slow or unwary.

 

 

The screens are simple utilising palette changes to help you navigate. The characters are small giving you plenty of space. The speed is fast. You can also have a friend assist by playing The Green Yamo. They can help you by running interference and harassing the ninja or more likely hinder you by trolling you. If you decide to take the easy path and set up The Green Yamo as a human player while playing alone he will sit immobile...for a screen or two. But after that the computer will catch on to what you're doing and take over control.

 

This is a brilliant game that should be remembered and played even now. I suspect though that the Bruce Lee licence makes that impossible. (In much the same way that we wouldn't be able to play Donkey Kong now if the original plan to make it a Popeye game hadn't fallen through.)

 

Absolutely the pick of the podcast and the pick of the issue. I spent many hours fruitlessly trying to find this on budget re-release and in the years before C64 emulation was stable I used to play the Spectrum version to scratch that itch. If Pixel Games or anyone else managed to re-release this (with an altered title screen and name) I'd be happy to buy this. One of my favourite 8 bit platformers full stop. If you haven't played it before you should make time for it. And if you have there's at least two unofficial sequels out there.

[Unofficial Who]

New week new podcast and ninjas really are a thing right now.

 

https://zappedtothepast.com/

 

Games covered

 

-Last Ninja 2: Back With A Vengeance 

-Rogue

-Night Racer

-Typhoon

-The President is Missing

-Ninja Scooter Simulator

-Dizzy

-Football Manager 2

[Unofficial Who]

It's been one of the hottest March days on record here so I'm too hot to play or write about any of the games tonight so I'm throwing it over to the rest of you dear reader(s).

 

Football Manager 2. Sportsball meets Excel. I have little interest in Football although having watched two seasons of Ted Lasso I now get the feeling I might have missed out on something. Nevertheless this didn't appear to me back in the day and it doesn't now.

 

The only question I have is about the matches. Matches you watch from the side lines.

 

 

Is this the first idle game?

 

Anyway feel free to share what's so great about this game or where it's lacking.

[squirtle]

1 hour ago, Unofficial Who said:

It's been one of the hottest March days on record here so I'm too hot to play or write about any of the games tonight so I'm throwing it over to the rest of you dear reader(s).

 

Football Manager 2. Sportsball meets Excel. I have little interest in Football although having watched two seasons of Ted Lasso I now get the feeling I might have missed out on something. Nevertheless this didn't appear to me back in the day and it doesn't now.

 

The only question I have is about the matches. Matches you watch from the side lines.

 

 

Is this the first idle game?

 

Anyway feel free to share what's so great about this game or where it's lacking.

It's lacking in tactics or strategy in game beyond some subs at half time and any kind of depth in the off field options. That said, Graham found it enjoyable and he hates football so make of that what you will.

[Unofficial Who]

Last Ninja 2: Back With A Vengeance was a bit of an event. The original sold 750,000 copies on the C64. The sequel? According to Mark Cale  5.5 million copies were sold for the Commodore 64 version alone; at that time, the user base of the C64 was estimated at 20 million, meaning that one in four C64 owners bought the game.

 

I was one of those that bought the game.

 

 

The extra features for the standard edition was a little lame. An instruction book and a 3D "map".

 

 

Still this was the sequel to one of the finest arcade adventures on the C64 and like many movies at the time it took place in modern day times placing it among popular movies like He-Man and Highlander.

 

Rather than angry eyes for each loading screen each level had it's own little diorama in pixel form and a tune by Matt Grey.

 

 

And the tunes here are a departure from the original with a gritty driven harsh sound. (There are no sound effects.)

 

The opening is an interesting puzzle, You're trapped in a bandstand having transported from feudal Japan. How do you escape?

 

 

Setting fantasy movies in a modern urban setting was a bit of a way for movie companies to do things on the cheap as you didn't need to build things like furniture and other props from scratch. It's the opposite here though. With the Last Ninja you could get away with every screen having a couple of props. A rock. A bamboo glade. Some vases. Here though they've had to deal with object density while keeping the screens readable. At the time I thought they'd done incredibly well. Even in the first level there's loads of puzzles to solve and lots opportunities to miss objects. How do you open the gates to the gardens? Is there a point to going to the toilets and combining what you find within? How do you cross the river? Bees? Not the bees?

 

Everyone is hostile. Thugs obviously but policemen too wield swords and throw stars. And then there's the jugglers...

 

 

There's a fair few improvements over the original game. For a start there's only one length of jump now. Characters look better defined. I think the screen building is faster? And I loved this back in the day and I would happily spend a lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoon completing this. It was at the time a technical marvel.

 

What about now though? Well obviously it's dated badly. It's more obvious the sacrifices made to get the game to run (a large status border and it being a flick screen game.) Combat feels sticky as does movement, many was the time I found it difficult to turn around without dropping to my death. And don't get me started on picking things up. It maintains the weird "crouch like you've done your back and your trying to pick up your car keys" method. And the big difference this time, I attempted this in a way I didn't back in the day. Without a guide or FAQ at hand. And without that it really is trial and error. Some key objects blink when you enter a screen but not all will. Leaps of faith are required. And because of the odd way of interacting with objects you can do the right thing but be a couple of pixels off and think "well that obviously wasn't the solution" when all you need to do is crouch a little to the left. Or right.

 

Some of the screens are stunning for the C64 and in terms of mechanics this is the better game than The first Last Ninja. But it loses something in terms of the atmosphere of the original and long after I stopped playing this one I still go back and play the first every once in a while to soak in the surrounds and the Ben Daglish and Anthony Lees tunes.

 

It's worth messing around with faq in hand if you haven't played it before and loved the first and it's my pick of the bunch this week. But time has not been kind to this one.

[Unofficial Who]

10% is harsh for Rogue on the one hand. Calling it a poor Gauntlet game is missing the point but it's easy to judge with the entirety of gaming history at our fingertips.

 

 

But this port isn't the best. I'd rather play Gateway to Apshai or Sword of Fargoal over this. Both rogue likes. Both by Epyx. This just feels like an ill advised 16 bit demake.

[Unofficial Who]

Night Racer is a decent budget game. I didn't buy it back in the day feeling like I'd been there done that via Atari's old conversion Night Driver. Did I miss out on much? I've played better on the C64 but I've also played much worse. It's worth playing just to see the clever forest at night silhouettes which reminded me a lot of sleeping in the back seat of the car on trips home late at night as a kid.

 

 

Check out that complicated map on the bottom left, good luck using that to navigate.

 

Speaking of Night Driver there's a great video on the 2600 port here which goes into the murky history of the original.

 

 

[squirtle]

I found the map quite easy to read in Night racer. Nice pine tree effect. Some of these getting 10% feel a little harsh at the moment. That's like saying the game is broken and barely works, and for all that's wrong with it, Rogue does work and you can play it. There's more to that thought and that is I always got the impression that Julian Rignall and Gary Penn were very well versed in games history at that point, as short as it was. The change of staff that has happened at the point we are now looking at don't seem to have that depth of knowledge and it shows in reviews like Rogue.

[Unofficial Who]

I used to love games that mixed genres and was pretty excited when I saw the photos of Ajax in action.

 

 

 

It looked like a cross between Afterburner and Twin Heli, both very popular arcade games at the time. However I'm guessing Ajax being a cleaning product name in the west they switched it for the much better Typhoon.

 

A port on the C64 followed pretty quickly and thanks to a friend giving me a copy I got to experience that pretty first level with you zooming downwards towards the sea (although the plane banks the wrong way which really annoys me but is true to the arcade version.)

 

The effect is simple but effective.

 

 

And then you switch for what is the majority of the game. A horizontal shooter.

 

 

And this is about as far as I got back in the day. Leaving aside the fierce competition at this point in the C64's lifespan this is a case of the home port being too hard. There's a financial case for the arcade machine trying to throw you off after 3 minutes that shouldn't be an issue here. The music is repetitive (and best swapped for the functional sound effects. I used a cheat this time to see further and the game becomes less impressive as you move through the levels with garish purple yellow and grey backgrounds with a sort of high res Spectrum effect over the top.

 

Back in the day I bailed on level 2 when repeatedly shot by clouds with no warning. There were far better games on the C64 at the time in this genre and now with on multiple platforms I find this hard to recommend despite being a solid port.

 

Still if you're a one credit demon and up for a challenge this will supply you with that.

 

Edit: If you own the Konami compilation Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection then you have access to the arcade version of Typhoon already!

Edited March 13 by Unofficial Who

[Unofficial Who]

I'm going to skip The President is Missing. In part because the game sounds like it's difficult to get running now on emulators. Graham, @squirtle's co host couldn't do it and the screengrabs for the C64 version don't look like they got much further than the copy protection check.

 

 

But also in part because it's a unique "arg" in some ways and much like playing Mud on an emulator the point is kind of lost without the physical props that came with the game. This includes several audio recordings on a cassette tape, two of which are in morse code that you have to transcribe. And finally once you believe you have the solution you have to write up a report and send it via mail to Cosmi. As in physically. In the real world. 

 

Mind you as of 2021 Cosmi was still operating so who knows?

 

The premise of the game reminded me a lot of a game that came a few years after Spycraft:the Great Game. Which was also a game about being an operative but with a friendlier system of reading reports. Also The Fourth Protocol released in 1985 was thematically similar and again more user friendly.

 

@squirtle you got the game working. Since recording the episode did you go back or was it too difficult to navigate?

[squirtle]

I have not been back to it. Clever idea, but far too unfriendly to wade through.

[Unofficial Who]

9 minutes ago, squirtle said:

I have not been back to it. Clever idea, but far too unfriendly to wade through.

 

Back in the day there was quite the draw for a teenager to playing games that used office based systems like you were some sort of hacker or top investigator. And while I don't work in intelligence there isn't as much draw to a game about what is essentially office work after a day at the office.

 

This is from the Atari ST version.

 

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

What on earth was the story behind Ninja Scooter Simulator?

 

 

I mean was this a case a sponsorship deal that fell through? A cover artist who misunderstood their instructions and drew the wrong thing and then they just ran with it?

 

Anyway the game. It's a Metro Cross clone. And not a good one.

 

 

This is just too hard. Unless...unless you sit in the very top lane! No red brick walls spawn there, although enemies and bonus time clocks do. By doing this I finished all 16 levels in mere minutes with the game looping around to level one. Avoid.

 

[Unofficial Who]

Dizzy is much beloved around these parts. A bit of a sacred cow and rightly so. The Oliver Twins are the nicest guys in the industry and their early creation Dizzy is a masterclass in character creation.

 

 

I mean who can hate on such a cute egg?

 

I can apparently. This should be right up my alley. Cute arcade adventure in the style of Pyjamarama with extra emphasis on platforming skill.

 

 

I'm not sure if it's due to the conversion but I find it hard coming to this working out what is background scenery and what is a wall. I find the egg roll jump difficult to deal with.

 

I think though what I'm missing out on is the time and context. I came to this rather late in the 90's when messing about with Spectrum emulation and even in 1988 I might have been too old to enjoy this one. Because what this game needs is a lot of time investment from the player and a schoolyard full of friends and acquaintances all swapping information about the secrets they've uncovered. I've heard some great podcasts about the magic of Dizzy and unlike the Zzap crew I think it's one where I just missed the right time and place to play it.

 

There's a great podcast episode of Retronauts that covers the joy of Dizzy https://retronauts.com/article/1857/retronauts-episode-441-dizzy

 

and you can see a walkthrough here which had me scratching my head thinking "how were you able to work that out."

 

 

So for me it's a so so Spectrum port of an average arcade adventure. For many this was the Zelda or The Witness of the 80's. A puzzle meant to be shared over time as a kid rather than played alone by someone decades later.

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

Dizzy wasn't the first Dizzy game I played but we'll get to that in due course. The only Dizzy game I completed wasn't even a Dizzy game but Wibble World Giddy, a now long forgotten parody game on the Amiga.

 

 

I think I enjoyed it because it was less like Dizzy and more like the Wally games with less platforming and a more traditional jump mechanic.

[Camel]

The thing to remember about the Dizzy games is that they’re rubbish.

[squirtle]

The Dizzy games are emblematic of games that were built for the Spectrum and the C64 can do better than this but there is no effort to do that in these ports.

[Unofficial Who]

Episode 100 is out!

 

https://zappedtothepast.com/

 

There's loads of special guests in this episode and somehow some games are covered. Here about the likes of

 

-Salamander

-I-Xera

-Blood Brothers

-The Empire Strikes Back

-Netherworld

-Beach Buggy Simulator

-Road Blasters

-Knight Tyme

 

There's at least a couple of gems in there!

 

Edit: I've edited the entry for Typhoon last week to point out that the arcade version is included on one of Konami's compilations, it might be you already own it without knowing!

Edited March 13 by Unofficial Who

[Unofficial Who]

On 11/03/2023 at 22:38, squirtle said:

The Dizzy games are emblematic of games that were built for the Spectrum and the C64 can do better than this but there is no effort to do that in these ports.

 

Later on there are a couple of Dizzy games that seem to have been made with the 6502 in mind so it gets better. (Mind you this was released post Zzap unless you count Commodore Force as being part of the remit of the podcast.)

 

[Unofficial Who]

Salamander aka Life Force is a bit of a weird one. Salamander is set in space, Life Force makes some changes to turn it into a Fantastic Voyage style shooter set inside a giant alien. Both versions make some changes from Konami's previous side scroller Nemesis. The powerup system is simplified, you just pick up powerups directly R-Type style rather than using a pick-up / menu system per Nemesis. And the game switches between horizontal and vertical stages.

 

It's also a bit of a looker.

 

 

It would be a fool's errand to convert this to the C64. Enter the "fools" Peter Baron on programming, Bob Stevenson on pixel painting duties and Mark Cooksey on music. And their port is excellent.

 

 

I didn't get my hands on this until the late 90's when I found a boxed copy on the C64 in a pawn brokers. I picked it up even though my C64 was dead. But today is the first time I'd actually sat down to play it back to back with the arcade version of Life Force courtesy of Konami's 2019 compilation Arcade Classics Anniversary Compilation.

 

It's an impressive work. There are compromises. The C64 version loses two of the six levels, the second player, the number of option pods fielded (you can have three in the C64 version vs the four in the arcade version, still impressive) and the synth voice shouting out powerup information and boss tips. But it plays just like the arcade game and looks just like it. The podcast mentions the only disappointment, frequent slowdown. However playing the arcade game I noticed the same slowdown when the player has a full complement of weapons. And when you have a full complement it is the closest I've ever seen to Super Nashwan Power on the C64 (Amiga owners will now what I mean.)

 

After several rounds I've managed to get up to this guy who keeps taking me out. More practice this week might get me past him.

 

 

But I urge anyone who wants to try the C64 version to cheat at least once to experience the amazing level 3 with the shooting flames from the top and bottom of the screen.

 

 

Would I play this version today? Well the arcade version is now readily available on all modern platforms and I couldn't recommend this over the arcade original. The NES port is also pretty solid. However if you're a C64 fan and you want to experience one of the best arcade ports on the C64 this is unmissable.

 

Easily the pick of the podcast this week.

[Unofficial Who]

Extra viewing, if you're interested in the NES version there's a great video here by Jeremy Parish. From a quick look at the ports it seems that in this case 6502 based machines had an advantage over Z80 machines.

 

 

[merrychan]

5 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

Salamander 

Great impressions as always! I have real fond memories of playing this on the C64 when I had mine in the early 90s before moving on to a Megadrive, this and both GnG games especially  

[Unofficial Who]

I-Xera I think would have been considered poor even before 1988.

 

The plot? A highly explosive and pretty logo has fell off the Empire's flagship and landed in a soap-bubble factory splitting into four pieces. You have been sent with the latest military robot suit and weapon into the factory to retrieve the pieces. Before the pieces can be collected you must find the Mini Interdimensional Storage Unit to carry pieces of the logo found, as well as any other objects to help you in your mission.

 

The game? It's an arcade adventure much like the Wally Week or Ultimate games but without any of the character of those games. It's just so drab and gray. I've read that getting through involves working out the critical path but when the path is this drab it's hard to see the draw. Nice music though!

 

[Unofficial Who]

I remember a little bit of controversy stemming from the cover of Blood Brothers. Blood oaths were a ritual that went back hundreds of year, one where you and a friend you cut a finger or part of your arm and press the wounds together allowing the blood to comingle seemed like an incredibly bad idea in the 1980's.

 

 

Still adults needn't worry about this game influencing children although the two parts did foreshadow some aspects of gaming in the here an now.

 

So let's look at the two game types on offer.

 

Game type number one has you flying on a hover bike through gaps. In a way this reminds me of modern indie classic Race the Sun. In practice this plays like a rubbish version of Buck Rogers.

 

 

Game type number two is an exploratory adventure. It has a rudimentary physics system that creates almost comical recoil causing you to fly backwards at the same rate as your bullets firing forward. This feels like an awful version of H.E.R.O.

 

 

Given that Buck Rogers and H.E.R.O. were both on budget at this point I can't see the appeal of this at all. I think Zzap were generous here with their review.

[squirtle]

1 hour ago, Unofficial Who said:

I remember a little bit of controversy stemming from the cover of Blood Brothers. Blood oaths were a ritual that went back hundreds of year, one where you and a friend you cut a finger or part of your arm and press the wounds together allowing the blood to comingle seemed like an incredibly bad idea in the 1980's.

 

 

Still adults needn't worry about this game influencing children although the two parts did foreshadow some aspects of gaming in the here an now.

 

So let's look at the two game types on offer.

 

Game type number one has you flying on a hover bike through gaps. In a way this reminds me of modern indie classic Race the Sun. In practice this plays like a rubbish version of Buck Rogers.

 

 

Game type number two is an exploratory adventure. It has a rudimentary physics system that creates almost comical recoil causing you to fly backwards at the same rate as your bullets firing forward. This feels like an awful version of H.E.R.O.

 

 

Given that Buck Rogers and H.E.R.O. were both on budget at this point I can't see the appeal of this at all. I think Zzap were generous here with their review.

Damn right they were. This was bloody rubbish.