Unofficial Who

Thanks to RPS for giving me a heads up of this 50's noir mystery where you play as a hotel maid. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/this-cool-50s-noir-game-lets-you-do-the-job-of-a-hotel-cleaner-aka-solve-a-mystery The demo is short but has some strong LA Noire vibes without the need to rub against furniture to pick things up. The demo is about 20 minutes long and worth a look if you love graphic narrative games.

For some reason in my tired state I read the title as Geoff Cape's Summer Games Fest!

For me it doesn't come close to Inside but I loved it way more than Limbo and I think that's down to the music and also that it's been playtested to the point that Limbo was and then pulled back a little bit so your timing can be a little off. There just feels like more room for small errors. And getting Takeshi Furukawa to compose the music is almost unfair on other indie games. (You might remember his work from The Last Guardian.)

Heads up, this is now playable on the Switch and works really well playing on a big screen with a joypad in your hands in that you can actually see the screen while controlling it now.

This reminds me of my early days of mucking around with emulation where I needed to play ALL THE GAMES which led to me playing ALL THE GAMES for about five minutes. I get it but it's a dreadful way to look at a back catalogue and games with real depth suffer under this approach. I'd recommend savouring one game at a time and using a magazine or a podcast as a sort of reading list. You'll play less games but you'll enjoy them more.

One would hope it's an early retirement thing because she pretty much saved Pixar at the time by working from home. While pregnant. Otherwise the optics on this are bad.

A new episode is up, this time it's an "Ask the Podcast" episode so no games are being looked at this week. As always it's worth a listen, you might even get an idea of the discussions on the discord you're missing out on by not being a subscriber. https://zappedtothepast.com/ So onwards to 1989! I mentioned at the start of 1988 that I was a bit down on this year. Loads of games came out (although the peak of releases may well have been 1987) but more importantly loads of bad releases were out. Even (or especially) if you were pirating searching for gems without a players guide was an exercise in futility and 1988 was the year many of my friends either moved to the Amiga, ST or PC or gave up on gaming altogether. My view on 1988 was also coloured as being maybe the second worst year of my life at that point. Having survived an incredibly abusive school in poor shape the school I moved too was brutal in a different way with me being an easy target for the many bullies. Combine that with no TV to play games on and well....it wasn't my favourite year. I left that school at the end of 1988 bruised and battered having failed both socially and academically. For some reason however I was accepted into the local co-ed campus in 1989 for years 11 and 12 and things were on the up. For one, having women in the school was a civilising influence. The school also had a zero tolerance attitude towards bullies. But what really changed things? Numbers. 90% of my bullies didn't come back for the last two years of school, they decided to go off and party hard. Which meant the next time someone took a swing at me he was alone. I was not. I grabbed his fist in mid-air as he grinned saying "Another year.." I cut him off. "No. Different year. Different school. Look around, where are your mates?" He lowered his fist as it slowly dawned. He was now alone. And we left it at that. Just like that the bullying stopped. And my life improved immensely. I did have less time for games given catching up at school and being distracted by girls. I had less money but there were less games to choose from. A lot of old talent had started migrating to the 16 bits but this led to space being made for a third wave of C64 legends, many hailing from the UK and Europe as the US lost interest. And while I had less money this was the year that cover tapes began to be the norm rather than the outlier and I still loved the hobby enough to find ways of scraping together the dosh to continue buying them whether it was skipping lunches or whether it was casual work. At this stage I was still buying Zzap, CU and C&VG regularly. Anyone else have memories of 1989 on the C64?

I heard about this on the other side of the planet because they'd apparently done a stellar job keeping episodes of UK cult classic (in the southern hemisphere but forgotten in the UK) The Goodies. https://www.facebook.com/thegoodiestv/

June 04/06 Planet of Lana (PC) For the past year I've been seeing adverts for this on Facebook, it was really pushed hard for the better part of a year. I was spammed enough that when the demo came out I was somewhat interested even though I was initially put off by the art. And having played it I don't understand why. I think maybe it was this year I finally shrugged off the whole weird "2D games have to be pixels" thing that I've been carrying around for so long. Others have already talked about this at length. Is it as good as Inside? No. But I liked it a lot. A lot more than Limbo and more than a lot of games in this genre for a couple of reasons. It reminds me of games like Heart of Darkness, a similar game from a different age. But in that game due to the market (physical product that could be sold or rented) the gameplay was tested and polished so that you had to do everything perfectly. Planet of Lana is a game that's designed to be completed so they've play tested it to the point of needing to be perfect and then they've pulled back a little so that you have a few seconds of grace. For an older player like myself this makes the difference between the game being a challenge and the game being impossible. Of note also is the amazing music which adds so much to the experience. Keen ears (or those who read credits) will recognise the composer Takeshi Furukawa who previously composed for The Last Guardian. Highly recommended for a 4-5 hour experience. And yes, you can pet the little round cat thing. Previously this year

I haven't had much time to play but what little time has been spent with Planet of Lana which I'm loving and...well....I bounced off Breath of the Wild the first three times I tried but this time it's grabbed me (if nothing else as a replacement for Assassin's Creed because I love climbing towers in games!)

Peer pressure won out in the end and my partner is currently enjoying herself with D4. I can't bring myself to play it even though the counter argument "it's not like you're giving Activision / Blizzard more money by playing co-op" is completely logical.

I was looking for something else and came across this. It did feel like 20 years ago 2D was going to be relegated to the past but now it's stronger than ever even if some games we think of as 2D are actually 3D pretending to be 2D! https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/28/18521698/shovel-knight-3d-camera-perspective-behind-the-scenes-video

It's also part of Capcom Arcade Stadium 2 (you might find it under the English name Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix if your ROMs are set to English.) So if you have the full set of ROMs from CAS2 you're good to go. If not you can buy it stand alone if you like from Steam etc.

I used this as a guide. And I did ok. On the second run. The first run I fired up the furnace and let go of the throttle only to race backwards off the siding! Edit, did I forget to include the guide? Yep! Use @squirtle's below but this might also help https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/The_Train_–_Escape_to_Normandy

From memory it was a great game on every platform....apart from the C64. I had the version where the factory level was impossible to complete due to the time limit.

We're covering that issue of Zzap soon, I wish the demo tape had been attached to my copy back in the day. It would have saved me a lot of money.

There's actually more than I was expecting but to highlight a couple that were a highlight for me. The Train:Escape to Normandy An incredibly clever game that makes you feel like you're operating a heavy piece of machinery from over half a century ago. Still holds its own, it's just a pity that you can only buy the inferior PC version digitally. Fernandez Must Die I didn't like Crowther's C64 work, or at least I thought I didn't. This is the turning point I never played and it's really underrated. A more complex version of Commando and Ikari Warriors. Possibly let down by the weird name and the odd pixel art but totally let down by reviewers who just didn't know what they had. The Great Gianna Sisters was my first Super Mario Bros game and 35 years on I still rate the music. In retrospect it's nowhere near as great as the NES game that inspired it but I loved it anyway. Also one of the first games I played that let you play as a girl. And finally Card Sharks, a game I didn't play until the 90's when I used it as a way to learn how to play and practice Hearts. I'm sure there's loads more I missed but I want to hear from the one or two others lurking what their favourite games from 1988 are.

This week the Golden Breadbin awards! https://zappedtothepast.com/ The running sheet -Introduction + Review of 1988 -Best Visuals Award -Crapcade Conversion Award -Worst Game (Sunday Best) Award -Best Audio Award -Craziest Concept Award -Licenced Catastrophe Award -Best Game Award -Patreon Awards -Other things… Awards -Look ahead to 1989 I won't spoil any of the awards here, you'll have to listen for yourself!

I loved this but I'm wondering if Rian is having a go at his audience loving it with the multiple references to one specific song throughout the entire last episode.

Last on this week's list is the cleverly named budget title Cheap Skate. This is simple fare with you trying to work your way up the ladder of your local skate park gang by completing Zaxxonesque runs. You can duck jump dodge and change your speed. It's ok if a little cramped. Didn't keep me interested for too long. I think a lot of skateboard games were valiant attempts that were doomed to feel a little clumsy until the 32 bit era where you had both an array of controls at your fingertips as well as fluid 3D that gave you more situational awareness. This is average but suffers as being one of many in a glut of skateboarding games. Points for the cheeky name though. And that's it for 1988! Next week a break as the podcast looks back over the year with the Golden Breadbin awards and then onto 1989.

Yep, we're seeing a migration at this point although.... ...that migration leaves room for others to come in and make their mark We're probably just past the commercial peak at this stage. But there's some great games yet to come with less crap obscuring the view.

I didn't play Nato Assault Course nor do I intend to as joystick waggling games at my age are just a world of pain for me. But I just wanted to use this as an illustration for my concerns about what Devo would term "de-evolution" in regards to the commercial state of C64 software over 1988. At the start of the year we had Combat School. A pretty impressive conversion of the Konami arcade game. Then midway through the year we had 19 Part 1 Boot Camp. Based of the Paul Hardcastle hit but really based in part off Combat School. (And turning an anti war song into kind of a pro war game.) And then we had this poorly rated game at the end of the year. In my eyes it appeared as if the standard of acceptable quality was dropping and dropping fast. Having looked over all of 1988 now that's not the case. Some of the best C64 titles of all time were released in 1988. But this is still a really good representation of the difference in quality in regards to releases at this time.

While the Amiga port is incredibly good I'm 100% certain the DOS version was released first. I remember playing it at a friend's place and hoping the Amiga version would be as good.

I'd always thought that Prince of Persia was developed in tandem across the PC, Amiga and Atari ST and only found out recently that it was an Apple 2 game (and one that had taken so long 16 bit versions had to be created for it to be commercial.)