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Zapped to the Past podcast (C64)

Unofficial Who

By Unofficial Who,
in Retro & Arcade Gaming

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squirtle

squirtle

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Just now, Unofficial Who said:

 

Ah! Then I'll hold off!

Yeah, Ep0 was the first thing we recorded to see if we could actually make it work as a podcast. We cover the years 82, 83 and 84. We picked a selection of games from those years to have a look at going by the dates on Lemon64. We also look at films and stuff as well. It will be odd releasing it as we have got better as the weeks have gone on, IMO. But it's worth it if you want to hear us talk about anything pre Zzap. 

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Unofficial Who

Unofficial Who

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11 minutes ago, squirtle said:

Yeah, Ep0 was the first thing we recorded to see if we could actually make it work as a podcast. We cover the years 82, 83 and 84. We picked a selection of games from those years to have a look at going by the dates on Lemon64. We also look at films and stuff as well. It will be odd releasing it as we have got better as the weeks have gone on, IMO. But it's worth it if you want to hear us talk about anything pre Zzap. 

 

If you're covering the golden years of Epyx I want to hear it. I'm hit by choice paralysis when playing retro games so I'm loving these podcasts a lot.

 

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squirtle

squirtle

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26 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

If you're covering the golden years of Epyx I want to hear it. I'm hit by choice paralysis when playing retro games so I'm loving these podcasts a lot.

 

Aside from Pitstop and Pitstop 2, I'm not sure we looked at much else from Epyx. For us Epyx were at the peak from Pitstop 2 and Summer Games onwards. 

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squirtle

squirtle

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34 minutes ago, dave7g said:

I like the show a lot but the news section is a bit long for me. Game news of the time may work better, but that's just my opinion. Don't take it the wrong way.

We know that and its been addressed as the shows have gone on. The idea was to look at the world back then but we found that we just didn't have enough to say and we've become better at it. 

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carleton

carleton

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On 27/02/2021 at 09:19, squirtle said:

Cheers, it's our pleasure. Also, if you could put that out on a tweet, would be greatly appreciated. :)

I’ve retweeted one of your posts.
 

I’m trying to remember issue 3. Entombed and Dropzone perhaps? I guess I’ll wait and see.

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squirtle

squirtle

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23 minutes ago, carleton said:

I’ve retweeted one of your posts.
 

I’m trying to remember issue 3. Entombed and Dropzone perhaps? I guess I’ll wait and see.

Spot on. Thank you for the tweet, hugely appreciated. 

 

Issue 3 is indeed those games. Two gold medals. But as said above, we restructure it to make it much more balanced from this ep. Really hope that people like the way it now goes as we feel it's so much better. 

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Unofficial Who

Unofficial Who

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I'm so happy you've released this.

 

Some great games and not so great ones.

 

-Dropzone

-Roland Ratrace

-Cyphoid 9

-Kikstart

-Knockout

-Chicken Chase

-Strangeloop

-Amazon Warrior

-Circus Circus

 

I have some thoughts on a couple of these which I'll share soon....however now I have an excuse to replay Dropzone. I might be some time.

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Unofficial Who

Unofficial Who

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Dropzone is excellent and I couldn't wait to get a copy. It was going to be one of my first purchases as a C64 owner. I had spent hours playing the Atari 2600 version of Defender which had some "unique" features. Such as the player ship disappearing every time you fired a bullet.

 

The 2600 version was pretty basic.

 

s_Defender_3.png

 

The C64 version of Defender was workman like but acceptable.

 

defender_02.png

Dropzone by comparison looked amazing.

 

Dropzone-Titel.gif

 

Dropzone-Spiel.gif

 

The jetman in Dropzone (and Jetpac) was most likely inspired by this guy. He was everywhere in 1984-85.

 

b645bfecc72362c64c9c1e9656ff1afe.jpg

 

Sadly I could not find a copy until it was given away for free on Commodore Format. In 1994. By then I had moved onto the Amiga which had a myriad of free Defender clones (mostly by Mark Sibley who had a love for the game.) A couple of years later I had a Playstation and a copy of Williams Arcade Classics and so Dropzone went unplayed.

 

Defender (and Dropzone) was great in that it had reactive play, That is each of the enemies had behaviours rather than patterns and reacted to your presence. I've just spent half an hour playing Dropzone and didn't get anywhere near the scoreboard. Approaching 50 this game is far too fast for me now (and that's saying something since it's slower that the Atari original.)

 

I only wish I still had the reflexes to play it.

 

Edit : Having played it a bit more I suddenly had a good run and made it to level 4 getting a decent score of 41,120.

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Unofficial Who

Unofficial Who

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Roland's Ratrace. This is one I didn't play in the day as it just never came out here. And to me he's as much of a mystery as BC is to the podcast. I'm a sucker for arcade adventures usually but I couldn't get on with this at all. Partly because I just had no connection to the character, partly because the sewer maze is way too samey to navigate.

 

Um, anyone else got anything nice to say about it?

 

The use of hi res sprite overlay for the main character is neat I guess.

 

674444-roland-s-ratrace-commodore-64-scr

 

676564-roland-s-ratrace-commodore-64-scr

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Unofficial Who

Unofficial Who

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Strangeloop was another game I desperately wanted to buy. I came close but missed out.

 

Short diversion. Starting from 1984 I had some incredibly bad times stemming from school. But in 1987 things looked up. We'd moved to a new suburb and I had a new start at a new school. A few days after moving in I explored some of the surrounding suburbs and found the most amazing computer store. It was an Aladdin's cave of C64 software. And they had Strangeloop! In a bargain bin! (I think it was $8, it might have even been part of a compilation.) So I scratched around at home for some change and savings and came back later.

 

It was gone.

 

And I mean really gone. Not the tape. But the store. And by gone I mean the store wasn't closed. The building was gone, four cement blocks from the foundations being the only thing left. It was a bit of a sign of the next two years.

 

Anyway I never got to play it until emulation. I only knew two things about the game. One, the Amstrad version was apparently better. And two, you needed the bike to get anywhere in the game! I mean every review mentioned this. Even the Zzap review. (Just sayin.')

 

tumblr_o1e90mF3aW1uh4mp4o1_1280.png

 

I've tried playing it since and while I would have loved this at the time I definitely missed the boat here. Instead I recommend The Swapper which to me at least evoked the same sort of feeling I used to get from looking at murky screenshots of Strangeloop. The Swapper plays like the version I had of Strangeloop in my head all these years.

 

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