Zapped to the Past podcast (C64)

[Unofficial Who]

War crimes are easy.

The uniform's free.

Follow the drumbeat.

Don't follow me.

Jump without question.

Into the fire.

War crimes are easy.

This gun's for hire.

War crimes are easy.

When I say 'jump', jump.

Wait for it, wait for it... Jump!

 

The Defect Police. Deus Ex Machina.

 

 

 

This reviewed really well. But even back then I had...concerns about using the Vietnam War as entertainment. It was a conflict that still felt fresh. As a child and a teen I saw the effect it had on some vets from that conflict. Redgum had a hit in Australia back in 1983 that pretty much summed up the local experience here.

 

 

I mean there were plenty of games about World War 2 around this time, games that my grandparents, both veterans quite liked (in the case of my grandmother) and tolerated (in the case of my grandfather.) But the stories I heard about the Vietnam war sounded a lot dirtier and murkier. Despite being tied into an anti war movie (and I'll have more to say about that at the end) and with design that felt a little more considered, at least for the first 2/3rds of the game it felt distasteful.

 

However a couple of years later when I moved in with a friend he ha it as part of his collection and of course being in my "I must play ALL THE THINGS" phase I played it and with the help of maps from Commodore User completed it.

 

This is essentially three games knitted together to create a narrative.

 

The first level has you in a jungle looking for a village and explosives to blow up the bridge leading to the village to prevent yourself from being overwhelmed. And it is rock hard. There are tripwires that are hard to see, trapdoors that allow VC to take pot shots at you and the VC jump out from everywhere using their knowledge of the area to ambush you.

 

 

This is pretty attractive, the sprites here all use an overlaid black outline for definition, something that would become a bit of a house style. A map is essential though, otherwise you will get lost or worse still try to cross the bridge without having the means to blow it up. This level, and most of the levels becomes a bit of a memory test.

 

Once in the village you have to search huts while being aware of ambushes AND not shooting local civilians. VC hide in some of the huts and will try to ambush you leading to a sort of paranoid edge as you try to locate a torch, map and trapdoor. There's a really good cutaway system used to show the indoors.

 

 

Find the entrance to the tunnel system and you get to the most technically impressive section. The first person tunnels.

 

Control niggles aside trying to find the compass, flares and exit is claustrophobic and is one of the best first person mazes seen on the C64. It's like a gritty version of Phantasy Star's dungeons.

 

 

After escaping there is the brutally hard machine gun nest section. When I played this back in the day I used to have only half the amount of flares I needed and got really good at seeing movement in the dark. After the last section it feels like a let down but it's pretty much the Beach Head inspired turret section that has plagued war games ever since their introduction. I can see what they're going for here.

 

 

The final section (if you make it that far) is the weakest of the three, a race to find a bunker to hide in so you don't get bombed by your own forces. Only to have to confront your now mentally unwell and murderous CO. And...well...it's essentially a reskin of the indoor sections from Contra / Gryzor.

 

 

(Weirdly enough and skipping forward Ocean's own conversion of those sections in the licenced game look nowhere near as good.)

 

 

And that's it. There's a bit of a disappointing end screen but it's a tough game that's had a lot of thought put into it. I can't imagine how hard it was to pull off the brief of making a game based on this conflict and I think at least early on they made a swing for it. And given the limited hardware it comes across as not as tasteless as it could have been. I think the presentation and the amazing music by Jon Dunn in his debut helps a lot.

 

But. I think this fails. And I think this fails for the same reason I think the movie failed back in the day. And it's that I think as media properties they're too good. They worked a treat for people like me who were already receptive to the message. People who'd lived with and known strange adults who were somewhat broken from their experiences. But the success of Platoon led to games like this being made and many other movies and TV shows covering both the Vietnam and Korean conflicts in a way that romanticised the adventure and comradery which directly led to at least two of my school colleagues enlisting and signing up with the ADF. It's a similar charge that you can throw at Spec Ops:The Line as well which is trying to be anti war but has such a compelling narrative that I'm sure some played it and missed the point completely.

 

So this is a weird one. At the time I had mixed feelings around the game and they've only deepened over time, my discomfort hitting a peak with Medal of Honour:Frontline and really cementing when I discovered Mel Croucher's Deus Ex Machina. It's one of two really weirdly targeted games this podcast given that the audience for the game would barely be old enough to see the film.

 

Technically amazing, the tunnel section uses tricks I'm surprised other games didn't copy. The music is amazing. It's a good game against the odds but it's not enjoyable. Not for me at least.

 

Killing is wrong, even pretend killing on little screens.

And people that sell violent games to children should be put away somewhere safe, 'til they get well again.

 

The Fertiliser. Deus Ex Machina.

 

 

[merman]

Funny you mention the song “I was only 19”. Paul Hardcastle’s 19 became the inspiration for a C64 game. 19 Part 1: Boot Camp was very much like Combat School. The idea was that completing training would let you transfer your stats to Part 2: Vietnam. Unfortunately Cascade closed its doors before it was finished.

[Unofficial Who]

I remember Super G-Man getting crap reviews so it's not one I've ever sought out. Playing it now I can see why the reviews were so critical. I think gamers in 1988 were looking for deeper experiences and while the price might have been right the platform wasn't. It wouldn't be for another year before good portable systems were available, and not for a couple of decades before portables with digital marketplaces could sell small games like this at a budget price.

 

I can see the Jetpack Joyride type appeal that Graham talks about here. For me it's too shallow and a little too frustrating compared to Jetpack Joyride. It does feel like a failed attempt at something that would gain much more traction later.

 

[Unofficial Who]

Andy Capp is another really odd choice for something to be turned into a video game. When I was a kid I was on welfare. Most of my family was. Due to syndication Andy Capp was a regular in the daily newspapers and I just couldn't see the appeal. Part of me was offended, it felt like a piss take at the expense of the working (or non working) poor. Part of me wondered if it was meant as some sort of cautionary moral tale, in much the same way that Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend cautioned against eating rabbit and cheese late at night. But mostly I found it grim and anxiety inducing. A reminder of what my future could end up like, endless dreary days revolving around the TAB (our local bookies), the pub and unhappy relationships. As someone who felt compelled to read everything I took to regularly skipping the strip.

 

And then this game was released. And it pretty much succeeds in distilling the essence of Andy Capp into digital form. The look of the game is extraordinarily good. The backdrops are made up of simple lines as in the strip and the main sprites are as close to their comic counterparts as you could get on the C64.

 

 

The setting works and the game design is pretty much the same sort of low stakes plot as the comic. You play as a feckless but "lovable" alcoholic who just wanders about bothering people and getting into fights. I found this pretty grim in 1989 when someone loaned this to me. (It probably didn't help that at the time he probably woke up with more change in his pocket than I did.) 30 plus years on it's no better. In a short game wandering the grey streets aimlessly I managed to bum ten pounds off the newsagent, harass a random woman who wanted nothing to do with me, get in a fist fight with my wife and then get arrested for affray by a police officer, my game ending in a prison stint because I didn't have the money to pay the fine.

 

The upside of this game is that the creators have completely succeeded in creating an accurate game based on the strip. It looks and feels like Andy Capp with similar themes. The downside? The same as the upside. It's unrelentingly grim.

 

It's weird. I've been racking my brain trying to work out the audience for this game. In 1988 most games were aimed at kids. Most adults playing games were playing text adventures, rpgs, flight sims or golf games. Anyone who read Andy Capp for enjoyment wouldn't give a toss about computer games. The only two reasons I can see this getting made is that it would have been cheap to licence for Mirrorsoft (being part of the Mirror media group) and maybe, just maybe someone looked at the Wally Week and Miner Willy games and thought "kids seem to like them. Maybe they want more working class heros!" Leaving aside the weird twisted suburban lens those games had Willy was abstract and Wally at least seemed to like his family. (Everyone's a Wally always reminded me of being the digital equivalent of the TV show Bread.)

 

In any case back in the day despite loving arcade adventures I soon dropped this, parts hit too close to the bone and other parts reminded me too much of sketchy adults I'd encountered in the 70's and early 80's.

[squirtle]

A baffling game that's one redeeming feature is that it looks exactly like the comics and feels just the same. And as you rightly point out, that is also it's most damning feature. Can't knock the technical aspects, but thematically, it's very dubious.

[Unofficial Who]

3 minutes ago, squirtle said:

A baffling game that's one redeeming feature is that it looks exactly like the comics and feels just the same. And as you rightly point out, that is also it's most damning feature. Can't knock the technical aspects, but thematically, it's very dubious.

 

What is the deal with Andy Capp? I mean he's so beloved there's a statue of him.

 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/andy-capp-statue

 

 

 

[squirtle]

Just now, Unofficial Who said:

 

What is the deal with Andy Capp? I mean he's so beloved there's a statue of him.

 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/andy-capp-statue

 

 

 

And the TV show. 

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

Jesus. That's even more grim. 1988 as well.

 

 

[squirtle]

4 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

Jesus. That's even more grim. 1988 as well.

 

 

I think we'll be chatting about that when we record ep78 tonight, so it'll be coming up in a week or two.

[squirtle]

1 hour ago, squirtle said:

I think we'll be chatting about that when we record ep78 tonight, so it'll be coming up in a week or two.

Actually, not tonight, tomorrow. I keep thinking it's Thursday for some reason...

[Unofficial Who]

I've been looking forward to talking about Lifeforce, one of the best shooters on the C64! I mean just look at it!

 

 

Lifeforce aka Salamander is a conversion of the....hang on, I just need to answer the phone.

 

Yeah, I'm writing about Lifeforce. Of course I'm writing about the right one. You mean there's two? Oh, the grey CRL release. Oh. Do I have to? Alright then.

 

OK. Wrong Lifeforce. Lifeforce by CRL has you in a tank trundling around a space station seeking to destroy the robot centipedes that have replaced the human variety of workers.

 

 

And it's grey. Oh so grey. The reviews at the time didn't inspire me to seek this out and playing it now doesn't change my mind much. It's so grey and ugly. There's some cleverness with the animated backdrops with destructible elements but it's just so uninspiring. I have to admit quitting well before I hit a game over screen. I know they were trying their best at CRL but it feels like they started to flounder aafter losing John Twiddy. Distinctly average back then, and forgettable now.

[Unofficial Who]

Back in the mid 80's a friend of mine loaned me an amazing compilation that had 30 games on it. 30 games! In truth most of them were complete rubbish apart from a half dozen which were all Task Set titles. And one of the ones I loved was a title called Jammin'.

 

 

A garish arcade maze game with moving lanes made up of colours, you could only transition from one colour to another using the diamond shape tiles. Get the instruments, avoid the bad guys. Made by Tony Gibson who sadly passed away in 2013. I loved this title and for some reason it passed me by that there was a sequel called Beat It! Jammin' 2.

 

 

It's a more polished version of Jammin. Collect the notes, avoid the baddies and use the smooth conveyor belts to transition from colour to colour. While it moves more smoothly and your sprite is much more defined I did find it lacked the satisfying "snap" movement of the original and it could be hard to work out which colour lane you were in. But this is decent enough and back in the day I would have loved this. While I can't find credits it does feel like a Gibbo game and it has the standard red green and yellow scheme that he loved to put into his games. Possibly my pick of the podcast this week.

[squirtle]

2 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

Back in the mid 80's a friend of mine loaned me an amazing compilation that had 30 games on it. 30 games! In truth most of them were complete rubbish apart from a half dozen which were all Task Set titles. And one of the ones I loved was a title called Jammin'.

 

 

A garish arcade maze game with moving lanes made up of colours, you could only transition from one colour to another using the diamond shape tiles. Get the instruments, avoid the bad guys. Made by Tony Gibson who sadly passed away in 2013. I loved this title and for some reason it passed me by that there was a sequel called Beat It! Jammin' 2.

 

 

It's a more polished version of Jammin. Collect the notes, avoid the baddies and use the smooth conveyor belts to transition from colour to colour. While it moves more smoothly and your sprite is much more defined I did find it lacked the satisfying "snap" movement of the original and it could be hard to work out which colour lane you were in. But this is decent enough and back in the day I would have loved this. While I can't find credits it does feel like a Gibbo game and it has the standard red green and yellow scheme that he loved to put into his games. Possibly my pick of the podcast this week.

Lemon 64 has it down as Tony Gibson.

[Unofficial Who]

22 minutes ago, squirtle said:

Lemon 64 has it down as Tony Gibson.

 

And it's up on his youtube channel.

 

 

Link found on his obituary/tribute here at https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2016/02/tony-gibson-a-tributeobituary/

 

I might have mentioned earlier he had some pretty distinctive games, Jammin' was the first one I played although I remember reading about Seaside Special in Commodore User.

 

 

 

[merman]

I loved Beat It, I actually played it before I ever played Jammin’.

 

And there were some interesting ideas in Lifeforce, it just got very repetitive.

[squirtle]

2 hours ago, merman said:

I loved Beat It, I actually played it before I ever played Jammin’.

 

And there were some interesting ideas in Lifeforce, it just got very repetitive.

I said the same in the podcast. Destructible scenery and the like with treasure hidden within. It just looks very grey and gets old quickly.

[Unofficial Who]

I was the target audience for MASK, it being one of the cartoons I would watch after school or on a Saturday. Decades later the only thing I can remember about the cartoon is the theme which has remain lodged in my head for dec....hang on, didn't we do this recently?

 

We did! Only a month ago! What sort of deal did Gremlin make to allow them to pump out Mask games like this?

 

Mask Two Two starts with a great rendition of the title track on a rather confusing character select screen.

 

 

And then you (eventually load up the game and...I mean come on. This would have been poor back in 1984. This is dreadful. It feels like it was rushed out the door as soon as it was in a workable state.

 

 

Upsides. I guess it loads.

 

Downsides. It loads. There are Scramble and Defender clones on the Atari 2600 that play better than this. Avoid.

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

Back when the Sega Master System started hitting the stores I could only look at the screengrabs of various amazingly coloured games in envy. Could I afford one? Of course I could. The system was cheap! But the games...so expensive. At the time I could only afford compilations, budget releases and cover tapes. So games like Fantasy Zone lived only in my imagination.

 

 

Out of this World  caught my eye as it looked like it was a rip off inspired by the Sega game.

 

 

And it sort of plays like it. It's slower and the game doesn't have the large enemies spawning smaller enemies. But it's overly reliant on waves of enemies coming in hot in a basic sine wave and if there's something I was tired of it was basic sine waves in games.

 

Fantasy Zone is a little simplistic for my tastes long term and this clone simplifies it more as well as losing the attractive (or garish according to your tastes) look. It's OK but again there's so many better shooters on the system.

[squirtle]

31 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

Back when the Sega Master System started hitting the stores I could only look at the screengrabs of various amazingly coloured games in envy. Could I afford one? Of course I could. The system was cheap! But the games...so expensive. At the time I could only afford compilations, budget releases and cover tapes. So games like Fantasy Zone lived only in my imagination.

 

 

Out of this World  caught my eye as it looked like it was a rip off inspired by the Sega game.

 

 

And it sort of plays like it. It's slower and the game doesn't have the large enemies spawning smaller enemies. But it's overly reliant on waves of enemies coming in hot in a basic sine wave and if there's something I was tired of it was basic sine waves in games.

 

Fantasy Zone is a little simplistic for my tastes long term and this clone simplifies it more as well as losing the attractive (or garish according to your tastes) look. It's OK but again there's so many better shooters on the system.

It controls horribly.

[Unofficial Who]

10 hours ago, squirtle said:

It controls horribly.

 

It has some weird movement issues in relation to your craft verses enemy movement. When enemies are coming towards you it's slow but once you turn to chase any you've missed they speed up in relation to you but in such a way that it feels like you're moving slower and that their speed hasn't changed.

[Unofficial Who]

I don't remember too many Tynesoft games making it to Oz and I don't think Winter Olympiad 88 would have been a contender for local distribution as pretty much everyone interested already had Winter Games. I did give this a quick try for the purposes of dissing reviewing it and cam away a little surprised.

 

First of all the title screen is pretty low effort. I know gyms back in the 80's loved using these little logos so it's sort of very much of the time.

 

 

The tune though is pretty solid and evocative of 80's sports shows.

 

Like Western Games some of this screens look a bit "bitty" now but on an old CRT they looked rather attractive.

 

 

 

There are five sports in total.

 

The Ski Jump has some sprite work that I was pre-warned by @squirtle about.

 

 

Erm...

 

 

 

This plays a lot like the ski jump event in Winter Games and I was about as successful here landing one jump where I didn't eat snow. Not enjoyable but I've never found this sort of event interesting.

 

Next up is downhill skiing. This for me was the weakest event. It's ambitious but twin issues make this difficult. One, because of the angle the skier takes up most of the area you need to see in regards to oncoming obstacles. The goggle view in the bottom right doesn't help much. Secondly once you're travelling at speed the frame rate drops making it hard to dodge and jump. It's a nice try and something that might have worked better on the Amiga version. It's a miss here though.

 

 

Next up is the biathlon and this feels very close to the event in Winter Games.

 

 

It's got some great animated backdrops as well that add to the atmosphere. The shooting however doesn't feel as solid.

 

 

And the event feels  simplified compared to the Epyx version. There's no heart meter and there's no satisfaction from coasting down slopes.

 

Slalom is next and this was my favourite event here just because it captured the speed and smoothness of making a good run. I thought the angle would be offputting but it works.

 

 

Last is the bobsleigh.

 

 

Again like biathlon it's solid but lacking compared to Epyx's take. Nice smooth 3D though.

 

 

This isn't a bad package, it's just rendered redundant by all of the events being covered by Winter Games (and in one case World Games) and done better by Epyx. Through modern eyes this release looks a little weird but in pre-digital times there wasn't the long tail that we have today and someone looking for a game covering winter events in early 1988 may well have only been able to buy this. At the time though if you were savvy enough and lucky enough you could probably find Winter Games and World Games in a compilation or as a budget release. There's also the multi format angle here. Given that this game was also released on the Amiga, Atari 8-bit, BBC, DOS and Speccy it might be that releasing a C64 version was a no brainer given the size of the platform market. Even mediocre sales on a huge platform could eclipse sales on a developing platform.

 

It's not a bad game. Solid but eclipsed by earlier efforts by Epyx.

[Unofficial Who]

Apologies. I've been far far from home and far far from posting about Zapped to the Past!

 

Latest episode has been up for a while.

 

Games covered

 

-Hunter’s Moon

-Clever and Smart

-Psycho Soldier

-Knightmare

-Inside Outing

-Bad Cat

-Flying Shark

-Vengeance

 

I'll post something tomorrow, but don't let that stop anyone else from commenting before then!

[squirtle]

There's one very good game in there, then a whole lot of average to shite.

[Unofficial Who]

And the very good game is of course Hunter's Moon.

 

I really wanted to get my hands on this being a bit of a Martin Walker fan at this point. (Well apart from Back to the Future but that was doomed from the start really.)

 

It took me 30 years to get a proper copy. More on that later.

 

 

How can I describe this? I think the description in the podcast works. It's a mix of Mutants and Morpheus with a touch of Spore. In each level you have to nip in and steal crystals while avoiding the swarming drones that build and rebuild structures. That's it. But it's in the implementation where this shines. A moody soundtrack. Tight controls. And a full screen display which feels like a luxury after playing so many games with squashed displays.

 

 

And this got a sizzler, with the review tucked in at page 69. Future editor Gordon Houghton would endlessly extol the virtues of Hunters Moon to any who would listen in future issues of Zzap, to friends and later in his blog which I can't find anymore. However  20 years ago he wrote a review for Lemon64 at https://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=https%3A//www.lemon64.com/reviews/view.php%3Fid%3D66

 

Quote

Hunter's Moon is so far from a typical shoot 'em up, it might as well be on a different planet. It's much smarter than the average blaster too, so your brain better be as quick as your trigger finger. The graphics are perfect, bringing a host of weird and wonderful geometric structures to pulsating life. The sound effects are even better, giving a voice to the creatures that inhabit the hives... Do the starcells really say 'Meanwhile'? Do the hives really shout 'Hiya'? Find out for yourself.

 

Back in 2018 Thalamus rereleased Hunters Moon as a cartridge which I bought after finding out all involved would be getting paid.

 

You can buy the digital files here at https://thalamusdigital.itch.io/hunters-moon-remastered although fair warning, I've never been able to get them running which is a massive disappointment (if you can get them running tell me how!) But it adds a whole lot of quality of life features and possibly the best intro ever seen on a commercial game for the C64.

 

 

Still even if you buy the binaries and then find a place to download the old version it's worth playing now. I would have loved this in the day and I'm probably going to spend part of the year playing this.

 

Pick of the episode by far, if you're only going to play one C64 game this week make it this one.

 

[Unofficial Who]

And then there's this. Clever and Smart.

 

 

A "funny" property translated from Spanish to German to English. I found this incomprehensible.

 

I wandered around here for a bit.

 

 

And then got stuck in the sewers.

 

 

Imagine paying full whack for this!

[Unofficial Who]

One more today. Psycho Soldier was the little known arcade sequel to Athena that might be well known to people here now because of the excellent SNK classics collection.

 

The collection is excellent. The arcade game? Well...I think it might have had a draw in Japan due to the theme (magical girl / idol hero) but it plays like an uglier version of Capcom's Son Son.

 

 

It's clumsy and messy. I wouldn't recommend it.

 

The C64 version is uglier and buggier.

 

 

I found that sometimes I'd die with bullets sometimes just passing through enemies and the sprite feels bigger in much the same way Bomb Jack in his C64 arcade version looks wider.

 

Which would I recommend. The arcade version or the home version?

 

I'd recommend Son Son by Capcom instead which was released for  free (at least for a while on the PS4) as part of Vol 2 of the new Capcom compilations. Same thing but much snappier.

 

[Camel]

I think Hunters Moon Remastered only runs in an emulator and won’t work on a 1541 Ultimate or similar if that’s what you were trying to do. I can’t remember the details around why that might be.

 

I find Hunters Moon endlessly frustrating and disappointing. I still have my disk version from back in the day and I bought the Remastered cartridge because for some reason I really want to love this game. But the ship’s slow turning speed just kills it for me. Deaths often feel unfair as the game design makes it impossible to react in time to avoid bullets. Everything else about the game is amazing.

[Unofficial Who]

3 hours ago, Camel said:

I think Hunters Moon Remastered only runs in an emulator and won’t work on a 1541 Ultimate or similar if that’s what you were trying to do. I can’t remember the details around why that might be.

 

 

It does run in an emulator but it's a protected binary and can only be run from a batch file and for me it just doesn't work despite trying two of the three options available (I don't have a C64 mini to try the third option.)

 

I think I bought it at the time to try and convince Thalamus to release more of their old games, I quite like the idea of some of the original programmers getting some more income.

 

3 hours ago, Camel said:

I find Hunters Moon endlessly frustrating and disappointing. I still have my disk version from back in the day and I bought the Remastered cartridge because for some reason I really want to love this game. But the ship’s slow turning speed just kills it for me. Deaths often feel unfair as the game design makes it impossible to react in time to avoid bullets. Everything else about the game is amazing.

 

I think I'm getting somewhere because I'm using a similar strategy as to what I used in Mutants. Scope out the area for the best angle of attack, time my run and then rush through to get what I need. I did pretty well for my first two runs before realising that there's a time element in getting the flashing crystals. Cue me playing three games in quick succession without planning and just ramming into drones.

 

If nothing else it's head and shoulders above the fare this week.

[Unofficial Who]

We didn't get Knightmare on Australian television so I could only read about it in magazines. It looked like a great concept though, a real life video game!

 

 

To me this looked like a photo realistic version of Virgin's C64 game The Gates of Dawn!

 

But it was never to be released in Oz. Why would it? The show wasn't shown here and so the game would have no audience...

 

...but wait! This ended up on a magazine cover mount! An issue of Your Commodore that I bought just for this! I loved arcade adventures and I loved the word wheel system in Labyrinth. This game was made for me!

 

 

Here was the first problem for me. I've mentioned this before but on my old TV lots of white on the screen would cause the flyback on our old TV to whine at a high pitch. Imperceptible to adults but to teenage ears it was the worst. At least the game would be awesome right? At least it would be full of colour and life!

 

 

That's a no. Issues abound here. The word wheels aren't context sensitive like they are in Labyrinth in regards to objects. It's all very drab, grey, and white. I mean I know it's a dungeon but it was nowhere near as vivid as the shots from the show I'd seen. And once I stumbled across a wall monster who demanded me to answer trivia questions about the Titanic I was done. The weak spell it had on me was broken. I had this when I had loads of time and this had little competition. But the competition was try and finish this game (takes between 12 and 20 minutes according to long plays I've looked at) or replay Labyrinth for a few hours. Easy choice.

 

I'm not even tempted to boot this up again to see if I've changed my mind. Something nice to say? I guess the candle is nice.

 

Oh and the Amiga and ST got this instead by Tony Crowther a few years later. And I played a demo of that for far longer than I gave this game.

 

[squirtle]

Nightmare.