Zapped to the Past podcast (C64)

[squirtle]

6 hours ago, Rex Grossman said:

Never really thought before how Excite Bike didn’t inspire a load of clones. 

Could also have been that it was replaced in the racing representation stakes by Super Sprint. Probably easier to make top down single screen racers at the time.

[Unofficial Who]

I was a little too old for the flood of toy / cartoon crossovers and so Bravestarr passed me by. Given how much I love sci fi western hybrids maybe I missed out?

 

 

Er....maybe not.

 

This scored 8/10 in Commodore User but by now I was buying that more out of habit than anything else at this stage and took the Zzap review to heart despite my love of arcade adventure hybrids.

 

On the surface it doesn't look too bad.

 

 

But when playing it you're instantly beset by dogs and randoms. The controls are awful (down to enter buildings?) and the adventure game sections are poor. This quite frankly feels unfinished, I suspect that as soon as it was in a state where it was "playable" it was shoved out the door.

 

Quite frankly seeing this screen was a relief. 

 

 

Another one to avoid, I don't think games this poor are released anymore. The annoying thing is there are the bones of a good game here, this feels like they wanted to make a sci fi western version of Zelda 2 but without the time afforded to such a project.

 

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

I think CRL were really clever in cloning Side Arms and giving it their own twist with Jet-Boys. Unfortunately for them EVERYONE seemed to have had the same idea and the clear front runner was also the budget release. This means if you want Side Arms you'll be buying the official port but if you wanted something like Side Arms Zybex was the obvious choice leaving this as an also ran. A lot of talk online says that this is an easy game...if you memorise all the attack patterns. Not my favourite sort of design.

 

 

Not bad, just not great and not as good as the competition.

[squirtle]

It was also annoying that you would die with contact with the bottom of the screen, something Side Arms did not do. It also took way too long to flick from left to right.

[ScouserInExile]

On 24/10/2022 at 04:52, Unofficial Who said:

Episode 83 is out!

How convenient, I've just finished episode 82. This is the perfect podcast for me. It's about C64 games and the format is in convenient, about the same length as my commute, chunks.

[squirtle]

9 minutes ago, ScouserInExile said:

How convenient, I've just finished episode 82. This is the perfect podcast for me. It's about C64 games and the format is in convenient, about the same length as my commute, chunks.

Glad you're still tuning in!

[Unofficial Who]

5 hours ago, squirtle said:

It was also annoying that you would die with contact with the bottom of the screen, something Side Arms did not do. It also took way too long to flick from left to right.

 

I'm pretty sure those waves are designed purely around two players as well.

[Unofficial Who]

Code Hunter looked so drab in the screenshots that I'd forgotten it existed until now. It kind of feels like a call back to classic single screen arcade challenges from the early 80's and I suspect if they'd gone for something a little more cute inspired rather than the anonymous bas relief robots on offer here it might have been more memorable.

 

 

It's certainly slick. Unfortunately it's not for me, the time limit is so tight that there's little room for improvisation. It's all about learning the most critical path and implementing that so despite my initial enthusiasm I quickly tired of it after three screens. It's still better than a lot of the full price fare this month.

[squirtle]

7 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

Code Hunter looked so drab in the screenshots that I'd forgotten it existed until now. It kind of feels like a call back to classic single screen arcade challenges from the early 80's and I suspect if they'd gone for something a little more cute inspired rather than the anonymous bas relief robots on offer here it might have been more memorable.

 

 

It's certainly slick. Unfortunately it's not for me, the time limit is so tight that there's little room for improvisation. It's all about learning the most critical path and implementing that so despite my initial enthusiasm I quickly tired of it after three screens. It's still better than a lot of the full price fare this month.

Best game this week, IMO.

[Unofficial Who]

1 hour ago, squirtle said:

Best game this week, IMO.

 

I really wanted to like it more than I did but I suspect we have different tolerances to play balance. It's certainly slick and worth a try. Surprised it never got picked up later for a cover tape rerelease.

[squirtle]

32 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

I really wanted to like it more than I did but I suspect we have different tolerances to play balance. It's certainly slick and worth a try. Surprised it never got picked up later for a cover tape rerelease.

I just thought for £2 it did exactly what it set it to do. As you said, slick and well made. Easily passes the Sunday afternoon test.

[squirtle]

33 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

I really wanted to like it more than I did but I suspect we have different tolerances to play balance. It's certainly slick and worth a try. Surprised it never got picked up later for a cover tape rerelease.

Oh, and if tight time limits annoy you, I've just played something for ep85 that will make you very angry.

[ScouserInExile]

20 hours ago, squirtle said:

Glad you're still tuning in!

I know it's not cool to be all crawly bumlicj fanboy, but I really like the whole thing. The format is great because it's not just "heres a whole load of games I used to love as a kid and still love now", the reviews of the dross are the most entertaining, a lot of the time. And I like the rapport and interplay between you both.

 

It's a great listen.

[Unofficial Who]

2 hours ago, squirtle said:

Oh, and if tight time limits annoy you, I've just played something for ep85 that will make you very angry.

 

Will it make me as angry as Droid Dreams?

 

This is like someone sat down and thought "What if I make a game like V or I, Alien? But worse?"

 

 

Worth loading up to hear the SID murder Madonna's Borderline. Awful. It's weird, someone actually takes this formula and makes a decent budget game out of this eventually.

 

This is not that game.

[squirtle]

1 hour ago, ScouserInExile said:

I know it's not cool to be all crawly bumlicj fanboy, but I really like the whole thing. The format is great because it's not just "heres a whole load of games I used to love as a kid and still love now", the reviews of the dross are the most entertaining, a lot of the time. And I like the rapport and interplay between you both.

 

It's a great listen.

That's cool to hear. Thank you 😃

[Unofficial Who]

M.A.C.H. or Maneuverable Armed Computer Humans to give it it's full title has to be inspired by the cartoon Centurians. And to give it credit it's more solid than that game.

 

 

A bit of tweaking and I could see this being quite the game in 1986. The problem is that it's 1988 and there are loads of 360 degree shooters that are better than this. Want something new with some depth? Hunters Moon is a better choice. But if you've owned a C64 for a number of years you probably already have Z (or Z Pilot as it was called later.) Real old timers would have Raid on Bungling Bay in their collection. 

 

I quite liked the music despite it being very 80's, the composer Johnannes Bjerregaarg would later work on Flimbo's Quest.

[Unofficial Who]

As alluded to in the podcast episode back in the 80's when it came to Conan inspired games your were either a Rygar fan or a Rastan fan.

 

I was an unapologetic Rastan fan. I was taken by its slower pace, it's beautiful pixel art and bombastic music score.

 

 

It felt more measured than Rygar, you had an inventory of sorts and that opening level just had so much promise! Of course converting this to the C64 would be a cinch. It has scrolling hardware. Good sprite management. And an excellent sound chip. However the reviews warned me off. Something had gone very very wrong with this conversion. A year or two later this was one of the games I found in the big box of discs given to me.

 

And....yeah.

 

 

There are issues. It's incredibly slow. And I don't mean measured. It's sluggish. The weapon upgrades? Well apart from the flame sword they're awful. Unlike the arcade game they don't offer any extra reach, they feel like cosmetic changes. The characters skate across the landscape floating above the ground. I just assumed that this dodgy copy was an early build or something. How could the people at Ocean be so inept?

 

And here's the thing. They weren't inept. This was a troubled project. Games on the C64 involving people wielding guns? Dead easy. Wielding hand to hand weapons? That's a whole other issue. We'll see a couple more Rastan clones in the next few episodes and they'll suffer the same problems.

 

John Meegan spills the beans here https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/rastan-v1/

 

Quote

“I believe Jane Lowe did one version and Martin McDonald. The change of palette was an technical choice. The problem was you only had three colours for all the sprites, and two of these were fixed for all sprites displayed. So whereas the first Rastan looked great, everything other NCP looked nothing like that in the arcade game.

The original was also too greedy on sprite usage using a combo of five and 4 sprites depending on the animation frame. The problem was when the sword / chain was in attack, that used 3 horizontal sprites and our multiplexer made the sprites tear horribly. It also chewed through memory. So for technical reasons, this was not viable."

 

Here's how version 1 looked.

 

 

Quote

I hate to say it but Rastan was by far my least enjoyable project for Ocean Software. I didn’t like the arcade game to start with, scrolling aside it was not suited to the C64 hardware and the maps were so huge. Triggering the baddies was a real pain as we only had 32 control characters in the character set to select what type of baddy came in, their behaviour type or whether these were deadly blocks etc…

 

So on the surface an easy conversion but when you look at the game more closely and the sprite and memory limitations the C64 had....the hardware wasn't up to the task.

 

Sure the Sega Master System had a decent version of Rastan but they made some changes to the sizes of the creatures and the map layout.

 

 

It's interesting revisiting some of these old games. I revisited the arcade game and while I still love the look, the soundtrack and the atmosphere....there really isn't much game there. It's overly hard and plodding. Arguably it's one of those games where experiencing the first couple of levels is enough really.

 

I still like Rastan better than Rygar though the arcade versions at least. Having played a lot of endless runners I can appreciate Rygar a lot more but I much prefer a game to give me a little bit of space.

 

But this conversion isn't great. The only thing that's changed revisiting this is my understanding as to why it didn't (and probably could never) work on the C64.

[squirtle]

Smashy Yo-Yo or death! Also, the vertical scrolling in the C64 version was awful.

[Unofficial Who]

2 hours ago, squirtle said:

Smashy Yo-Yo or death! Also, the vertical scrolling in the C64 version was awful.

 

Teenage me just thought they were lazy with both conversions given what had come before without really understanding the limitations.

 

I think my two unfair comparisons were Barbarian (a static screen game where you only face a palette swapped version of the player character) and Antiriad (where you chucked rocks at small single colour sprites in a flick screen environment.)

 

Did anyone manage to pull off this sort of game on the C64 successfully? I mean Ocean managed it loads with gun based games but swords seem to be difficult due to the sprite requirements.

[squirtle]

36 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

Teenage me just thought they were lazy with both conversions given what had come before without really understanding the limitations.

 

I think my two unfair comparisons were Barbarian (a static screen game where you only face a palette swapped version of the player character) and Antiriad (where you chucked rocks at small single colour sprites in a flick screen environment.)

 

Did anyone manage to pull off this sort of game on the C64 successfully? I mean Ocean managed it loads with gun based games but swords seem to be difficult due to the sprite requirements.

Usagi Yojimbo.

[Unofficial Who]

6 hours ago, squirtle said:

Usagi Yojimbo.

 

Of course! Looking forward to that episode as I've never played it. Very much the exception.

[Unofficial Who]

This last entry is going to be a little on the long side for a game I didn't end up playing but bear with me.

 

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. This was a completely unrealistic dream for someone of my background but I still held it for the longest time. Around 1984 I borrowed from a friend Space Shuttle:a Journey into Space. This was the first simulator I had ever played and it took things so seriously that it not only used the joystick but every single switch the console had. It even came with two cardboard overlays (one for the "woodgrain" 2600 and one for the "Vader" 2600 and a reference card that would sit on top of the console.

 

 

Was this a fun game? Not in the traditional sense but it was all about the atmosphere and pretending that the skills learned from this would map into real life.

 

 

An obvious fantasy! Or was it? While digging this up I discovered the following

https://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/space-shuttle-a-journey-into-space/trivia

Quote

During the development of the simulator, one of Activision's testers landed the Shuttle using just the smaller engines, which are normally only used for minor adjustments.

Steve Kitchen was puzzled that the simulated shuttle would allow that to happen, so he went back to NASA and asked them to try the same thing on their own simulators. They concurred that it was indeed possible, and so landing the shuttle in an emergency using the smaller engines was added to the actual Space Shuttle’s emergency procedures manual! (From the Bird Sanctuary)

 

In any case this experience kept the dream alive until a few year later after my education had stalled due to an unfortunate event (leading me to be well behind on math) and discovering my health issues would preclude me from even becoming a pilot.

 

So by 1988 my interest in such simulators had waned and while Apollo 18:Mission to the Moon looked amazing in the screen shots I had little remaining interest in spending a week studying a manual to fly pretend missions. Had this been released earlier I would have been all over this. Because I think sometimes there is fun to be had in pretending to do dull things. (Even dull things where in real life if you screw up you're dead.)

 

I watched a longplay of this to get an idea of how to play (I'll link further down) and that convinced me that this was likely not the game I wanted to spend a weekend trying to get to grips with. But I've got a few observations.

 

 

The first observation...this looks great for the time period. Accolade and Artech were pretty good in creating bold looking games for the C64 where it looked like a lot more was happening than is actually happening. And that leads to one of the first design issues.

 

 

This looks fantastic doesn't it. But this reminds me of one of one of my pet hates in games that persist even to this day. Games where something amazing is happening and you can't look at what is happening. All the cool stuff is happening in the top middle part of the screen here yet your attention needs to be focused on the instruments below looking at thrust and telemetry. This could be avoided with a reply showing you the success or otherwise of your attempt to launch. This is something that still happens in quick time events in games to this day where you have to be so focused on the prompts that you miss out on the cool stuff (looking at you pre 2018 God of War.) This by the way is where most people will begin and end their game.

 

In the second part you need to dock with the lunar module. This looks pretty impressive.

 

 

You then have some very boring course corrections to make.

 

 

And then have to land via instruments. Again the cool stuff happens in the bottom right but you must keep an eye on the central screen.

 

 

And here's where the game takes a weird turn away from the simulation and turns into a sort of World Games style even. The moon walk. I watched a few minutes of this but ended up skipping through what was a tedious ten minute bounce and back. This is tonally weird and I suspect simulation nerds would not have been impressed.

 

You then launch back into space and entering earth obit to snag some satellites in what appeared to be a thrust style mini game.

 

 

And then you re-enter the atmosphere fighting the gyroscope and performing several procedures.

 

I won't spoil the end game graphics although loads of previews at the time spoiled what was a pretty awful digitised photo. 

Look there's more stuff here, boring stuff involving screens like this.

 

And some really scratchy speech.

 

I can't fairly evaluate this as I didn't end up playing it but from watching the longplay and listening to the podcast there are some issues.

 

-As mentioned earlier the gaming sin of having really cool animations happening in such a way that you can't pay attention to them.

-As mentioned in the podcast, the issue of "fun." I don't think overall that's as big an issue as Graham and @squirtle made out since the people attracted to this would find the fun in leafing through manuals and hitting the switches at the right time. That is the fun here for the intended audience. However as a counterpoint I could see the intended audience being unimpressed with the arcade like moon walk and space walk sequences.

-The lack of practice and accessibility options to try or practice any section of the simulation. This is an odd omission. One could see the intended audience dropping off given you have to start from the launch over and over again until you make it to the next section. Which you are likely to fail due to unfamiliarity with the new section. And here's where I loop back around to Space Shuttle on the 2600. One of the modes in that game is a demo that plays through an entire successful mission from beginning to end so you can see how it should work. Not only that but if you touch the joystick at any time you can control the rest of the mission from there. Suck at launch? Sick of the launch sequence? Just want to practice the docking or landing sequence? Just set it up in demo mode, wait and jump in when you want. That a space simulation in 1988 didn't have this feature that was pulled off on 1970's hardware back in 1983 is baffling. But even more baffling given that Accolade was founded by ex-Activision alumni.

 

I can see the appeal and there's definitely an audience for this sort of game. But they're unlikely to play a game with such fixed mission parameters when they have the option now of playing something as complex (but more entertaining and educational) as Kerbal Space Program.

 

 

So that's Apollo 18. One for the hardcore only. Did anyone play it back in the day?

 

 

 

[merman]

On my best ever Apollo 18 run, I got all the way to the Moon, captured the satellite and then burned up on re-entry... so close.

[Unofficial Who]

15 hours ago, merman said:

On my best ever Apollo 18 run, I got all the way to the Moon, captured the satellite and then burned up on re-entry... so close.

 

Did you find it fun though?

[Unofficial Who]

A new episode appears! https://zappedtothepast.com/

 

Games covered this episode 

 

-Strike Fleet

-Knight Games 2

-Skyfox II

-…Traz

-Mandroid

-Heli Drop 

-Scumball 

 

Some decent games in this lot apparently and I haven't played a single one of them!

[Unofficial Who]

Let's start with the best of the lot Strike Fleet. Or in my case let's not because I could just repeat what I said in August about the previous game PHM Pegasus. Even with the 96% rating and even with it coming from some of LucasArts best this was never a game that would interest me. I cede the floor to the rest of you. If you enjoyed the previous game here's more of it.

 

[Unofficial Who]

Knight Games 2 is an odd game and no mistake. And I can't seem to find anything on how it came to be. But...I have a couple of theories.

 

First things first. This is a collection of three games. which is probably the reason for the title, Knight Games 2:Space Trilogy.

 

Game number one is a Dropzone clone called Combat Robot. In terms of look and feel it reminds me a lot of Tony Crowther's early work for the C64. You control a ship shaped like a knight's helmet and rescue knights of the realm while shooting or avoiding baddies. It's OK, the colours are bold but if you've got access to Dropzone then this has very little appeal.

 

 

Game number 2, In Orbit reminds me a lot of early coin-ops. It's split into three stages. The first one is a horizontal shooter in a limited flying space. The second one has you shooting from a first person turret. The third has you back in the helmet head shooting down a corridor.

 

 

The third game is the main event where you fight another robotic knight using lances, sabres and chains.

 

 

I actually really liked the graphics here, on a CRT they would have looked lovely. The combat is suitably floaty but a bit slight. I suspect it would be a lot more fun with two players rather than just one.

 

All in all it's an OK package. A compendium of three average games, with the first two being dated shooters and the third being...well we'll get to that in a moment.

 

@squirtle, you and Graham posited the theory that this might have been a compendium of game ideas by Jon Williams who had created a previous game, Oink with the same formula. I think you're onto something here.

 

Here's my theory. English Software at this time was winding up. This, Leviathan and Octapolis were the final three games released in 1987. That was it. Not sure what happened to the company after that. So I suspect that the first two games may have been prototypes, or earlier games that weren't fit for release by themselves. And so were added to this to bulk up the content.

 

Theory the second. I think Part 3 was intended to be the real Knight Games 2 and that it was possibly inspired by a sci fi arcade brawler from 1986 called Metal Clash by Data East. I'm not sure if it was intentional or subconsciously done but the moment I played the third game it reminded me instantly of this old thing. (I think Knight Games 2 looks better by the way.)

 

 

Metal Clash was a slight game and this part of Knight Games 2 is a little too slight and samey to be it's own release. So two old half finished games might have been repurposed to make this a more attractive package. I think Zzap scored this correctly back in the day, it's not bad but (and I'm sounding like a broken record here) by 1988 you'd already have access to Dropzone and Uridium and....well, I don't think anyone else made a Metal Clash style arcade conversion for the C64 so this was the best you were going to get.

[merman]

8 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

Did you find it fun though?

 

Yes and no. It was fun once I had worked out how to work the telemetry screen and actually start lift off.

[Camel]

I spent a LOT of time playing Traz. Mostly making levels.

[squirtle]

18 minutes ago, Camel said:

I spent a LOT of time playing Traz. Mostly making levels.

Interesting, and sad, history behind TRAZ. I'm sure @Unofficial Whowill fill us in on that one.