Zapped to the Past podcast (C64)

[Unofficial Who]

I'm going to defend Subterranea as someone who played it back in the day. (Back in the day being 1991)

 

Before we start...that logo looks a little...familiar.

 

 

Um...let's call it a tribute.

 

 

Anyway what we have here is a competent if somewhat average side scrolling shooter.

 

 

You fly left to right shooting bad guys and avoiding obstacles until you get to the end of a level where you're transported to a bonus boss battle.

 

 

And that's it. I don't think it's half bad. I don't think it's one you'd choose to play now with the whole history of the C64 at your fingertips but for the price it's half decent.

 

Things in it's favour

-You can hold down the button to keep firing. It's slow but my old hands love that you don't need to hammer the fire button constantly.

-It's smooth.

-When you die you start where you left off with a few seconds on invincibility.

-The ship is nicely animated.

-It's cheap.

 

Things I'm not so keen on.

-The bad guys can move through the landscape. I hate that in these sorts of games.

-Levels just kind of end abruptly with you being transported to the boss level.

 

I think some of the problems this game has might be down to inexperience, especially the weird end level / boss transitions but for the price it's a bit of fun for a while.

 

And for some of us who got this as part of Zzap Megatape 13 it was even more of a bargain, if you broke it down probably about the cost of a cup of coffee or less when you take into account you also got a magazine, another game (the text adventure Velnor's Lair) and two demos (Narc and Wrath of the Demon.)

 

It's a fun diversion for a bit and great budget / covertape fodder.

[Unofficial Who]

Finally we come to Oh No! and getting around to playing this fixes a personal injustice.

 

Two years after the release of this game it was cover mounted on Zapp. Being a big fan of Sensible Software I couldn't wait but it was not to be. The newsagent refused to give me the tape that came with the magazine (although he waited until I handed over my money before telling me I wouldn't be getting the tape. "How do I know you didn't remove the tape from the cover? No discounts!")

 

It's kind of rankled with me for years that I was possibly cheated out of the cover tape as well as being accused of being a thief and I switched newsagents after that. I have no idea why I've never in the past few years just fired up an emulator and played it.

 

Oh No! has a bit of a reputation for being not that great but having played it now I've really enjoyed messing around with it.

 

You play as a future farmer in your teardrop shaped craft trying to protect your oxen (represented by spheres the way engineers love to design all living things) from cattle rustlers. What's really unique about this game is that you are invincible, the game ends when all your oxen are nabbed. But hitting bullets or other craft bounce you around so it's a game with you trying to destroy the invaders on your farm while they do their best to run interference for the cattle pen drones. It's simple and really unique.

 

 

Is it the best game covered this episode? Maybe not but it's my pick of this episode. While it copies a premise from an old arcade game called Rip Off the changes made make it a whole new game and one I think was misunderstood by many at the time. A fun smooth arcade shooter.

[Camel]

I had a lot of fun playing Oh No! back in the day. I bought a lot of budget releases then and it’s remarkable how many were pretty good.

[squirtle]

1 hour ago, Camel said:

I had a lot of fun playing Oh No! back in the day. I bought a lot of budget releases then and it’s remarkable how many were pretty good.

The ratio of decent budget to decent full price is alarming.

[Unofficial Who]

11 hours ago, Camel said:

I had a lot of fun playing Oh No! back in the day. I bought a lot of budget releases then and it’s remarkable how many were pretty good.

 

10 hours ago, squirtle said:

The ratio of decent budget to decent full price is alarming.

 

I remember this being such an issue that industry bodies at the time were making noises about limiting the sale of budget games and cover mounts which led to weird work arounds. (The version of Oh No! I played for this thread was the "Special Zzap Edition." Not sure if there were any other changes bar the title screen.)

 

I can understand some in the industry at the time being worried about budget and cover mounts eating away at full price sales but as a kid/teen who was dirt poor and yet wanted to avoid piracy as much as possible budget games and cover mounts were the only way realistically to get my hands on games outside of gifts.

 

Kids today have it a lot better, if you can afford to scrape together enough dosh to put together a machine there's a whole world of legit free content out there.

[Unofficial Who]

Just a heads up, while the mainline podcast is done for the year a bonus Ask the Podcast episode is up here https://zappedtothepast.com/

 

Quote

Here’s the third of our ‘Ask the Podcast’ specials where we tackle some of the questions asked by our Patrons in our exclusive Discord Channel. If you wish to pose us your own questions then you can do so by signing up to our Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/zappedtothepast

We did say that we were not going to release anything over the Christmas break, but we thought this might make a nice present for you all. So, enjoy this bumper lot of questions whilst sitting in a post Christmas lunch fug of purest brown.

 

[Unofficial Who]

While I'm here I'd just like to thank @squirtle and Graham for running this podcast for almost two years now. It's been very enjoyable revisiting these games and finding new hidden gems.

 

Best find of the year for me was easily The Train:Escape to Normandy.

 

It's a game I wouldn't have bothered with if not for the podcast and mastering moving and driving the train was satisfying in much the same way as mastering piloting the machine in the Lone Sails games.

 

 

(BTW the version on Steam is the IBM PC version and it's nowhere near as good as the C64 version. I only recommend buying it as a way of paying the current right holders.)

 

Worst game this year? Lee Enfield. I won't waste the bandwidth by posting a screen grab of that.

 

 

[squirtle]

Just to let people know, it looks like we will be off for three weeks. I have been struck down with the flu that's going round and whilst I could sit in front of a microphone, I'm not sure me coughing and hacking through a recording would be what you would all want to hear. Apologies and all that, but I'm just in no fit state to record anything at the moment.

[Unofficial Who]

On 30/12/2022 at 04:37, squirtle said:

Just to let people know, it looks like we will be off for three weeks. I have been struck down with the flu that's going round and whilst I could sit in front of a microphone, I'm not sure me coughing and hacking through a recording would be what you would all want to hear. Apologies and all that, but I'm just in no fit state to record anything at the moment.

 

Get well soon @squirtle and take all the time you need. We'll still be here when you get back.

[Unofficial Who]

While the mainline series is on holidays @squirtle and Graham have released Battle of the Pilots Pt 3!

 

https://zappedtothepast.com/

 

Quote

In episode three of Battle of the Pilots, Adrian and Graham from the Zapped to the Past podcast reach into the massive back catalogue of TV shows from over the last 50 years and pluck out a couple of pilot episodes for a head to head battle. For episode three, we have chosen two mid 70s mostly British cult sci-fi shows – the darkly dystopian Blake’s 7 vs the brightly nihilistic Space 1999… let battle commence!

 

There never were any video games based on either property but I do remember Space 1999's iconic ships being referenced in some games on an unofficial basis. Cosmic Convoy springs to mind immediately.

 

[Unofficial Who]

Normal service is resuming next week, the new episode has dropped for subscribers and will be available everywhere in a couple of days.

 

And something special is covered here. One of the greats. A winner you could say.

 

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

And it's arrived! The first mainline episode of 2023! https://zappedtothepast.com/

 

Games covered

 

-Alien Syndrome

-Win Bob Ner Bob Winner

-Scout

-Contra Gryzor

-Wheelies

-Pandora

-Echelon

 

At least one solid one in there.

[Unofficial Who]

And we're off to a great start with Alien Syndrome, a port of the Sega arcade game which takes the Atari game Gauntlet and gives it sci fi dressing by way of the Alien movies.

 

The Zzap reviewers back in the day were pretty positive about this and I remember the multi format mags praising this version over the other versions. And at the time (thanks again to the big box of discs given to me) I played this and felt it was a pretty solid version of the coin op.

 

Of course by that I mean it kind of looked like the photos I saw in the Arcade Action column in C&VG. I never did see the machine in the flesh.

 

Of course revisiting it now I can compare both back to back and first impressions are excellent. It has a pretty decent loading screen.

 

 

And the title screen has level tile sets slide onto the screen in the same way as the coin-op with one important difference. Instead of a short musical sting the C64 version has two longer pieces of music that put the arcade version to shame.

 

 

One we get into the game proper first impressions are maintained. The colour palette is different to the arcade game and I'd argue better in some cases. Especially level one where a deep blue replaces the dull grey of the arcade. Compare and contrast.

 

 

 

As for the game itself? I have to disagree with the Zzap review and with the podcast hosts here because of one big bugbear.

 

The game is too hard. Much too hard. Passages are smaller, the aliens are quicker, you can get caught on objects on the C64 version and the push scrolling in the C64 version (in comparison to the scrolling in the arcade version that keeps you fully centred) leads to too many death.

 

Technically it's really impressive but it's unfriendly and almost impossible in one player mode. I even played through it with cheats and almost gave up. As an example the end of level boss on level 5 is a chore to destroy on the C64 version but doable in the arcade version. You also have to rescue every single crew member in the C64 version which is harsher than the arcade version.

 

It's still impressive, the bosses take up a lot of screen space and move quite quickly. 

 

 

And the level designs are identical which made playing the arcade version of the game a breeze directly after playing the C64 version. And even though it's a multiload the loading is pretty fast (on disk.)

 

Back in the day I put down being unable to get anywhere in this due to lack of skill but playing it now and comparing it to the arcade game I guess they were probably worried the game would be seen as too slight and pushed the difficulty up to 11. It's still my pick of the episode for reasons that will become apparent but yet again we have a game spoiled by being too rock hard. Dark Souls players might want to try one credit this one.

 

Just as an interesting aside, there was another version of this in development by US Gold who thought they had the licence before it was nabbed by The Edge. And you can read about that here at https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/alien-syndrome-v1/

 

Quote

Assigned to the task was developed Mat Ellis, with graphics by Simon Dunstan. The team were sent the arcade machine for about a month, where the team got to work getting as much of the game converted as possible. However, after just a month of work – the deal had fallen through and The Edge/ACE had got the licence instead. Mat feels that had they been able to continue, their conversion would have been superb.

 

That port was reworked into the unreleased Subclavian.

 

[Unofficial Who]

May as well get this out of the way...it's WinBobNer!

 

 

OK, it's Bob Winner. Three things to note here.

 

1. The title is a damn lie. 

2. The logo is a disaster.

3. Like the colour in the title screen? Well don't get used to it. Because beyond this point there's more yellow than a mashup of Cold Play and Yello's greatest hits here.

 

 

I'm not going to spend too much time on this. It's a disaster. Can I say anything good about it? It's better than Lee Enfield. Just. Barely. We're going to see a lot of this look over the next couple of years in terms of weirdly digitised graphics. In fact we're going to see an awful example next week. This one though is a port of a 1986 Amstrad game, not an ST game like I originally thought (although there is an ST version.) And I guess for 1986 this would have looked great.

 

(Amstrad version)

 

I can't speak to how it plays though. This is a definite avoid.

[squirtle]

Who knew the banks of the river Seine were plagued by pits of quicksand!?

[Unofficial Who]

Just now, squirtle said:

Who knew the banks of the river Seine were plagued by pits of quicksand!?

 

I was prepared for this eventuality by every adventure TV show and cartoon broadcast from the 60's onwards. I was led to believe quicksand was something I'd need to know how to survive daily.

 

[Unofficial Who]

Scout is one of those games long forgotten now. This feels like it started life as a demo and I could see it amusing one for a bit if it was on a cover mount. But even at a budget price it falls short.

 

 

I mean it isn't bad like Bob Winner. Just untuned. You zoom across an autoscrolling landscape shooting and jumping to the right. Waves are somewhat random so even memorising the level is of no use as a random enemy can make a difficult leap impossible. The enemies feel pretty random as well. It's technically good but it doesn't come together.

 

Worth loading for the brilliant Maniacs of Noise tunes if nothing else. I'll have forgotten this by the end of the week though and I suspect you will too.

[squirtle]

6 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

Scout is one of those games long forgotten now. This feels like it started life as a demo and I could see it amusing one for a bit if it was on a cover mount. But even at a budget price it falls short.

 

 

I mean it isn't bad like Bob Winner. Just untuned. You zoom across an autoscrolling landscape shooting and jumping to the right. Waves are somewhat random so even memorising the level is of no use as a random enemy can make a difficult leap impossible. The enemies feel pretty random as well. It's technically good but it doesn't come together.

 

Worth loading for the brilliant Maniacs of Noise tunes if nothing else. I'll have forgotten this by the end of the week though and I suspect you will too.

There was a Karl Hornell (guy who did Fungus etc) vibe about Scout.

[Unofficial Who]

I'm going to be a bit rough on Contra Gryzor, I thought it was overrated back in the day and I think it's overrated now.

 

After Konami tried to go it on their own in regards to conversions Ocean/Imagine pretty much had their conversions tied up around this time. I had played the arcade version briefly and it wasn't really my thing. I found the vertical layout for the first level claustophobic although it makes sense for the 3D sections.

 

 

But it's always felt a little messy and clumsy to me.

 

The C64 version is a solid port although it only has 6 of the 10 levels from the arcade. But it looks pretty blocky.

 

 

The C64 can do better than this as an excellent port of Midnight Resistance would later demonstrate. But there is one thing that the C64 lacks at this point that makes this game unplayable, for me at least. And that's the lack of extra buttons. With one button on the stick being used for fire and diagonal shooting being essential in this game they've moved jumping, which you also need to do a lot...to the space bar.

 

This is clumsy. At this point I used the "big toe" controller technique to use space. That is an old Atari joystick plugged into port one and my big toe on the fire button to use as a pseudo space key. But you need to jump a lot in this game and this just wasn't good enough. Sometimes I would get to the second part of level one, the 3D bits (that Ocean ripped off for part of their Platoon game a few issues back.)

 

 

But no further. This time around I played with a cheat until I got to the second level, a vertical jumping challenge up a cliff and I stopped there.

 

I don't like this conversion at all. Not then and not now. But this might be an issue with me. I've never like the arcade game. I've never liked the excellent NES version which like a lot of Konami ports to the NES takes the arcade game and changes it for the home. And I've not liked any of the follow ups on any console.

 

If you like Contra don't waste your time with this port. You can get all the NES and Snes Contra you can eat from Konami via the Contra collection on all current platforms.

 

As an aside, the Amstrad version always looked the business in screen grabs. Did anyone here play that?

 

[squirtle]

Yeah, I was never taken with the C64 version because I had played the Amstrad version at my friend's, who owned one. It's flick screen, but seem to remember it being pretty good. I could be wrong, though.

[Unofficial Who]

5 hours ago, squirtle said:

Yeah, I was never taken with the C64 version because I had played the Amstrad version at my friend's, who owned one. It's flick screen, but seem to remember it being pretty good. I could be wrong, though.

 

I think the other issue here is the size of the library at this point and the quality of the titles available. The few times I played Gryzor my first thought was always "hang on, why am I playing this when I could be playing Green Beret?" Ocean would do better in this genre in the future but I'm still perplexed at how well this reviewed at the time.

[Unofficial Who]

Wheelies is an imaginative...no wait...it's a modified SEUCK game isn't it. I mean it does have "improvements."

 

Like a title screen that isn't strobing text.

 

 

Argh! Come back strobing text! All is forgiven!

 

It has a level select screen as well.

 

 

And the game is standard SUECK fare which is to say it's pretty decent.

 

 

Of what I've played so far this week this was the most enjoyable, probably because it's not out to kill you immediately. The sound effects have that straight from the SEUCK mixing board feel and there's a little bit of raster flicker, possibly caused by some of the modifications here.

 

There's the nagging feeling though as with a lot of commercial SEUCK based games that you could probably "roll your own". And the single life (at least the games I played only gave me one shot) did seem like a way of hiding how slight the game is. This is another game I'd probably feel cheated about if I'd bought it, but it's perfect cover tape fare (and once we get to cover tapes you're going to see a lot of SEUCK games.) Check it out if you're a SEUCK fan.

[Unofficial Who]

Pandora feels like it was trying to do System Shock several years before System Shock. It's got a great plot. A generation ship that was sent out to the stars 200 years ago has been detected making a beeline back to Earth. This doesn't sound like it's a good thing so you're smuggled on board to try and work out what's happening.

 

It has a rather notorious beginning where if you move before one of the crew gives you his ID you are instantly killed.

 

 

This feels like a game that's struggling on the C64, especially with the interface involving objects. It's incredibly clumsy and it's all too easy to accidently drop your ID onto a dead body and then attempt to move away with instantly fatal results. Moving one way led to a long fight with a diabetic crew member desperate for needles, the other a thief who stole all my ID leading to...instant death. I suspect that a better way to play this might be the 16 bit versions.

 

 

However this is a game that's been made redundant by System Shock, Bioshock and Prey, all of which succeed where this game stumbles. It's a clever idea and ahead of its time, it just fails in implementing this in a way that isn't clumsy.

[squirtle]

I think you're being a bit kind there with the immersive sim references. This does not seem to have any of the things that make up those games. The plot may be interesting, but as a game it's wanting and it has a terrible combat system that is painfully hard to try and get your head around.

[Unofficial Who]

4 hours ago, squirtle said:

I think you're being a bit kind there with the immersive sim references. This does not seem to have any of the things that make up those games. The plot may be interesting, but as a game it's wanting and it has a terrible combat system that is painfully hard to try and get your head around.

 

I think it's what they were aiming for but it really doesn't work in it's implementation. The combat was something I couldn't work out, and the mechanics beyond that is trading A with B. But I could see what they were swinging for and I think it was too ambitious even for the Amiga.

[squirtle]

10 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

I think it's what they were aiming for but it really doesn't work in it's implementation. The combat was something I couldn't work out, and the mechanics beyond that is trading A with B. But I could see what they were swinging for and I think it was too ambitious even for the Amiga.

Maybe... I didn't get that from it. Immersive Sims are all about giving you the tools to get from point A to point B in a myriad of different ways. I didn't see any of that in this.

[Unofficial Who]

7 minutes ago, squirtle said:

Maybe... I didn't get that from it. Immersive Sims are all about giving you the tools to get from point A to point B in a myriad of different ways. I didn't see any of that in this.

 

I don't think they had the space. I can see the faint shadow of it there though.

 

That start is way to clever for it's own good. Having to wait like it's some sort of text adventure until you're handed an ID card by a guy who literally says "There's no time to explain..." is fine.

 

Once.

 

But of course you're doomed to having to replay that section over and over.

 

Edit: Pandora was originally going to be a sequel to (raspy digital voice) "CHIMERA!"

 

https://blog.pencils.com/e3/

 

Quote

There was a point where I almost quit, but the feeling of getting Chimera accepted by Telecomsoft has never left me, and the buzz I felt making all of those versions back in those heady days is always there. I wanted to remake the game using all that I’ve learned since its original release. There were things I would have done differently had I done a sequel, and Pandora was originally going to be a sequel to that game. It took a different path. The remake of Chimera is an attempt to recapture the feeling of the end of Chimera where I was on top of the world and could do no wrong, but to take a different path to the one I eventually took with Pandora. Thus the subtitle “this time get it right”. It’s not just getting the game right, it’s getting my future right.

 

[Unofficial Who]

Echelon is one of the reason I miss the three headed review monster that you used to get with Zzap reviews. While Jaz was enthusiastic about the game despite the flaws Gordon and Paul were less enthusiastic. I loved 3D games on the C64 but the comparisons to unfavourable comparisons to Mercenary led to me being too cautious to buy this one. While Paul Woakes worked miracles with vectors on the C64 with Mercenary it's telling that other creators found different ways to render landscapes on the C64. Be it the illusion creating by growing and shrinking scan lines in Tau Ceti or the use of fractal landscapes and scaling sprites by Rescus on Fractalus and Koronis Rift it seemed that Echelon was a step back.

 

I was tempted to try this despite @squirtle and Graham panning this but looking at the manual there was a half page warning / explanation on frame rates. In the end I decided to skip this one, I've played better on the C64 and there are loads of modern games where I can fly at more than a few frames per second.

 

If you're curious to see how Echelon works this guy spent some of the pandemic mastering it and he's got a great video on how the game works here.

 

 

 

There was a crack made on the podcast about the Carvers going back to golf and while they do try to do 3D in a sci fi setting on the C64 again in the future their major successes after this continue to be golf games.

 

The weird thing is if they had changed the theme of the game to being a cyberpunk hacking into a hostile network the blue/red vectors on a black backdrop would have made more sense and I probably would have given it a crack.

[Unofficial Who]

This week on Zapped to the Past https://zappedtothepast.com/

 

Games covered

 

-Draconus

-Microleague Wrestling

-Road Warrior

-Gutz

-Venom Strikes Back

-Gothik

-Northstar

-Target Renegade

 

Some nice ones in there this week!

[Unofficial Who]

First up this week is Draconus, a game I played a lot of in 1991 when I got it via a Zzap covertape. Pretty good month too as it also included Side Arms-a-like Zybex by the same people.

 

Did I get anywhere in it? No, it's rock hard. Even with cheats it's possibly too hard although I'd argue it should have at least had an unlimited lives option.

 

So the plot?

 

 

See that thing on the right? That's the Tyrant Beast! You have to find him in his lair and kill him. On the left there is you. Frognum.

 

This game feels like an early attempt at a Metroidvania game. You have a sprawling map that can be explored in any direction. 

 

 

You have flaming breath and a little sort of stab move. But you can also pick up artefacts that grant extra powers like this early one that allows you to swim.

 

 

The enemy design isn't great but the animation and movement of Frognum is. He sort of shifts along with a limp. Backgrounds appear to be inspired by Antiriad whereas the theme of the game may well have inspired Shadow of the Beast. I still find it too difficult and too easy to get lost in although longplays show it is beatable (and beatable in 15 minutes if you know what you're doing which is twice as long as a speed run of Antiriad.) The music is excellent with a great title tune and fantastic music stings throughout.

 

It's not perfect, I found the controls a bit "fuzzy" in places but for the time as a budget release this was great. Even better as a cover mount. I wouldn't recommend this over the myriad of Metroidvanias you can get now but it's worth checking out for fans of the genre if only to see what could be done in 64kb.