Games that remind me of my childhood Number 26 : Skate Rock (Commodore 64)

Lately I've been going through several boxes of my old games in storage and have selected a few to keep me going for quite a few future "GTRMOMC" posts, but for this one I'm going to talk about a nice little game I purchased as a re-release for £1.99 - Skate Rock. 

Originally released at full price by Bubble Bus software, it was later re-released by Mastertronic on their "Ricochet" label and this is the version I have.  The game featured the player riding their skateboard across 10 courses, avoiding the numerous obstacles that appeared on the way.  There were 8 flags that needed to be collected along each course - if you missed one, you would need to go back and get it because you couldn't complete the course without them all.  You also had a limited amount of time to compete the courses.

Doing a little spin at the end of course 1

Don't forget to collect all the flags, or you won't be able to finish the course

The courses were made up from several areas including a rural street, a town and a bridge/construction area.  Obstacles to avoid usually consisted of walking pedestrians, dogs, cars/lorries, workmen, cones and other skateboarders.  Occasionally you would need to use a ramp to jump over an obstacle to get further along the course.

"Get outta way!"

Sometimes you need to use ramps to progress further.

Don't fall of the bridge!

The game played horizontally and you used the joystick to control your skateboard.  Up made you accelerate, down to slow down, and left and right rotated your board.  If you held the fire button and pushed left and right you could also do kick turns that rotated your board quickly for sharp turns.

Those patches slow you down, and makes it harder to move.

Each course got progressively harder to the point where I think it became impossible to complete without cheating but I had great fun trying to get further.  The only thing that really got me about this game were the naff, blocky sprites (especially the cars).  Come on, the Commodore 64 was capable of so much better.  Other than that, it was a great game that came out in the late 80s during a skateboarding craze and when other skateboard games such as 720° and Skate or Die were populating the games charts.  Skate Rock also had a nice soundtrack by C64 music legend Ben Daglish. 

 

And this is what you get when you finish all 10 courses. "You've completed all then courses....."

"...  You're now a member of the Slime Rat Skaters".  Aren't you glad you finished the game for that monumental ending?

 

The cover.  Spot the cock up in the instructions!

The back of the cover.  A great space for writing some POKES for cheating perhaps?

The tape!

 

A nice addition to any C64 gamers collection.

Games that remind me of my childhood Number 25 : Dorks Dilemma (Commodore Plus 4)

Dorks Dilemma is a fun one player game that was released by Gremlin Graphics in 1985.  You control "Dork", an alien who awakens after crashing his space ship on an alien planet inhabited by Zobwats.  The Zobwats have dismantled your ship and have scattered the parts across 25 different rooms.  As Dork, you must explore each room, destroying the Zobwats with your bombs and reconstruct your ship so that you can escape.

Each room is a small maze consisting of various walls, with a spaceship part located in the middle.  In order to collect the ship part, you must destroy a set number of Zobwats using an infinite supply of bombs.  It sounds simple, but when you drop a bomb you only have a few seconds to get as far from it as possible.  If you're too close, you'll be killed too.  Once the Zobwats have been destroyed, move on to the next room, and the spaceship part appears in a jigsaw on the right of the screen.

Once you have collected all 25 pieces, you have to rearrange the jigsaw pieces to properly display a picture of your ship taking off from the planet.

The finished jigsaw

You're free to enter/exit the rooms as you please and although the 25 rooms are always the same, they are re-arranged in to a different order with each game, adding a bit of variety.  However, if you destroy some Zobwats and leave the room before destroying the required amount, you have to do it all over again when you re-enter the room.

One good way to kill the Zobwats is to let them come to you, then drop a bomb and run! (or roll)

Just let a bomb go off.

Each room has four respawning Zobwats that appear in each corner of the screen.  They gradually follow you, moving closer and although they can touch you, you must be careful not to move in to them.  It is possible for them to trap you in a corner or surround you, so be very careful, especially when planting a bomb.  Once you drop a bomb,  you have a few seconds to get away before it goes off.  You then have to wait several seconds for another bomb to regenerate

Don't get trapped.

If you enter a room where the ship part has already been collected, you get this.

AND should you finish the game and escape the planet...  You get to do it all over again from the beginning!  The only difference is you have more Zobwats to destroy in each room, and they move faster too.

All that hard work, and all you get is this message when you finish the game.

 

The box - part of a double tape compilation.

 

The tape

 

The full box cover, featuring all four games - Dorks Dilemma, Petals of Doom, Xargon Wars and Tycoon Tex

 

What's frightening about this game is that it's nearly 30 years old - Talk about making me feel old.

Games that remind me of my childhood Number 22 : Paperboy (Arcade, Commodore Plus 4, Commodore 64)

I think I may have mentioned before in this blog that when I was young, my family would all go for walks from Leigh-on-Sea to Southend, stopping off at various watering holes (pubs) for a drink.  Being young, we would have to sit in the family rooms of such pubs like The Peterboat, Ye Old Smack, The Cliffs Pavilion, The Shambles, and The Foresters Arms to name a few.

Anyway, the one thing these pubs all had in common (besides selling booze!) were a great assortment of arcade games, namely Carnival, Pac-Land and Commando.  I would spend a fortune on these, but the highlight of these walks was finally reaching Southend and spending loads of my pocket money in the arcades on one classic game that I still love playing today……   Paperboy.

I never considered myself an expert at the game, but I used to fly through the levels, picking up the newspapers, and throwing them at the doors of subscribers, whilst avoiding road-workers, drunks, radio controlled cars, break-dancers, and other obstacles.  On many occasions I had a large crowd standing behind me, watching and cheering me on.  It actually made me feel good!

The original and best...  The arcade version.

 

Back in 1986, I was excited when I found out that Paperboy was coming out on the Commodore Plus 4 (our family computer at the time).  I remember getting the game from Software Plus in Basildon, getting home, loading the game for the first time, only to find the conversion a complete and utter pile of pooh!  Actually, looking back at the game, the conversion wasn’t all that bad considering the limitations of the Commodore Plus 4 – As with many games on the system, it was also made to work on the lower spec Commodore 16.  I’m sure a version made specifically for the Plus 4 would have been much better……  ANYWAY…..

The Commodore 16 and Plus 4 Version.  A good attempt at a conversion, considering the limitations of the computer.

 

When I got my Commodore 64 for Christmas in 1987, one of the games that came with the computer was the C64 conversion – and WOW….  It was amazing.

Paperboy, the first game to feature a non-white character?  Nah, just the limited C64 colour palette!

 

Well, it was at the time.  Besides the blocky graphics, it was just as good as the arcade (just without the handlebar joystick), and included the training course which was missing in the Plus 4 version.

The game was simple – You played the paperboy and your task was to deliver newspapers along a suburban street shown in an isometric 3D view.  If you ran out of newspapers, you would have to collect more and you could also damage/vandalise non-subscribers houses by throwing newspapers at their windows and other items located in their front gardens to boost your score.  If you deliver a newspaper to every subscriber’s house, a non-subscriber becomes a subscriber the following day.  If you miss a subscriber’s house, they become a non-subscriber on the next day.  The game starts on Monday and you need to get all houses to subscribe to the newspaper by the following Sunday.

 

Try not to hit the guy going for a morning run!

 

Sounds easy?  It would be if it wasn’t for break-dancers, cars, skateboarders, drunks, cats (and even the Grim Reaper) getting in your way.  You also had to cross an intersection in the road which required the player to dodge traffic.  Some obstacles could earn the player additional points such as throwing a newspaper at a burglar trying to break in to a house, or hitting one of two men having a fight in the middle of the street.

A non-subscriber.  Smash some windows!

 

At the end of the street, the player would then need to complete a training course for additional points (and to improve your throwing aim).  If you crashed on the course, you would simply just start the following day without the bonus points of completing the course.

The training course

 

The game was also featured on one of my favourite shows in the 1980s – a gameshow by the BBC called First Class which had young contestants play against each other on a variety of popular computer games at the time (720, Hypersports, and of course Paperboy).

Title for the BBC kids show "First Class" which featured Paperboy as one of its games.

 

The cover for the Commodore 16 and Plus 4 - The graphics were so bad, they didn't even put screenshots on the back of the cover!

The tape (Commodore 16 and Plus 4 Version)

 

The box!

Mastertronic - What if? : The Last of Us

Mastertronic brings you "The Last of Us" for £1.99, only for the Playstation 3, Commodore, Amstrad, Spectrum and Atari  - Available from all good newsagents, chemists and game shops!

If only..... :o)

Because I have WAY too much time on my hands, I thought I'd mess around with putting together some fake Mastertronic covers for modern computer games.

In case you are not aware (or can not remember), Mastertronic were big in the mid to late 1980s and were a major budget software label in the United Kingdom and produced a large number of cheapo games and re-releases for the Commodore/Spectrum/Amstrad/Atari 8-bit computers (and some 16-bit too) - most at a pocket-money-friendly £1.99!

Just a bit of fun really, but what would modern games look like if Mastertronic still released games like the good ol' days? Well, here you can find out!

 

Click to enlarge

 

Click to enlarge - I bet this would be one hell of a mult-load game!

 

You can view more of my fake Mastertronic covers by clicking here

Games that remind me of my childhood Number 21 : Winter Events (Commodore Plus 4)

 

These days, people think it was the Nintento Wii that brought families together to play computer games... Wrong!

Back in the 80’s there was a sudden boom of Olympic sporting games.  Epyx were famous for the Winter and Summer Games series (amongst many others), Activision brought out Decathlon, and Ocean had a series of Daley Thompson themed Olympic titles.  Each of these games would allow a number of players to compete against one another in several events.   Many are infamous for causing joysticks to break due to the vigorous waggling of the joystick necessary to play the events!

Of course, at the time these games came out, I only had a Commodore Plus 4, and none of those great games came out on that system (ok, besides the joystick-unfriendly Daley Thompsons Star Events).  I remember a friend of the family bringing his Commodore 128 round to our house one evening, and showing us Summer Games, and I was wishing something similar would come out on our beloved Plus 4.

It took a while, but in 1986 it finally happened.  Udo Gertz, programmer for some great Commodore Plus 4 games such as Tom Thumb and Ghost Town finally released Winter Events, published by Anco (remember them?)

The game featured six events, consisting of Biathlon, Slalom, Ski Jump, Speed Skating, Bobsled and Down Hill Skiing, all featuring some of the best graphics ever seen on the system.  Indeed, some rivalled that of Epyx’s very own Winter Games.

The opening ceremony

 

The game starts with a very impressive opening ceremony, showing an athlete lighting the Olympic torch.  Although very impressive, I have never understood why the theme tune to the TV show Dallas is played during this!

Menu

 

Once the introduction is finished, you are then taken to the Menu screen.  From here you can select the number of players (1-4), choose whether you want to compete in all the events, or just a few.  You can also practice an event, and load/save your world records to tape or disk.  Once you have selected the game mode, you then have to enter your name and select the country you wish to play for.  Once all of that is done, it’s time to play the events.

Biathlon

The first event was the Biathlon, and it was probably one of my favourites.   It’s a simple event that had you moving the joystick left and right to ski (and up and down to ski down hills).  You had to complete six laps of the course (each lap being only 3 screens long!), and occasionally take part at shooting targets with your rifle.  Quite odd that your character was green though!

Slalom

Next is the Slalom.   While most games of this type viewed the course from an aerial view, this one had the camera directly behind the skier (just like a car simulator), and had you swerving between the flags at crazy speeds!  Quite difficult at first, but once you’ve learnt the course it is easy to complete in a fast time without having any faults.

Ski Jump

On to the next event – The Ski Jump.  Pretty simple this time.  Press fire to begin down the slope, and just as you’re about to reach the end, press the fire button again to jump.  You then needed to use the joystick to position the ski jumper so that he aerodynamically flew through the air, and then land straight, otherwise your jumper would crash on landing.

Speed Skating

Speed Skating is the next event, and it also was my least favourite.  Simply move the joystick left and right in time to the skater’s legs.  Fortunately this wasn’t your typical joystick waggler, so there was no need to frantically move the joystick (and risk breaking it!)  This was also the only event in Winter Events which allowed you to play two players at the same time, assuming you had two joysticks.

Bobsled

Onwards to the Bobsled event.  This is another of my favourites.  The screen was split in to two sections.  A map of the course was shown on the right, and your progress was indicated by a red line.  The left side of the screen was a cutaway view of the track, with the camera directly behind the bobsled.  As you would approach each bend, you had to compensate using the joystick so that you didn’t flip over.  Great fun!

Downhill

Finally, the last event was the Downhill.  This was very similar to the Slalom event, except you did not need to swerve between the flags.  It’s all pretty much downhill, travelling as fast as you could without colliding with any trees.  As with the Slalom, once you had memorised the course, it was very easy to complete in a fast time.

The final results

And that’s it.  Once all the events were completed, a final screen would be displayed showing your character(s) on the podium, and the final results.

Now as most of you know, I hate sport with a passion.  However, I and my family would play this for hours and it was great because it was once of the few occasions that would bring us all together.   We spent countless hours playing this, and it was fortunate that Udo Gertz released a sequel not long later – Summer Events.

A wonderful game, that still plays well today.  I really miss those days when all four of us  would sit around the living room TV playing this.

The cover

Instructions

The tape.