Castle Master 2 The Crypt - A Walkthrough

Well, yesterday I took you on a tour of Castle Eternity as seen in Incentive Software's brilliant Castle Master from 1990.  Playing the game rekindled my love for it, and its equally brilliant sequel - The Crypt.

So now, one day later I bring you - Castle Master 2 - The Crypt.  A playthrough/walkthrough of the Commodore 64 version.

As with all Freescape games on the Commodore 64 (and most other 8 bit conversions), the solid vector graphics run incredibly slow, which is why I have had to speed the video up.  The slowness never bothered me, and I always thought it made the game more atmospheric when playing, but for a viewer it would probably bore the socks of you, so enjoy my 54 minute and 47 second walkthrough, compressed to just 10 minutes.

Games that remind me of my childhood Number 27 : Mission Mars (Commodore Plus 4)

One of the (many) good things about spending a few days back home in Laindon is the opportunity to rummage through the family game collection and to reminisce on old Commodore Plus 4 classics.

So for this visit, I bring you Mission Mars, from 1985

Mission Mars...  The type of game where the box art makes the game look reasonably good (complete with a tagline saying that the game is 100% machine code!), but upon getting home and loading the game, you realise that you've just blown a good sum of money on a rather naff game.

That said, I do have fond memories playing this game which is why I have included it here.  The game is very simple and has you control a small space ship through vertical tunnels, avoiding various obstacles that get in the way.

That's it! 

Ok, the game description is as follows.

You have been sent on a mission to raid the caverns on Mars.  However, these caverns are known to be filled with booby traps.  Your task is to reach the centre of the caverns and land your ship.  Each cavern has 5 stages to survice and you will need a lot of skill to do so.

 

Hmmmm.  Basically the game has 5 stages which repeat over and over again once you reach the end of stage 5.

Stage 1 - Fly down the cavern, shooting enemy installations.

 

Stage 2 - Fly down the cavern, shooting randomly generated spaceships

Stage 3 - Fly down the cavern, avoiding randomly generated bouncing balls!

 

Stage 4 - Fly down the cavern, avoiding what I assume are comets.

 

Stage 5 - Fly down the very narrow cavern, avoiding the walls.

 

Sounds exciting eh?

 

Once you reach the end of Stage 5, you don't even need any skill to land the ship - just let it hit the wall at the end and then you're greeted with the following message...

 

!! MISSION COMPLETE !!
WELL DONE YOU HAVE
RAIDED THIS CAVERN

 

Once you press the fire button, you get to do it all over again!  No change in the game difficulty, no change in stage order.  You can literally finish this game in 5 minutes.

 

End of the game?

Oh yeah....  That was worth it!

 

Now, for the reason why I have included the game here....  I remember playing this game once on a little black and white portable television in the corner of our living room at my parents house, amassing a huge score just from playing the game from start to end, and restarting again with each completion on stage 5.  I wish I took a note of my final score

 

The box cover

The tape

 

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 24 : Treasure Island Dizzy (Commodore 64)

Treasure Island Dizzy is a flip screen, platform, puzzle and adventure game written by Philip and Andrew Oliver (aka The Oliver Twins) and was published by Codemasters in 1988 for a bargain price of £2.99.  As with all Dizzy games, it was pretty much ported to every available system of the time.  It was the second game in the famous Dizzy series and is my personal favourite - simply because it was the only Dizzy game I ever completed!

Strange that this game has often been called the worst of the series because of the high difficulty level - you only have one life whereas the other games in the series give you multiple lives.  This means that you could potentially be almost at the end of the game, and if you make one simple mistake like dropping the snorkel (required so that you can breathe under water) whilst under water, you'll die and will have to start the game from the beginning.  There's no save game option!

...and so the adventure begins!

The aim of the game is to simply escape the island.  This involves you playing the titular character Dizzy (who is essentially an egg with feet and hands), picking up various objects scattered around and using them in the correct places.  You're ultimate goal is to get a boat, an engine, petrol and an ignition key that will enable you to leave the island and head off for freedom.  Sounds simple enough, but to do this you will also need to collect 30 gold coins.  Some coins are easy to find, others are hidden behind various background objects like plants, boulders, windows etc.  Collecting the coins is a bit like a side quest to the main adventure, but ultimately even though you can build the boat and leave, you still need to have the 30 coins to actually complete the game.

The game is a classic example of the excellent quality of some of the 'cheapo' games available to computer users in the late 1980's.  It's fair to say I got more enjoyment out of this game than a lot of the full priced releases of the time by some of the larger software houses like US Gold and Ocean.  Despite the poor graphics that were obviously ported directly from a Spectrum (complete with monochrome hi-res graphics with colour clash), the game is wonderful, and I still think the Commodore 64 version has one of the best theme tunes ever to grace a computer game.

You'll be needing a Woodcutters Axe to drop under the bridge
 

 A snorkel...  Possibly the most important item in the game.  Just don't drop it when you're in water.
 

 To get the gold, you'll need the Infrared Detonator and some dynamite
 

 Exploring a ship wreck!
 

 An underwater cavern....
 

 A pirates secret cavern.
 

 This guy will sell you the boat and parts you need to escape.
 

 The boat.  Still need an engine, and petrol to escape.
 

The cover (click to enlarge) 

The tape (click to enlarge)

The Map (Click to enlarge).  Author T2 at maps.speccy.cz)

Maybe one day I'll get to actually finish the other Dizzy games!  What's scary is that I was 11 years old when this game came out....  I'm now 37!

For now, have a listen to one of the jolliest pieces of music that has ever come out of the SID chip in a Commodore 64.

Games that remind me of my childhood Number 23 : Buggy Boy (Commodore 64)

It's been too long since my last "Game that reminds me of my childhood".  So, let me begin by saying my next game is......

BUGGY BOY!

The Commodore 64 had some stand-out driving games, but one of my fondest racing gaming memories is from Elite System’s conversion of the arcade hit Buggy Boy by Taito. The game was a near perfect replica of the original arcade (minus the big fancy buggy graphics), and featured 5 courses containing all sorts of obstacles. The aim of the game was to complete each course before the timer reached zero. You could gain extra time by passing under “Time” gates, and increase your score by collecting different coloured flags, and going under various score gates. If you collect the coloured flags in a particular order (as shown at the top of the screen), you could also gain additional bonus points.

Buggy Boys 5 tracks

Along each route were numerous obstacles – some could help you in your goal to reach the end of the track, or ultimately cause you to crash, losing valuable time.

Logs - These made you jump and were quite useful for jumping over obstacles.  However, they could also cause you to crash if you timed the jump badly.

Stones – Running over these caused your buggy to drive on only two wheels. You had to be careful when hitting these because if your buggy ran over a log, it would crash!

Brick walls and Boulders, fences and trees - These were obstacles to miss at all times.

The game also featured water (avoid at all times), banked roads, narrow crossings over water, and tunnels.

I feel sorry for the current generation of youngsters – Show them a game like this, and they’ll just turn away and go back to their Playstations and Xboxes…. I could spend hours playing this. Graphics were simple but very good and colourful for the time the game came out (1987).  Sound was minimal as was the music, but overall the game was and still is fun to play.

The cover art

The tape