Bomb Jack (C64)

He's Jack, there's bombs... what more do you want?

Time for a fun little quirky game now, Bomb jack on the Commodore 64. One of those arcade conversions from the big all-powerful graphics down to the clunky little home computer. But first and foremost, what exactly is Bomb Jack and does it even have a plot? Probably, shoehorned in somewhere just for the sake of it.

Speed is essential in this level, as all the enemies spawn at once.

You're a superhero, complete with leaping ability and cape and the lovely little talent of being able to float and stutter your descent should you need to with your cape. Your sole task to collect bombs that some thoughtless little shit has left around various tourist-traps and locales. Avoiding enemies and collecting bombs is all there is and once you've cleared the room, that's it and you move onto the next one.

I suppose it's slightly less insulting than telling you how to play.

There's a little more behind this however, once a bomb is collected another will flash. This is not a timed game however, it's merely the one you should get next if you want a bigger bonus. Collecting enough bombs (either flashing or not) will spawn bonus collectibles such as bonus points or the more important P ball that gives you the same effect as Pacman eating a power-pill, all the enemies turn into smiling faces and collecting them nets ever-increasing points in a short amount of time. Or ignore the enemies and just get the remaining bombs to finish the level.

More winning, much dancing.

The levels get increasingly harder, the enemies get faster and home in quicker and that damn bird thing flying about really ramps up the speed after level 10. But the game is pattern based, so if you know the sequence of bonus bombs, you could max out your bonuses and bombs very quickly and in short order have yourself a wealth of extra lives before very long at all.

Those last 2 bombs in the top left are going to be a bitch to get.

Controls for the game are fairly simple, you move from side to side and press fire to jump, holding up while jumping will make you jump a little higher, enough to get from bottom of the screen to the top in one go and tapping fire while falling will stop your descent and let you glide down safely in order to avoid enemies or that damn bird thing. Death is instant from a single collision from enemies and the collision box is a little bigger than your sprite, or so it would seem... A situation I like to call, cheating fucking computer. So don't risk going alongside enemies please.

Odd choice of a tourist trap... They couldn't think of anything better?

The levels become more fiendish as you progress with the start point for monsters often being right beside 2-3 bombs so you'll have to wait until a FULL set of monsters are on the field of play before you can resolve the issue of kicking arse, taking names (bombs actually) and generally winning the day.

Get bombs, avoid enemies, simple pick-up-and-play approach

The music, the lovely little Sid Chip Tune ensemble that it is, plays along quite happily within the game. The same tune for each level, different music for the bonus power up, endings and the starting splash screen which seems to have some odd warbling effect that makes me think this was composed underwater for some reason. Sound effects are your usual squibs and plinks that one might expect, there's little to write home about on this one while you're waiting to go over the top.

Thank god, now I can play something better.

As an arcade game from the early 80s it does fairly well, but it's a short little romp that will come back and see you every now and then but has no real long term lasting appeal, really should have just stayed in the arcade and not worried about a home port when something with more substance could have been used instead.

Ghostbusters (C64)

You too can sing alone, in 3...2..1.."Repetitive Music.... repetitive music"

It's odd, but there's a lot of conflicting views around this particular game, more specifically based around which port of the game you happen to be playing. Some will slate and attack the Spectrum version, others will lambast the NES, some will applaud and love the Megadrive (.......genesis) version while I'm taking a look at the C64 version of Ghostbusters.

At least one of the cars lets you pretend you're in the film. It's shit too.

Let's start off. "GHOSTBUSTERS" and that's the digitised speech coming from the faithful old Commodore 64 (k of ram I'll have you know) and introduces us to the splendours and wonders that are voice synths. Followed by a slightly charming rendition in SID of the original theme tune with bouncy-dot lyric sing-a-long session for those thinking they bought a karaoke set instead of a game. And it might even work at first.

Whoo I caught it, only about 40 or so to go... for fucks sake.

The sad part is that this is the ONLY song in the entire game. On loop. You'll relish the start and end of the game where it's silent. At least, not at first. The novelty of humming along while singing "something strange...... in the hood.... call.... GHOSTBUSTERS!" while trying to recollect the full words and option just to belt out the chorus. While singing dee-duuh repeatedly in time with the music. Ray Parker Jr must be spinning in his grave... Or will be some day.

"He Slimed Me!" Sounds great, gives you a chuckle, you'll be ripping your hair out after the 5th time

The game itself is firmly based around the film (ignoring the library scene) where in the game takes place having bought and set up the company, you then get to decide upon which car you want to buy, which upgrades to install upon it and then set yourself off to playing the actual game. You've your traps to catch ghosts, a vacuum to suck up the ghosts on the street, marshmallow sensor to detect a Marshmallow Man attack, bait to stop him attacking building (which you WILL need and get a bonus few thousand on successful preventions), glasses to make the ghosts easier to see (instead of behind the backgrounds) and if you've the cash, a portable containment field to reset traps (you'll only need 1 and never need replace it).

Part of the driving experience, racing down the road and sucking up ghosts.

You start with 3 men and will have to drive to HQ if 2 of them get taken out (read: Slimed, with voice synth for it too) and have to visit the HQ if you fill all your traps (or not if you have the VERY expensive portable containment unit). Gameplay is broken down into 3 parts. Firstly, you have the map, which shows your logo, part of New York City including Zuul, the key master, the gatekeeper and 4 wandering ghosts. During the game these ghosts will make a straight line for Zuul and if they get there, they'll boost the PKE reading, which is your in-game timer. The higher it goes, the faster they move. They can be stopped by you running you logo into them but the further you go, the longer your next car drive will be as you're planning your next car trip.

Replenished. Notice the lack of Winston in the game. Racist developers.

This however, does not get the cash in. The money (to repay the bank loan at the start of 10,000) comes from visiting buildings and removing Slimers. A bit like in the film where you'll have to wait for a call, try to get there in time before it fucks off and/or slimes one of your people. Each Slimer will net you a few hundred dollars and then you're back to hunting more Slimers, stopping ghosts and baiting Marshmallow Men.

Me vs a big fat man. It's bed time all over again.

The game quickly devolves into getting to a red flashing house, dropping the trap, running a man to the left, running one to the right, launching the streams (don't cross them) and trapping the ghost (hopefully) in a long series of mini-games that don't really deviate aside from the backgrounds shown at each building. The map section becomes repetitive until the Marshmallow Man shows up and usually will catch you off guard unless you're fast enough to hit the bait button and net your few bonus thousand dollars, or it causes a building to break apart and you get stiffed with the fine for it.

Mwahahahahahaaa... Now you don't have to play this game. Incidentally, "spoilers"

Once the game picks up speed with the ghosts moving faster, more calls being registered and quickly enough, it becomes much more intense and worth playing, just a shame it has to start so slowly and leave you waiting quite a while for something to actually happen. The lack of difference between Slimers makes you feel like you're not really removing an issue but the spectral form of catch and release, in essence cheating people out of their hard earned cash as you become the slackers of the ghost catching community.

So... fucking... boring... Crossing the streams kills both men, let's do that!

IF (and it's not always going to happen) you raise enough cash by the endgame, you've seen the various Marshmallow Man attacks and been summoned to Zuul after the key master and gatekeeper have met (and they serve no real purpose on the map aside from just BEING THERE to show a sort of urgency that leaves you guessing "no really, what's the fucking point?"), you get to attempt to get into Zuul past the badly dancing Marshmallow Man. You've 3 lives and you need 2 to get into the building by running through his legs. Once 2 are in, you've done it. You kill Zuul, destroy the gateway and wreck up a building in the process while the game gives you more cash to play over with better equipment and cars. (Since you can't buy car #4 at the start)

It's nice at least to see a huge sprite like this adorned with all the items you ACTUALLY bought.

But would you want to? Not likely. You might save the state or write down the code and MAYBE give the purple car a go to see it race through the streets quickly, which then leaves you waiting even longer periods of time between ghost calls, a curse as much as it is a blessing. Beat it once and you'll likely never look back again.

Monopoly C64

The board shown, the players ready, the boredom can begin!

 

It's that family gathering time, when you've got several people around, you've got full stomachs and there nothing on TV that nobody really wants to watch. Then someone, with usually the best intentions, thinks of playing the most dreaded of social activities, the board game. So now you're stuck reading the rules for the first half an hour, those too drunk to play properly will be messing about and trying to shove the playing dice up their nose and everyone else keeps looking at their watches and trying to make an excuse to go home.

And one prick always takes it far too seriously and always somehow has a dictionary on hand to spell all those 2 letter words while another person plays ONLY by their deviant rules. So to celebrate this bullshittery, I'm reviewing Monopoly on C64. You may hate me later, or now, I don't really care either way.

At least the names are accurate for the players.

There's a distinct advantage to having a board game on a computer. You never lose the Old Kent Road down the back of the couch, or find the missing hotel with your bare feet sometime later that week causing you to curse the day that someone decided that injection plastic moulding was a good idea.

You've your usual 6 player maximum in this game, you can also start the short game where several properties are divvied up and given to players while you could also go in for the long haul. Dice rolling takes place first of all to decide who goes first, then the game begins properly with the order ordained by chance itself and it's then a race to buy up stuff and make other people give you their hard(maybe) won money when they accidentally roll a random outcome that lands on your stuff.

Auctions usually are high octane, cash vs thrill, places of excitement. Nobody thought to include that in this game.

Each player starts with £1500 and can move around the board after rolling two die, upon landing on a property they can purchase it if there's enough funds in their account (if they want to) or they can witness it going up for auction with the other players (and themselves included) where the bidding can become really stupid or low level.

If money becomes a problem, they can mortgage their properties and gain cash back from that but they lose the chance to gain rent from their possessions until they pay 110% of the price again. If a player cannot pay off a debt, they go bankrupt and are out of the game.

While moving around the board, players can land on Chance and Community Chest where various events will take place that can either help or hinder the player, or do nothing at all such as the "Pay for repairs on houses" if they own no houses at that point.

Nobody likes Dave enough to give him a nickname.

That's the general gist of the game, the C64 version managed to replicate this rather well. The board is clearly visible at all times, characters and colours of all things can be changed to suit the players however they deem necessary. So if they don't want a black car, they can change it to anything at all, even the colour of the board to just REALLY confuse things. The screen also shows where they are on a zoomed in view of the game while also showing the next 3 spaces so they can see the lay of the land in a closer point. Credit and Assets are easily viewable at all times but pressing the corresponding key to view them, as is for showing who owns what. Collection of rent is optional, as long as someone presses R to collect rent otherwise it's ignored though the AI NEVER forgets to.

It's when the game gets into things like trading and such that the pace of it all slows to a crawl. The menu is slow already on the C64 and moving around and checking things can be time consuming for the human players while AI can make the same offer EVERY SINGLE TURN until they get what they want to have. Usually they'll never settle if someone's going to gain a full set unless you pay roughly double the value so there's little way to trade things or play favourites.

Whoo, people have bought things. Hooray. Why am I putting myself through this?

Likewise the game grinds to a halt when it comes down to avoid bankruptcy and the players are usually too fed up to carry on playing

The game does have snippets of sound, dice rolling makes a noise not too dissimilar to a dice rolling. Train stations sound a little like a steam engine making some noise, being sent to jail (directly to jail, do not pass go) gives you a wonderfully wailing siren noise but no due process for being told of the crime committed and so on. Which doesn't help the game at all, being that it's rather slow in the first place, when it gets bogged down with extra things and issues that aren't helping the flow or pace of the game, it's easy to get fed up with the system and decide that once one person hits the idea of bankruptcy, that it's time to switch off and play something else.

Bitchtit bought a station, I can barely contain myself.

Something fun. Because this is clearly not it. The real shame is that I cannot pick the board up and smack someone over the head with it, and the C64 keyboard combo runs the risk of me actually breaking the machine. So that's not an option.

Board games on computers are usually not a good idea unless it's developed JUST for the computer in the first place or is a play-by-post game. 

The button to switch the whole thing, will never be far from your mind.

Spindizzy C64

Back in the day, there was quite a few ways to release a game. You could have written it as part of a professional team; you could have made it in your bedroom and sent it off to a publisher. You could have half-arsed a game and sent it to a publisher infamous for not giving a ripe fuck about the quality of the game and in such cases, we end up with Spindizzy.

No, not Dizzy, that game series featuring an animated egg and obscure puzzle/platform sections with item A being traded for item B and so on. I'm not talking about that here. This is a game that was relatively well received in the UK and applauded by a great number of reporters who didn't really know what a good game was, nor how it should be reviewed.

The game is a simple premise (as are most of the c64, but not all) where in you control a geometric shaped character and where the shape has no bearing on how you move or perform. Ball, spinning top or inverted square based pyramid, means no difference in the game itself. You are "it" and you are off to explore an Isometric 3D world, collecting gems, solving puzzles and all that before you run out of time/energy and your machine creature thingy shuts down and the game is over.

This already sets alarm bells ringing in the design and concept of the game.

For a start, this means there is a maximum distance you can travel in EVERY game. Which also means that you'll have to make choices to navigate one way and not another and not be able to explore those ways until you start the game over again. You will never be able to collect every gem in a single game either. You will also have to navigate the same areas REPEATEDLY in order to get to somewhere new and then explore a fork in the path you've never navigated before.

Assuming of course you can even get there in the first place. The game's control system is always confusing on the Isometric system of display. Up, moves you Up and Left, Down moves you Down and Right. The problem with isometric displays is that the translation of controls is never consistent. In this game the controls are set, though the inertia and speed can take a lot of management to get used to in order to be able to successfully navigate around 80% of the rooms in the game.

Not only are there the issues of moving around the game but there's the fact that you'll have to rotate the game world to see around pillars, obstructions and other such fun. The ability is there to be used, but you'll have to use the keyboard to in conjunction with the joystick to get around the map. On top of this, is the ability to speed up by use of the joystick fire button which can give you enough of a speed to make certain leaps and jumps (but not too big though, you can't handle too much of a landing impact). Conversely there's the lovely little ability to slow down by using the space bar, though try handling a joystick and a keyboard when performing some very intense and precise movements in this game.

The game is however, a good idea. But the lack of speed and power of the C64 means that dying (or falling off and resetting) can take a while before you have to load up the next screen, fall, bounce off a wall, load up the previous screen, fall, bounce rinse and repeat. While other times might have you falling off one level into an abyss on the next screen with NO CLUE that you're unable to go in that direction until after you've taken a Peter Pan swan dive off the fucking level.

The idea of exploration and puzzle solving is not exactly a novel one by this point but it's a brave attempt just executed poorly. The puzzles within the game are just the idea of hitting switches in a certain order to attempt to bring together a set of lifts and platforms. Making walls appear and disappear, high floors and low floors fading in and out of existence, lifts above lifts to get to higher points etc. There's potential but sometimes it's not so easy to realise.

This brings me onto another big gripe with this system. Perspective. It's hard at times to realise WHERE blocks and floors are in relation to yourself. On top of that some rooms are PURPOSEFULLY designed to obfuscate and confuse you, lead you into a false sense of awareness so that a floor that LOOKS like it's under you is actually 40ft behind you into the level and when you fall, you're absolutely nowhere near it and end up going sailing past the edge of the room and into the abyss that is reloading back where you fell from and wasting more time failing to get to rooms you now cannot access as you'd run out of time.

Nice idea, poorly executed.