Budget Day - Bionic Granny (Commodore 64)

And finally, as if to show that my day hasn't all been fun and games (well, OK, it has been all games), I thought I'd play what is considered to be one of the biggest abominations in computer games history... Bionic Granny.

If you haven't played it before, and I hadn't, then you aren't prepared for the horrors that lie in wait.  This is truly a throwback to the days when software companies would take anything that loaded and throw it upon an unsuspecting public.  There weren't many reviews mags around in the early days, and they were a little afraid of upsetting software companies, so it was common for poor games to sell way more than they deserved, as nobody knew any better.

Bionic Granny is one such game.

Having said that, I'm pretty sure that nothing could have persuaded me to part with my cash for this.  It's not like they could have had great screenshots on the back of the box.  No amount of mocking up could make this look decent.

Don't go near her, kids. She's a nasty old crone.

The story, too, is shockingly bad.  But I can see why it might have appealed to people under the age of twelve.  I'll quote directly from the title screen, if I may:

"IT'S NEARLY FOUR O' CLOCK AND TIME FOR THE KIDS TO COME HOME FROM SCHOOL.

YOU'R A BIONIC GRANNY AND ARE WAITING OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL TO HIT THE KIDS AS LEAVE.

SOME WILL WALK DOWN THE ROADS BUT OTHERS WILL TRY TO EVADE YOU BY KEEPING OFF THE ROADS.

DON'T LET THE LOLLIPOP LADY THROW LOLLIPOPS AT YOU."

Go on, lollipop lady... get in there and belt her one!

Alright... if you were a granny and were lucky enough to be bionic, why the hell would you use those powers to hit schoolkids on their way home?  Wouldn't you rather be rescuing cats or baking awesome scones, or something?

Also, the instructions say "don't let the lollipop lady throw lollipops at you".  Good luck with that... she roams around the top of the screen flinging them as though her life depended on it.  And as whatever bionic feature you are installed with has the disadvantage of rendering you unable to move forwards or backwards, there's not really much you can do to stop her.

In fact, there's no evidence that this granny is bionic at all... the lollipop lady is substantially quicker than her.  I think she's just a cantankerous old biddy who takes pleasure from whacking kids.  There's a place for menaces like that... and it provides free room and board at Her Majesty's pleasure.

Mad old bat needs locking up.

If the game had any semblance of fun or ironic humour to it, you maybe wouldn't mind.  But it's appalling.  You just toddle about at the bottom of the screen, hoping one of the homebound kids happens to meander into your stick, which will score you points.  There's no comedy, no entertainment, no fun.  It's a horrible piece of software, and if budget games had continued in this vein then the industry would have been in a horrible place indeed.

Fortunately, it became a breeding ground for real talent, as you've seen from today's posts.  We were blessed with imaginative, entertaining and enjoyable games, some of which were very ambitious, some of which were better than many full-priced games.  That era of pocket money games was pretty special, and we never saw it's like again.  We should think ourselves lucky for what we had... the kids of today may be spoiled, but they've missed out on one of the most memorable chapters of gaming history.

Budget Day - Train Robbers (Commodore 64)

I'm heading back in time again for this latest game, but whereas I played a good guy in Kane, this time I'm playing a positively bad guy in the form of Cactus Pete, in Firebird's Train Robbers.

Cactus Pete is fairly prolific as robbers go... he's currently worth $4,000, which is no small amount of cash.  That doesn't concern Pete, though... he's constantly on the lookout for more trains to rob, and more lovely lolly.  And you're going to help him.

Ooyah!

It's a dangerous business, train robbing.  First of all, you have to actually get on the train.  When you're a robber, you can't just buy a ticket.  Pete's method of entry is a little less straightforward.  He leaps onto his trusty steed and waits by the railway line.  When the train comes buy, he leaps from his horse, climbs the train's ladder, and runs along the rooftop to the cargo carriage at the back of the train.

That sounds like a piece of cake, but you try jumping a gap on a train at 80 miles per hour.  It's tricky.  It's even trickier when you consider that the railway cuts through a number of hills, meaning there are tunnels aplenty.  If Pete doesn't duck in time... well, it doesn't bear thinking about.

Sneak!  Sneak!  Sneak!

When (if) Pete makes it to the loot car, he can fill his boots.  All he has to do is climb down the ladder inside the car, pick up the two keys, unlock the safe and make off with his stash.  Oh, and avoid the two vicious dogs that patrol the carriage...

Should Pete manage to empty the safe without being bitten, he'll find himself back on top of the train.  Now he needs to get back to the front of the train where his horse will be waiting for him.  It's another tricky journey, with mailboxes to jump over or duck under.  Still, with all that adrenalin running from having completed another successful heist, that should pose no problem at all!

Is it dark in here, or is it just me?

Train Robbers is a funny little game.  It's funny as in odd, and funny as in amusing.  It has some great touches... the way the screen goes black and you can only see Pete's eyes when you go through a tunnel is particularly funny.  It's pretty tricky, too... I can say in all honesty that I've never managed to get back on my horse after a robbery, not in 1988 and not in 2013.  But I played it quite a bit, and it remains an entertaining little budget game.

Budget Day - Oh No! (Commodore 64)

There is no way... no way, that you would buy Oh No! just from looking at the cover art. There's a cow with a space helmet on its head, an odd-looking furry animal, a desert and, in the background, a spacecraft.

The spacecraft is the important part. Oh No! is a shoot 'em up, and although the storyline is odd, the game most certainly is not...

In Oh No!, the year is 1,000,000 AD, and you are a breeder of space oxen. These beasts are very highly coveted by other entities, who will stop at nothing to get their hands or other genetically-modified appendages on them. The rustling bastards. So you must mount up on your trusty space-steed and put a stop to their stealing shenanigans.

Save the clock tower!  I mean, the cows.  Those glowing round things. Save them!

It's much simpler than it sounds as a game... confined within one (scrolling) screen, you must blast anything that comes within range and stop them from taking the oxen off the screen. If all the oxen are lost, the game is over. Them's the rules, and they're easy to follow...

And indeed, the game is simple in theory. Once you start playing it, though, you'll see that it's much more difficult in practice.

Oh No!, to my mind, stands right up there among the finest of frantic shooters. What it essentially does is to cross Robotron: 2084 with Defender and Missile Command. Wait... let me explain.

Right... *cracks knuckles* come on, then...

You have a playfield where you have to protect your oxen... they're like The Last Human Family, but in bovine form. But unlike in Robotron, they're not killed when enemies get to them. Instead, they're captured, and you have a limited amount of time to rescue them before they're taken off the playfield. See, that's like Defender.

The game is split up into different planets, and each planet has nine waves, with each being progressively more manic than the last. There's no break between waves. Once you destroy every enemy in a wave, the next one rushes in without a second thought. If you want any kind of a break for your trigger finger, you'll have to wait nine waves for it.

It's OK... I'll be your Defender...

As your only objective is to save your oxen, it's important to keep them close together or, if it all gets too much, let them all go except for one and be sure to defend that one to the end. That's the Missile Command aspect... it's very similar to your endgame there, where you concentrate on keeping one city intact.

Oh No! is a Sensible Software game, and probably one of their least well-known at that.  It was well-reviewed by ZZAP! 64, but I'm not sure how well it sold or was received in general. Comments on Lemon64 seem to be mixed, but I absolutely loved this game when I bought it and I still play it occasionally now. It's a really pure shoot 'em up high-score experience, guaranteed to get the adrenalin pumping. Lovely stuff.

Budget Day - Raging Beast (Commodore 64)

The matador.

Noble.  Proud.  Cruel.  Foolish.  All adjectives that can and have been used to describe the bullfighter in years gone by.  In today's "civilised" society, the matador is often considered barbaric.  However, the sport and tradition is an ancient one... it's tough to know, in this day and age, when something like bullfighting should be abandoned and when it can justifiably continue.

Or if you don't want to enter that debate, you can play Raging Beast.

A timeless battle is about to begin...

Proving that truly nothing was impossible, Firebird brought us a computer game based on the sport of bullfighting.  It seemed inconceivable that it could be any good, or even that it could be done, and yet here it was.  How could they get away with the slaughtering of bulls for computer entertainment?

They didn't even try.

In fact, the bull is the true star of Raging Beast.  As soon as the two protagonists enter the ring and stare each other down, you know that it's probably not going to end well for you.  When your only form of defence is a little red hankie, you need to be really good... because this bull knows what he's doing.

It appears as though the bull has the upper hand in this bout.

It's quite amazing just how much character has been packed into the few pixels that make up Alfonso the bull.  As soon as you start waving your red rag at him, he'll snort, he'll paw the ground, and then he'll start to approach you.

It's at this point that I make like the weedy guy up against the mighty gladiator in Monty Python's Life of Brian... I turn and run.

Doing this will not win you the game, but it's funny.  You will genuinely laugh as you're haring around the bullring with a hefty bull chasing after you.  But it doesn't get anything done, so at some point you have to grab the bull by the horns (not literally) and attempt to confront Alfonso.

Now... who exactly is in charge of this situation?

I used to be half-decent at this back in the day, and could "Olé" with the best of them.  But I don't mind admitting that I struggled to get to grips with it this time around.  I don't mind admitting it because, again, it was funny.  Getting stomped into the dirt, thrown into the air or flung onto the bull's back for an impromptu ride around the ring is good entertainment.

It can only last so long though, and eventually you get a little bored and want to move on to something else.  But for a unique, amusing and entertaining experience, Raging Beast hits the nail on the head.  And there's not even the slightest risk of injury!

Budget Day - Kane (Commodore 64)

Boys love playing at being cowboys.  I'm no exception.  The (fairly) recent Red Dead Redemption allowed me to live out those Wild West fantasies in full, riding a horse around glorious barren landscapes in glorious sunsets, playing poker with the boys and taking down the bad guys.  Great stuff.

Of course, there have been cowboy games for almost as long as there have been games.  Possibly the earliest example was the arcade game Boot Hill, where you faced off against an opponent in a one-to-one shootout.  I loved playing against my dad on that game... we would later replicate it at home with Atari's Outlaw.

Anyone fancy a stir fry tonight?

Another of my favourite early Wild West games was Mastertronic's budget effort, Kane.  Written by John Darnell, who would later be responsible for classics such as Star Paws and Escape from Singe's Castle, it was owned (in one form or another) by probably everyone I knew.  We all thought it was a classic, although that might just have been because it was one of the first games we owned!

It was easy to be impressed by Kane, though.  For a start, the main sprite was basically Agent 4125 from Impossible Mission, in a cowboy hat.  And as the good agent was one of the best characters in computer games at the time, that was no bad thing.  The first level saw you shooting ducks with a bow and arrow, and they let out a rather pained sampled squawk when hit.  For a budget game, this first level alone made you sit up and take notice.

Other levels had just as much to impress.  The second and fourth levels feaured a very nicely animated horse... hey, it didn't take much to catch your eye in those days!  That said, those horse-jumping levels were a bit repetitive, and if you fell off in the wrong place you'd be stuck and your game would be over.

Peek-a-boo, I see you!  BLAM!

The third level saw Marshall McGraw, for he was the character you played, holed up in the town of Kane, with bad guys aplenty hiding out and hoping to take you down.  They'd appear in doorways, windows, up on rooftops or from behind barns.  If you weren't Quick Draw McGraw, they'd shoot you dead (or at least, dead enough to remove one of your lives).

Kane certainly had more than enough about it to keep us teens entertained for a good while.  Although it wouldn't have been great value at full price, it was a great little budget game, and it kept us occupied for many an evening whilst waiting for something else to roll into town.

Budget Day - Arnie (Commodore 64)

If it's the early Nineties and you're making a game about an all-action hardman, you could do a lot worse than calling it Arnie.  Just that one name conjurs up images of a gun-toting muscleman, cutting a swathe through entire squadrons of armed bad guys.  It did then and it still does now, twenty years down the line.

It's appropriate enough, because the Arnie of this game is, indeed, a one-man army.  Dropped into a warzone by chopper, it's up to you to guide this man of steel around the map, shooting down everything in his path, until the inevitable confrontation with the mad dictator at the source of all the troubles.

There's not much that's as satisfying as exploding enemy hardware.

It's a tried-and-tested scenario, but the game is a bit more interesting and enjoyable than its cliched storyline.  That's partly because of the graphical viewpoint... Arnie is in glorious isometric 3D, which is fairly unusual for a game of this type.  It does mean that your viewing area is restricted at time (when you reach the edge of the map), but this doesn't really cause any problems.

Unusually, the game is not split into levels.  You're deposited into the jungle, and from there you just make your way across the landscape until you (hopefully) reach the end.  I often wondered why more action/shooting games weren't like this.  Life isn't split into levels, nor are action films.  Why shouldn't a shooting game be one seamless journey?  It works really well, with not a single break in the action.

That enemy truck looks dangerous. Luckily, my rocket is about to take it out.

Arnie was programmed by Chris Butler, and you get a little bit of a feeling that he was out to prove just how good a shooter he could program, having been hamstrung by Elite when programming (the still very enjoyable) Commando conversion.  This is a bit slower-paced than Commando, but still has plenty going on.  With extra weapons to pick up and new enemies and obstacles introduced along the way, it's never boring.

Arnie was released later in the Commodore 64's lifetime, and as a result it had a more expensive budget price of £3.99.  It was still well worth that bit extra though... I never regretted the purchase, and even today it's a worthwhile blast and a fair old challenge.

Budget Day - Slimey's Mine (Commodore 64)

"YOU ARE HERE!"

Right now, you're on They Were Our Gods.  Back then, you were in Slimey's Mine, and you'd just picked up a map.  You knew that, because the game shouted it at you.  It shouted a lot of things at you, did Slimey's Mine.

If you've never played Slimey's Mine, you probably should.  I guarantee that you'll crack a smile, at the very least.  It's a completely bonkers game, the sort of concept that was realised regularly in the Eighties and went sadly missing for a long time, but is (thankfully) coming back with a vengeance in this day and age.

There he goes!

Slimey is a frog-like creature, who has somehow managed to get himself trapped in an asteroid belt far, far from home.  All he wants to do is make it back home.  Home is where Slimey's heart is.  Unfortunately, the only way off the asteroid belt comes in the form of a giant balloon... which is on the other side of a yawning chasm.  Slimey's only hope is to venture into the mines in the asteroids and collect frogs, which he can spit into the hole to fill it up, thereby creating a bridge to the balloon, freedom, and home!

If you're wondering what kind of game could possibly be spawned from a storyline like that, then let me tell you: it's a shoot 'em up.  Of course it is.  Each asteroid contains a number of caverns which Slimey must negotiate to get to the frogs.  As you'd expect, it's not as easy as that...

I'm forever blasting bubbles...

The asteroids feature a number of indigenous life forms, and guess what?  They're not friendly.  Some will actively attack Slimey, while others will wander about minding their own business.  Contact with all creatures is harmful to Slimey, though... he'll dry out, and eventually expire!  Fortunately, Slimey can collect water jars, which although not giving him any direct benefit, will turn bubbles to water that Slimey can collect.

There are other benefits to be found, too.  Apples will clear a screen of dirt, leaving you free to wander its entire area.  Banana bombs can be used to attack a number of enemies at once... useful.  A map will appear every so often, which will give you a reminder of the asteroid's internal layout.  And then there are the diamonds...

Eeek!  Get away!  Get away!

Now, don't get me wrong.  Slimey's not a greedy Gertie, Bertie.  But Slimey's only way off a screen is to collect enough diamonds to make a red diamond appear.  Once he collects the red diamond, all the critters disappear, leaving Slimey free to leave the screen.  Well, if he can avoid the death-dealing lasers, that is...

I'm sure that if you haven't played Slimey's Mine, you're probably shaking your head right now.  And you have a good right to be... it sounds ludicrous.  And it is ludicrous... but in that fantastic, imaginative way that fills you with a certain kind of joy.  It's loud and obnoxious, with hilarious sampled screams, gulps and utterances constantly brightening proceedings.   And although it eventually gets repetitive, it's great fun.  This was a terrific purchase back in the day.

Budget Day 2013

Good morning all, and welcome to Budget Day 2013!

For those of you that didn't follow my old blog, A Gamer Forever Voyaging, this is something I've done for the last couple of years now.  The intention is to take our minds away from the misery and drudgery of having more taxes imposed upon us and more of our hard-earned money taken from us in the Government's Budget, by going back to the days where a little of our money went a long way.

Often, when buying a budget game, you were taking a bit of a punt. It's quite possible you were buying it on a whim, without having read a review. Maybe you liked the screenshots on the back. Maybe it had a nice cover. Or maybe Rob Hubbard did the music. Whatever it was, there was a reasonable chance that your £1.99 purchase would give you about half an hour's entertainment before being consigned to the back of the bottom drawer. That made it all the more satisfying when it turned out you'd bought a little gem.

My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen... the House is in session. It's Budget Day!

Today, as I have done in the past couple of years, I'll be playing a mix of the great and the good (and the terrible) budget games that graced our Spectrums and Commodores.  Oh yes, I'll probably throw in a couple of stinkers just to remind ourself that not everything in the garden was rosy.  How I suffer for my art!

This particular Budget Day will be a little different, as I'll be reposting a few of the posts from previous years, probably with new screenshots and possibly with a little rewording in some cases.  It's a cheap and easy way to bolster the day's content, but what the heck.

So, sit back and relax as we take a trip back to the days of the budget game, and we'll see if our happy memories are justified or if we just couldn't admit to ourselves that we'd wasted our pocket money...

(C) 64 ways to make your Android/MP3 phone better!

I think, although I'm not sure, that I can create links to the Commodore 64 ringtone files I made in Dropbox so that you can download them.  Won't that be great if it works?  So I'm going to try and do just that.  If it works, you can pick and choose from any you like the sound of, rather than waiting for me to e-mail you the whole batch.  Everybody wins!

Here's the "track listing":

Commodore 64 ringtones - Android/MP3 versions

The Complete Commodore 64 Ringtone Collection

Action Biker
Beyond Forbidden Forest 1
Beyond Forbidden Forest 2
Beyond Forbidden Forest 3
Beyond Forbidden Forest 4
Beyond Forbidden Forest 5
Beyond Forbidden Forest 6
Beyond Forbidden Forest 7
Beyond Forbidden Forest 8
Beyond Forbidden Forest 9
Bionic Commando
Citadel
Crazy Comets
Cybernoid
Delta
Dragon's Lair Part II
Driller
Dropzone
Finders Keepers
Firelord
Ghosts 'n Goblins
Green Beret
Hades Nebula 1
Hades Nebula 2
Hawkeye
Hunter's Moon
International Karate
Last Ninja 1
Last Ninja 1B
Lazy Jones 21
Monty on the Run 1
Monty on the Run 2
Monty on the Run 3
Mutants 1
Mutants 2
Nemesis the Warlock
Ninja
Novaload
Ocean Loader 1
Ocean Loader Early
Panther
Paradroid 1
Paradroid 2
Parallax 1
Parallax 2
Penetrator 1
Penetrator 2
Platoon
Rock 'n Wrestle
Sanxion 1
Sanxion 2
Spellbound 1
Spellbound 2
Thing on a Spring
UridiumFX
Uridium
Warhawk
Way of the Exploding Fist 1
Way of the Exploding Fist 2
Wizardry 1
Wizardry 2
Wizball
Zoids
Zybex

These are not complete tunes; rather, they're snippets that I reckon make for good ringtones.  I've edited them so that they loop around pretty neatly, and I think there are some really good ringtones here.  Oh, and they're not all tunes...

If you like these, please comment and let me know.  And by all means share this post wherever you think there would be an interest.  They took ages to make so they might as well be spread far and wide!  Don't go pinching them for another website though (at least not without asking)... that wouldn't be nice!

(C) 64 ways to make your iPhone better!

I think, although I'm not sure, that I can create links to the Commodore 64 ringtone files I made in Dropbox so that you can download them.  Won't that be great if it works?  So I'm going to try and do just that.  If it works, you can pick and choose from any you like the sound of, rather than waiting for me to e-mail you the whole batch.  Everybody wins!

Here's the "track listing":

Commodore 64 ringtones - iPhone versions

The Complete Commodore 64 Ringtone Collection

Action Biker
Beyond Forbidden Forest 1
Beyond Forbidden Forest 2
Beyond Forbidden Forest 3
Beyond Forbidden Forest 4
Beyond Forbidden Forest 5
Beyond Forbidden Forest 6
Beyond Forbidden Forest 7
Beyond Forbidden Forest 8
Beyond Forbidden Forest 9
Bionic Commando
Citadel
Crazy Comets
Cybernoid
Delta
Dragon's Lair Part II
Driller
Dropzone
Finders Keepers
Firelord
Ghosts 'n Goblins
Green Beret
Hades Nebula 1
Hades Nebula 2
Hawkeye
Hunter's Moon
International Karate
Last Ninja 1A
Last Ninja 1B
Lazy Jones 21
Monty on the Run 1
Monty on the Run 2
Monty on the Run 3
Mutants 1
Mutants 2
Nemesis the Warlock
Ninja
Novaload
Ocean Loader 1
Ocean Loader Early
Panther
Paradroid 1
Paradroid 2
Parallax 1
Parallax 2
Penetrator 1
Penetrator 2
Platoon
Rock 'n Wrestle
Sanxion 1
Sanxion 2
Spellbound 1
Spellbound 2
Thing on a Spring
Uridium FX
Uridium
Warhawk
Way of the Exploding Fist 1
Way of the Exploding Fist 2
Wizardry 1
Wizardry 2
Wizball
Zoids
Zybex

Now, iPhones are a bit fiddly, and have their own special format for ringtones.  They can't use MP3s for such purposes.  Luckily for you, I'm awesome, and I have converted these to work on your iPhone.  Just add them to your iTunes and drag them to your phone, and they will automatically populate the Ringtones section.  Simple!

These are not complete tunes; rather, they're snippets that I reckon make for good ringtones.  I've edited them so that they loop around pretty neatly, and I think there are some really good ringtones here.  Oh, and they're not all tunes...

If you like these, please comment and let me know.  And by all means share this post wherever you think there would be an interest.  They took ages to make so they might as well be spread far and wide!  Don't go pinching them for another website though (at least not without asking)... that wouldn't be nice!

64 ways to make your phone better!

Hey there!  It's my dad's birthday today... 65 today!  Congrats, fella!  And what better way to celebrate than for me to give YOU stuff!  I'm great like that.

In this case, I may be seen to be biased towards one side of my potential readership (sorry, Spec-chums!).  I have created, for your pleasure and enjoyment, sixty-four Commodore 64 ringtones!  Yes, some of the finest Commodore compositions have been hacked into bite-sized chunks by me, for the sole purpose of brightening up your life when you get a text or phone call.

SMILE! as the Crazy Comets bassline signals an incoming call.  GRIN! as your slacker mate phones to the sound of that famous tune from Lazy Jones.  SMIRK! when your girlfriend phones and the soundtrack to Penetrator plays...  LAUGH! at the sheer silliness of having Uridium's "Land Now!" siren blasts to announce a phone call, or even the sound of a Novaload's screech.  Yes, I've thrown a couple of left-field efforts in there, too...

Yes, I recorded the sound from this very screen.

I do enjoy making stuff like this for a bit of fun, and I hope you appreciate and enjoy them too.  You'd better, because it takes me ages!  But if you don't, there's no harm done.

Now for the tricky bit.  I haven't got any webspace at the moment, so you can only obtain these either by e-mail or through Dropbox.  Either way, just send me an e-mail to paul.e.morrison at gmail.com (you know what to do there) and let me know how you'd like to receive them, and I'll arrange it right away.

You can get these for either iPhone or Android (or any operating system that uses MP3s).  So I reckon that most people are covered here.  If you fancy spicing up your life, then get in touch!

Day 247 - Eeeeeeviiiiiiillll!

I haven't used this title purely because I've just watched the lost Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy episode with my youngest child.  Ooohhhhh, no.  I'm using it because that's what this post is about.  Pure evil.  And we (almost) all were guilty...

I was just digging through my retro stash (thanks again Mr. Reed), when I came across some of these:

Look at that.  The 80s equivalent of a bar of gold.

Surely everybody that owned a computer, be it C64, Spectrum, Amstrad, Dragon 32, BBC or Oric must have had a stash of these.  They were perfect.  You could fit almost any single-load game on one side, which negated the need for tediously hunting through tapes and writing down counter numbers for each game.  You'd just load up the game, play it, and when you'd finished you'd turn the tape over, rewind it the short distance to the beginning and load up the game on that side.  Brilliant!

Of course, the fact you were doing so meant that you were a filthy, stinking PIRATE!  But to be honest, I don't think many kids back then even knew what that meant or what the consequences were.  It wasn't something I even thought about.

That said, there can have been no other reason for these cassettes to be produced other than for kids to copy games onto.  They were dead cheap (anyone remember exactly how much?), ideal for kids with limited budgets.  And let's face it, how many of us actually wrote our own programs?  Well, I wrote one... a database of ZZAP! 64-style reviews.  But it only consisted or PRINT and IF...THEN...GOTO statements.  Hardly a complex work.

Erm... that's right, m'lud. My reviews database was called "Commando".  Honest.

And for all that, I owned tens of Boots C15 cassettes.  Boots even sold cassette carriers, which held ten or twenty of these things and had a handle... perfect for carrying your evil ill-gotten games to a mate's house.

Of course, there were times when a C15 wouldn't do.  Complex multiloads needed more tape room, for starters.  And then there was the fact that you could get up to ten games on a side of C90 cassette.  So if you didn't have a big enough supply of trusty C15s, then you had to break out the big fella.

I probably sound like a right scumbag now.  But to be fair, I owned over 200 original games for my C64.  The problem was there were just so many great games available, and kids of our age had a very finite amount of cash.  It was simply impossible to buy all the games we wanted, which is where blank cassettes came in.  But I know that I, and most of my mates, had a very impressive collection of original games.  We bought as much as we could, not necessarily because we knew it was right, but because we liked owning this stuff.

That's just WRONG, man!  Who would waste tape on Trivial Pursuit?

I'm much the same now.  I've never owned any copied games for any system beyond my Commodore 64 (except for inherited copies that have come with a second-hand system I've bought).  I'd rather buy and own a film than download it.  And although I will admit to downloading music on occasion, I will either buy it if I like it or delete it if I don't.  Although in this day and age, there are programs available that legally allow you to preview music before you buy it so downloading is becoming a bit of a thing of the past.

I don't really have a point to this.  I'm not staunchly condemning the evil pirate scum or implicitly advocating the purchase of absolutely everything you like.  I just thought it would be fun to write a bit about the old days, having found a box of treasures.  There's not much that's more fun than digging through the past.

Day 238 - Meep! Meep? How's that for a Cliff Hanger?

I distinctly remember the first time I played the Road Runner arcade conversion at home.  It looked great, but I couldn't help but feel disappointed by the simplistic gameplay.  Controlling the Road Runner, you ran along a series of roads, avoiding the ravenous Wile E. Coyote who attempted to catch you in a number of mildly amusing ways.

I think the problem with that game was that you played the Road Runner.  You don't watch Road Runner cartoons for the Road Runner, after all.  The fun comes from Wile E. Coyote's misadventures, mishaps and catastrophes.  Why would you play a game that doesn't feature any of that?

See, I just wanted to let the coyote get the Road Runner.  Wile E. is great!

Luckily, none of that mattered, because may years earlier a company called New Generation Software had released a game called Cliff Hanger.  And it was the only Road Runner game you'd ever need.

I doubt I'll ever forget the first time I loaded Cliff Hanger on my C64.  It was buried in the middle of a C90 that I'd borrowed, and as I'd never heard of it before I'd primarily loaded it to get to whatever was next on the tape.  Those feelings appeared to be confirmed when a droning tune burst into life and a crippled looking character (Cliff Hanger himself!) appeared and hobbled across the screen.  The fact that his brother was called Coat almost sealed the deal...

I'm looking at this and thinking that a lot could go wrong...

Still, I'd spent five minutes or so waiting for it to load, and in those days we all had more patience.  So I decided to give it a go.  What would another couple of lost minutes be, really?

Of course, I had no idea what to do.  The first screen appeared, and my character stood in a desolate-looking desert backdrop, appearing to be as clueless as I was.  I pushed the joystick right, and accidentally walked over the ledge.  Wow... what a rubbish game.

Well, that could have gone better. But at least I'm still in one piece.

The game took me back to a title page, but I noticed it had a different name this time.  I pressed fire, and a different scene appeared.  And this time, something was moving!  It was getting closer... a bandit!  I hurriedly ran at the precariously-positioned boulder, knocking it off the edge of the cliff... and squashed the bandit!

OK, so it was a pure fluke, but in that moment I realised what this game was all about.  Set up like a film set, Cliff Hanger has you playing a series of outrageous scenes or stunts in which you, as Cliff, must stop the evil bandit from making his getaway.  Some are relatively straightforward, merely asking you to roll a boulder off a cliff and onto the fleeing criminal.  Others, though, are very complicated and lead to a bit of head-scratching as you try and figure out what you need to do.

Alright, now I'm a bit stuck.

Graphically, the game is very simple... which is perfect.  It helps to generate the look and feel of the Road Runner cartoons.  The simplistic desert settings, although not of the finest quality, could almost have been ripped from your favourite episodes.

Interestingly, the tables are turned in terms of how the characters work.  The bad guy is now effectively the Road Runner, with the hapless Cliff Hanger taking on the role of Wile E. Coyote.  That's why the game is so much fun... you get to act out all the crazy stunts.  When you first start playing, you're never quite sure what's going to happen.  Sure, there are sometimes clues in the title, but when you're faced with a sparse landscape and just a couple of objects, it's all down to trial and error as to whether or not you'll be successful.  And when you set off one of those traps, you're almost hiding your eyes as you do it, wondering how it might go horribly wrong...

Alright, who put that giant rock there?  Thanks, whoever it was!

Cliff Hanger is hilarious and a heck of a lot of fun.  I suspect it was overlooked when it was released, which would be a shame as a lot of people missed out on a great time if that was the case.  There's not much to choose between the Spectrum and C64 versions... for me the Commodore version edges it with its slightly more authentic backdrops and the fact that screens are a lot more randomised, keeping it fresher.  Either way, though, if you like Road Runner you'd love playing Cliff Hanger.

Cliff Hanger was programmed by James Day, who didn't write much else.  I'd love to get his thoughts on the game, and also from New Generation's Malcolm Evans and their other programmers.  New Generation didn't release a lot of games, but there were some genuine groundbreakers among them, and they deserve to be featured in this book.  One can only try...

Day 232 - any time is a good time for a High Noon showdown!

I'm going to do more posts about single games from now on... otherwise there's a danger of me only writing one post a month!  That doesn't guarantee the game I write about will be included in the book, so if that happens with any of them you can consider these bonus features!

One of the first Commodore 64 games I ever played, well before I even owned a machine of my own, was Ocean Software's High Noon.  I used to go to a mate's house and he had loads of games for his, even at that early stage.  Some of them might be considered quite obscure by now... for instance, I now distinctly remember playing Jason Perkins' Blue Moon, which I'd completely forgotten about until I started researching Jason Perkins!

Yee-haw, ya rootin'-tootin- varmint!

One game I never forgot was High Noon.  Back in those early days, the prospect of any new game loading was exciting.  This was a fairly typical early Ocean game, with the Novaload squeaking into life and then a basic loading screen, short repetitive tune and scrolling message popping up.  For some reason, even though I was used to the instant access of the Atari VCS' cartridges, the nervous anticipation of seeing a new game was there every time.

Once it loaded, High Noon was one of the best things I'd ever seen.  It may have had really chunky sprites, but it gave them charm and character.  And you could walk into and out of the screen!  This made the play area bigger, although you had to learn a whole new method of bullet dodging as a result!

You can never die with dignity in the Old West.

Speaking of charm and character, for a game where the focus is purely on gunning down as many bad guys as possible, High Noon has a nice sense of humour.  This is evidenced by the undertakers, "Rig + Mortis", who wander out after each kill and drags the still-warm bodies into their lair!  Oh, and this even includes your good self, so try not to get hit if you can...

Later levels ramp up the difficulty, with bandits on horseback throwing you off guard, and then there are the robbers with dynamite to keep a close eye on...

Ah.  So that's what that hissing thing does.

You have to keep your trigger finger warm and active if these guys aren't going to make off with all the bank's money or worse, all the saloon's women!  And while it does get repetitive, the difficulty curve is well-judged and the gameplay remains frantic enough to entertain.  I don't know who wrote High Noon... there is no in-game credit other than "Ocean Software Presents".  But it's a game I've enjoyed for almost thirty years now, and still well worth a little blast today.