We're barely 2 weeks into 2023 and we have one of the first new C64 releases of the year. This comes courtesy of knifegrinder, and it's a bit of a corker.
Set aboard space station where the central AI core has gone haywire, players assume control of android L-3573-R (or Lester to its friends), which must search the various ducts and corridors of the facility to discover exactly what has happened. The game is a classic Metroidvania affair, with the player scouring the map to locate key cards and other items that will allow access to additional locations.
The odds are certainly stacked against poor Lester. The station is protected by an army of service droids, sentry guns and other automated defence systems, and there are plenty of environmental hazards to deal with, including rivers of toxic waste, spikes and more. Special weapons and power-ups can be discovered by destroying enemies and barrels with Lester's laser rifle, and most enemies leave behind collectible coins. These can be spent at one of the various terminals dotted around the station, upgrading your gun and restoring health.
In addition to acting as an interplanetary vending machine, terminals also show a map of your current location, plus all other rooms on the station. Visiting each location will fill the square with a colour representing the level of security clearance required to access the area, so it's pretty easy to work out exactly where you've been, as well as where you should probably be heading next. Finding the access cards can take a while until you're familiar with the map layout, but it's actually quite difficult to get lost.
Overall, Lester is a fantastic little game. The game mechanics are simple to understand and well-executed, and the size of the map means you've got plenty to get your teeth into. Quality-of-life features like the map and checkpoint system are great additions, and the aesthetics are top-notch.
As with so many recent C64 games, Lester would have undoubtedly cleaned up if it had been released back in the day, putting so many commercial titles to shame. Although the game can be downloaded for free, I chose to make the optional payment - it's a great effort and well worth a few quid for the amount of effort on display!
Developer: knifegrinder Publisher: knifegrinder Year of Release: 2023 Download: https://knifegrinder.itch.io/lester
I confess always had a bit of a soft spot for The Blues Brothers on the Amiga. It was one of Titus Software's better games on the platform which, given the publisher's reputation, was quite a low watermark to begin with.
The objective is to help Jake and Elwood find the musical instruments and pieces of equipment needed to perform at their sell-out gig. The gear has been strewn around the local municipality, shopping centre and building sites, and you'll need to hunt high and low, dealing with militant cops, construction workers and seniors piloting runaway shopping carts.
When it comes to the C64 version, I wasn't really holding my breath, but I was genuinely surprised at how well this conversion turned out. Titus outsourced development to CTA Developments and 221b Software developments, which proved to be a prudent move. The result is a really fun platform game containing practically all the features and levels of the 16-bit version.
The only complaint I have about the game is, perhaps ironically, the music. Certain notes sound off-key and a little weird, which is a shame, considering how great the Amiga tunes were.
This shouldn't deter you, however. The game is still good fun and worth a play, regardless of the slightly wonky tunes.
Developer: CTA Developments & 221b Software Developments Publisher: Titus Software Year of Release: 1991
Released in 1984, Dropzone is the first C64 game released by the late Archer Maclean. Archer sadly passed away on December 17th 2022, and despite releasing comparatively few titles for the system, those he did release were to an incredibly high standard.
Like a lot of other titles, Dropzone is far from an original idea. It borrows heavily from Defender, the classic Eugene Jarvis coin-op, for most of its ideas, but calling it a simple clone does both Archer and the game a disservice. A quick perusal of other games published in 1984 reveal a line-up which, by comparison, were still relatively primitive. Even the first games from combined C64 programming powerhouses Tony Crowther and Jeff Minter were either lacking in playability, or required at least a couple of doses of a fairly potent hallucinogenic substance to really appreciate. Dropzone was pretty much perfect right out of the gate, benefiting from Defender's solid design principles, but playing to the strengths of the Commodore 64 itself.
The game's objective is to simply set as high a score as possible, which requires the player to rescue a series of space-faring scientists -- blue, rotating things trundling across the planet's surface -- from a plethora of alien invaders which spawn into existence at the start of each round. Saving a scientist requires the player to fly into them, attaching the scientist's pod to the player's jetpack, then taking them to the near-by moon-base. Only a single a scientist can be carried at once, and the aliens will start to target the remaining egg-heads while you have your hands full. They'll try to assassinate the poor guys with android units, either by dropping them on to the planet surface or, more irritatingly, dropping them on to the rescue pad of the moon-base and allowing them to destroy a scientist you'd previously rescued. The round ends only when all scientists are either rescued or destroyed, and all invaders have been dealt with.
In terms of armaments, your jetpack comes equipped with a laser blaster with auto-fire for shooting down enemy craft, smart bombs for clearing out all enemies on screen, plus a cloaking device which grants invulnerability for a short duration. The points you earn will replenish these items, plus award bonus lives at regular intervals; these are great features which offset the game's difficulty and, with practice, seasoned players should be able to rack up some impressive scores.
The reason why Dropzone remains a C64 classic is due to the fact everything is so polished. It feels like a lot of time and effort went into the game, with everything being tuned and refined to perfection. The graphics, scrolling and other technical aspects are equally impressive, and it's easy to see why Zzap!64 awarded the game a coveted Gold Medal in the magazine's third issue. It's one of a select few games which remained relevant throughout the entirety of the C64's commercial lifespan, and it's still a fiendishly addictive experience today.
Developer: Archer Maclean Publisher: U.S. Gold Year of Release: 1984
Even by the time Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, the Amiga's best years were behind it. For the gaming press and public still loyal to the Amiga, Elfmania was one of the remaining titles to cause some excitement among the remaining fanbase. I'd transitioned to PC by 1994 and never got to play the game back then, but I've seen comments from some quarters praising it as one of, if not the best fighting game on the Amiga.
It's easy to see why; Elfmania was an impressive artistic and technical showcase, particularly for a machine which had debuted over a decade prior. That something could look this good and run at a flawless 50 Hz on an A500 is quite a achievement, something made all the more impressive when you consider this is an OCS game, not AGA.
Having played through the game a few times for the purposes of recording a longplay, my impressions of the game proved to be far less complimentary, for reasons I shall discuss later. First, we need to cover the underlying game model, for understanding this is key to understanding some Elfmania's more fundamental issues.
Whereas Street Fighter II (and similar games) try to balance the various fighters within the game, Elfmania goes in a different direction. The game employs the concept of hiring a warrior to fight on your behalf, and each of these costs a certain amount of cash to employ. You begin the game with just enough cash to hire one of the more basic fighters, with other combatants becoming available as you earn cash from various bouts. Landing a blow on your opponent causes a coin to spawn out of thin air, and this gets added to the prize pot if you manage to hit it. Coins are also awarded for health remaining at the end of the bout, and it's possible to earn a bonus by swatting the fountain of jewellery which spews forth on the demise of your opponent. It's all a little weird, but it's certainly a novel system.
Using your chosen combatant, you take part in combat to decide who takes control of the selected map square. Victory results in a cross being drawn on the grid, and you'll need to create a horizontal or vertical line of 6 crosses on the grid to claim ultimate victory. Some map squares will reveal your next opponent, whereas others will hide the combatant until you select the square. Using save states reveals that the opponents you face are actually predetermined for each game, just the game gives the impression of selecting an opponent at random.
The first major failing becomes apparent when you realise the game employs a series of modifiers under the hood to increase difficulty as the game progresses. The CPU difficulty setting, displayed on the map screen whenever you select a square on the grid, continually ramps up the general ability of your opponents as you proceed. What it doesn't make clear, however, is it also increases opponent health and damage output. I played a round 4 match using Janika against a clone of herself, and I noticed blows the CPU opponent landed where taking far greater chunks out of my health bar, where as the few hits I was landing were barely making a dent. This is made worse when fighting the more costly fighters, who have a higher base health pool to begin with; factor in the CPU difficulty modifier, and you have virtually no chance of beating a higher tier character with one from a lower tier.
Should you lose a fight with a more expensive fighter, the fact you'll stand absolutely no chance with one of the lower-priced ones means you might as well give and restart the game the moment this occurs. The game devolves into a weird game of rock-paper-scissors, knowing which fighter you have a realistic chance of beating an opponent with, and you best not mess up, ever. In short, the game balance is completely flawed and absolutely no fun as a result.
What makes things worse is the underlying fighting mechanics are also deeply flawed. Much of this comes down to the usual problem of only having a single-button joystick, so the devs shoehorned in an awkward eight-way control system where moves are executed by holding down the button and pushing in certain directions on the stick. This is less than intuitive in a game where pushing up to jump is a thing, so don't be too surprised when you find yourself bounding around the screen inadvertently. The one special move each character possesses is also completely pointless because they all involve repeating a specific move a set number of times to activate; you're telegraphing the special long before it activates, making it pointless in multiplayer, and the CPU opponent reads your joystick inputs anyway, making them similarly useless there. As a final insult, the developers decided holding back on the stick to execute a block was far too intuitive, instead forcing the player to hold down and fire instead.
The various issues gave rise to outbursts on more than one occasion as I railed against so many of the silly decisions the developers seemed to have taken. I was reassured to note that Amiga Power, regarded as one of the most honest and reliable Amiga publications of the day, felt equally aggrieved. In its July 1994 issue, reviewer Stuart Campbell reeled off the same issues I'd noted during my play-through, and had opined the fact the devs failed to act on any of the feedback AP had provided, following hands-on experience with an earlier preview of the game. Apparently, the game had been delayed on a number of occasions to specifically allow revisions to the gameplay, but that none of the issues had been addressed in the final build.
As impressive as Elfmania looks, the underlying game is woefully average. The money system proves to be a novel twist, but the combat is stymied by awkward controls and the the flawed balance model just adds to the frustration; those looking for a rival to Street Fighter II should continue to look elsewhere.
Developer: Terramarque Publisher: Terramarque Year of Release: 1994
