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Very strangely its not one of the really fondly remembered arcade games of our time, Time Pilot 84 is the forgotten sequel to Time Pilot. Where the original had you changing from a plane to a rocket as you went through time, Time Pilot 84 had you in the same ship and flying across some very detailed planet landscapes in 8 directions.
Time Pilot 84 - first level
A more familiar title from my childhood compared to Hudson Hawk (Which I only recently got playing). Think ‘Zaxxon‘ with a aeroplane flying across WW1 Germany, and what you have is Synapse Software’s ‘Blue Max’.
Blue Max on the C64
This is a game from way back in 1983 released on the likes of the Atari, C64 and Spectrum and which I have a bit of a soft spot for, as its one of those titles which I grew up with as a kid.
A few months ago I borrowed a bundle of disks from ex-C64 developer “Matt Young” who took on the daunting task of converting Ultimate Play the Game’s “The Bubbler” from the Spectrum.
The big problem which eventually killed the conversion was Ultimate’s insistance that they replicated the same draw routine as the ZX Spectrum (Which was about 1mhz faster than the C64 in terms of processing power).
The C64 version - level 1
23 years later, we helped to salvage all of the sources and a combination of Matt, David (A colleague on GTW64) and Jani (A C64 developer) pieced together everything to form a fully complete conversion.
You can read more of the recovery story at: http://gtw64.retro-net.de/Pages/t/Review_Thebubbler.php (Complete in the very outdated template – which I *WILL* eventually rebuild).
Something i’ve always wanted to do (but always been too busy) is to occasionally do a blog post of any particular games of interest during my retro gaming travels to share with others. Quick and short blog posts just to quickly highlight the game with a brief background/overview and then allow others to go off and check it out for themselves (Hopefully on more obscure titles). Now I have a bit more time, here’s hopefully the first of many starting with Ocean’s “Hudson Hawk”…
Box art (various)
“Hudson Hawk” was considered a bit of a flop on its movie release back in 1991, but Ocean Software had at the time decided that there was a decent game to be created from it. It was found out recently from Ocean’s supremo Gary Bracey that the actual film script he was sent depicted something far better than what eventually surfaced, with a script which was described as fantastic.
The Vatican level (C64)
Unfortuntaely things were tweaked and the film bombed badly; as a result the game went under the radar a little – although it is quite a superb little game created by the ‘Special FX’ team.
Summarizing in brief, the game is a platform/puzzler affair where you must avoid tripping up alarms and steal particular artefacts from the likes of Rutherfords and the Vatican. Enemies range from guard dogs, to guys on pogo sticks – all very bizzare and comical throughout (Throwing a ball will send one of the guard dogs running after it and swiftly jumping off the roof after it). It is a sort of a mix of Bruce Lee (C64) and Addams Family (SNES) , with that typical NES platformer feel to it (Which is ironic considering it was released on the NES).
Of course, my version of choice is the C64 conversion which is very well done – but notable versions include the Amiga and NES versions (Though all platforms of the time are well covered). One other version that I have been playing a lot is the Gameboy version that was picked up from a charity box.
Gameboy version (Level 1)
Although its been dumbed down a little (with some of the puzzle elements from the first level removed compared to the C64 version), it’s an enjoyable conversion of the game and some people will find it less frustrating compared to the C64 version (which isn’t very forgiving at the best of times.)
Now I have an urge to watch the film just to see if its as bad as people have made out…
The epic arcade adventure ‘Knight ‘n’ Grail’ is finally complete and on sale now from Psytronik Software for the Commodore 64. The game is available on disk only in Premium, Budget and Digital flavours. All pre-orders are currently being posted as we speak.
This is one of the best games for a long time on the C64, featuring some fantastic gameplay, a very large game map, neat touches throughout, excellent visuals and music throughout. It’s been heavily playtested to ensure that players get a fantastic experience – and that they will. As well as getting a top notch game, you have the option to get the game as a professionally produced disk release (Premium / budget) to play on a real C64, or you can purchase just a digital copy to play on any C64 emulator.
For more details about the game, visit: http://www.psytronik.com
For ordering details, visit: http://www.binaryzone.org/retrostore/
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