Zzap! 64 Annual 2019

GETTING GOING In the editorial of issue 4 of ZZAP!64 I announced that I had become editor and Chris Anderson, who so successfully launched the magazine for Newsfield, had felt unable for personal reasons to accompany the editorial offices from Yeovil where he lived to Ludlow. Only weeks before, I had expected to continue as editor of Crash, but events overtook me and I not only had to get to grips with the C64 and its games but also with the feisty lads who turned the formerly peaceful Crash offices into their own den of iniquity! Gary Penn, Julian Rignall and – shortly after – Gary Liddon turned Newsfield inside out, like a whirlwind. If any readers at the time thought there was uniformity of opinion over the merit of the games…

The 1980s were a battlefield for 8-bit owners. With the format wars being fiercely fought in playgrounds across the land, Spectrum and C64 fans claimed that games released for their system were better than those for others… while Amstrad owners just looked on, wiping bitter tears of defeat from their war-torn faces. Commando was a game that 8-bit owners fought over tooth and nail. C64 owners, while having a decent arcade conversion on their hands, were acutely aware that ultimately Commando for the C64 was broken. With only three levels of the arcade game’s original eight, flickering graphics, slowdown and a tendency to crash, in this instance it seemed that Spectrum owners had won the battle with a fast-paced fully intact adaptation of the game to use as ammo to hurl…

Remember ZZAP!64 issue 15 with Leader Board on the cover? Finding it a challenge to depict golf in an exciting way, Mr Frey’s solution was the lolly licking blonde, with the golfer reflected in her shades. Oli revisited the sport once again with Planet Golf, supplying the out-of-this-world artwork for the title. The game pays tribute to Alan Shepard, who played golf on the moon during the Apollo 14 expedition in 1971, only now you can play a round on five different courses in the solar system. Earth, Mars and Jupiter each has a 21-hole course, while two further courses of the traditional 18 holes can be unlocked as you progress through the game. The mechanism for hitting the ball is very Angry Birds. A single pixel represents the ball and a…

What is it with anthropomorphic animals… at the slightest drop of a mad badger’s hat they take off at a breakneck speed for the nearest hole. Examine the evidence: Monty went looking for coal, Rockford went to dig up diamonds and now Barnsley Badger is on the hunt for the lost treasure of Tutanbodger. This, he has heard, is secreted in a graveyard. To be fair to Mr Barnsley, he has a gambling problem and reckons the lost treasure will be the answer to all his money problems. But is the graveyard a gamble too far? Barnsley Badger is a throwback to the platforming games of our youth. The main character sprites and the many enemies could have been pulled right out of the mid-1980s. Even a few minutes’ play reveals the…

This is not Snake, the game of old, this is P0 Snake which means it’s the same but it’s also different (Does that make any sense? —Ed). Whereas you had complete control of your snake back in the day, in P0 Snake the fire button is the only control to change the snake’s default clockwise direction to anti-clockwise. Using short sharp bursts of ‘fire’ gets the snake moving in a straight line. Hold down ‘fire’ for a little longer and the serpent effectively changes direction. The challenge is ramped up by having to avoid contact with obstacles, the screen boundary wall or even colliding with the snake’s own tail. Just as with Snake of old, the snake’s length grows as the pulsating white blobs are collected on each level and there…

‘Splorf, Space Corp. Sanitation Engineer 5th Class reporting for duty. My job is crap, literally! Everyone thinks that a career working in Space is all glamour – fast ships, fast women, excitement and adventure. Well let me burst that bubble for you, some of us have to do the bum jobs… and I’m not even joking when I say that.’ We all must start at the bottom but the problem for Splorf is he stayed there. It’s not because he is bad at his job, in fact he is splendid at it. It’s just that career advancement in Space Corp is not exactly a fast process. Maybe in another 20 years he will achieve the rank of Engineer 4th Class, but until then his number one priority is Number Twos. All that…