Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

While fighting games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and even Super Smash Brothers remain some of my favorite titles from the past 20+ years, you never forget your first. And for me that was International Karate on the Commodore 64. For being a C64 game the graphics in International Karate were actually quite good, but I guess when you consider the game just consisted of a couple of sprites bouncing around, it’s not surprising the developers were able to include some impressive backdrops like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Sphinx and pyramids in Giza and even the New York skyline.

Of course International Karate came out well before the days of finishing moves, fireballs and other gimmicks, and was basically just a couple of guys (quite possibly twin brothers resolving an eternal grudge) duking it out using nothing but their karate skills. You scored points or half-points based on the hits you landed, and the first player to two points won the round. And in the event the clock ran out, the player with the highest score claimed the victory. There was also a series of great mini-games you got to play at the end of each stage like breaking stacked blocks with your head or jumping/ducking to avoid a barrage of throwing knives. Who needs fatalities anyways?

International Karate was definitely one of the staples of my C64 (you could tell because it always had a home near the front of the diskette box) and from what I recall, the fighting mechanics and control were actually pretty decent. However, I distinctly remember one little quirk that drove my friends and I crazy. Besides moving your character around and punching and kicking, you were also able to control which direction they faced. Now in modern fighting games the two opponents automatically turn to face each other if they cross on screen, but that wasn’t the case with International Karate. If you jumped over your opponent (or simply walked past them) you had to make sure you turned around in time, otherwise you basically set yourself up for a fist in the back of the head. It wasn’t the prettiest way to win a fight, but to a kid a win is a win.

[ MobyGames - International Karate ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If you asked me to sum up the 1998 DreamWorks Interactive title Trespasser in just a few words, I’d have to say it was hands down the worst game I ever loved playing. Before Trespasser was released, it seemed to have everything going for it like a unique control system which eliminated a cluttered HUD, open-ended gameplay, cutting edge graphics, a robust physics and AI system and even a real-time foley engine for generating and mixing sound effects on the fly. Not to mention the fact the game was based on an insanely popular film franchise, and it involved dinosaurs! But in the end, Trespasser as a whole was definitely not greater than the sum of its parts. In fact, it was far less.

A long list of development issues had plagued the game, including an ever expanding budget and a race to release the title in time for Jurassic Park’s sequel. And it resulted in a final product that didn’t even come close to the ridiculous amount of hype that Trespasser had generated before its release.

And while I (and most reviewers) considered Trespasser to be an incredible disappointment, I still really enjoyed playing the game, at least as far as it allowed me to. One of the biggest problems with Trespasser was the unending list of bugs that made the game both hilariously entertaining, and frustratingly impossible. While it was quite amusing to see a Triceratops suddenly jump 50 feet into the air for no explicit reason, you could end up in tears trying to perform a simple task like stacking a few crates in order to traverse a broken staircase. But the game still had those rare moments when all of the elements worked together like they were designed to, and while hiding behind a rock watching a pack of Velociraptors go after a T-Rex, it kind of made you forget what Trespasser could have been. Hey Valve, any chance you’d be interested in taking over the reins and cooking up a sequel for us?

[ Wikipedia - Jurassic Park: Trespasser ] & [ TresCom ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’m not entirely sure where the idea to develop a video game based around oral hygiene and dental care came from, but it almost seems like Commodore was trying to make up for the other… let’s say… ‘less educational’ titles available for the system. And this was 1982, well before video games became the scapegoat for the majority of society’s woes. As I recall, Tooth Invaders was included with certain Commodore 64 bundles since I’m sure it would have had a hard time competing with other more exciting titles on store shelves. I mean it’s hard enough to get kids to brush every day as it is, I can’t imagine too many would have been thrilled with the idea of doing the same thing in a video game.

But it turns out that Tooth Invaders was one of the first games my uncle actually had for his Commodore 64, and whenever I visited it was usually the best option. In the game you play a kind of an oral superhero who goes around brushing small parasites off a set of 8 teeth. You had to be fast though, as the parasites were spread by a small army of roaming green meanies who were quick to undo all the work you had done. Once you had a tooth completely cleaned you could call for a fluoride rinse which would permanently protect the tooth so you could concentrate on cleaning the others. Of course if you didn’t stay on top of things a tooth would quickly become so covered with parasites that it would basically fall out, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make an impression on a 5 year old kid who felt brushing was a waste of time. Though it did take our family dentist quite a few years to convince me that my mouth was free of those roaming green meanies.

[ C64.com - Tooth Invaders ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While last week’s NHL Stanley Cup for the SNES was a genuinely enjoyable title, it really couldn’t hold a candle to the most recent entry in the EA hockey franchise at the time, NHLPA Hockey ‘93. It’s still regarded by many (and immortalized in a certain ‘money’ film) as one of the best video game hockey titles of all time, and it definitely remained one of the staple cartridges for my SNES. While NHL Stanley Cup had the license for the NHL teams but not the players, NHLPA Hockey ‘93 was just the opposite, with actual players’ names and numbers, but no actual NHL teams. But in the end I think having the license for the actual players who were bona fide celebrities to my friends and I was far more important, and it helped make the game a bigger success.

At the time, NHLPA Hockey ‘93 was considered the must-have version of the game because in the ‘94 edition the blood, violence and fighting that made the game extra fun for teenagers like myself, was removed. It seems the NHL and NHLPA felt it was harmful to the sport’s image, and they demanded that EA remove those elements from future games. They were eventually put back in a few versions later, but their removal helped keep NHLPA Hockey ‘93 popular for years to come.

Unfortunately, just like NHL Stanley Cup suffered from the unfortunate ‘dump the puck’ bug I mentioned last week, NHLPA Hockey ‘93 had a similar and just as annoying glitch. Basically the goalie’s AI prevented them from switching sides of the net fast enough during a wraparound shot, which resulted in a guaranteed goal if there were no opposing players to stop you behind the net. In fact, since neither my friends nor I could be trusted not to use the trick, we ended up having to create unique variations on the game, like pulling the goalies altogether, just to keep it interesting.

And of course let’s not forget NHLPA Hockey ’93’s most awesome feature, the instant replay. It made rubbing in a particularly sweet goal or body check even more satisfying as you replayed the event over and over and over again, much to the annoyance of your opponent. In fact their only response was to just sit there and take it, or trip the reset button on the SNES console, which as I recall was how half the games actually ended during our own regular seasons.

[ MobyGames - NHLPA Hockey '93 ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If there are any young whipper-snappers reading this, you might find it hard to believe, but at one time it was possible to buy a sports game based on one of the professional leagues that didn’t have the letters ‘EA’ emblazoned across the cover. Now I’m not going to go on a rant or even claim that EA necessarily does a bad job with their sports titles, but in every industry competition is a good thing, and when it came to hockey games the Super Nintendo also had NHL Stanley Cup.

It was the first hockey game on a console to simulate a 3D, first-person perspective, and while it relied heavily on the SNES ‘Mode 7′ technology and sprite-based animations, the effect was really convincing. (Even if the camera was extremely frustrating at times.) Of course even back in 1993 game developers still had to deal with licensing issues for sports titles, and unfortunately NHL Stanley Cup was only able to secure the rights for the official NHL teams and logos, not the actual player rosters from the NHLPA. But even the most passive of hockey fans knew that it was worth sending the puck to #99 or #66, even if their jerseys lacked a name on the back.

For a while I actually found NHL Stanley Cup to be quite challenging, and even playing against a friend usually resulted in pretty low-scoring games. That is until one Christmas eve when my 6 year old cousin handed me a devastating and embarrassing 16-2 loss. Now while I’m pretty sure most 6-year-olds could still easily beat me today, he thankfully took pity on me that night and revealed his ’secret’ for winning the game.

It turns out that NHL Stanley Cup had a small ‘bug’ he’d discovered. If you brought the puck up through the middle of the rink and simply dumped it as you passed center ice, the goalie would inexplicably come too far out of the crease allowing the puck to sail over their head and into the net. Unfortunately from that day on the game stopped being about passing and setting up intricate plays, and became all about stopping the other guy from coming up the middle of the rink and scoring goal after easy goal. Needless to say the game became less interesting after that revelation, but it’s not like EA’s hockey titles at the time were immune from the same problem…

[ MobyGames - NHL Stanley Cup ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If you thought last week’s Lemans was as basic as graphics could get on the Commodore 64, I’m afraid you ain’t seen nothing yet. While Omega Race might not be at the absolute bottom of the barrel when it came to pushing the C64’s graphic capabilities, it’s still pretty far down there. Even with the ability to choose any 2 color scheme you preferred, instead of the default black and white scheme pictured above.

The game was often compared to Asteroids for obvious reasons, but I think Omega Race changed things up enough to make it a worthy alternative. I mean sure you were shooting at ‘droid’ ships that broke apart instead of asteroids that broke apart, but the game screen was surrounded by a force field that everything (except your laser blasts) would bounce off. In Asteroids everything would wrap to the other side of your display whenever they went off-screen, but Omega Race was more like a game of interstellar pool. Except that when your ship hit the surrounding force field you could never really predict what angle it would bounce off at.

But I always thought that the most challenging part of Omega Race was that your ship never lost momentum. So if you wanted to come to a stop for any reason, you had to spin around and thrust in the opposite direction. (That’s what she said.) But this extra challenge also facilitated my ’secret’ technique. When the game started I would rotate my ship until it pointed towards the top of the screen before giving it a boost. Then, because of the perpetual momentum and force fields, the ship would continually bounce up and down across the screen allowing me to swivel and strafe at the enemies whenever I had a clear shot that wasn’t blocked by the high score board in the middle of the screen. While it might not have been in the true nature of Omega Race, it resulted in some pretty decent scores. And since the game had no final ‘goal’, the high score was all that mattered.

[ Moby Games - Omega Race (C64) ]

By Andrew Liszewski

It’s pretty obvious that Lemans was one of the first games available for the Commodore 64, and not just because it came on an actual cartridge. (At least my copy did.) The graphics and sound effects were incredibly basic, and while the gameplay wasn’t terrible, I don’t think it was enough to make up for the aforementioned shortcomings. But what made the game playable for me, even enjoyable, was the fact that it used the Commodore 64’s paddle controllers. (I’m pretty sure Commodore sold an official set of these, correct me if I’m wrong.) Instead of swinging a joystick left and right or using the keyboard to steer, the paddle controller provided a surprising amount of accurate control as you careened around the twisty tracks and tried to dodge the other racers on the circuit. Now I know Lemans wasn’t the first game to use a paddle controller, since it came well after Pong, but it was a new and novel concept to me and let’s face it, it doesn’t take much to impress a kid.

In the game you were pretty much racing against the clock and the scoreboard, since it gave you 60 seconds to reach a score of 20,000 points. Points were of course accumulated by driving as fast as you could go and by passing your computer opponents, and if you managed to reach 20,000 you were given 60 more seconds to reach 40,000 and so forth. I think you can see the pattern. But the longer you drove, the more hazards you’d have to deal with like iced roads which reduced your ability to steer, and the dangerous (and confusingly random) ‘night driving’ where you could only see other cars on the road once they entered the beam cast by your own headlights.

I think the most frustrating part of the game though was that your car would ‘explode’ (with an effect that looked like someone had covered it in gray goo) by just grazing another vehicle. It was nothing like GTA where your vehicle can survive a lot of damage before it goes up in flames. No, once a single atom from your car collided with a single atom from your opponent’s car you would be forced to go into the pits for repairs which of course cost you valuable speed and time on the clock. It was frustrating for sure, but that’s the way it was and we liked it!

[ Lemon64.com - Lemans ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Sorry for skipping last week’s The Games We Played. I’m afraid circumstances beyond my control meant I was on the road and didn’t have a chance to dip into my big box o’classic gaming, but next week things will be back to normal (or better!), I promise.

In the meantime, why not spend some quality time at work with this perfect flash recreation of Texas Instrument’s Speak & Spell? I’ve linked to it before, but it’s one of those flash games that you can actually justify playing while ‘on the clock’ since it’s technically improving your spelling. What boss would complain about that? When I was younger I was always suspicious of these ‘educational games’ that tried to pretend they were fun, but I had a soft spot for Speak & Spell’s cold synthesized voice. Not sure why. But since it pre-dated both my Commodore 64 and the Tiger Electronics handheld era, it pretty much had a monopoly on my attention.

[ HANDHELD REMAKES :: The Archive - Speak & Spell ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The Commodore 64 had a wealth of games available for it, but without the internet or magazine racks full of gaming-centric publications most titles were dependent on word-of-mouth when it came to advertising. (Since you couldn’t really tell how good a game was just by looking at the misleading box art at your local Babbage’s.) So it’s not surprising that some great titles fell through the cracks, and one game I particularly enjoyed, but haven’t found too many others who’ve even heard of it, was Racing Destruction Set. (Which I still accidentally refer to as ‘Destruction Racing Set’, which seems to make more sense in my mind.)

It was a racing game that used an isometric view instead of the standard first-person in-car view, which made it feel more like playing R.C. Pro-Am than Test Drive. But you had your choice of driving a VW Beetle, a stock car, a dirt bike, a Porsche and even a lunar rover on a selection of 50 different tracks. And whether you played against a computer or a friend, the game always used the top and bottom split-view (seen above) which had a ridiculously wide aspect ratio, but it never seemed to be a problem.

Looking back at the games I tended to play more than others I realized that it didn’t matter how crappy the graphics or sounds were, as long as they had a high replay value. And nothing adds replay value to a game like customization, and that’s where Racing Destruction Set excelled. Besides the 50 built-in tracks, the game included a track designer which allowed/required you to spend hours laying out and tweaking corners, jumps and straightaways with various types of terrain like dirt, ice and pavement. You could even screw with settings like the gravity which either resulted in your car catching air on even the tiniest of jumps, or not even being able to make it up a hill. And if you did get stuck because you thought it would be hilarious to crank up the gravity, you were basically screwed since there was no way to exit a race in progress until both cars finished. The only ’solution’ was to reset the C64 and lose an afternoon’s worth of track designing. Ah, the good old days!

[ Lemon64.com - Racing Destruction Set ]