Innholdsfortegnelse for Zzap! 64 Annual 2019 i 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…

Dear Lloyd, I have finally put my contribution onto Kickstarter. Was a bit slow. Damn, I wish I had known earlier about getting the Cybernoid music as a vinyl record if you contributed really early – that is so cool it is almost worth buying a record player just to play it! Oh well, I get a nice ZZAP!64 mug to drink my coffee with in the mornings, which is a nice addition to my other retro-themed mugs. Thanks also to whoever it was who posted the link to the video The Newsfield Years – I watched that last night and it was great to hear the backstory behind ZZAP! and friends! As a loyal C64 user, of course I can only say ‘and friends’ and cannot say the name…

All is not well in the ungulate paradise of Neon Vortex, invaders are using every tactic in the book to destroy this psychedelic heaven … then again, they may just be trying to return a library book. Enter two brave – or perhaps very stoned – micro-sheep. They are the only ones standing between Neon Vortex and utter, colourful destruction. Sheepoid is very much a tribute to Jeff Minter’s 1983 classic Laser Zone. Core gameplay is exactly as one would expect; the two micro-sheep are independently controlled using each axis of the joystick but act as one when the fire button is mashed. The skill is knowing which sheep to move in a situation, which is made ever trickier when the invaders are anything but predictable. In a plot twist…

With the cries of ‘Intruder Alert’ still ringing in your ears take a moment to reflect on just how close Mad Otto came this time as you scrambled from the previous room. How many times has this played out since you landed on Mazeon? Too many, for sure. It all started so quietly, the robots seemed unable to fight back, avoiding them was easy as they bumbled around, but dammit didn’t you notice they always seemed to head towards you? Only after they started firing at you and moving faster did you realise the true nature of the situation. Survival was now the only goal, keep going… room after room, avoid or kill the Automazeons and try and find a way out. Most important of all, don’t let Evil Otto…

From his cavern deep in the Misty Mountains, crouched over the keyboard as dawn sweeps over the Iron Hills, the Bearded One, newly-reincarnated as Stuart Williams after decades of wandering shade-like in the dark beyond, taps out this epistle to adventurers across the world. hail, my fellow adventurers, daring explorers and apprentice Wand Wielders – well met at the appointed place! Here begin The New Chronicles of The White Wizard – for a brand new ZZAP!64 Annual. Welcome, one and all – come join our quest! Here shall we once more GET and LIGHT the dusty lamps of old, chant the Words of Power and polish the Wands of Wisdom, even discovering, should time permit, why a Wizard’s Staff has a knob on the end! For those of more warlike…

heroes & Cowards – The Pentagram of Power is a fun adventure game for the Commodore 64, but quite different to the more arcane verb-noun parser games of old. It’s actually kind of a pseudo point-and-click adventure, with the protagonist’s (that’s you, Wand Wielder) command and dialogue input being menu-driven via an action window, with input simply by joystick or arrow-keys. Movement is also by stick or key, and each time you arrive in a new location, the screen describes the place in both graphics (above) and text (windowed below), together with player status. This makes this game ideal for new adventure gamers (or those who have been on the mead), who may have trouble trying to guess which words the parser will accept in text-based adventures, or those looking…

Growing tired of war, powerful warrior king Rizek looks to restore peace in the land, a move that goes down badly with those around him who crave war. In particular an evil wizard who curses Rizek, removing his soul and turning him into a beast. After spending 1,000 years in a prison, an earthquake splits open the prison wall, and the beast is freed to search for his soul and restore peace to the land once more. To achieve this, 12 spirit stones randomly scattered across a temple must be located and taken to the ‘soul’ room, there to be sorted into an order that will restore Rizek’s soul and his human form. Hints on the nature of the order litter the temple: note them well because the game cannot…

The Government (note the capital G) is trying to cover up an experiment gone wrong that’s ended up with toxic waste dumped into the sea. So what’s new? And guess what? The fish have mutated into ravening giants. Worse, a bunch of demented swimmers has been lost while far out in the briny wastes… what, you might well ask, are they doing miles from anywhere, floundering about in the waves, but there you go, it’s your task to rescue the loonies. Clear a path through the predatory sea life, take out any Government guardian subs (all part of the Government cock up cover up), find the swimmers and save them. But keep a wary eye on the sub’s oxygen level, or lose a life. Four levels require the rescue of…

If you missed Mel Croucher’s rave about THEC64 MINI go back a couple of pages and pay attention, otherwise read all about it on page 110, how its creators put together this amazing compact version of the trusty old Commodore 64 – and anyway, who needs a working keyboard (you can attach one if you’re going to start up BASIC games programming again). With a bundle of – appropriately – 64 great classic games on board and the ability to load in almost any others, THEC64 MINI is a must – and for the lucky winner of this Fusion Retro ZZAP! competition one of these will be coming your way, care of Royal Snailmail. Watch out for the postie with the mostie! In keeping with the ZZAP! Competitions Minion’s high…

I don’t remember actual scores but I can remember finishing Bubble Bobble many times with my best mate Adam. Seem to remember the scores were in the millions as we could do it without losing a life and get secret doors. Good times. Paul Vince C64anabalt – 5937m Juha A Impossible Mission – 29950 (on an emulated Palm Tungsten T3 using Frodo. Sadly I play it every day and have done for a number of years. I usually start again if I get zapped. Jeremy Shaw Planet Golf (I really enjoy the game) Jupiter – 27; Mars – 22 Kepler – 14; Earth – 6 Cameron Jackson Impossible Mission 2 – 71200 (this was a while back) ZZAP!64 #40 in August 1988. Andy Dean, South Harrow Park Patrol – 999999…

Being a great martial artist must be cool. You get to have all these fantastic fighting skills, you’re almost able to defy gravity with your jumping abilities … and you get to pick an awesome name. Something like Tiger Claw, for instance. Who’d dare to mess with someone called Tiger Claw? Except for the three Lords of Evil. Not only do they have equally fearsome names, they’ve also stolen four sacred magic scrolls. It’s up to you to get them back from Fire Fist, Thunder Chain and Angry Tongue (I said ‘fearsome’) before they use the knowledge contained within and fulfil their true dastardly potential. Fortunately, Tiger Claw has some tricks up his natty purple sleeves. Master Lee, with some prescience and in his infinite wisdom, transferred some of the…

Mikael Tillander (code and graphics), Håkon Repstad and Hans Axelsson (music and sfx) make up the team who brought out the original Knight ‘n’ Grail, and this sequel continues the story from where the original left off. The extensive playing area promises a massive arcade adventure with locations to explore and puzzles to solve. There is of course a convoluted backstory, which involves the Archmage who was given the Grail as payment from the Knight for helping him on his quest to free his beloved from a curse. Step forward the wicked Titans who thwarted the Archmage’s plans to rule the kingdom. Worse still, the rotten Titans enchanted his consort with the same spell they used to curse the Knight’s beloved and the Archmage fled from the hideous monster into…

Many have attempted to uncover the secrets of the Legend of Atlantis, and now it’s the turn of archaeologist-adventurer Rocky Memphis. Having come across a clue to the fabled city’s location in a South American tomb, he still needs a lot more to go on and must dig deeper to discover more pieces of the puzzle. Since he can’t get out of the tomb because his ladder is broken, he presses forward to see what lies beyond. Deadly traps and lethal denizens mean the tomb will not give up its secrets easily. However, Rocky is quite a nimble fellow, able to run, jump, climb and shimmy across railings, together with ducking down to search objects, all skills needed to avoid an untimely death and to navigate some of the more…

When I took over the helm of ZZAP!64 from Chris Anderson with issue 4, I was only the second of a series of editors. It seems only fitting in this first ZZAP! Annual to pay tribute to them, and many of the wonderful, talented and sometimes downright annoying(!) people who worked alongside them to get ZZAP! out every month. (Clever clogs – that way they won’t have to keep cropping up in any further annuals, haha! —Dep. Ed) AND LET’S NOT FORGET … MARKIE There were, of course, many behind-the-scenes people whose contribution to ZZAP!64 over the years was invaluable – too many to fit in here, sadly (Paul Rand gets a look-in on page 5). Two for special mention: Mark Kendrick (left), ZZAP!’s page designer and talented cartoonist 1985–94,…

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…

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…

Yawn…! Oh my, where was I when I left off? 1994, I think. The last thing I seem to remember was someone whispering in my ear ‘Commodore Force… Commodore Force… ’ endlessly. It must have been a nightmare, my doctor warned me not to eat cheese last thing at night. Well of course I did get dragged into the typing chair again last year for that ZX Spectrum ra—mag CRASH, but perhaps the less said about that the better. So – ahem – on with the RRAP. 30 YEARS FROM BAG TO BAG Dear Lloyd, In 1988 life was 8-bit. Not just 8-bit but Commodore 64 8-bit… and it was awesome. SID tunes, demos and the latest game releases made known by none other than a very special magazine that…

Boxed edition: €45 + shipping Download: $23.99 (due to new EU regulations, only available through digital sales platformitch.io unless in Germany and outside the EU) • Features 19 tunes • Fast free-directional scrolling • 2,000 screens over 27 huge levels Sam’s Journey has been a long and weary one. It was initially considered to be an April Fools’ joke before finally being accepted by the C64 scene as The Boy Who Would Be King. With online retro news sites originally declaring the game a hoax, released screenshots were eyed suspiciously by C64 fans previously burned by a ZZAP! Towers prank in 1986 that announced another technical marvel – Mindsmear. Sam therefore initially started out his travels on rocky ground facing insurmountable odds. Becoming increasingly sure footed as the months progressed,…

The smells and sounds of summer are now but a distant memory; the rays of warm sunshine hitting your bare skin; the smell of lavender on the gentle breeze and bees busily buzzing from flower to flower … hang on, didn’t there used to be way more bees? Thankfully for the survival of humanity (bees are really important to nature, don’t you know!) we are not the only ones who have noticed that the bee population is being depleted. The Guardians from planet Yenoh, who populated the Earth with bees over three million years ago, have been watching how us naughty peeps have practically wiped them out – and boy is it going to be a sting in the tail for us. (‘sting’? ‘bees’? Get your coat, you’re fired—Ed) Don’t…

Back in 1983 Ultimate Play The Game released the Spectrum hit game Jetpac, which never made it to the C64 – until now, that is, under the guise of Rocket Smash EX. The story of the original game was quite simple – as the chief test pilot you delivered spaceship kits across the galaxy, assembled rockets, fuelled them by collecting six fuel canisters, and then flew onto the next destination. Each planet had a get rich quick opportunity through filling a bottomless sack with precious gems and gold dropping from the galactic sky while bouncing across the platforms shooting the unfriendly alien inhabitants. The challenge was to survive long enough to fuel the ship and move on. The C64 gets a great version of a classic that’s possibly better than the…

Released on 31 August, 2015, after winning first place in the Forum 64 Adventure Compo, Caren and the Tangled Tentacles is an old-school point-and-click adventure in the style of Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. The game was created by dev team Prior Art, who are known in-scene as Enthusi, Veto and Jammer. Programming and scripting have been done by Dr. Martin Wendt, with graphics and animation by Oliver Lindau and music and sound effects from Kamil Wolnikowski. In the game, you take on the persona of Caren, a young woman in her early twenties who works as a chemist in a local institute. One day, she makes a strange discovery there, and so begins to investigate what is behind some sinister events. Your mission, as Caren,…

Finding the adventuring life a little tricky? Wandering aimlessly without a clue? The White Wizard casts the runes and peers into his scrying-glass to help you along the path less travelled. Never Ending Story Luck shall you need, should you cross the sands. Carry yon flame from West to East; take up the glass to blind the Beast. Robin of Sherwood Serf all ye way to Nottingham town. Enter the camp, and much will come your way. Lord of the Rings Wear not the Ring for long; weakness it brings. Remember your inner hobbit when tackling the barge. The Pawn Having the horse, set the Princess astride and ride out. If nay, rope your bed and descend via the window. Snowqueen Be sure to pay Granny lip-service afore ye go……

SCOTT ADAMS is considered by many to be the father of the computer adventure game industry. A true pioneer of computer games and a legend among adventurers, Scott and his first wife, Alexis, set up one of the earliest computer games companies, Adventure International, at Longwood, Florida, USA in 1978. Stuart Williams recently interviewed Scott, who now lives with his second wife, Roxanne, in Platteville, Wisconsin, USA, about his life, his past work – and about his exciting recent return to the games development industry. S.W. Scott, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be interviewed for the new Chronicles of the White Wizard! Many of our readers who are long-standing adventure gamers will have fond memories of your pioneering work, even if they…

Bear Essentials plays like a love letter to the glorious school summer holidays of the 1980s – a homage to days goneby; of sun dappled strolls in the woods, hazy days spent laying in cornfields listening to birdsong, river walks and beach side BBQs – all ignored in favour of sitting indoors with the curtains pulled, hunched over a C64! Bear’s wife (with stampy foot and pointy finger, clearly a furry reimagining of Miner Willy’s housekeeper Maria) has serious concerns about the forthcoming winter. Their cupboard supplies are dangerously low, and unless stocks are replenished swiftly it’ll be game over before the game has actually started. So, she sends Bear out on a quest – to collect apples from the numerous beautiful yet dangerous nearby locales to hoard in their…

In this nostalgia-ridden retrospective, Julian ‘Jaz’ Rignall digs the first 20 issues of ZZAP! 64 out of his closet and casts a beady eye over all the Gold Medal reviews of the era. Just how many of these top-awarded games deserved their astronomical ratings, or were the ZZAP!64 crew simply caught up in their hype? Jaz reminisces about what the team thought at the time, and delivers his modern-day verdict with the benefit of decades of hindsight. Elite Publisher: Firebird Reviewed: Issue 1 Overall Score: 95% ZZAP! 64 hadn’t even launched yet, and it was already embroiled in an inter-team controversy. Elite was brought to ZZAP! Towers for review before Gary Penn and I joined the magazine, so it was left up to Bob Wade to rate the game on…

One of the aims of the Kickstarter was to fund the definitive book about Rob Hubbard that covered everything from his life to the technology he used. Part of that involved revisiting Rob’s unreleased works and delving into the Rob archive. It is a plentiful resource, ranging from unreleased rock operas to deleted sub-tunes from EA games, to jazz. Some of Rob’s original SIDs were essentially SID covers of previous work (WAR and Chimera, for example). It was natural to ask, ‘what would have happened if he had chosen different tunes from his back catalogue to turn into SIDs?’ Rob had already provided us with his old EA source code but unfortunately his UK source code had been disposed of when EA UK moved offices, which is one of the…

Forget what the pessimists and the purists might spout – covertapes were great! Yes, they did become borderline omnipotent in the magazine’s later years. And yes, Oli had to adapt his wonderful cover illustrations to create space for an unpleasant plastic cassette. But overall covertapes were good for gamers, providing demos of the hottest new games and full versions of older commercial titles. By 1990 the covertapes had become an integral part of the monthly ZZAP! mix and over the years there were a total of 67 tapes. Here MARTYN CARROLL selects ten of the very best tapes, the ones that were stuffed to bursting with gaming gold. Let’s press play on tape… The best tapes to ever grace the cover of ZZAP!64 The ZZAP! Sampler This was it: the…

Argus is your typical swords and sorcery affair. It plays a dramatic fantasy back-story before launching the game: Evil Zoran has kidnapped the Starchild and it’s your job as the hero Thoran to go to the Starchild’s rescue and stop the egregious villain in his stride. It takes just a quick glance to see that Argus is a love letter to old-style 8-bit RPGs such as Bards Tale and SSI’s Gold Box games. Exploring the huge map (1,500 locations) takes place via animated transitions in a third-person flick-screen view. A compass shows the exits available in each location. Moving left or right rotates your position to the direction you want to follow and moving forwards takes you on to that location. A menagerie of nasties lurk in wait in the…

Programming: Andreas Varga (as Mr. Sid), Owen Crowley Graphics: Steven Day, Andreas Varga, Mikael Backlund Music: Andreas Varga Let us whizz back to the late 1980s where we find gaming at a turning point. The 8-bit systems are starting to wane in favour of 16-bit powerhouses, mobile gaming is just about to be thrust into the mainstream thanks to Nintendo’s Gameboy with a genuine classic game – Tetris. At roughly the same time these events were taking place, another true classic game entered the gaming pantheon, a game that would spawn not only an entire franchise but be ported to pretty much every system known to man … apart from one, the C64. That game was and still is Prince of Persia. Trying to come up with a fresh approach…

You know how it is. Earth has been around for long enough now. We all know the planet is vulnerable to attack from alien scum. That’s just how it is. What we need are better deterrents. A planetary defence shield would be just the job. As luck would have it, we are aware of a planet called Darx, which just happens to have huge quantities of the mineral we need to build this shield. Darx is an inhabited planet, but rather than resort to diplomacy or trade, we’ve decided to get the minerals we need by invading them and taking what we want. There’s irony for you! The residents of Darx didn’t take kindly to this impertinence and, perhaps unsurprisingly, they defended their planet against this alien invasion (that’s you,…

Black holes have much to answer for, but they do make great plot devices. Take our hero, minding his own business while testing his latest ship Hunter, when BAM! Hits a black hole and is transported to an unknown region of space where giant crystal structures are built by autonomous workers. Hunter’s on-board computer suggests information pertinent to escaping lies within these constructions, so off you explore … Completing each level requires collecting all the starcells present, one of which flashes for eight seconds at the beginning; obtaining this gives you a loop-space co-ordinate. Each system can be completed in one of two ways: defeat every single level present, or acquire four loopspace co-ordinates. You then progress to a sub-game where defeating all the workers grants an extra life and…

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…

‘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.…

Originally conceived as an entry to the RGCD 16KB cart competition, Paul ‘King of the Demake’ Koller (C64anabalt, SuperBreadBox, and LuftrauserZ) delivers the ultimate in twitch gaming. Based on the popular Super Hexagon iOS/Android game, this title proves that the C64 can hold its own among modern platforms. Micro Hexagon is a game with no backstory, no characters, no narration and no plot. It’s not a puzzle game either, more a test of ability and patience – the sort of game in which you can show off your skill to other people. It promotes one upmanship – a sense of higher purpose, of being in the zone, at one with the machine. It also encourages others to express that they’re worried about you and to suggest that maybe a bar…

Ah the future! How many times have we been promised wonders like rocket jetpacks and visiting granny in a flying car. As usual, though, the experts got it wrong; we never got the utopia promised by Tomorrow’s World! Take the poor people of the Omikron system in the year 14634, for example, for two days every year the planet suffers devastation from passing asteroid showers – what should be done? The powers that be came to the rescue by building a robotic shielding station on the fourth planet in the system – Hmm … isolated robots, what could possibly go wrong? For 23 years all went well… until a rogue energy burst caused the shield to blow a fuse, setting the robots free to roam the nearby star systems, destroying…

For reasons best known to Lord ZZAP!, I have been dragged out of my tar pit again and asked to wax lyrical on all things pixelated. This time we’re in the world of the two-wide, one-high pixel that once split playgrounds asunder as boyish affiliations bounced between a limited palette with attribute clash and having a wide choice of browns. While some of us found the strange shaped pixel to be something of a challenge, there were those who took to it like ducks to water. Without naming those responsible, we all know our heroes from the golden era of game development, those who wrestled with the C64 and came out victorious every time. One or two were colleagues who made my efforts seem risible at best, but you will…

Stefan Vogt’s Hibernated 1 is all set to be the first interactive fiction (pure text adventure) release by Pond Software, a hobbyist retro gamedev team and non-profit software publisher which has only been around for a couple of years but is rapidly growing in popularity and reputation. The central question posed by this brand-new science fiction based game is, what do you do when you wake up unexpectedly from hypersleep after a rather chilly 200-year snooze, find yourself just two-thirds of the way through a 1,200 light year journey from the solar system to the real (and nicely-referenced) Kepler-62 system, and discover that you are most definitely not alone? The protagonist – astronaut Olivia Lund, who has been sent on a mission of exploration by the Terran Alliance – reflects…

Peter Hempel/Pagetable, FREE download Liberate the land from the evil Murdlok! Reflection, not recklessness will guide you to your goal! Murdlok is a long-forgotten German text-and-graphics adventure game which, despite being written in the mid-1980s, was never released. Authored by hobbyist Peter Hempel, about whom little was initially known, both the game and the author were rediscovered by Michael Steil and made available on his website pagetable.com in February, 2018. Mr Steil then joined forces with Lisa Brodner to create an English translation of the game, which is also on the site. Since the news of Murdlok first arrived on pagetable.com, further information has come to light, courtesy of the author, who was born in 1957 and lives in Berlin, Germany. According to Mr Hempel, he began writing the game…

Details and prices at http://fusionretrobooks.com…

The busy interactive intro sets the scene for the challenge ahead. It’s 2218 and as humanity travels across the galaxy a war ensues against a machine intelligence. When a binary transmission forming an Omega symbol is detected, a patrol vessel is sent to the transmitting planet to investigate what it all means. Does the symbol represent an advantage for mankind or is it a deadly trap? The ship’s crew is equipped with ‘Ranger’ armour suits, designed to protect them in combat against the foe. The task of investigating this hostile world falls to the crew’s latest member… you! Steel Ranger is an exploratory 2D run ’n’ gun platform game – very much in the guise of Turrican – in which you need to find the source of the Omega symbol,…

In the 1980s female gamers were a rarity, but Karen Wild (then Gordon) not only loved her C64, but won a place on the cover of ZZAP!64 #28. Karen is now a dog trainer and behaviour consultant with over 17 years in the field. Noted author on the subject, she has a degree and diploma in psychology, is a full member of the Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors and is an Associate Member of the British Institute of Professional Dog Trainers. Her association with canine behaviour must surely have been sparked by those lovable rascals Head and Heels. Chris Wilkins asked the questions. • How did you end up being immortalised on the cover of ZZAP!64? I was an avid fan and never missed an issue. Once they ran a…

FEELING REBORN, AGAIN Wow, will you look at this! I’m in the pages of ZZAP! again after 30 years! That’s a whole lifetime for some readers, although to me it seems like a slight pause. I have been told that the publication of this Annual is made possible by the faith of a great many crowdfunders. So thank you, oh brave new world that has such people in it. It’s not so much back to the future, more like future to the backer. And it’s obvious that this future world holds true wonders between its firm glossy covers. For example, have you seen the competition prize? (Just flip this page over…) In my years of absence from these pages the mighty C64 has been reborn as the C64 Mini, and…

Security guards often get the short end of the night stick. Take Kim for example, just minding her own business working nights at the Throne Group Science Complex, but suddenly finds herself waking up on a makeshift operating table with only a fuzzy recollection of what just transpired, and the ability to trigger any metal detector worldwide. Seems someone at the company was trying to play God behind the scenes with the creation of a new intelligent AI, and it’s rebelled with devastating effect. Kim’s repaired cyborg body contains nanobots, meaning she can regain health while standing still, a scientifically explainable reason to employ the standard regeneration trope of today’s videogames. The nanobots require power however, and thus you must either find batteries or the occasional recharge station. As the…

Darren was previously behind the original C64-DTV, which was truly a C64 in a joystick, right down to generating a composite video signal. Unfortunately its custom microchip implementation meant that it could not be upgraded or modified after production, and the large upfront cost required to tool up the semiconductor plant before a single chip was produced was relatively prohibitive, plus there was always the risk that the chip wouldn’t work. Our user research told us that customers wanted HDMI with an easy to use user interface (UI), as well as being upgradable with new features after purchase. These and several other factors made a hybrid hardware-software (emulation) approach far more cost effective, flexible and maintainable. Summer 2016 Once we had carried out some technical viability tests, work on THEC64Mini…

Speeding on the A81, makes you the proud owner of eight dream machines. Climb into your choice of Ferrari, Porsche, Mercedes, Jaguar or BMW, then it’s foot down on those glorious (German) highways. The road is more traffic-strewn than you might like, so speed with a measure of caution. Although a high-speed crash doesn’t spell instant death, a few bumps sends the vehicle to a halt at the side of the road. Travel far enough, though, and a black car is encountered signifying a bonus level. For added authenticity, the game can be played with a steering wheel using the Jocopod, an adapter constructed by the developer specifically for this game. Much cheaper than a Testarossa! The best way to describe Speeding on the A81 is as a cross between…

There’s something in the title screen that gives away the inspiration for this immersive science fiction arcade-action adventure from Trevor Storey and Achim Volkers with soundtracks by Saul Cross. UTS Heracles (United Transport Shipping vehicle) is travelling on the edge of known space. It’s headed for the military station Damocles with a classified cargo, with the crew in hypersleep, but when a breach in the cargo containers fires off danger alerts, the crew are woken up. Something’s escaped and a spreading horror awaits the crew in the dark, silent corridors of the ship. As a member of the Heracles crew it’s up to you to investigate the cause of the alarm. As you climb into your UV suit the screams of your fellow crew come echoing from deep down in…