You have to wonder why some games end up being converted to some consoles or comp0uters. Here is such a pointless exercise for your consideration as RetroBear looks back to his one and only experience with a C16+4…..

Make sure you always check the screenshots on the back....because they don't always apply to version you are buying....

When you have a successful home computer the one thing you want to do is expand on it. Spectrum did so with a 128k version, and Commodore added a disk drive making its capabilities that much more powerful. The last thing you want to do is bring out a downscaled version of an already fairly potent machine. So when Commodore announced in 1984 they were discontinuing their entry level Vic 20 and replacing it with the C16, one wonders what they were thinking.

Yes by then the Vic 20 had had it’s day. The C64 had taken off globally and was selling well in both Europe and the USA. Commodore wanted to establish the C16 as a budget home computer and thus head off any supposed competition that was coming from Japan. Unbeknownst to them that competition never arrived as the resurgence of the home console was imminent. Thus all Commodore’s competitors at the time, namely Texas Instruments, Timex and Mattel, withdrew from the market leaving the C16 all alone.

The results were pretty disastrous. The computer sold badly in the USA, forcing Commodore to withdraw the machine from sale. It picked up in Europe where it was sold as a cheap games machine and had some very surprising success in Mexico. There is no doubt though that as a far less powerful version of it’s C64 sibling there were only a few things it could do that would appeal to anyone interested in playing games. The machine now does have a cult following for it given it’s rather poor reputation (and there are good games to be found for it)

Footballer Of The Year was not one of them. For those unfamiliar with the game, you took the role of a lower division footballer with an eye for goal. During each game you would be given a limited number of chances to score goals. You occasionally would have one or two defenders in your way and the keeper to beat, but providing you were quick off the mark you got your shots in. During the game you had a chance to earn extra goal cards to have extra chances in the match. Too slow and you’d be tackled or the keeper would save your shots. The quicker and more accurate you were the better and soon the bigger clubs would come knocking. Working your way up the leagues you would gain experience and a reputation and eventually you could claim the Footballer Of The Year title and even play for your country.

Sadly I wasn't able to find any actual screenshots for the game, but it's kinda like this only the text is a bit more spaced out

The game was a big success on the 8 bit formats and Gremlin Graphics even released a sequel incorporating the Amiga and Atari ST. It is the C16 version that sticks in my mind for one reason. A friend of mine had a C16 and I popped round one day to have a look. I’d never heard of them before then, let alone seen one. I caught him playing Ikari Warriors and was rather unimpressed by what I had seen. So when he loaded FOTY up I really had trouble believing what my eyes were seeing, and that despite the fact I wear glasses.

Instead of having the chance to shoot on goal in some rendered matchday graphics, to simulate your shot on goal you pressed the space bar on a text screen. Once you did that the computer would tell you which way you kicked the ball and whether you had scored or not. That was it. No way of telling if you were close or showing the ball nestling in the net, the C16 simply wasn’t powerful enough or advanced enough to show that. All you got was a message informing you of success or failure.

If you read the 4 points in the bottom left hand corner you will see what I mean - the thing is though this was printed on the inside and not the outside - a cunning plan to get you to buy the game then read about how bad it was going to be later

Quite frankly this was one of the most detached, embarrassing and ludicrous pieces of software I had come across, and I still don’t think I have seen anything as bad as that since. You just had no control over what you were doing. I couldn’t help feel sympathy for my friend, who I am sure would have been thrilled with the computer. I might have had an Atari 2600 at the time but at least that allowed to actually play the game.

Playing it on other formats FOTY is a fine game. This though doesn’t even warrant the word “game” being tagged to it. I am sure there are many fine pieces of software for the C16 but having seen one in action I am rather glad I had a few mates with a C64 instead.

VERDICT : Horrible.

NOTES : No trace at all on Amazon and eBay (you lucky people)

UP NEXT : Let’s all rub noses – Ice Climber on the NES.

Well the good stuff didn’t last as RetroBear plays one of the biggest steaming piles of cow dung ever released on the Super Nintendo. The question is why did anyone really both trying to convert a game so shallow as this ?

Well the box looks nice I suppose, but its all downhill when you open it

Do you remember laser discs ? Now that is a fair slice of retro history right there. This was meant to be the technology that revolutionised how we watched movies in our own home, with the chance to have almost cinema quality picture and full channel stereo sound blasting us out of our armchairs. Those in the know say that this was a technology that should have succeeded if only for one small, tiny problem : the laser disc players were the most unreliable piece of machinery that was ever produced.

No bother that you could have the most incredible version of Star Wars or Jurassic Park thundering out of your TV. If your player was throwing a wobbler there was no chance of getting anything out of it. All too soon laser discs lost out to the already established VHS market and, before they had a chance to improve, the DVD came along and did what laser discs should have done in the first place. Gamers though also had their own slice of good fortune when Don Bluth, and ex-Disney studio animator, and his Bluth Studios decided to not only make an arcade game with high quality cartoon graphics but also stick it on laser disc.

Sadly these machines were as unreliable as their home counterparts. Too often machines broke down awaiting repair and at the time charging you £1.00 a go when the average game would give you 3 credits for 50p was extortionate. The games produced, Dragons Lair : Escape From Singe’s Castle, Dragons Lair 2 : Timewarp and Space Ace, were some of the most simple ever made. All you had to do was move the joystick or press the fire button at the right time to move to the next screen. Basically you were playing a cartoon with interaction, and limited interaction at that. You couldn’t fault how the games looked and sounded, but as playing experience it was like being hit with a wet lettuce over again and having someone nick a quid from your pocket for the privilege.

Whilst it all looks very nice it cannot compare to the arcade original in any way shape or form

Some bright spark thought it would be fun to secure the rights to the home conversions and try and make some money. When the third game in the series, Space Ace, was released it had a whopping 9 discs for the 16 bit versions. How on earth could you fit all the tech into one small tape ? Well you couldn’t and anyone expecting a similar experience to the arcade game was living in cloud cuckoo land. Finally, Escape From Singes Castle arrived on the SNES and what a disaster it was.

Rather than make any attempt to recreate the arcade game, the SNES version like the NES one was turned into a side scrolling platform game (The Angry Video Game Nerd has done a pretty scathing review of the NES version). Whilst there is no doubt the game has some nice colourful graphics the fun ends there, when you realise the whole game moves like a slug in treacle with a brick tied to its back. The controls are amongst some of the most unresponsive I have ever experienced, switching from incredibly twitchy to sluggish to just damned unresponsive with each flick of the joypad.

You don’t get any joy from this game at all. It might have been prudent to try and do a straight conversion with the obvious graphical limitations, but when the original has little or no game play in the first place, it makes you wonder why this wasn’t left in the dust covered memories of the past. You might give some small applause for the effort but when platform games are ten-a-penny and as bad as this it really doesn’t bear thinking about. You can now play both Escape From Singes Castle and Dragons Lair 2 via your PS3 should you wish to download them. It must be added that after all these years it’s a straight conversion and as such all you have to do is move the pad or press the button at the right time. Yawn. That’s now like being hit in the face with a case of wet lettuces whilst someone takes £8.00 from your pocket. No thank you.

It is hard to tell whether the game is moving or whether it is a trick of the eye

Dragons Lair at least holds a place in games history for trying to do something technologically advanced. Unfortunately either someone was very greedy or someone simply didn’t think it through properly. Make up your own minds, I’m off to play Asteroids instead.

VERDICT : Hopeless controls and a game speed to rival the 100m final of the snail olympics, this is not recommended at all unless you are a fan of masochism.

NOTES : For those of you who don’t wish to heed my advice you can buy a copy for £2.39 on Amazon whilst you’ll have to pay an insane £4.00 for a loose cart version on eBay.

UP NEXT : Horror of horrors – Footballer Of The Year on the Commodore C16+4

This week after an enforced break due to work commitments and a bout of Bear Flu, the Retro Bear takes on a voyage of gaming discovery, which will probably run into another couple of columns…..

Originally Posted to GameFancier.com on September 21st 2010

I thought that this week it might be a good idea to do a spot of reminiscing and hark back to when I first discovered computer games. Yes, the days when chicken really did taste like chicken, cans of coke were 25p from the shop on the way home from school and smoking a cigarette on the sly seemed like you were doing something incredibly naughty. How times have changed – chicken now tastes like water flavoured chicken, I haven’t bought a can of coke in years and after dropping a packet of 20 in the street the other night, realising 10 minutes later what I’d done and retracing my steps, found them on the floor unopened.

My childhood has a lot to thank gaming for. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d been born 10 years earlier and been brought up on Space Hoppers. The late 70′s and early 80′s were the first boom period for gaming and I was right in the middle of it. The trusty old wooden Atari VCS was entrusted onto me at an early age and I still have fond memories of getting a blister on the inside of my thumb from too much Space Invaders (wittily referred to as Atari Thumb by my mother) or finally reaching the 40,000 point barrier on Frostbite.

The little seen C16 - you got one of these if you couldn't afford a C64

My mate Andy introduced me to his VIC-20 and the game Carnival which was nothing more than a shooting gallery, with ducks and things. How we whiled away the hours playing that. We probably played more games but that one sticks out more than any other. Alternatively, across the road, I was happily playing on another friends C64, insisting on playing only Ocean Software games so I could sit and listen to the Ocean Loader tune as the game fired up. Another friend had a C16 which is the only time I have ever seen or played on it. I wasn’t impressed – Footballer of The Year had graphics and actual game play on the C64 but with the C16 version you pressed the space bar and it told you what happened. Ikari Warriors also looked a bit tame compared to the other 8 bit versions.

I had my first taste of playing an actual arcade cabinet on a trip to Blackpool on my 11^th birthday, despite my local chippy having Pengo permanently housed there. My Dad wouldn’t let me play on it, saying they’re a waste of money. The first game I did play was the vector graphics version of The Empire Strikes Back. I had no idea what to do and the 20p credit vanished into thin air. Years later on the Amiga version or Star Wars I had my revenge, though I have never played that version of Empire since (I did own the Atari VCS Empire game and was rather good at it, though there was no end to the game and it just continuously looped).

The Atari VCS was gathering dust and was sold to a guy I knew at school. He then promptly had it stolen. I even spent the horrendous sum of £8.99 in Toys’R’Us on the Atari VCS version of Kung Fu Master shortly before I sold it. My family then invested in an Amiga for “Educational Purposes”. Yeah.. Right. Many the night you’d find my Dad in front of it playing Gettysburg or E-Motion. To fill the gap, my mate Andy had a C64 and we spent many nights playing Mike Read’s Pop Quiz. It seemed the only country and western question that ever came up was “Who sang Rhinestone Cowboy?”. This then became a running joke for many years and caused copious laughter whenever we heard it playing.

While my other friends were playing on Master System’s and Megadrive’s, and shortly after Super Nintendo’s, I was stuck with a 16 bit home computer that nobody else seemed to own. A guy at school I had known of years also had an Amiga, but everyone else owned an Atari ST. Within 12 months the ST numbers had dwindled and 5 of us from school even started an Amiga club. That lasted all of two weekends until we found something else better to do.

1-0 to the Retro Bear

On week nights Andy would pop round to play Kick Off 2 and it was there that I began to experience what I can only presume most gamers suffer from – Game Rage. For weeks he couldn’t beat me, then all of a sudden he went on a 30+ match winning streak that I couldn’t bear. It was pure torture, and he being a smug bastard didn’t help either. This was the man who on a first date with a girl took her to a snooker hall to play pool. When I asked him how it went he turned to me, raised hands in the air to signal holding a trophy and triumphantly said “6 – 1”. And yes dear reader, they did end up marrying each other. Then again, me and he were always at our most intense when playing games – snooker, pool, cards, video games – it was always the same.

Away from home consoles, I dabbled a bit more in arcade games. However my short comings as a gamer (which I still have today – I was up most of last night swearing at Stuntman on the PS2) were always evident and it was painfully obvious to anyone with one eye that I was actually shit. It didn’t deter me though as I continued to pump 20p’s into the likes of Outrun, Space Harrier (the big hydraulic version), Operation Wolf, The Simpsons and Konami’s 4 player Turtles game. Yes I was shit at them, but that didn’t stop me loving being there playing them.

I’ll leave you this week with my own memory of Wrestle War, which ended up being converted to the Sega Megadrive. For weeks on end Andy would accompany me to the local cinema where, before going to watch a film with a large drink and a bucket of buttered popcorn (the best sort which you can’t buy now because of cholesterol or something), I would sweat my ass off trying to beat this game. I think it was round 6 before you got to the copyright dodging Bulk Logan character. I was that good I even had people standing watching me. Sweat pouring down my face in buckets, I felt like a gaming god. True, I never did beat the game but I gave it my all.

It's Time To Rumble....

 

Some might say a tale of blood, sweat and joysticks. Some might say you sad bastard, get a life. I’ll leave it to you to decide.

Next week – the advent of consoles bring some exciting times, more tales of game rage and a tale of 2 guys, 2 guns and some zombies.

Til then – keep it real

PS. I promised a game review at the end of my last column. So here it is – Stuntman (PS2) : Its shit!