Revenge of the Mutant Camels C64 Tape Loader (Zzap Megatape 19 edition) c64 tape loaders 2026-09-22 | Revenge of the Mutant Camels C64 Tape Loader (Zzap Megatape 19 edition)
Spy Hunter C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2023-06-03 | Spy Hunter by US Gold/Commodore, played from tapeThis is the standard early us gold novaload we've all seen a bunch before, at this point, but I just wanted to say how quickly the game loaders - which makes sense being a 1983 cart release in the US, which meant it was only 16k of data at most - _uncompressed_, which means really probably around half of that once compressed. But yeah, 2 minutes is a hell of a quick loading time!Also, the game is pretty fun, especially when you consider how early in the systems life it is! I do enjoy the trick they use of changing the map in order to avoid having to do an eight way scroll
Shadow Warriors C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2023-06-01 | Shadow Warriors for C64 by Ocean, Played from tapeSome games are just not worth the loading time. This is definitely one of them. At least it uses the tape counter and doesn't make you completely reload the game, though it does make you reload if you die on level one...It's an ocean game from 1990 that doesn't even have the ocean loader. What even is the point?The worst part is, it gets some things right - it doens't commit the golden axe sin of being so pretty it can only have one enemy on the screen, it _could_ be a playable and fun game _if_ they bothered to actually tune it, but instead it's unplayable dreck. I'm sure there was a contact that ended up with this being written in a week, because there is actual technical competence on display, just a complete and total lack of care for the actual game. I'm pretty sure that wasn't on purpose...
Rolling Thunder C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2023-05-29 | Rolling Thunder for C64 by USGold, played from tapeAs a kid, I always associated the US Gold loader with unreliable loading - I think, in retrospect, this is because I was buying a lot of budget releases on the Kixx label. But not just on the Kixx label, oh no, these were Kixx licensed to Ozisoft in australia, who did the duplication locally. So it was cheap upon cheap upon cheap... honestly, it's amazing the tapes didn't just snap. I actually was pretty well known to the people who ran the computer department at my local k-mart because I bought back about 40% of the games I bought from the budget stand for not loading... after a while, they stopped just believing me and would actually try and load them to make sure I wasn't just bringing them back because the games were shit. Eventually they stopped wasting their time doing that, because, well, about 40% of the time they really just didn't load.So rolling thunder is one of the games that I bought in those circumstances, but it actually did work, and I enjoyed it then. I'd heard of how terrible it is, and you know, I recognise it's not great, but... look, I had some fun playing this, and as a budget game, it's fine. This is, admittedly, a common story - find on budget is a horror show at full price!
Robin To the Rescue C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2023-05-13 | Robin to the Rescue C64 by Solar Software, Played from TapeWhen I was eight years old, we got the ozisoft propack compilation tape for our c64, and this was one of the earliest game on the tape (it had 10 games on a single tape), and so I played it quite a bit and actually beat it back then. Having not sighted the game for nearly four decades, I'm giving it another go - everyone asserts it's so easy that you can't lose, but well, here I am losing a lot. Sure, my joystick doesn't help, but neither does the ropey collision detection and the pixel perfect jumps required.Really, the game is just an early clone of Hunchback, and honestly it's not terrible for a 1983 game. It _is_ short, though - I think there is only 2 or 3 more screens than I got through in this play, and yeah, then it just loops... so on a budget pack of 10 games that was fine, but probably not so great if you bought it full price in 1983. But then, standards were different then, so... you have to judge it within its time. I'm not convinced you really should play it today, but.... look, I didn't hate revisiting it!The version I owned had a different loader, because all of the games were very obviously frozen and had a colourbar loader, and this is the original instead.
Dragon Breed C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2023-05-10 | Dragon Breed C64 by Activision, played from tapeFirstly, if you're not viewing at 50hz, the dragons tail is going to look like crap. It looks great on my CRT output, and it looks good on my TV playing youtube, but it looks like ass on my laptop. YMMV etc.I've never played this one before, but after my complaints about st dragon, it was suggested I try this instead for a better c64 dragon based shooter. On the one hand, this being an ash+dave joint, they actually managed to get the dragon right, unlike st. dragon - yes, it flickers, but it's done well, and it's really playable in that regard. The difficulty is pretty hard on the boss fight, but that's just a matter of practice.But my god is the loading fucking terrible. In particular, it commits the two grievous sins of:a) separate title load to level 1b) on game over, even on level 1, rewind the tape to side one and load the entire game again from scratchThat second one always makes me mad, because I might as well just reset the computer at that point - I'm literally not saving any time at all. There's no reason they couldn't have had a tape counter reset to load level 1 again, but no.... fuck tape users.
St Dragon C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2023-05-09 | St Dragon by Storm for C64, played from tapeI had somewhat high hopes for this one, since I actually love the arcade machine, and honestly, it's an okay conversion - but it wasn't as good as I expected, in particular, because of the limits of how long the tail could be, the game doesn't really work in the same way it does in the arcade (the gimmick there is that you can wrap your tail around yourself as a shield, essentially). Without that, it's a mostly mediocre shooter... like it's fine, I didn't hate myself playing it or anything, but it's just, you know.... fine.Also for some reason, the second level took two attempts to load... so that's weird... still, that's tape life for you! The loader is generally really well done, though, in particular I like how it tells you what the hell is going on!
Chinese Juggler C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2023-05-07 | Chinese Juggler for C64 by Ocean Software, Played from TapeSo my original of this is actually novaload, which this is not - I believe this is actually the original release, and the novaload version is a budget release. That said, my original does not load anymore, so this blue screen loader version is what you get instead. It is still absolutely turbo tape though, since it at least loads within a few minutes... still, I do wish there was something to watch.As to the game, it is WAY easier than I remember it - when I had it as a kid, it was quite the challenge, but I ended up turning it off after playing it for around 20 minutes because it just wasn't really providing a challenge today. Which is fine, because it was fun until it wasn't - as a budget game, this is fine, though if I'd have paid full price I'd have been sad, even back in the day.
Ivan Ironman Stewarts Super Off Road C64, Played from Tape c64 tape loaders 2023-05-06 | Ivan Ironman Stewards Super Off Road by Graftgold/VirginA fun single load super sprint style game. Loads shockingly fast, single load, what's not to love? It really helps if you have an up button mapped on your joystick, otherwise you're holding up a lot and trying to steer, which would be painful, but otherwise? This is a solid racer without too many frills, but sufficient thrills. I'd say it's probably the best of the bunch when it comes to C64 overhead racers.Weirdly, online documents claim this is freeload, which would make sense since graftgold used freeload a lot! But it doens't look like freeload, from the bars, so I'm somewhat skeptical. But I've been wrong on this point before....
Dynamite Dux C64, Played from Tpae c64 tape loaders 2022-05-21 | Dynamite Dux C64 by Activision/Core Design, played from tape.I have a weird personal history with this game - I originally saw a review of it in the Aussie magazine "MegaComp" (which later became MegaZone), and I desperately wanted it, but I never found a copy back then. What I did find, years later, was the arcade game, which I played a lot of. Being the type of arcade game that it is - pretty much "Golden Axe with Ducks" (it's even a System16 game), I figured the c64 version was probably crap, and looking up the Zzap review that gave it 57% seemed to disagree with this.I feel like Zzap called this one wrong (as I do with Golden Axe!). Anyone who says that Golden Axe and similar 2.5d-ish street beat-em-ups can't be done well on the c64 needs to play this, and then re-evaluate that view. Because sure, this has blocky expanded sprites, and kind of rubbish sound effects, but it plays like an absolute belter. I was honestly shocked by just how good this conversion is.This is how Golden Axe, Double Dragon, and Final Fight should have been.The tape version is a bit wonky - it does the whole levels on side 2 thing, but it also has level 1 on side 1, so it loads that, and then you have to wait for it to skip it the first time you hit level 2 (all the green-black bars are searching for tape). Then at level 3, it wanted me to rewind the tape for some reason, and do that again... at which point my capture device crapped out by I also didn't really want to wait longer for loading, and I feel like this is a pretty good taste of the game in any case.In short, even on tape, I'd strongly recommend checking this one out!
Demon Blue C64, Played From Tape c64 tape loaders 2022-05-19 | Demon Blue by MicroValue for C64, Played from tape(re-upload, this time with sound - my capture crapped out on the original upload, and I did not realise until someone pointed it out...)This is a really, really pretty single load late-era flick screen adventure game that is notorious for its extreme difficulty. Honestly, I think the game is actually really worth your time - for the record, a lot of people disagree with this take, and they're not actually _wrong_ for a couple of reasons:a) It commits the sin of pixel perfect jumps, without _quite_ having the controls to back that upb) It commits the sin of it not being clear what harms you and what does notc) The instructions are absolutely terrible with regards to (b)d) There are a lot of points where "take damage" seems to be the only way forward, but the game doesn't make it obvious if this is okay or not!Here's the thing: The reason I played it for as long as I did in this video, is I had a really great time with this game. It's not, you know, a super classic or anything, but especially as a budget game? Honestly, if you can deal with the difficulty, it's pretty fun. And, as discussed, the art in the game is spectacular.Also: For such an attractive game, that loading screen is ugly as hell!
Red Heat C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-04-25 | Red Heat by Ocean/Special FX, played from tapeA terrible, terrible, boring game with a familiar loader. I'm sure there is a story here how they got stuck with a license to a shitey movie, and had to make something in a week, but this game isn't even entertaingly bad - it's just boring as hell!The sprites look nice, but everything else about this game is uninteresting. Even the music is uninteresting. I'm sure this exists for a reason, but honestly I couldn't tell you what that reason is.
Lethal Weapon C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-04-24 | Lethal Weapon by Ocean, played from TapeThis is a perfectly adequate platform game (I have a joystick with a second fire button mapped to up, which helps with these!), but two things stand out about it to me:a) It's an ocean release without the ocean loader!b) It's clearly unfinished, despite this being a retail tape copyThe latter can be seen most prominantly in many online screenshots as well during the title copyright message, proudly claiming the game was made in "AIIB" - if you convert that text to digits, it would actually be "1992", but they never bothered to add numbers to the font - which, presumably, would have been done at some point, as well as replacing the obviously temporary and wired ocean logo with a proper one. But there is more - for example, the McGuffins that you're supposed to collect in the game seem _entirely optional_ - the manual says you should get them, but they don't do anything. They don't even give you points. They're just.... there. Given that you're supposed to explore the level to find them, but this seems completly optional, I assume the plan was to have you colelct at least some percentage of them to progress. Which would, in this style of game, totally make sense!Also, the tape mastering commits the usual sin of "rewind tape to start, you might as well restart your computer", a hallmark of in-a-hurry.The most damning evidence for this, however, is that 1992 date - the game came out around May 1993, which says that they were running _very_ late with the release of this. Given that date, and the fact the sunset of the boxed commercial game market (I believe this to be ocean's second to last game, just barely predating sleepwalker - by around a month) was not just fast approaching, but basically here, I'd be shocked if they didn't just put what they had onto a tape in a panic, and ship it out, especially when they'd paid for such an expensive license.As an aside, I do believe this was also the second to last game released to budget by the Hit Squad (the last being Cool World, weirdly - though that was earlier on full price), but on this I could be wrong - reviews were starting to get sketchy by that point (we're now in early 1994), and it could well be that this was acutally the last (the other contender is WWF European Rampage)
Defender of the Crown C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-04-23 | Defender of the Crown by Cinemaware, played from TapeI actually wanted this when I was young, and saw it advertised on tape - so I wasn't shocked by its existence, but thinking about it now, I'm honestly kind of surprised they made it.And, for the most part, they actually pulled it off - this wasn't as good of an experience as on disk, obviously, but I didn't feel horrible playing it! There were, mind you, definitely parts of the game I avoided to save loads (jousting!), but otherwise.... yeah, this is actually fine.The weirdly clever part of this, is it comes on two tapes spanning four sides, and so essentially they simulated random access by having each of the large parts on a different tape and had the user just swap them out when needed - you'll see throughout this playthrough "Insert tape X side Y and hit play", and that's what is going on there. It's funny, people talk about this as one of the most brutal multiloads ever, but honestly? It was less painful than turbocharge, which everyone loves. And it's a game that is an interesting enough experience that, honestly, I do find it worthwhile in this medium. Of course you wouldn't choose this version today, you'd grab one of the packed single side disk versions, or the cartridge version, but if you were in 1988 and this was your option? A worthy one!
Labyrinth the Computer Game C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-04-22 | I actually intended to finish this game all of the way through, but two hours in I got fully stuck, so you get as far as the exterior of the castle - that's about 80% of the way through, but.... I'm not happy about thatSo this was acutally one of the games I got with my original C64, so of course I've got some emotional attachment to it. But it was always going to be an impossible one for tape to do well, given all of the branching paths - you can see in some of the longer loads where certain scenes have been skipped because of that... but actually I don't think this works too badly, even playing it today. It's especially playable as a first time playthrough, since you spend a lot more time in scenes - I'll admit I zip through this because I mostly knew what to do from playing it years agoThis is, btw, by far the longest video I've done, coming in at around two hours. If someone understands what I'm doing wrong near the end, I'd love to try again and do a complete start-to-finish playthrough - the strategy guides I looked up had different answers, and none of them seemed to work.The best bet is take a path which skips that scene, of course,. which I'm assured is possible, but I've never done that!
Great Gurianos C64 Tape Loader Only c64 tape loaders 2022-04-21 | This game wouldn't start for me in either port - port 1 changed the player options, port 2 did nothing. I think something might be wrong with my copy.... perhaps a lot of them are busted. It was only released on a compilation as far as I know, so that's not unlikely....Enjoy the terrible loading screen!
Turbo Charge C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-04-21 | Turbo Charge by System 3, Loaded from TapeThis is one of the most brutal tape loaders that I've experienced - as an aside, why is it always racing games that are terrible? This one gives the notorious Turbo Outrun a serious run for its money, and commits all of the same sins. What it doesn't do, is have the variety of presentation to make it at least somewhat worth it - the title is fine, but it's no Magical Sound Shower Remix, and the intro is fine, but it's not, well, the turbo outrun intro. And those between stages bitmaps are fine, but they're repeated and just static bitmaps.I'd always heard the story that this game was designed for cartridge first, and then ported to tape/disk at the last minute when system3 realised that was too expensive for that market, and that's really what it feels like - to the point where the loader will just, you know, kick in half way through a presentation scene to load more presentation. That sort of thing.So, okay, what about the game? The game is.... fine. It's a fundamentally Chase HQ 2 with Chris Butlers fancy racing engine, and some pretty presentation, but beyond being technically accomplished, it's okay as a game but not great. This is mostly down to the fuel mechanic, which in the early levels is severely unforgiving - as well as the forks in the roads that lead to dead ends, with no actually telegraphed way of knowing which to take.Like, it's _fine_, I'd say on cartridge or disk it'd be a 80%ish game, but on tape it's a 60%ish game - especially if you ever get any good at it, the levels are actually pretty short, so you'll spend way more time loading the game than playing it, but again, it just doens't feel anywhere as fancy as Turbo Outrun does, which makes the whole experience less worth it. It's good, but not "get away with this loader" level of good.Powerdrift was honsetly, to me, a much better playing game - and it fit in one load! Which is honestly the frustrating thing about this - it could have been a 96% game with just a few tweaks. Seperate out the presentation to side b of the tape, don't force the between-stage bitmaps, and balance the game - level 2 is way easier than level 1, for example, on that fuel point. Because the code is honestly great, and it's technically probably the single most accomplished racer on the C64. Just... everything else around that is half baked, and that's very, very sad.
Wec Le Mans C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-04-19 | Wec Le Mans C64 by Ocean, played from TapeSo my thoughts going into this were "it looks kind of ugly, but it can't be worse than Chase HQ". I was wrong. This is significantly worse than Chase HQ. I should note, that the first two games I played, I didn't realise there was a high gear - that's totally on me, I did find it the third game, and got a lot further then, obviously. But make no mistake, high gear or not, this game is bad. The car physics do not resemble, well, anything fun at all - they're neither realistic or arcade feeling. The track graphics use raster effects/sprites to draw the road and sides, which should be smooth, but of course is not... at least ChaseHQ has an excuse for its piss poor speed, in that its drawing a full bitmap display. This is just sheer imcompetence from end to end, and is honestly one of the worst racing games I've ever played.Chase HQ feels like a fuck up, like they wanted to make a good game, but just fucked it up and ended up porting spectrum graphics routines out of desperation. Wec... feels like they didn't even try.
Jumpman C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-04-17 | Jumpman by Epyx/EuroGold, loaded from tapeI had no idea this was on tape - I knew about Jumpman Junior, which had both tape and cartridge releases, but this? No idea! According to the tape image I have, it's from 1986, which is 3 whole years after the original release. So obviously Jumpman was not designed for tape, and not released that way, so how they handled it is you essentially load in level sets - I only played a few levels here, because I am tired and not good at games generally right now, but.... honestly? It seems a pretty decent way of handling it! As long as you record the tape counters, much like something like lemmings, you can get where you want pretty easily. Yeah, it requires some displine, but for a tape conversion of a US disk only game? It's actually really well done!I do believe there exists a USA epyx tape version as well, at least via some forums - I don't have that... I'd like to get a hold of it though!
Anarchy C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-04-16 | Anarchy by Hewson/Rack IT for C64, loaded from tapeThis is a fun little action puzzler that was, weirdly, at various points on both the Zzap and Commodore Format cover tapes. I used to be a lot better at it, and I probably would be with some sleep, but there are plenty of _good_ playthroughs of this on the internet already - we're just here for the tapes!
Monkey Magic C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-04-15 | Monkey Magic for C64 by Solar Software, loaded from tapeThis one I got on an OziSoft compilation of 10 games (a few solar softwar egames, a few gremlin games, and a few originals - monty mole, robin to the rescue, and potty pidgeon were highlights). I'm 100% sure this is completly unlicensed from the original show, and the mary poppins music is a nice touch.It's objectivly bad, but yet I enjoy it anyhow. You probably shouldn't play it, but I never regret loading it. I hear the Commodore 16 version is actually superior to this, mind you.
Into the Eagles Nest C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-04-13 | Into the Eagles Nest by Pandora, Loaded from tapeI actually had this on a CGA pc when I was a teenager, and it was one of my favourites there. The c64 version is actually a bit harder, but also a really great gauntlet style game. Honestly, I could play this for a few more hours quite easily - four missions in a single load, though one map, also really shines on tape!
Blues Brothers C64 Tape c64 tape loaders 2022-04-11 | Blues Brothers by Titus for C64, Loaded from tapeThis game is shockingly really great - I originally had a version of it on a Commodore Force cover tape, which was actually only a year or so after the games full price release, so I guess it flopped pretty hard. I enjoyed playing this a lot, though - for a c64 platformer, it's actually pretty advanced, and handles really well, and while the backgrounds are 3 coloured, the sprite work is really well done. In particular, the object mechanics and physics are really great.Fun fact: on the PC, this game uses the same engine as Titus the Fox and Moktar - I wonder if we could port that level data to this enging, and have that game on c64 too.
Slayer C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-01-09 | Slayer by Hewson/Rack-IT for c64, loaded from tapeExcuse me being terrible at the game - the next thing I'm doing is opening my joystick to fix the dodgy left switch, apparently (you can see this in the impossible mission video too), but it's actually a pretty fun little budget shooter, though hard as nails. Totally recommended!
Impossible Missing (CBS Version) C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-01-08 | This is a weird one. In the ultimate tape archive, where I got this copy, it's marked as (c) cbs electronics. I actually had been told it was the USA tape version (USA tapes do exist, but not of this ;)), but I've since been corrected on this. It _does_ use a weird as hell loader - the reason it pauses so long on that first "found" screen, is I didn't realise you have to hit _space_, not the commodore key, so I thought I just had to wait.... obviously I pressed space on the others to get through it.See the previous video for a "full" play - since this was my second play in a day, I got kind of tired of it... again, impossible mission is objectivly a great game that I just haven't super clicked with, and you will probably love even if I do not.
Impossible Missing (US Gold Version) C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-01-07 | So my general view on impossible mission, is it's a fine game... that just hasn't aged well, to me. Back when I was doing a lot of video game reviews (I used to have a disk magazine where I reviewed new c64 games in the mid 2000s), this is the sort of game where I'd have probably tried to hand it off to someone else, because I intellectually understand the game is great - my brother is still a huge fan of it - but even back in the day, it just never fully clicked for me. I do understand it a bit better now, and honestly, I had a decent enough time with this, but... I'm just not as in love with it as most.Don't let this put you off the game - this is almost certainly definetly a "me" thing, rather than the game.There is anohter version of this, whcih I think is the USA tape release, which I'll upload later - this is the PAL release by us gold, as evidenced by their classic novaload loader!
Bonanza Bros C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2022-01-06 | Bonanza Bros by US Gold for C64, played from tapeI wasn't expecting much from this US Gold Sega conversion, but I was [;easemt;ly surprised - this game is actually super fun. Additionally, I expected to be annoyed by the multiload after there was a load straight after the initial title screen, but actually the level loads are really short and generally worth the waitSo yeah, this one is awesome.
Winter Olympiad 88 C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-30 | Winter Olympiad '88 by TynesoftI do enjoy when novaload games actually use the novaload block counter! It's always nice to know what's going on! And petscii loading screens will always remain the way of the future! Also, I love that the game advertises buying other versions of itself on the loader scroller for some reason....This is, of course, the untitlted epyx knockoff project, and so it is what it is. I've never playd this one before either. But you can't go past a rocking Wally Beben Soundtrack. So we go to play the game, and.... okay, clearly each game is a seperate executable. At least, unlike g-loc, they had the common decency to try and hide this (indeed, I thought the game had crashed originally!), but.... the way it uses novaload, this is obviously so. But unlike there, were it's frustrating, here it's actually kind of neat. Of course, the loading time is _brutal_, putting winter games (which I played yesterday) to shame with just how horrifying it is. It's a solid ten minutes before you hit any gameplay, which kind of makes sense given that, again, everything is entirely seperate executables, so there can be very little shared code between them. That having been said, the presentation is great - THere is digi music everywhere, zooming logos, everything, which I suspect is why the loading is just so brutal. I said above the novaload was cute, adn honestly, when I wrote that, I was only 10 minutes in. I'm now 20 minutes in, and it's no longer cute. I appriciate some good presentation, I do, but the amouint of it here makes the game completly unbearable to actually live with. If I did not have the countdown timer, I probably would have given up by now, but at least I do know that it is loading....It's no Run the Gauntlet, my current bar for bad mastering by people who should know better (goofy railway excepted), but honestly it's not that far off. The thing that I think I find offensive about both of these examples - and don't find, for example, as offensive about Skate or Die or Winter Games, is that this was developed for a mostly-tape market. In 1988, when this problem was well understood. It doesn't hurt that those are both really good games, also, and this one.... feels like the knockoff that it is. Biathlon is the worst in that regard, but honestly, none of the events feel like a patch on the equivalents in winter games - it really is a case of style over substance, which when you're loading all of that style over and over on tape, goes from kinda annoying to unforgivable.As to the events: ski jump is passable once you work it out, although the perspective is stupid, downhill is entirely unplayable, biathalon is fine once you work out that the rhythm of your joystick should NOT match the screen, but rather just a gentle left-right-left-right every second or so, slalom is boring as hell but at least functional, and bobsled is another unplayable mess. What a waste of 45 minutes. I will never get that time back.
Winter Games C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-29 | Winter Games by Epyx/US Gold, played from tapeSo, first up - I actually ended up running out of disk space during the last event, so you guys miss the message to rewind the tape to the start and load the game again to re-play. But, since this contains all events (bobsleigh is the last event on tape), I decided to just leave it there - the only thing missing is the final presentation screen, which is nothing but a screen of text with rankings.I'll admit, after Skate or Die, I was expecting the worst here - in particular, I was expecting to magically have to know which event was where on the tape. But actually they re-did the game to be vaugely linear. Yeah, the multiload is still hell, but it's not Skate or Die level of hell. It is Turbo Outrun level of hell, though, so... still not great. You know, I didn't really need to see that intro sequence and such again, and I sure as hell don't need a seperate load to show me the results - i'm sure it's paging the music in/out of memory or something like that, but it really does seem unnessesary. That having been said, I chose to compete in single player, which is def the worst option, as these things go go, than most others, as you can see by the tiny amount of play time I got on between loads (It's loading the second event as I'm typing this), but I could see this being actually pretty cool if you select practice instead.In a couple of these events, I _really_ wish I had practiced. Mostly the ski jump. But yeah, if this was the I actually hadn't played this for a couple of decades - I had the atari 2600 version around 1989, and I had the PC CGA version in 1992 or so, but never the c64 version (the only C64 game in this series I've played before is California Games). It's really good - definetly worth the loading, as aggressive as such loading is (obviously, like most USA games, this was primarily intended as a disk game, and hacked onto tape for the PAL market later)The thing that most surprised me, playing this, is in my head the epyx games series were just another violent joystick waggler, but actually this isn't true - the events rely on timing rather than raw speed, and do not put your joystick in danger of death. I suspect this was mostly my kid self not really understanding nuance, but.... well, as sports games go, it's pretty good in that regard!That said, after all of these years, it turns out I still don't really understand how figure skating works. Go figure. Also, the bobsleigh event is kind of dumb, but the rest are gems. So, you know, for a 1985 game particularly, this is punching well, well above its weight - and definetly better than any other version of the game that I've played. But, yeah, maybe I should invest in a 1541 if I want to play this further....
Winter Camp C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-28 | Winter Camp by Thalamus Europe, played from tapeWhen I was younger, I had the demo of this on a zzap tape - it was only years later that I learned that zzap and thalamus were owned by the same people, and so.... well, this game has a terrible multiload, because of course it does, and of course that was _never mentioned_ in the zzap review. That having been said, at least you get unlimited continues on the current level, so at least it's not _that_ bad - honestly, many sins can be forgiven by not having to constantly reload, but... well, still, there is very little gameplay for the amount of loading being done here. Of course, the game crashed whenever I tried to play the second level more than once, so I didn't get enough practice to really ge tthe hang of that one - i wonder if that's just my copy, but it did it three times in a row!Super well presented game, what acutally pretty fun. Just a shame about how long it all takes to load in... I suspect if I had a non-bugged copy, I'd be happier - I definetly wanted to get better at that second level, so...
Monty Mole C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-27 | Monty Mole for C64, Loaded from tapeSo fairly ordinary early 80s loader, but I had an interesting time with this game - my first play, I was like "how in the everloving hell did I play this as a kid and get anywhere?" but, by game #3 I'd gotten somewhat used to the quirky physics and got a fair way in - all of my play attempts are in this video, but one of the key things I learned between games that I had forgotten, is there is actually diagonal jump buttons on the keyboard keys A and S, which make things MUCH more paletable. Once you know this, getting the jumps becomes MUCH easier, and things become MUCH more fun.Yeah, the game is still really fun. I might yet come back to this and try and properly beat it at some point.
The Official Father Christmas Game C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-26 | The Official Father Christmas Game by Alternative SoftwareSo this is more the sort of garbage I was expecting from a christmas game. Look at that monochrome loading screen.... now realise that it's 32 characters wide because that's the width of a ZX spectrum screen! Even on the ZX, a monochrome loading screen is a garbage sign (I strongly recommend youtube.com/watch?v=dekMYO5HNvU for a complilation of some really cool ZX loading screens)Given that, I was surprised when I got into the game that it wasn't just cheap ZX port trash. Also I guess it was for charity, at some point...The first level commits a seriously grevious sin of being a game where you have to carry things, where contact with an enemy makes you drop the thing, but then makes it completly non-obvious if this has happened - I kept going to the sled, and finding that i'd dropped the item i was carrying, and honestly had no idea. A shame, because this first level is the games only redeeming feature. The rest of the game is just trash
Santas Christmas Caper C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-25 | Santas Christmas Caper by Zeppelin, loaded from tapeSo.... lets say you want to make a cheap christmas cash in game. Budget title, nothing special..... how about a weirdly competent horizontal shooter! Where a drunk santa shoots presents with other presents!Sure, why not! This is the c64, after all! I expected this to be absolutely terrible. But it's actually weirdly really fun. Go figure!
Barbarian (Ocean Release) C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-24 | Barbarian by Palace software - Ocean Compilation releaseThis is a weird little artifact... this is Palace's barbarian, however it's ocean loader, complete with ocean loader 4 music. It turns out that it's from the "We are the champions" compilation release, at least according to lemon64 (see lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=536300&sid=dec597210b88459a4150aa21a4ad11aa ). As an aside, this is actually the one in the ultimate tape archive, interestingly - and not the original :). My copy of the original is in another country, so I can't easily fetch that right now... oh well, to the internet!I have to assume ocean never recieved a master of this - Paul Hughes has mentioned in interviews that sometimes he had to crack games and put freeload on them when they did the compilations, and well, here we are...
Barbarian C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-23 | Barbarian by Palace softwareA really fun one-on-one fighting game.... obviously famous for the decapitation move. Needs more blood, but honestly this is one of my favourite c64 fighting games, and it's still fun today.For some reason this loader reminds me of the late US Gold - I wonder if it's the same one
Project X C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-22 | Project X by Mr Chip SoftwareThis game is pretty much without redeeming features... but originally I had my joystick in the wrong port, and it turns out space bar does a starfield demo. So, you know, a typical demoscener game.
Hard Drivin C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-21 | Hard Drivin' by Domark, loaded from tapeHere's the thing: I am aware that this is not a good game. There is no universe in which this is a good game. I'm pretty sure there isn't even a universe where it's a mediocre game. But yet, when we got the Wheels of Fire compilation, which contianed Powerdrift, Turbo Outrun, Chase HQ, and this, my brother and I actually played a surprising amount of this, and didn't deeply hate it - I mean, even back then we knew the game had severe problems, but... we actually got a lot of enjoyment out of it.Yes, the controls are weird, but they're no more weird than something like test drive. We'd played a lot of test drive back then, too. But here's the thing: Despite my slippery driving, here in 2021, I still had fun with this!So, you will probably hate this game and this conversion. But I don't!
Turrican 2 C64 Tape loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-20 | So I played turrican a little back when I first started the channel (at which point, my capture setup added a 1.5 second lag to inputs, so I didn't really play the games usefully back then.... maybe I should redo that oie though), and was pleasantly surprised by it after hearing how terrible it was on tape - I find myself suspecting if people really were talking about turrican 2, though, because this one... isn't as great. Particularly, it commits that sin that, if you die on the first level, and then select continue, you still have to reload the level - which, for a game where your first play of it is going to usually be bad, because it's a hard game with not-always-obvious physics and death pits right at the start, you're going to be doing that reasonably immediately. So I actually did that, got frustrated when it asked me to rewind to counter position 986 - a position that made no sense. I assume that, if I possessed the instructions, I'd need the magic knowledge of resetting to 0 somewhere - maybe on the title screen - and started recording this entirely from scratch, since I wanted to load through to at least the second level, and I did make it there, however it then still wanted me to rewind to counter 986.... which seems like the start of the tape? Maybe? I'm not sure....Feels like typical "we shoved this on tape at the last minute and didn't really think about it. Fuck you, get a disk drive" bullshit.I mean, obviously a c64 classic, and a game worth dealing with this on, but a couple of little quality of life things could have made this so much more accessible. As with the death pits on the second level, there is a bunch of bits of this game which have just not aged as well as they should have.... if I was reviewing this now, I'd probably be inclined to give it around an 80%ish score rather than the 95%+ score I would have given it in 1991. It's obviously still _good_, but not _as good_. Part of that is there is a LOT of this game that this video just doesn't show - the shump sections being a good example of that. And that's kind of the bit that's aged badly - the game has amazing parts, but then hides them behind insta-death pits and a lack of hit invincibility/pushback - the fact that you can get killed by a tiny thing because it just drains your energy on a pixel contact was forgivable in 1991, but really isn't in 2021. It'd be such a simple thing to fix, but I guess back then.... brutal was the name of the game.
Enduro Racer C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-19 | Enduro Racer by Activision/Electric Dreams for C64, Played from tapeSo I actually really love this game. I always did - I had it as a kid, and I didn't know it was supposed to be terrible. I see flaws now, you know, the frame rate... isn't great. But honestly? Playing it today, I still loved it, and I'm going to play it some more later.Everyone says this is the worst game on the c64, worst game ever, etc, etc, but really? I can't see it, I just can't. It's simple, sure, but it's absolutely fun!
Ghostbusters Ricochet/Invade-a-load Release C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-18 | It's invade-a-load! But also.... this is the third indepdent versions of this that I've found in my posession. I'm unsure why there were so many different versions of this!As an aside, I got really bored in the first half of the game, but then didn't make enough money to accomidate for the fact that while you only need 10000$, you actually seem to need way more because the ghost bait is not reusable, so you can't stop the marshmallow man more than once, as far as I can tell.Maybe I don't understand the game, but.... yeah, I lost the deire to understand it at this point. Particularly: the driving should not be part of the game!! The rest is fine, but the driving is boring as hell... the rest of the game is great, actually. But yeah, it seriously hurts it.But.... invade-a-load ghostbusters. I, for one, was not expecting this... (also: why won't youtube let me make the invade-a-load the thumbnail?!)
Hostages C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-17 | Hostages by Inforgrammes, played from tape for c64This game is super interesting, but the loader is completly terrible - it's another one where I think you need magic knowledge of the loader to make it really playable, beacuse it wants to just reload everything forever.... and the game is unforgiving enough that the loading time really, really sucks.I suspect - I've not palyed it before, as you can tell by this play - that the game is MUCH better on disk. On tape? Not a great game.Cool intro through....
Continental Circus C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-16 | Continential Circus by Virgin/The Sales CurveThis is honestly a great little F1 driving game for c64 - it handles awesomly. There's only a few levels, but it was always a favourite of mine back in the day, and it was really fun to revisit it. A single load, too - the sales curve were always good at making games for tape!
Salamander C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-14 | Finally, a good game again! The reload on death is annoying, especially since I was half asleep when playing the first game of this - and then died quickly, and had to reload _everything again_. It's got a tape counter reset point, but it's so early it might as well be just reset the c64Which is a shame, because it's a really good game, and well worth playing, but it's annoying that you have to go through that when you're just starting out learning how to play it, or hell, you just have a bad game...Also: Ocean Freeload game without the ocean loader music?! Seriously?!
Final Fight C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-13 | Final Fight by US Gold/Creative MaterialsWow, this game really has no redeeming features whatsoever. I am dumbstruck by how bad it is. I ended up turning it off because I could not stand to play any longer.Seriously, you guys, the loading was NOT worth it.
Cisco Heat C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-12 | How bad could it be? I'd heard it was bad, but... come on, it was a full price game in 1992. How bad could it be?I'm pretty convinced someone lost a bet, and had to code this in a weekend. This isn't just a bit bad, it is barely even a game. The same developer did the c64 version of Street Fighter 2 which, while horribly rushed (he actually spoke to games that weren't about just how rushed... like 3 week development time) was at least a competent game - sure, it wasn't great, but it was competent, playable, and functioned.This though? It's none of those things. I really, really do not understand how this got released.
Edd the Duck C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-11 | Edd the Duck by Impulze/ZepplinThis game is good, but it has that horrible europlatformer thing of requiring you to collect _every piece_, as well as having some of the pieces in almost impossible to reach places . Additionally, it's a game that makes backtracking nearly impossible.... I don't really know what's up with that.Also, for whatever reason, I had _serious_ trouble hitting diagonal jumps on this one - essentially, once it registers the "up", it does not register left/right anymore, so if you miss the diagonal, you're boned. I think this would be better with a pad with up mapped to a button, but... i suspect I'd have the same timing proble, to be honest. My hands just don't move that way...The game is still fun, and I'd definitely play it again, but I did leave pretty frustrated, especially at hitting the end of the level, but not actually being able to progress.
Run the Gauntlet C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-10 | Run The Gauntlet by Ocean for C64, loaded from tapeSo this is an interesting one (Suggested by Rob Bowker - thanks!), which I'd weirdly been thinking about playing for a while since I liked the ads for it back in the day, but never actually tried it. Firstly, note at 0:50 or so the screen that literally says "we fucked up mastering this game so badly that, despite us saying in the manual you could reset the tape counter and play agian, and in fact there is no way to play it again without completely starting from scratch and loading the digi music intro again!!!". At this point. I knew I was in for a ride. Wondered, did I, how did they fuck this up this badly? Surely, being a 1988 ocean game, Paul Hughes would have mastered it with freeload, we'd have ocean loader 4, and everything would be great. The screechy loading sounds alerted me to the fact that I was not, in fact, in kansas anymore. Still, Jon Dunn's intro music is banging. I've left a lot of it in this video because I turned it up to listen to it because, as previously mentioned, it is banging. Then, I hit space to load the rest of the game. At which point, loud screech directly into my ear holes. Fuck my life. But also, okay, someone must have tested it or else that note mentioned in the earlier paragraph would not exist, but.... did anyone ever actually fucking try this before sending it to the duplicators?!Also: That cheetah 125 special that the game claims to support is cool, and I used to have one - it has two joystick cables on it, and the second one maps to fire on the other port. THe reason you do this, is because fire on port one also maps to the C64 space bar. The only other game I've seen with explicit support though is Flying Shark, which was why I had one back in the day. But it works on heaps of "press space to x' games. But I digress...I do like that this loader at least shows progress for the multiload parts. Of course, this whole thing would have been a lot more pleasent if it wasn't for the forced reload of the presentation screen at the start - if they'd _just_ had the options screen and then have alreadt loaded the first event, it would have been a much better experience - especially since the event takes a LONG time to load. Also: each event has music, but it's so much quieter than the loading screech that I didn't realise until the last even, because I had my volume down so low.First event loads... quickly figure out the controls, wonder why they used up for accelerate instead of the perfectly servicable fire button. Sure, whatever, I wasn't great at it, mostly because I struggled with the controls, but fine.... then load the next event, off-road.This is when I realise that they packed a non-linear game onto tape. I didn't find a c64 manual, but I did find a zx spectrum one with the words "Do not stop the tape. unless told to do so. Loading could take sveral minutes due to each event being randomly selected". So imagine you're sitting in england in 1988, where tape is the predominant mechanism for games, and you are designing a sports game such as, well, this. And you have two options - have events in a random order, or have them in a random order only on disk, but make them load in a fixed order on tape. Which would you choose? If you're impact software, you'd chose, well, what you get to see in this video, which is 30 minutes of video for 6 minutes of gameplay.In any case, I get to the second event, again struggle with the controls, at which point.... the game appears to crash. I feel like I could get used to the controls, or actually I feel like if I played it again, I'd play it with keyboard controls, which I suspect would work a lot better for me. But I'm also not super inclined to do so, given that we're 27 minutes into the recording as I type this, and I've gotten to play for six minutes, and I really should have only had three minutes but I was crap at the game. So I stopped the tape, at which point it tells me what it's trying to load, so I guess it's back? But then I have the horrifying realization, that in fact it's trying to load an event that is earlier on the tape, and just sitting there was the games attempt to tell me that I needed to rewind the tape.... (continued in the first comment :)
Lightforce C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-09 | Lightforce by Faster Than LightSo obviously this has that amazing hubbard soundtrack, though I probably should have switched to an 8580 for it (I have a sid switch on my c64) but it still sounds pretty great even on this 6581 - heavy filters, though.But lets talk about the game. Jesus christ is it harder than I remember... I don't have an autofire joystick, and the game _clearly_ wants to have one. But also... you MUST memories the enemy patterns - because if you miss _one_ enemy at all, they just home in on you. ESP is an essential component of this game, to the level of something like Rick Dangerous. Which is kind of sad, because it sounds and looks great. But, honsetly, the playability of this has aged _really badly_, just by being so rote memorisation based.
Goofys Railway Adventure C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-09 | Goofys Railway Adventure by Disney/WestwoodWhat the fuck did I just play? Seriously... ignoring the ludicrous copy protection, the only interactivity in this game is hitting space. Okay, it's designed for kids, that's fine, but here's the thing: This is the single worst multiload I have ever, ever experienced.It makes turbo out run seem like a cartridge game.I'm sure it was a quick port from a US disk only version, but why in the everloving hell did they do this?! Why would anyone do this?! What young child is going to sit through several minutes of loading for approximatly ten seconds of "gameplay"? Seriously, the game is mostly just loading.... literally, I probably could have left it sitting there to play itself, and itw ould just have loaded bitmaps, moved the train, rinse, repeatYou have to be paying attention, too, because it just starts once the loading happens! There is no warning, not even really much noice, just.... suddenly you're playing 10 seconds of gameplay before you doze off to anotehr few minutes of loading.Seriously, any barely competent developer could have mastered this entirely differently. Whether through the use of compression - a bitmap is 8k, and the other graphics are probably another 8k.... but it's a 64k system doing not much else, so you could totally load 3 of those screens into ram uncompressed. Compressed.... probably the whole thing. Hell, little enough is going on with the CPU that you could background load from tape. Anything. Just.... _something else_. Anything elseThis is the dumbest thing I've seen on a cassette tape. Seriously, I cannot fathom how anyone thought this was a good idea.
Pitfall C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-08 | Pitfall by Activision for C64, loaded from tapeWeirdly, I had this on cartridge when I was a kid. I think they were mostly common in australia - HES actually made a bunch of cart conversions. This, however, is a very, very standard early turbotape. No loading bars :(In related news, I lost interest in playing this game super quickly. Which is weird, because I've recently enjoyed playing it on atari... like, the game is mechanically fine, it's just.... mechanically fine. On this platform, it shows its age a lot more.
Wonderboy in Monsterland C64 Tape Loader c64 tape loaders 2021-12-07 | Wonderboy in Monsterland by Activision/ImsagesI had really fond memories of the c64 of this from when I was younger, and honestly? It's still great - despite my poor performance here (mostly due to blowing two credits on a battle i should have easily won, but my joysticks fire button was being dodgy.... still, that's my own dumb fault for using a dodgy joystick!). I had forgotten how short some of the levels are, so the loading is a _little_ annoying, but honestly? It's livable!What I didn't remmeber is how the game weirdly scrolls in 4 pixel blocks, despite otherwise running at a decent speed - I'm not sure why that is, and honestly it doens't really detract from the game,. but it IS weird for a c64 game! I assume there was some bug that this covers up....But yeah, despite that, acutally a super quality effort!
