Fantasy Designer V.1

Published on Magic Disk 64 05/90

One of the more frequent applications found on Magic Disk 64 were demo/intro creators that allowed C64 users to make flashy intros without requiring any programming knowledge. Fantasy Designer V.1 is a fine example of such a tool, and it comes with a simple, straightforward interface. While its usefulness may be limited, it certainly makes for better screenshots than a spreadsheet program.

Magic Disk 64 04/90

Cover
When I saw this issue at the newsstand, the cover art immediately reminded me of the docking bay from Star Wars: A New Hope. I suppose that was the artist's inspiration, even though it is not an exact copy from the movie.

Compared to last month's facial disaster, this picture is actually pretty good. For one, the perspective is quite accurate with a common vanishing point, and the only people depicted are either very far away or have their face obscured by a helmet. If I want to get extra nitpicky (and that's what I usually do here), I can point out one thing: Assuming the ship in the front is the same model as the ones seen further back, then the pilot in the cockpit must be a giant compared to the people you can see standing around the other ships.

In any case, the cover evidently fulfilled its purpose, as I found it quite captivating. It's a pity, though, that it somewhat oversells what is on the disk. None of the games feature any space stations or ships. One game has a starfield and some moons/planets in the background, but that's about all the similarities I can find.

Reaction

Published on Magic Disk 64 04/90

If we want to reduce C64 games to their basic essentials, a lot of them come down to a test of reflexes. Reaction is different. It does the reduction for us in advance and simply presents itself as a pure test of dexterity:

You can't accuse the game of false advertising; what it's about can be found right in its name. Admittedly, the iconography surrounding the title logo may be a bit bewildering. Without wanting to spoil too much, I can already confirm that Reaction does indeed contain stars, moons, balls, arrows, blue windy paths, and a disembodied hand doing thumb signals. Unfortunately, that probably makes the game appear more exciting than it ends up being.

JASG

Published on Magic Disk 64 04/90

If you haven't guessed it already, I like playing old video games. I'm not a purist, however, and I enjoy the conveniences that emulators have to offer, even though the experience may not be completely authentic. If I feel a C64 game is too hard, I have no qualms about using savestates.

Enter JASG, a game that has me dying over and over, despite the fact that I savestate frequently and use a trainer that provides infinite lives. At the time of writing, I have been unable to complete it, even though I've been using cheats up the wazoo. That should tell you something about how exceptionally stupidly difficult this game is.

JASG challenges you to control a jumping ball through several mazes and collect all dots. It sounds so deceptively simple.

Magic Disk 64 03/90

Cover
Any self-respecting treasure hunter knows about the Golden Key and the curse that is connected to it: Legend has it that any man who lays eyes on the mystical door opener will have his countenance changed to that of Indiana Jones. However, that does not mean he'll become a Harrison Ford look-alike, no. Instead, he will morph into the unpleasant proportions of an off-brand Chinese-manufactured Indy action figure. His face will forever be marred by lopsided, sloppily painted-on eyes, a nose that looks unfit for breathing, and a mouth completely devoid of an upper lip. He will eternally wield an oversized knife and a whip, without knowing why, and he will be damned to replicate famous poses from the movie posters.

On the plus side, he'll make it onto the cover of Magic Disk 64 03/90.

Not everybody can have an Oli Frey to do the artwork for their magazine, but deary me, this is quite the car crash. I like to imagine that the first draft of the cover was such a perfect rendition of Harrison Ford's features that somebody at CP Verlag strongly suggested changing the face in order to avoid a potential lawsuit. At that point, the original artist was unavailable, so the alterations were hastily done by a hapless staff member who barely knew how to hold a pencil. That's not what happened, but I like to speculate.

Aside from the dodgy art, the subject matter is also a bit strange, especially if you're familiar with Keyfinders, the game this picture is trying to represent. There is no golden key in the game. The protagonist does not use a whip or a knife. He is wearing a hat in the game, true, but it is purple, and so is the rest of his outfit. Ok, the color discrepancy can probably be forgiven. I wouldn't expect the cover to depict a guy dressed completely in purple unless it is a Prince album. On the other hand, that'd probably make for an epic image, if done right.

The rest of the picture is actually fairly decent, and I remember, as a kid, I found the combination of warm and cool colors on the pillars quite striking. It sort of reminds me that orange/blue would become a very popular color scheme for game box art (and movie posters) decades later, at least for a while.

I know it's hard to take one's eyes off the disastrous cover image, but it should not go unnoticed that the magazine's logo, the disk image, and the spiky price tag underwent some alterations. They now look a bit more stylish and less like they were drawn on an Amiga.

Spacefighter

Published on Magic Disk 64 03/90

Spacefighter incorporates elements from Defender, Elite, Uridium, and even Impossible Mission. It's hard to pin down to one genre, so I'll just call it a side-scrolling shooter with trading elements.

This is another game that completely undersells itself with the title screen. I mean, sure, the text is neatly arranged, and if there is no capable pixel artist around, it's certainly better than a badly drawn picture. Still, a game called Spacefighter evokes images of spaceships and explosions, but instead, we get a screen with the wholesome charm of a spreadsheet application. One might be excused for thinking that this is a text adventure.

Instead of just complaining about the lack of a title/loading image, I decided to create one myself, just for the fun of it:

And fun was had, even though it took me way too long to finish the thing.

Ecstatic Code

Published on Magic Disk 64 01/90

Aside from games and utilities, Magic Disk 64 occasionally featured demoscene productions on the disk. Ecstatic Code by Cosmos Designs was the very first demo I ever got to see, and it introduced me to the whole concept of non-interactive, audiovisual real-time presentations.

Magic Disk 64 02/90

Cover
Up until now, each cover I've looked at illustrated one of the games found on that issue's disk. Not in this case, though, as what we have here is an exciting glimpse into the future. At least, it was at the time when this issue came out.

As far as I can tell, this cover is a loose interpretation of Anti, a game that would appear one month later on Game On 03/90: In Anti you are indeed flying around in a (VTOL) jet. However, you are not attacking a military base, but instead defending a nuclear power plant from incoming missiles.

Perhaps there were plans to publish Anti on this issue, but then the game had to be postponed for one reason or another. Admittedly, this is pure speculation on my part. Maybe they were just in dire need to put something exciting on the cover because the games listed on it were pretty much the antithesis of excitement.

The artwork is of the magazine's usual quality. It has some nice color gradients, but everything looks a bit lopsided, thanks to various perspective errors. The jet's exhausts, for example, are so deformed, they seem to be melting from the sheer heat that's coming out of them. The jet also appears to be shooting a laser beam at an awkward angle that caused some structure in the background to catch fire. It could also be a very distinct heat trail of a missile that already hit its mark.

Starting with this issue, the cover lines do not have solid colored backgrounds anymore, which makes some of them a bit hard to read, but allows for the picture to be more visible.

Helden

Published on Magic Disk 64 03/90

Helden is a flick-screen action maze game. The name is German for "heroes", which refers to the game's protagonist who wants to perform a deed worthy of several songs written in remembrance. I'm not sure why the title is plural, but I like to believe that it is a sarcastic commentary on the sheer number of lives you'll lose while trying to get anywhere in this game.

Keyfinders

Published on Magic Disk 64 03/90

It's time to journey underground into a vast maze filled with valuables, creatures, and numbered keys. This is Keyfinders, an action adventure game inspired by Hero of the Golden Talisman (Mastertronic, 1985).

In the diskmag article, the game is interchangeably referred to as KEY-FINDERS, KEYFINDERS, and KEY FINDERS, which is quite the achievement for a text that's only six paragraphs long. In Italy, the game was released under the name Nebraska Joe, which is kind of ridiculous but thankfully didn't allow for as many alternative ways to write it. I decided to go with the name Keyfinders, as that's how it was written on the magazine cover.

Proudly sponsored by the color green!

The completely silent title screen is rather unassuming, but curiously allows the player to customize its look. There are options for changing the direction and speed of the scrolling background. As to why this feature exists, I really cannot say. It's probably just in there for the hell of it.

Shift

Published on Magic Disk 64 02/90

Shift is a puzzle game in the vein of Sokoban with lots of additional elements that mix up the age-old formula of pushing boxes around. I remember being quite enamored with this title, though at the time I had not been familiar with Sokoban or any of its numerous clones. Let's see how well it holds up today:

You PROULY should have proofread this screen before calling it done...

Shift starts with this rather plain title screen which uses nothing but the C64's standard character set (commonly known as PETSCII, Commodore's version of the ASCII standard). There is nothing special going on here, except for the fact that the company logo is about seven times bigger than the game's actual name. Talk about getting your priorities straight.

What the title screen lacks in graphical fidelity, it makes up with its energetic music that achieves the remarkable feat of using a polka beat without sounding overly cheesy.

Magic Disk 64 01/90

Cover
Meet Maze-Man, the C64's official* nineties mascot! He's the fastest dot gobbler around the electronic circuits! He's dexterous, he's clever, he's a pointy-eared troll with a toothy smile that puts your average ice hockey player to shame!

* by which I mean not official at all

Once again, the creator of the cover took some extensive artistic license. Neither the player sprite nor the maze looks anything like what is depicted here. I'm not complaining, though, because replicating the game's actual look would've resulted in something resembling a color vision test with an off-brand Pac-Man in the middle.

All in all, this cover image is not too bad. There are quite a few things wrong with Maze-Man's upper body proportions. I mean, try imagining him without the shirt. Actually, don't. I'm sorry I even suggested that.

I like how his spiky hair and ears line up with the mountain backdrop. Whether this alignment is on purpose or not, to me it conveys that he is a part of this world. While faces aren't the artist's strength (as you'll eventually see when I get to issue 03/90), this one's done well enough to bring the guy's opinion of the maze behind him across.

Geninus!

Published on Magic Disk 64 01/90

Since we're still in the middle of Edutainment Month, here's a look at another utility that could be interpreted as educational: Geninus! is a tool to create sine curves for sprite animation. I guess the name is a portmanteau of generator and Sinus (German for sine), since it is, in fact, a sine generator. I would've called it Sinerator instead, to keep the words in the right order, but Geninus! is a fine name as well, especially with the added exclamation point.

This isn't a very complex program, but I still wanted to put it in an article, mainly because of its presentation and how, back in 1990, it introduced me to sine curves in a very practical way.

Intro & Demo-Designer

Published on Magic Disk 64 01/90

April is Edutainment Month, and I'm using it as an excuse to waffle about something else than a game. Intro & Demo-Designer is a creation utility for intros and demos. Admittedly, that stretches the definition of edutainment a bit, but I expect to be more entertained (and possibly educated) by this program than the more recent games I had to endure on this blog.

Don't judge the program by its very plain welcome text. This tool packs quite the punch, and it allowed twelve-year-old me to spruce up several of my rather rudimentary BASIC games.

Decton

Published on Magic Disk 64 01/90

Decton is a gravity-based action game similar to Muse Software's Space Taxi from 1984. Instead of passengers, you have to fetch nondescript cargo from several platforms placed across the level and transport it to the starting point. Expect to swear a lot when playing this one.

That is one colorful title logo, I have to say. So colorful in fact, it uses all of the C64's available colors, except for one. Sorry, Violet, this party's just not for you.

TX - The Game

Published on Magic Disk 64 01/90

It's TX - The Game, not to be confused with TX - The Musical or TX - The US State. It's a fixed vertical shooter for one player. It's also one hell of a mess.

It's got a sweet mountain backdrop, though.

Maze-Man

Published on Magic Disk 64 01/90

Maze-Man is a game about a yellow ball that eats a lot of dots while differently colored enemies are chasing it. If the yellow ball gobbles up all the dots, the next level starts. If one of the baddies touches the yellow ball, it loses one of its three lives and has to start the level anew. I can't shake the notion that this concept sounds vaguely familiar...

Yeah, it's Pac-Man. Even the font used for the title is as subtle as a sledgehammer.

Merry Christmas!

Published on Magic Disk 64 12/89

Merry Christmas! is an electronic holiday greeting card that is mildly interactive. As a kid I thought it was quite neat, and I sort of made a tradition out of starting it up every Christmas and showing it to my parents and grandparents, much to the latter's bewilderment.

I'm writing this article in February, so I'm either two months late or ten months early.

Electra

Published on Magic Disk 64 12/89

Electra is a horizontal-scrolling shooter very much in the vein of Uridium.

The game starts with this rather gray title screen which doesn't exactly incite excitement. There is no animation or music, just a static, suppressive silence which is expectantly waiting for you to press a function key. The most remarkable thing here is probably the fact that five different fonts made it into one screen.

No Mercy (Preview)

Published on Magic Disk 64 12/89

No Mercy is an Operation Wolf clone whose most defining trait is how much of an Operation Wolf clone it is. To its credit, it's a very competent clone, in some points even better than Operation Wolf's C64 port. I never saw the full version of the game (released on Golden Disk 64 07/90) at any kiosks, so I only ever got to play the preview version which consisted of one level.

Operation Wolf was an arcade game released by Taito in 1987. It's a side-scrolling shooting gallery that uses a mounted gun as an optical controller. You point and shoot at stuff on the screen and throw the occasional grenade. Getting shot or shooting friendly targets, such as civilians or nurses, increases your injury meter. If the meter is full, you're dead. Your ammunition is limited, but you can restock it (in classic video game logic) by shooting ammo containers and animals.

The game was ported to several consoles and home computer platforms by Ocean. The C64 conversion was quite decent and one of the few games that supported the use of a mouse.

Anyway, on to No Mercy (Preview). The game doesn't bother to hide its inspiration at all. Just compare Operation Wolf's cover art to No Mercy's intro screen:

Totally not Dolph Lundgren from Red Scorpion

Spot the non-difference!