It’s not often I play the C64 version of a game I liked on the Spectrum (and in this case, the Game Boy too) and think, you know, this is actually better. But it is. The animation of your main frog/gonk guy especially is really nice, and the vertical scrolling is less jerky. it’s great.

And hard. Very hard. Previously, I don’t think I’d ever even passed level 2, so I’d not experienced how much of a mind-stewing maze the later levels are. It looks like a platformer, but actually, it’s a maze game in 3D with things to shoot to trigger lifts and stuff. It’s then you realise that the time limit is the thing most likely to kill you too.

The screenshot, by the way, is from the Evercade site because, again, there’s no screenshot function on the Evercade. Tch.

This week, the next two Evercade cartridges arrived. Cybernoid is on the new C64 cart, and I was a big fan of the original (albeit on the Spectrum) so it’s the first thing I started up. Thankfully, the Commodore version is very similar to the Spectrum one, although with more muted colours and a different ship design.

It’s still a pretty good game, although it’s very easy to die due to the random nature of some of the spawns. For example, baddies spawn at the edge of the screen – the same edge you need to exit by – and so frequently they’ll appear in the same spot you occupy, killing you. The random bullet frequency from some turrets can mean timing nipping between them is based on luck rather than judgment too.

Another spanner in the works is special attacks. You’re given a number of things like mines, bouncy bombs and so on, some of which are required to hit destructible blocks above or below you as your cannon only shoots horizontally. But you only have a limited number of uses of each, meaning you can end up in a room with no way to progress, no way to return, and no enemies to shoot (as killing them sometimes drops refills). Very frustrating, and means that you end up never using any special attacks except for in the situations where you can’t otherwise progress.

And it is very hard.

Other than all those things though, I very much enjoyed playing it again after all this time. It’s one of those games that just loops infinitely, so after about 4 loops through the game I’m claiming “done”.