Commodore 64 Book - available now

frak · Post by **frak** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:08 pm 0

64-Book order placed as my copy of the excellent Speccy book is looking quite lonely.
Here's hoping it's a great success for you Andrew

(Another shout for an Amiga games bible here. Well, you've gotta have the trilogy

)

andrew_rollings · Post by **andrew_rollings** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 2:01 am 0

frak wrote:64-Book order placed as my copy of the excellent Speccy book is looking quite lonely.
Here's hoping it's a great success for you Andrew

(Another shout for an Amiga games bible here. Well, you've gotta have the trilogy )

Thank ye kindly...

I'd love to do an Amiga book, and that was the computer I graduated to after I had the Speccy (with a brief stint on the ST)...

Oddly, the only thing I missed about the ST (apart from Oids) were the Minter games that didn't get converted.

Photon Storm was one of my most played Amiga games...

Seriously though, I've considered doing a NES/SNES/(N64?) book, and a Sega Master System/Megadrive book too.

Trouble is, my wife will be a little upset if I spend so much time on this type of book, when they really don't make much in the way of profit (because they're full colour, low volume and an odd shape - makes the printing really expensive, but there's no way to do it justice otherwise).

Andrew

juice · Post by **juice** » Fri Aug 24, 2007 12:06 pm 0

Well... my Spectrum book arrived a bit ago, and I have to say: it truely is a work of love. Excellent stuff - many thanks!

Mind you, I'm not impressed with the derision heaped onto Zoids. I loved that game

This may partly be because I'm obsessed with robots, but it's also because the game had some intriguing concepts - not least the idea that you weren't directly in control of the zoid - combined with a relatively advanced multi-window multi-tasking (or a good simulation thereof).

Admittedly, it was also buggy as hell, incredibly prone to crashing (at least in emulators - I don't remember it being that bad on the real hardware!) and if you were spotted by more than one baddie, you'd be shooting down missiles until the heat death of the universe. Oh, and when I did manage to get Zoidzilla up and running, could I find the Red Zoid leader? Nopes.

Rants about (possibly misplaced) game obsessions aside: top marks! Looking forward to the C64 one...

andrew_rollings · Post by **andrew_rollings** » Sat Aug 25, 2007 6:37 am 0

juice wrote:Well... my Spectrum book arrived a bit ago, and I have to say: it truely is a work of love. Excellent stuff - many thanks!

Mind you, I'm not impressed with the derision heaped onto Zoids. I loved that game

Don't get me wrong... I loved the Zoids toys... That's why I was so friggin' disappointed with the exceedingly crappy game

I'm glad you enjoyed the book

I put a lot of effort into it... It was worth it as well as they're nearly all gone too...

I hope the C64 book does as well!

Andrew

merman · Post by **merman** » Sat Aug 25, 2007 4:36 pm 0

Zoids... didn't play it until many years later, on a ZZAP covertape. Without the full instructions it was pretty difficult. When I managed to pick up a secondhand copy, things became a little clearer.

It's almost... IMPRESSIONIST in the way it plays. That pink blob is a giant robot, now set the missile range on this meter without numbers and fire it at that giant diamond shape... Tricky but rewarding if you can get into it, and a great Hubbard soundtrack.

andrew_rollings · Post by **andrew_rollings** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 2:52 pm 0

merman wrote:Zoids... didn't play it until many years later, on a ZZAP covertape. Without the full instructions it was pretty difficult. When I managed to pick up a secondhand copy, things became a little clearer.

It's almost... IMPRESSIONIST in the way it plays. That pink blob is a giant robot, now set the missile range on this meter without numbers and fire it at that giant diamond shape... Tricky but rewarding if you can get into it, and a great Hubbard soundtrack.

It was all dark blue on the Spectrum... DARK BLUE????? Of all the stupid colours to pick! DARK BLUE!!!???

(Don't laugh Merman, at least it wasn't pink

)

Andrew

juice · Post by **juice** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 6:01 pm 0

merman wrote:Zoids... didn't play it until many years later, on a ZZAP covertape. Without the full instructions it was pretty difficult. When I managed to pick up a secondhand copy, things became a little clearer.

It's almost... IMPRESSIONIST in the way it plays. That pink blob is a giant robot, now set the missile range on this meter without numbers and fire it at that giant diamond shape... Tricky but rewarding if you can get into it, and a great Hubbard soundtrack.

That's the C64 version, which is significantly different to the Spectrum one, and with a lot more hands-on action. I've tried it a couple of times, but never really gotten into it.

On the Spectrum, you didn't have to control the missile power: just launch it and jink between mountains. Nice wireframe effect and a little mushroom cloud animation when it hits (or misses).

Zoids on the Speccy was very much a stealth game. You had to:
a) knock down the base shields (airstrike on the power station)
b) nuke the base
c) find a gap in the Zoid pattern and sneak onto the ruined base
d) scan for bits (new zoid, missiles, power)
e) leg it back out of scanner range

Oh, and...

f) shoot like mad when spotted and blitzed with missiles

The relatively slow response of the Zoid meant that you had to be very careful, as each enemy Zoid that spotted you would launch about 30 missiles - and they tended to run in groups, so being spotted by one means being spotted by several. Then too, each missile ate 10% of your health (in the Spiderzoid at least), so it was very important not to miss! It didn't help that the UI could sometimes miss keypresses, and movement was based on seemingly overlapping tiles, so that you could quite easily stall mid-search or bounce into scanner range by moving a pixel and jumping a tile.

(And as previously mentioned, I'm unconvinced that the Speccy version has any bad guys at all wandering between the cities. I finally managed to get Zoidzilla rebuilt - thanks to emulator snapshots - but could I find Redhorn? Could I smeg. You do occasionally get targeted by a long range strike from Snakeazoid, but that's about it)

I dunno. Play it as a stealth game, and it's quite cool - ironically, I've never liked any other stealth games (MGS, Splinter Cell, etc). Still, anything's cooler when giant robots are involved

merman · Post by **merman** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 11:11 am 0

Interesting, I'd not played the Spectrum version.

Anyway, here is a mock-up of the cover in all its glory:

merman · Post by **merman** » Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:12 am 0

For all you Llamasoft fans, I can now reveal... Jeff Minter has written the foreword to the book! Thanks Yak!

Phineasfool · Post by **Phineasfool** » Sat Sep 22, 2007 1:17 pm 0

The book looks great. Just wish I had the extra money to preorder a copy right now.

fog · Post by **fog** » Sat Sep 22, 2007 9:46 pm 0

merman wrote:For all you Llamasoft fans, I can now reveal... Jeff Minter has written the foreword to the book! Thanks Yak!

Superb.

Do we have an ETA yet?

Post by **Muttley** » Sat Sep 22, 2007 10:34 pm 0

Pre-Ordered.

merman · Post by **merman** » Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:59 pm 0

fog wrote:
merman wrote:For all you Llamasoft fans, I can now reveal... Jeff Minter has written the foreword to the book! Thanks Yak!
Superb. Do we have an ETA yet?

Fingers crossed, it will be out in time for Christmas.

fog · Post by **fog** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 7:00 pm 0

merman wrote:
fog wrote:
merman wrote:For all you Llamasoft fans, I can now reveal... Jeff Minter has written the foreword to the book! Thanks Yak!
Superb. Do we have an ETA yet?
Fingers crossed, it will be out in time for Christmas.

Cheers. Something to look forward to at Christmas that isn't aftershave or socks

merman · Post by **merman** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 9:46 pm 0

Well, we're now going through the final stages of proofreading. We decided that rather than hurrying to meet the (self-imposed) deadline of Christmas, it would be better to make sure it's 100% finished and accurate.

So, we're going to the printers on December the 1st, with the books due to be sent out in late January.

Pre-order now at http://c64goldenyears.com

And don't forget, Yak has written the foreword...