Here’s what’s in FREEZE64 issue 31:
RELEASED: October 2019
COVER FEATURE: ZYBEX BY ZEPPELIN GAMES
As C64 shoot-em-ups go, Zybex is right up there with the best of them, which is quite an achievement considering it was Zeppelin Games’ first Commodore 64 budget release. Created by Kevin Franklin, Michael Owens and Adam Gilmore, Zybex was everything that Side Arms wasn’t, and so much more – all for the measly sum of £2.99. But how was it possible that a budget title such as Zybex was able to deliver so much more than a full-priced effort that just didn’t cut the mustard? The truth was, we didn’t care; we had an amazing side-scrolling arcade shooter that hardly made a dent in our pocket money / pay packet. And so we celebrate this fab game and pass it through the Vinny-O-Matic to reveal a few cheats and features.
OUT OF THE ‘MOULDY CUPBOARD’: MAGGOTMANIA
This time round we pull out Maggotmania from Commodore Business Machines (UK) Ltd, which, to my amazement, was programmed by one of my all-time favourite Commodore 64 programmers, Jason Perkins – yes, him who programmed Monty on the Run, Frak!, Avenger, and Thing on a Spring… to name but a few. But is this early Perkins’ effort any good and worth salvaging from the Mouldy Cupboard?
DIARY OF A GAME – THE MAKING OF BADLANDS
Another exciting instalment of the making of Badlands, which is a series of exclusive diary entries by programmer Steve Collins written back in 1989. Steve reveals how he battled with game elements such as ‘sparks’ and ‘helicopters’. A cacking and popular feature.
BITS ‘N’ BYTES
Hearing the name ‘Brick’s Revenge’ instantly conjures up a possible Arkanoid clone – and
you’ll almost be correct. But as we recently found out, Stuart Garnham of Amazingly Awful Games [don’t let the name fool you] is coding something that has a few more tricks up its sleeve… We take a look at Brick’s Revenge, which is currently in the making.
JULIAN RIGNALL’S ZZAPBACK!
Our Julian is back with his instalment of ZZAPBACK, a regular monthly column in which he takes a trip back in time to look at the top games reviewed in an old edition of the classic Commodore magazine, ZZAP! 64. This time round he’s going back to 1986 and delving into issue 12— the April edition of the magazine.
SECRET SQUIRREL INVESTIGATES
Our interpid Secret Squirrel is back with another bunch of case files for Nutcraka and Thing on a Spring that need sorting.
CODER’S CORNER: KEVIN FRANKLIN
Finding past Commodore 64 programmers for this feature is always the toughest part to creating FREEZE64, and our next interviewee is no exception; he was difficult to find…
But with the help of past interviewee, Mick Hedley, who was able to link me up with Kevin Franklin, it was only a matter of time before an interview was secured, and the story of another great C64 programmer is shared via the pages of my humble, little fanzine.
LEVEL SKIP IN SOFTWARE PROJECTS
I recently took some time out from writing and producing FREEZE64 to go back to my roots of hacking Commodore 64 games – which ended up as FREEZE64 work anyway! One of my aims was to focus on early Software Projects games on the Commodore 64, which go as far back as 1983. I wanted to create level skips for Crazy Balloon, Dinky Doo, Nutcraka, and Galactic Gardener so that I could *finally* get to see all the levels within each one. But I wanted to do it in a way that enabled me to create a list of POKES that would code in the C= key to activate a level skip, which I managed to do and reveal in this feature.
LUCIA PLAYING #FTFT: MAD NURSE
My daughter Lucia has always been in to computer and video games, and so I tasked her to play a Commodore 64 game of her choosing For The First Time #FTFT. This time round she chose Simon Picks’ Mad Nurse published by Firebird Software. What does a millennial teenager make of this classic budget title from Firebird Software? We’ll find out!
THANK YOU FOR THE MUSIC… ADAM GILMORE
If you’re a fan of our cover feature game, then you’ll know that Zybex houses some cracking SID tunes by the great Adam Gilmore. But Zybex isn’t the only C64 game that Adam produced music for; he has a whole back-catalogue of SID tunes for us all to salivate over, and so we thought it was time to catch up with the man himself and chat about his time producing epic tunes and ditties for our beloved breadbin.
NEW & EXCLUSIVE POKES ‘N’ CODES
As always, I’ve spent some time trawling through the code to new Commodore 64 releases to hunt down some exclusive POKES ‘n’ CODES for you all to play with. This time round I have some exclusives for Endless Forms, Chaos Generator, and Chopper Command.
MY C64 HEAVEN WITH STEPHAN EICKMANN
We take a trip over to Sarmenstorf, Switzerland to check out Stephan Eickmann’s mancave and his cool collection of Commodore 64 gear.
