This issue of the simply superb Commodore Format, on sale this day 32 years ago, was my fourth at the time and the first I bought after finally receiving my Commodore 64 computer for Christmas. (You can check out a more personal look at CF in my retrospective on #14.) This was a memorable issue for sure, with certain game reviews leading me to some lifelong favourites which I’d countless hours of fun with, as well as having a super addictive covertape game. However, I’m including it on the blog for none of these reasons.
Instead, CF makes its fourth appearance on the OiNK Blog because of a review inside for a game I didn’t purchase. It may have been based on a favourite TV show but there was only so much pocket money I could splash out on my C64 and it had very stiff competition this month. Now, decades later it’s time to take a closer look at that review because the game is based on a series dear to the hearts of pig pals everywhere, namely Round the Bend.
‘One-player’, ‘Joystick control’, ‘High score table’ and ‘difficulty levels’
Originally intended to be an OiNK television show (much more on that at a later date) Round the Bend was an electronic comic show created by the same trio of Patrick Gallagher, Tony Husband and Mark Rodgers. With the huge Spitting Image Workshop puppet of Doc Croc as its editor and various animated comic strips with a certain sense of humour, it was OiNK in all but name. Running very successfully for three series, and winning awards as it did so, it was inevitable we’d see a computer game at some point.
Taking the tired old formula of turning a licence into a platform game, the general consensus appears to be that it plays well but was far too easy. So it was fun but not for long enough to justify the full price. As was customary at the time this would be rereleased a year or so later as a budget game for a few quid, but at a tenner or more it got knocked down for its value for money. It seems to concentrate completely on Doc Croc and his ratty writers too, which seems a waste as the show was chock full of zany characters who could’ve brought many different forms of gameplay. At least John Potato Peel makes a cameo!
Like the OiNK game before it there was nothing too original then, but what was there was fun. A quick glance at a “64%” score and it’d be easy to dismiss it, but reading Stuart Campbell’s review has me thinking it may have got a higher score upon rerelease. I can find no evidence of a further CF review, however Zzap!64 scored it 52% initially but this jumped to 74% after its price drop. Nothing to write home about then, but an interesting look into a curious OiNK-adjacent piece of merchandise nonetheless.
As is customary when looking at these old magazines I can’t help but reminisce and have pulled out some other highlights that had me fondly remembering reading this for the first time. First up is one of the games on the covertape. According to some sources online this was a copyrighted piece of software hacked and distributed illegally through the public domain, CF unknowingly giving away commercial software. But as you can see here in the first paragraph of the instructions page that’s incorrect; a piece of misinformation that gained traction in C64 circles despite the explanation of a hacker’s name on it being front and centre here.
The idea is a simple one but it is oh so addictive. You control that little silver circle and must destroy all the tiles on the screen and make your way to the exit. Thing is, the tiles explode one second after you touch them, so forward planning is essential. You must plot out your route over increasingly complex layouts because once you’re moving you can’t stop or else you’ll explode too. It’s just as addictive today as it ever was and is best played on a real machine with a joystick. One of my top C64 games of all time and it was a freebie!
Speaking of favourites.
and, brilliantly, the paws mean ‘Pause Function’
In the Commodore Format retrospective I showed you the preview for First Samurai and the Making Of feature for Creatures II: Torture Trouble (and I also embellished on the magazine’s scoring system), both games impressing me from my first issue. Now at last both were available to buy! They blew away anything I was playing on friends’ consoles at the time and each had me glued to the screen for hours. For a computer created long before Nintendo even released their first console, these were pretty incredible.
The little egg character was a megastar in the 8-bit computer days
They both played like a dream too. As I’ve said before, Creatures II remains in my top five computer and video games of all time to this day. I remember buying it on cassette to begin with, but the mutliload (where each level has to load individually for a few minutes) was destroying the flow, so when my parent’s bought me my disk drive a few months later I used my pocket money again to buy it on 5.25” floppy disk (loading was so much faster) and never looked back! Two glorious games. No wonder Round the Bend never got a look in.
Also this month was the concluding part (obviously, the game was finished) of The Clyde Guide by the geniuses that were John and Steve Rowland, creators of Creatures, who provided a fascinating look into the creation of the game. I loved things like this and when they returned later in the magazine’s life it was for a game called Mayhem in Monsterland which they documented from the very earliest design stages.
Elsewhere in the budget games section was a game with a title that rather stood out. It was a difficult one I remember. You had to avoid all the buildings and enemy craft (even UFOs) until you got a chance to crash into and destroy the enemy HQ and rescue the hostages! Dizzy also makes an appearance this issue. The little egg character was a megastar in the 8-bit computer days and despite simplistic graphics and controls his adventures proved extremely popular thanks to great gameplay and puzzles.
That feature about the user-created, free-to-distribute software that made up the public domain showed what this little machine could really do graphically. A few years later I even put together my own Public Domain Library (amongst others who did the same) to help distribute said software. Parallel Logic Public Domain (thanks to lifelong friend Colin McMaster for the name), or PLPD as it went by, was even listed in CF as the third best PD library in the whole of the UK! I was dead chuffed.
I’ve also pointed out before how the game adverts of the day often didn’t even show us what the thing looked like in action, instead relying on exciting artwork and descriptions. Given how the games would look completely different across the many formats they’d be released on I can understand why. No one wants to buy a game thinking it’s going to look one way and then realise those images were from a much more powerful computer. One such advert in this issue was for the conversion of the arcade hit, Smash TV (think ‘The Running Man: The Game’).
Smash TV was a corker of a game. Copying the controls of the arcade cabinet you could use two joysticks to control your character, one for their feet (their movement) and one for their gun (which direction they’re firing). Hand one joystick to a friend and the shouting and hollering as you try to work together, clearing rooms of enemies in this violent gameshow while trying to pick up brand new toasters etc. was hilarious. Even seeing this advert brings back all the feels.
Finally, a look to the future. Not the future of the 21st century though, instead let’s take a look at the future according to Commodore in 1992 and their CDTV. The 90s would be a hotbed for CD-ROM machines promising us a multimedia future. I personally invested in one of Panasonic’s 3DO machines (3DO was to be a new standard like VHS) and to this day I think it’s criminal it was never the success it deserved to be.
They were expected to revolutionise our world
Of course these days we’re used to our electronic devices doing pretty much everything, but at the beginning of the final decade of the last century it was the norm to have a dedicated machine for each piece of entertainment, like games, music, movies etc. While 3DO at least tried something new and the various machines looked cool, Commodore went with a rather boring rectangle, possibly thinking it wouldn’t alienate people too much if it looked like their current VCR or HiFi (I assume).
Needless to say it never took off. It was basically a Commodore Amiga with a CD drive and no keyboard; the fact you could buy a keyboard, mouse and even a floppy disk drive for the CDTV didn’t help distinguish it from the computer range either. For me it’s always fascinating to read contemporary magazines from around that time and the hype for The Next Big Thing, and how they were expected to revolutionise our world. It took a little longer but in the end we got there.
I’ve had great fun reading this magazine again and reliving the hype I felt at the time for the games inside it. Commodore Format remains my top mag even to this day and you can check out other issues on the blog if you like. Namely, the one that gave away the OiNK game on the cassette, another which printed maps for said game, and as mentioned above my first issue as well, which just so happened to be my first ever magazine too. It also contained that advertisement for Round the Bend. Great memories. Still a great read.
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