Atomic Robo-Kid Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]
40Developed and published by Activision in 1990.
Atomic Robo-Kid is an arcade game released in the late 1980's by UPL. It was ported to several home consoles/computers and this is the C64 version.
As for the story, here is what Wikipedia has to say:
"In the 21st century, a blast of cosmic radiation bombarded Terra-12, a deep-space outpost of Earth, hideously mutating all transplanted life. A fleet of savage beings followed the radiation wave and invaded the planet, and began the systematic destruction of all remaining sentient life. Years of battling the alien 'governors' have gone by, and now only one hope survives to avenge the desperate terran colonists."
What this boils down to is a scrolling shoot 'em up where you control a weird cybernetic robot who can move in an 8-way scrolling environment, collect power-ups and destroy aliens in a bid to destroy a boss at the end of each stage.
Enemies do not destroy you on contact, but they do slow you down and this leaves you vulnerable to being hit by projectiles (i.e. bullets, bombs) which CAN kill you. The main strategy involves killing enemies quickly because they do spawn quickly and in vast numbers; it's easy to get overrun and then picked off by a stray bullet.
There are several weapons to be collected, including lasers, 3-way projectiles and the all-important rocket bomb. This is the only weapon you need and should use since it is able of destroying enemy projectiles. In fact, it would be near-impossible to beat some of the boss monsters without it since they can fire a large number of homing missiles at you that only the cluster rocket can deal with. It's relatively easy to acquire the weapon, but if you die then you lose the weapon you had active and have to find it again.
Compared to the arcade and 16-bit console/computer versions the C64 version has been cut down; certain enemies are missing, such as the giant fan-blade with the giant eye that is so prominent on the game's cover.
The game suffers from slow-down due to the sheer number of sprites that appear on-screen during certain parts of the game. This might explain why the actual game runs in a much smaller display area that the machine's full 320 x 200 resolution so as to reduce the amount of playfield that the C64 has to address at any particular time.
The game does support simultaneous music and sound effects, although you have to manually enable the music in each section by pressing F1. It's also a shame that each stage is so short as the music by Martin Walker is really great.
The graphics are very nicely drawn and animated and the core essence of the game is there, so it gets a thumbs-up from me.
Enjoy!
#retrogaming