Game:

Captain Dynamo (1992)

Duration: 10:40

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10

Hey look, it's another old CodeMasters computer game with a "superhero" who's completely defenseless!

On all other computers, Captain Dynamo was a pretty leisurely platformer, with a Bomb Jack sort of feel: Choose between two different jump heights, bop the baddies from above, duck the dangers, search for secret bonus rooms, look before you leap; no sweat. But for some reason, CodeMasters decided to give Commodore 64 users a version of Captain Dynamo with a completely different, completely sadistic level layout. Well, perhaps not completely different--parts of Cavern 1 are based on the ZX Spectrum version's Cavern 6, which tells you something about the difficulty right there. There are all-new tricks, traps, and hazards, arranged so that you have only the barest margin of error to clear them, and often you will have to memorize bizarre maneuvers for certain situations, pull off several of them in a row, and keep track of everything that is going on, including things just off-screen, in order to avoid getting killed. Unless I'm missing something, this Dynamo can't duck, can't kill anything, and can't change direction while jumping, only while falling. And there are no mid-level checkpoints in this version; if you touch anything, it's back to the beginning of the level for you. You start with 9 lives, but it seems like a rather minor aid when you can lose them so easily. (But why does the loading screen say 5 lives?)

Therefore, I did use savestates a bit to make this, to spare the boredom of watching levels get repeated, as my luck usually runs out after a couple of levels, and I didn't want to sink as much time into this game as I did for Linus Spacehead. I mainly only used savestates at level boundaries, though, in the hopes that you see about how much caution I typically employ.

The conveyor belts can be annoying, as not only does running against them only keep you in place so you're forced to jump across, but if you only snag the last edge pixel, you can no longer jump for some reason and are forced to fall off and try again. Something to remember about the bumpers is that they tend to bounce you away from the direction you're holding.

If you're wondering why Dynamo never jumps on those barbed floors, it's because they're supposed to be magnetic, so they make him walk more slowly and prohibit him from jumping at all while he stands on them. If you can, try to jump onto them from the last bit of normal floor to get a head start.

My final take of Cavern 2 went a little different from the usual. I meant to ride that pickaxe all the way over the spider, but I must have slipped my finger off the button, and luckily the platform appeared to catch Dynamo in time. Actually, it might be safer to just fall down with good timing and cross back over the start point rather than messing around with the spider.

After crossing the next magnetic floor, you want to be very careful not to miss the next pickaxe and land between the spider and the spring, because then you can't jump back to anywhere and have no choice but to walk into the spider. Also, I don't know if I ended up showing this off anywhere in my final video, but if you hold the jump button while landing on a spring, you won't get bounced high, but will instead keep jumping at regular height until you let go and hit the spring again. This is important to do at the end of that large open area because you won't know at first whether the electric beam and cutter fan are out of your way yet, but I got lucky this time.

Toward the end of Cavern 2 is a cool little puzzle. The floating pickaxe between the side crushers isn't spawned until you jump between them. But if you jump at the wrong time, they will be synched so that you can never ride the axe without getting crushed. You'll want to let the plungers collide, then wait a couple of seconds, then jump, and then the axe should be timed right to give you a lift.

Cavern 3 is where the game really starts to get unfair. Really! The giant evil Kirbies are another enemy with random waiting periods, and then they randomly decide to either roll toward your horizontal position, or just roll in place for the same length of time. You need to use these facts to find a way to pass safely, and to make it worse, the game starts adding passages exactly as wide as Dynamo himself, so you will have to be lined up with them perfectly to be able to jump through. The jumping Kirbies aren't so bad once you find safe places to stand under them, except perhaps when you're forced to bounce up to where they spawn on the right.

At the very top were 4 diamonds I didn't grab, as I tried grabbing them on previous plays, but no matter how I jumped, Dynamo would not slip through. So either there's some trick to it I don't know, or the level designer messed up. The 2 diamonds on the far right of that area may not be worth collecting, as there's a good chance the evil Kirby will dash over soon enough to trap you.

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