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Commodore 64 Longplay [016] Retrograde (EU)
157http://www.longplays.org
Played by: MadMatty
Retrograde developed by Apex Computer Productions (ACP) & Transmission Software. Released by Thalamus on the Commodore 64 in 1989. The first game by the Rowland Brothers which will set a new bar for high quality games on the ole C64 making Thalamus standout yet again as a premier publisher for the platform.
“The Retrograde: a vicious and lethal bounty hunter out to loot a hostile system’s treasure of diamond crystals even if he has to blow the place apart! Level upon level of horizontal and vertical scrolling mayhem, over and under ground. Be Retrograde, the stalking, flying death dealer!”
This is the largest game by Thalamus at this point and there is a fair bit to do. Its also the longest game to complete and I had to make some concessions making the video to stop it from getting to long. Initially I wanted to show every weapon but it came apparent quite quickly that it wasn’t going to work as the later weapons are very expensive and it takes time to farm required crystals as well as every weapon having multiple levels. It doesn’t help that each higher tier weapon is far weaker than the previous weapon until you level it up a few times. You have a number of mount points on your suit to fill and each weapon requires a different amount of points. To reach Retrograde you need to max out your weapon level (Turns red). I think the game could be comfortably beaten if just using the first two weapons maxed out. In the end I keep a weapon loadout that works until the final level where I get the laser weapon. Very expensive but awesome. It can be upgraded 10 times but the kicker is it doesn’t get more powerful!
The gameplay revolves around you killing enemies which drop crystals(credits). You use credits at the shop on each planet to buy/sell your weapons (the sale price is woeful), upgrade weapons as well as your power fist. I upgrade the power fist once each level as its quite important. The enemies on the bottom of the screen protect a bomb which you need to find collect from them. Once you have it you need more credits to prime the bomb which opens a door to the planet core. You then need to go to the core, defeat the enemies there and boom! This is required 2 or 3 times depending on the planet. Once you have got through the caverns you face off with the planets boss. Each boss has to be handled differently so make sure to have the correct weapon loadout because there is no going back. A good horizontal and diagonal weapon is all you really need, but you may have to find a pixel perfect spot to fire from a vertical shot will make it much easier for one or two of the bosses.
All the way through you have an energy bar. Shields can appear at random which will fill your energy bar and is a massive help as you don’t lose a life when that bar runs out. Lives are also collected when reaching score milestones and also refill your energy bar when collected which is …awesome! This is great until you hit the final level. There are no shield drops and the enemies are their to drain you as fast as possible. I work hard to collect enough points for the final weapon upgrade as well as keeping a much earlier one just to show power differences on the main boss. The laser looks real nice but doesn’t change even when reaching retrograde.
A fantastic game raising the bar yet again. I show the loader for both disk and tape as they are interesting in their own way. The tape version has loading music which I show here just for level 1. I didn’t play the tape version much as I had the disk version as well from the Hits 2 compilation. This is the first time I have seen the game ending as on my original disk the ending would not load, just a blank screen… I didn’t play it much after reaching that a couple of times. Rage!!!!
00:00:00 Disk Intro
00:00:50 Tape Loader
00:06:40 Title Screen music
00:11:08 Level 1
00:23:15 Level 2
00:38:12 Level 3
00:50:00 Level 4
01:08:20 Level 5
01:37:35 Level 6
01:54:08 Level 7 -
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