Game:

Aztec Challenge (1982)

Duration: 3:44:26

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In a special extra-length stream I play a game at my dear friend Gibbon's request on the occasion of her birthday. This time it's a childhood favourite of hers, Aztec Challenge. This autoscrolling platform game became an ambitious multi-genre thrill ride on Commodore 64, which is well remembered and has been remade by various creators since. I take a look at a lot of different versions in this stream, in this order:

-The 1982 Atari 8-bit version by Robert T. Bonifacio. This is an auto-runner with very simple graphics which I didn't spend much time on.

-The 1983 Atari 8-bit rerelease has similar gameplay but much improved presentation. I got through the first phase before moving on.

-The 1983 Commodore 64 version by Paul Norman. The 7 levels each have unique gameplay with varying levels of difficulty. The novelty this affords the game is its key selling point, and I had a good time clearing one loop (the levels have night-time variants if you clear enough loops but I didn't get that far).

-The 2003 Flash-based remake of the C64 game by its creator Paul Norman (retitled Azteca: Queen of Quetzalcoatl) is sadly lost to time, so I wasn't able to play it but I chatted a bit about its direction and showed the pre-game splash page. A warning, the screenshots featured in this section are quite small but do depict some violence and nudity. If you have a Flash-capable browser you can view the splash page and intro cinematic at the game's archived site: https://web.archive.org/web/20110226064651/http://aztecaqueen.com/

-The 2005 unofficial PC remake by Smila. A blend of 2D and 3D assets give this a nice low-budget feel, but the gauntlet phase is much harder than the original! It also does not checkpoint between phases, so I was only able to get about halfway before having to give up. Get it here: https://archive.org/details/Aztec_Challenge

-The 2006 demake for Atari 2600 by Simon Quernhorst (retitled AVCStec Challenge). This homebrew was available for sale on physical cartridge only, but it is out of stock so I just got it from a ROM site. It's a decent recreation of the first C64 stage only, but with several variations. Nice music too.

-The 2022 demake also for C64, but made in Basic and without discrete graphics by Steveboy. A fascinating experiment in recreating the C64 version but in a more limited way. Those limitations did hamper the gameplay but it's impressive nonetheless. Plus it had essentially cheat options so it was quick to get through. Get it here: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=214702

-After this I made a perhaps misguided revisit to the 1983 Atari 8-bit version to see more of the game. Spurred on by Gibbon discovering more about this version and its ports to other systems (and referring to this excellent comparison article http://frgcb.blogspot.com/2014/01/twofer-4-aztec-challenge-cosmi-19821983.html ) I played through about half the game with copious savestate abuse before realising that you could do a high and low jump. This blew my tiny fragile mind, things get a bit raw in this segment! I did eventually manage to clear a whole loop of this version to see all the different levels on offer.

Meanwhile there's some chat about Aztec culture, the heroine character, and other stuff. I also referred a few times to this interview conducted with Paul Norman, creator of the C64 version: http://www.c64.com/interviews/norman.html


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