Zamzara - Commodore 64 - longplay & ALL ending
10Zamzara waspublished by Hewson, in its economical Rack-It line.
It was designed and programmed by the Finnish Jukka Tapanimäki (1961-2000), except for the music (by Maniacs of Noise) and the intro screen. At the time the author was known for previous Commodore 64 hits (Octapolis and Netherworld).
The development of Zamzara, however, was much more troubled. Tapanimäki initially planned it as a more complex game, with adventure elements, to be published by Hewson's main label. Twice he had to modify it because the publisher was not satisfied and wanted something simpler, ending up creating a low-cost shooter.
Player is an humanoid alien who must cross a futuristic complex divided into 27 horizontal scrolling screens (+ 2 extra ones with no way out, used to get secondary weapons and the missing gene, needed to obtain the good) within 15 minutes; if time runs out, regardless of remaining lives, it's game over (17:41).
You can run left and right and jump; when ou're in the air you can repeatedly give the jump command to make the character floating without ever falling to the ground (certain screens require this move). Standard weapon shoots short beams horizontally, while with other keys (F1, F3, F5, F7 and space) you can select various more powerful weapons, with limited ammunition.
The selected secondary weapon is fired by holding down the fire button for the short time needed to fill a charge bar, and then releasing it (except for long horizontal beams / rapid fire and missiles, triggered by the space bar).
Three types of multidirectional beams are available:
-Photon laser beams, that bounce off walls and have a longer range (but doesn't do much damage);
-Nuclear laser beams, that bounce off walls and have a shorter range (but does a lot of damage);
-Spreding copper mines, that allow us to protect ourselves from enemy fire (and still do a minimum damage to enemies that hit them them).
Enemies consist of several types of large still monstrous creatures launching projectiles, groups of smaller flying creatures, and mechanical firing stations. The bigger the enemy, the higher the score you earn when you defeat him.
When you run out of energy you lose a life and the screen restarts from the beginning.
Often you can collect icons to recharge your weapons and gene vials that increase your score by 100,000 points; if you collect 10 vials you get an extra life.
You need to collect 20 gene vials to get the good ending.
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Controls summary:
P = pause game
← = abort game
F1 - set rapid fire gun / 50 shots per collected icon
F3 - photon laser set / 25 shots
F5 - nuclear laser set / 10 shots
F7 - set net mine / 8 shots
Space - missile set / 1 shot
Joystick left / Joystick right = walk left/right
Joystick left forwards / Joystick forwards / press fire button = jump left/up/right
Joystick forwards = float upwards (pull forwards several times shortly after the other)
press fire button = fire weapon
To trigger a special weapon (F3, F5, F7) keep the fire button pressed until the loading bars (in the control panel) are full, then let go of the fire button.
As usual guess who made this perfect documentation? Well, minotaurus! thanks to him and also to wikipedia and c64 wiki!
This video is part of the videogame endings database, whose goal is to catalogue and create the world's largest archive of videogame endings! (what an humble and not ambitious project :D
#retrogaming