One of my favourite pieces of news to do write ups on are the reports from "Games That Weren't" ... A dedicated investigative news website which delves into the histories of C64 games. Especially ones which were either left unfinished, or mysteriously vanished at some point, usually between magazines' reviews, and actual release day. Last year saw some high profile Hi-Tec and Warner Bros games, not only found, but also restored and finished to a playable level, for everyone to enjoy. And on 12th Jan another exciting story surfaced, as they announced to have found a fully working and completable version of popular Amiga platformer Chuck Rock (Core Designs).
It seems that despite rave reviews from the likes of Zzap magazine (96% in 1992) , Core Designs were not happy with the final result on the C64 and decided to either pull the plug completely after press releases, marketing and reviews were out.. Or at least only make a limited run in Italy (where copies were found on Ebay many years later). The great news is, that a fully working double sided Tape version has been released for everyone to enjoy as well as cassette covers which you can print out and make yourself, courtesy of Paul Kitching: (download here).
So what's it like? Well I've not played the Amiga version before, so I'm not able to compare it, but I do remember there was lot of fuss over the game as it featured some rather nice large sprites for the player character as well as enemies. And this is all present in the C64 version... Controls are tight, collision detection is pretty good, and the "Chuck Rock" mechanics of picking up rocks and chucking them at the enemies to clear your path, and also reach higher platforms is great fun to pick up and play. I think the graphics are about as good as one could expect for such a game on an 8-bit machine: large colourful, and full of character. And gameplay is great too. This is a "new" must have addition to your C64 collection!
For Full Story and Downloads:
Games That Weren't
Posted by @hayes_maker
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