Advent Calendar - December 4th.

4th & Inches (Commodore 64)

Accolade went through a little spell in the Eighties where they brought us Britishers a real taste of Americana on the Commodore 64. I've already written about a couple of them... Law of the West and HardBall! I like to consider the games a trilogy, and the third is the game I've played today, 4th & Inches.


You just don't get names like that in English sport. Mack Truck? Fantastic.

I used to quite like American Football in the Eighties, courtesy of Channel 4's coverage. I didn't understand it (originally I didn't even know what this game's title meant!), but it almost felt like it was a game from another planet. Of course, any liking of American Football was knocked out of me by five years of living in Detroit... there has never been a suckier team than the Detroit Lions.

So the first time I loaded up 4th & Inches back then I was instantly taken with it. There were all these weird sounding plays and moves... Shotgun? Streak? No idea what they meant, but they seemed to work so I did them all the time. I really enjoyed the game, especially when playing against another human. It's a long, long time since I played 4th & Inches... I thought the time was right for a revisit.


See what I mean? I thought a Double Wing was something new at KFC.

The game is structured in a similar fashion to HardBall!. You've got a choice of two teams, which effectively comes down to your favourite colour between red and blue. Before you actually try and score any points, both sides have a choice of plays, chosen by the respective positions on the joystick. Your human opponent won't know what you've picked, adding an authentic air to proceedings. Once all the options have been run through, the action starts. The ball is snapped to your Quarterback, and you have to try and successfully run the play you've selected, or effectively stop your opponent if you're on defense.


Go on, son! GET IIIIIINNNNNNN!

I'm not going to run through the rules of American Football here... partly because it would be boring and partly because I don't know them myself. I'm not writing about American Football, anyway. 4th & Inches is an incredibly limited game by today's standards, but it was fun then and it's still fun for a game or two now, as long as you're not expecting any amount of depth from it. Because, depending on whether you've chosen to run or pass, the game becomes either a giant pile-on or a Benny Hill sketch, with the entire opposition team charging after your running back. In fact, it reminds me a little bit of Monty Python's Masters vs. Boys rugby match.


Inevitably, the tide has turned. That'll be that, then.

I was never that great at the game, and so it proved again whilst playing this... after a good start that saw me taking the lead, I never scored again and received a sound thrashing. I still enjoyed it though... the graphics have a charm all of their own, the incidental music from Ed Bogas (look him up... I had no idea back then that he'd done so much musically) that contributed so much to the atmosphere of all the classic Accolade games is still lovely today and there's quite a bit of tension as the clock ticks down and you're pressing for another score. 4th & Inches might not be a match for the Madden games of today, but back then it was all we had and it served us very well indeed.

Beyond the Forbidden Forest (Commodore 64)

Atmosphere.

It's a valuable commodity in games... and one that can make or break a game. Nowadays it's a bit easier to capture that all important atmosphere, with modern technology allowing programmers to add far more colour (literally and metaphorically) than ever before. But back in the days of the Commodore 64, it was far more difficult to get right. A few games managed it... Paradroid was one, for example, The Sentinel was another. One game that was dripping with atmosphere was Beyond the Forbidden Forest.


Jesus. Can we not just go down the park, instead?

Right from the start, where a title screen warped from the twisted branches of the forest appears, lit only by lightning flashes that crack the night sky, you're spooked. And it doesn't get any less creepy. The game is kind to you to begin with... because it uses an unusual aiming system for your bow, it won't throw any creatures at you until you press the F7 key. But roaming around an empty forest with the most sinister, evil-sounding music playing is not for the faint of heart, either. You're just as well off pressing that key and getting on with it.


Run awaaaay! Run awaaaaaaaaaay!

The trouble is, when you do, it's the stuff of nightmares. Giant scorpions rush from the undergrowth, pincers snapping. Huge worms burst from underground... you never know where they'll spring from next, and too many misses with your arrows will see you dragged under... Mosquitos bigger than eagles swoop down, and will suck you dry. And there's a big stompy thing, too. Stomp, stomp, STOMP! And when day turns to night... very worrying indeed.


Ugh. I hate worms. Where's Kevin Bacon when you need him?

As if to prove that you're not in this alone, and that the Gods may be on (or by) your side, for every creature you defeat, a golden arrow will be delivered in a musical fanfare from the heavens. They're not given to you as a reward, though, or because they look nice. You'll need enough of these, at least six, in order to gain access to the Underworld, where even greater evils await...


No, that's alright Kev, you just stay up on that roof. I'll be AAAAARRRGGHHHH!!!

If you've ever watched a film that Ray Harryhausen worked on, you'll see the appeal in Beyond the Forbidden Forest. A lone archer, trapped in an evil forest, attacked by giant creatures... resurrected by a mystical light if killed... it's the stuff Dynamation movies were made of. Jason and the Argonauts would have nothing on this. Well... OK. This would be a close second to Jason and the Argonauts. That's awesome.


Phew, here comes the helicopter rescue. Oh, hang on...

And so is this. It might not look it... it's fair to say the graphics are a bit on the chunky side, but they work in the context of the game and are quite clever in the way they let you run (and fire) in and out of the screen. The music is excellent... each creature has its own "theme tune" along with the other short, sparse numbers, and all are either dramatic or evil-sounding.


If only I had a bag of marshmallows...

Beyond the Forbidden Forest is not necessarily a game with masses of replay value. There's no high score, and once you've seen the end there's not that much point going through it again. But getting there is an epic and very difficult journey, and one well worth taking, I reckon. It's another game that I'd love to see a remake of... and I was shocked to find that there was one for the PC, in 2003. I'm making an effort to obtain that... I'll report on that one as and when...

Blue Max (Commodore 64)

One of the first compilation tapes I ever bought for the Commodore 64 was US Gold's Arcade Hall of Fame. It contained five games and three of them, Tapper, Spy Hunter and Up 'N' Down, could indeed qualify for an arcade hall of fame. The fourth, Aztec Challenge, was a game my friends and I all enjoyed. And the fifth was supposed to be Blue Max, but I was gutted to get home and find that, on my copy, it had been substituted for Dropzone.

I hated Dropzone. It was too hard, and I was rubbish at it. But I forced myself to play it, got to be half-decent at it and grew to love it. And as I loved all the other games, Arcade Hall of Fame was one of the more successful compilation releases, at least for me.


Where's the Aztec representation here, eh? Bloody racism!

But what of Blue Max? The name conjures images of epic dogfights, fantastic flying feats and moustachioed heroism. I never did get to play it back then, so it seemed that the time to rectify that was long overdue.


This picture reminds me of River Raid. The game, however, does not.

I have to say, it wasn't really worth the effort. Blue Max is merely a Zaxxon game, and not an especially good one. You take off, fly a bit, try and bomb the occasional building or truck, try and shoot down the occasional plane (good luck with that), and then land to refuel. And then you do it again... and again, and again.

Frankly, Blue Max bored me. It's neither difficult nor exciting, and fails to provide any of the derring-dos you'd expect from the game's name. It's really highly rated by everyone on Lemon64... can't think why, though.