Friday 11 April 2014

Flashback Friday - Booty

Booty was a great game for the Commodore 64 (C64). Ok so my definition of great may not be completely accurate.... it was painfully annoying but it is one of the games that I remember playing (so it must have had some greatness) .... I've downloaded the ROMS and played it a few times since just to get the nostalgia bug back, but never managed to complete it.


It was released in 1984 and was a single player game..... the music was terrible but fortunately you could switch it off.

The aim of the game was to guide Jim, the cabin boy, through the ships various decks collecting items of booty . To collect these you simply walked past it). You had to be careful tho as some of the items were secret bombs and if you didn't move away fast enough it was life over.



Each level had many locked, colour coded panels that could only be opened by a key of that colour (collected by standing in front of them and pressing space bar). If you picked up another key the first would be dropped.

To go through the big brown doors and into another cabin you stood in front of them and again pressed spacebar .... but beware of the floating door.



Jim dies in many many ways (indicated by his sudden shock of white hair); if he falls through a trap door, drowns, is bitten by a ship's rat, pecked by one of the birds (apparently Captain's parrots), cut down by a Ghost Pirate, or blown up. Unfortunately avoiding some of these is impossible as they can appear when you are stood at the side of a screen so you get no notice. You also only have 2 speeds - go or stop, you cannot run. You can move up and down the screen ..... but only where there is a ladder and you must be stood in exactly the right place to use these, many a time I was caught because one foot was a mm in the wrong place to climb.

Many times in the game you have to use the yellow moving panels to get across the screen.  You couldn't simply walk onto them (that would be too easy).  They key was to stand at the edge of the platform with one foot hanging off as soon as the yellow bit got to you move onto it.  You can see why this ended fatally many many times.

Now I didn't think I had ever completed this game, but when researching it the ending seemed familiar so i must have at least got to bronze.... years and years ago. When you have collected all the items from the ship, you will be given 45 seconds to locate the Bronze key to the next pile of booty. Clearing all booty a second and third time causes a search for the Silver and Gold keys, each increasing the game's speed and hazards. Now bronze is hard enough I should imagine you would need to be Wonder Woman to reach the gold one.


If you want further reminders of the game here is a you tube video.....



....... Right I'm off to find a ROM and see how long I last before I cry!!

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