Ross's Game Dungeon: Captain Zzap

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A Game Dungeon? At Christmas? That's a nice gift.

👍︎︎ 56 👤︎︎ u/Ella_Spella 📅︎︎ Dec 25 2017 🗫︎ replies

I binged watched most of Game Dungeon over the last couple of months, glad new ones are still being released. Really enjoy his content on these obscure games, even the ones I have actually played.

👍︎︎ 44 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Dec 25 2017 🗫︎ replies

It's always fun to watch Ross drag himself through an elaborate torture routine disguised as an old game

👍︎︎ 45 👤︎︎ u/SomewhatSpecial 📅︎︎ Dec 25 2017 🗫︎ replies

Once again Ross Scott makes to deliver top notch content. I absolutely loved his coverage of armed and delirious, but it's still a joy to find these obscure games and look at them face value.

👍︎︎ 78 👤︎︎ u/Throwaway_4_opinions 📅︎︎ Dec 25 2017 🗫︎ replies

Really curious of why it had the licence removed. All I can think of is that they only had the Flash Gordon license for 6 months or something and it was still selling after that.

👍︎︎ 5 👤︎︎ u/FuadRamses 📅︎︎ Dec 26 2017 🗫︎ replies

I thought game dungeon was on hiatus so he could focus on freeman's mind 2? Oh well I'm not complaining. This is a great Christmas present.

👍︎︎ 5 👤︎︎ u/Rookwood 📅︎︎ Dec 25 2017 🗫︎ replies

Of course you read the manual first, how else did you take that pre-game shit?

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/IT_guys_rule 📅︎︎ Dec 25 2017 🗫︎ replies
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[Subtitles by danielsangeo] Ho ho ho! Welcome to the Game Dungeon. This is a Christmas episode, but I am running low on Christmas games that I feel like talking about. So, instead, I'm trying something different and we're going to look at a game I got for Christmas as a kid but I never beat. Well that ends today! So get ready for "Captain Zzap". And I clocked it--it takes 2 minutes, 20 seconds from time you launch the game to where you can do anything. Once again, I do not miss floppy drives. And we get some pretty great music here for a Commodore 64 game, although it takes a bit to get going. If you like it, then I have a Christmas present for you: Check the video description for a pretty rad rendition of it. "Your Earthworld will soon be under attack from Targ. "You must stop him seek help from Prince Goram..." And, that's our whole story. All right. Here we go! Now for once, I actually DID have a manual to THIS game, a box and everything. But imagine you're a kid with a new game on Christmas morning. Is sitting down and reading a manual cover to cover the first thing you want to do? Yeah, I didn't think so. Let's get started. And here we are, deep in the jungle. Cool. And I am immediately hit by those classic Commodore 64 feelings of fear and confusion from not reading the manual. I mean, look at this: I have a cryptic map; a timer counting down immediately until my imminent death, no doubt... The fire button does nothing. Left and right work, down makes me crouch, and up makes me shoot. Oh, whoops! I'm down one round. Better hope 11 is all I need, huh? Well, to the right of me is a bottomless pit, so I guess I'm heading left. Deeper into the jungle we go. Santa has no eyes here. I like how the music turns creepier. Oh, and notice not a damned thing changed on my map. How am I supposed to read this? Why is north at an angle? Is that magnetic north? If I try to go up on this path, I just lose more ammo. Down does nothing. Huh, it looks like you could go there. Okay, onward! OH GOD! Oh, interesting. The game's not over. I just lose precious hours of what I can only assume is the remaining time I have left on my Earthworld. AH HAH! NOT THIS TIME! Yeah! Wow, this is ominous. Does this match up to the skulls on my map? I don't know anything. Deeper we go! Oh, this looks bad! I'm losing bullets here! WHAT DO I DO?! I CAN'T FIRE WHILE DOWN BECAUSE FIRE IS UP! RAAAAAAH! Well, I think we just had to pay the toll to that ground-bat thing. I will say the graphics and atmosphere to this game are pretty awesome for '86. For such minimal graphics, this really makes me feel like I'm in the jungle and danger is all around me. OH! I'M CAPTAIN ZZAP, YOU DAMNED DIRTY APE! And another bottomless ravine--does it kill me? Yep, it sure does. So, uh... That's the game. And really, this is the lesson so many Commodore 64 games would teach me: that life is hopeless, you're going to die, everything is confusing, and you didn't know what to do even though you really tried. Merry Christmas! So here is where I would've decided to go sledding or make a snowman instead, but not this time! Thanks to the Internet, I'm actually going to read the manual this time and plow through this game. Except we have one problem: I cannot find the manual to this game anywhere. I lost mine decades ago and it doesn't seem to exist online. But you know what I find instead? I break through to the next layer of reality of this game. See, this isn't just Captain Zzap with two Zs. It's also--DA DADA! "Flash Gordon"! Yeah, it had two names! And this starts me down a rabbit hole of questions. Get ready. This is going to get complicated. It's not uncommon for the same game to have different names depending on where it's sold. I've never really understood why companies do this. Unless there's a big cultural or language problem with the original title, why change it? Aren't you just diluting your brand recognition, then, especially both titles are still in English? So this isn't too unusual, except this is a licensed game! Flash Gordon is a well-known intellectual property with comics dating back to the '30s and a famous movie in 1980. I never knew much about Flash Gordon myself; I always got him mixed up with Buck Rogers and Flashbeagle, but I've at least have heard of him. In fact, I really wanted to see the movie as a kid but my mother wouldn't let me because she thought it was too adult, so that should give you an idea of the level of censorship I grew up with. It's too bad because I think I would've loved it. Having seen it as an adult, I can say it's equal parts cheesy and awesome. It's a movie that holds nothing back except the budget. Boy, small world! Last episode was about Samuel Gordon. This time, it's Flash Gordon. Flash knows what it means to be a Gordon. Anyway, the whole point of a licensed property is for the name recognition. People see a character or a franchise they know so they buy the game. Otherwise, there's not much point. You may as well skip the licensing fees and come up with your own idea instead. Some games have done just that. "Journey to Silius" was originally going to be a "Terminator" game, but the company lost the license so they tweaked it to make its own game instead and sold that. More famously, "Doom" started out as an "Aliens" game, but id Software changed their mind on that and now we have Doom. But you know what the difference between those games and Captain Zzap is? They didn't already finish, publish and the sell the licensed game first! This game simultaneously sold as Flash Gordon AND Captain Zzap. It's a frigging mutant. So they must've had the license. Look, it's the same game--just a title change. So, I guess... Wait...wait, wait... What was that? Oh! So it's NOT exactly the same game. Captain Zzap has black hair and a mustache! Okay, this just got weirder. Is he his evil twin? Flash from alternate dimension? What is going on here? Well this says to me that they did NOT have the Flash Gordon license, except when they did. But what the hell? THIS is going to cover your bases? Flash is Zzap? Ming is Targ? We're all done even though Zzap is still blond on the cover? Okay, I could be completely wrong here, but I have to assume, if this company had licensing issues, or were selling their game in international markets, that at some point, they talked to A lawyer. I have no evidence of this; I'm just assuming. So are you telling me a copyright lawyer saw these two box covers and said, "You're good. That's fine. "Your game looks different enough from Flash Gordon "that you don't have anything to worry about. "Now there's no licensing issues, "copyright holders can't make any claims on you, "no one can ever sue you for this. It's all good." Things were always a little wild-west with copyright law in video games back then, but I think this was a little sloppy even by THOSE standards. Now I want to get back to the game, but we're not done yet! This keeps going! It keeps going! Now this final drop of madness could be a coincidence, but I don't think it is. While researching this enigma, I came across a review of it in a magazine, and it got an 89%--a pretty good score. I like how they gave it a "hookability" score. I think we don't rate games enough by hookability anymore. Anyway, the editors all liked it. Hm. And the name of this magazine? Zzap 64! In the holiday issue, no less! See it all comes around. We're working in some Christmas cheer in here. Boy, that guy had a destiny with hair like that. So what happened here? Well, I can only guess, because like Zzap 64 liked Flash Gordon, they decided to return the favor and named him Captain Zzap. They should've given him this guy's hair. Conflict of interest aside, did they think Zzap Magazine would have their backs if they got sued even though they would have no power at all over that? This is short-circuiting my brain. If you don't understand why this is so nuts, pretend a more recent game did this, say "Batman: Arkham Asylum". That's another licensed comic book character game that got pretty good reviews, right? Yeah, look. GameSpot gave it a 9 out of 10. So imagine if Eidos decided to re-release that the same year, keep the exact same cover, except now they call it "GameSpot Avenger", without permission from DC Comics, and Bruce Wayne has a mustache. Copyright lawyers would choke on their coffee if they saw that. So what have we learned here? Well, this is NOT just a simple renaming for another market. It's either one of the more reckless copyright gambits I've seen in gaming, or the game is, in fact, from another dimension. I like that second theory better. I've always felt like, if alternate universes exist, we're one of the alternates, not the standard. So forget Flash, we're playing Captain Zzap. Back to the jungle! Well, I still don't have the manual to Captain Zzap, but Flash Gordon DID get a manual, so we're going to have to make do with that. So let's see the controls. Wow. A one-button wonder here. I guess like the movie, this is a game that refused to accept its limitations. Back to exploring the jungle. Now that I'm armed with the knowledge of how to jump and shoot at things below me, this opens up a lot of possibilities. These jumps are pretty tense; Zzap cuts it awfully close with these ravines. AaaaAAAH! Unfortunately, one part of the jungle invariably looks like the next. I keep wandering and wandering and get nowhere or dead. It's mostly just jungle with ape men, occasional wildlife, and skulls. I'd say all that's missing from this is a hunger or thirst meter along with contracting jungle diseases to complete how punitive this feels. I DO find more bullets, so that's something, though the manual cheerfully reminds you that these are a one-time thing and will never replenish. Okay... I never got out of this jungle as a kid and now I'm starting to doubt if I ever will. Well, the manual also flat-out says that you should make a map. Ugh, do I really need to? Yes, I do. They're not kidding. Well, I start mapping this and I have to say, this is one of the more evil maps I've seen. It's not the worst, I'm sure, but this jungle pulls a lot of tricks on you. First, this map loops back in on itself horizontally. Well, that's actually not so bad and feels a little more natural honestly, but it does make things a bit trickier to map. Next, we have the exit on one screen re-orienting you on another one. So if I travel up here, I might enter from the left side here; exit from the right and come down from the top; exit to the left and come up; but also exit down and come right; [overlapping voices] Now to give the game credit, it DOES show a sliver of mercy, and does NOT change your pathway if you backtrack from the same direction, so it's at least consistent. But I didn't know that and this game gave me no reason to assume anything merciful about it, so I was marking down which direction I go with complete paranoia. And of course, there's no consistency as to how many relative blocks you travel. So what takes me five screens to travel here may only take me two screens up here. But what really twists the knife is how many screens look exactly the same but represent different areas in the jungle. Which orange crossroads is this? The one with the blue ravine to the left or the one with the tiki head and the ape man to the left? Or is this a different crossroads altogether?! And which left actually takes me left and not up down right left?! If I mark down my progress incorrectly, I might have to undo all my work on the map because I overwrote correct directions with bad information! RAAAAGH! Usually making a map to a game is easy but tedious. THIS one feels like I'm juggling different realities in my head and there's not a great way to write it down properly. This was getting so bad, I looked online to see if a map to this game existed. I couldn't find one, but then I got desperate and looked again, and... I found one! For Flash Gordon for the ZX Spectrum. I'll take it! Thanks Pavero! As you can see, it's simplicity itself. Although even THIS is a little confusing because THIS you can exit vertically and THIS means you can't. This also proves that the map at the bottom is completely useless--no help at all! It's not every day you see a game that has the largest element of the HUD be a total red herring. So now that I have an actual path, I have hope of getting out of here. And that's good because hope is in short supply what with more hanging skulls, snakes and a purple totem, and skeletons coming to kill me. Dropkick a skeleton--BOOM! Flash dropkicking a skeleton wasn't in the movie, but maybe it should've been. The jungle still feels very imposing and I notice details I hadn't earlier. Now this could just be a glitch from emulation, but look at this here. I'll slow it down. I'm assuming this is some sort of update to drawing the background layer but little things like this work on your sanity, just a bit. You know, minus two points. So next we fight Bowser. Aw man. And finally, we make it to, uh... I don't know, a German Shepherd? Sure. Into the caves! [monotone] "You have entered the cave-dwelling of [monotone] "Prince Goram defeat him and continue your [monotone] "quest to destroy Targ" And guess what? The game now spits me back into some sort of endless loop. Looks like the ROM dump I was using had some errors in it so we can't progress further in the game. It just corrupts here and you'll see this screen looping forever. Did I already mention how much I love floppy disks? So yeah. This is a pretty authentic Commodore 64 experience we're getting here. But I'm going to interrupt the good times and give a shot to a different ROM dump I found. WHICH MEANS I HAVE TO DO THE JUNGLE ALL OVER AGAIN! Agh... Okay, here I am the cave AGAIN. Loading screen AGAIN. Fingers crossed. Will it load? Aha! It did! All right--Oh, damn. I'm getting my ass kicked. I don't even know the controls--okay, punch, good enough. Let's go with it. I mean, am I really going to stop what I'm doing to read the controls when it took me so much effort to get this far? I'm not even completely sure what's going on here. I think instead of losing health, I just need to land more blows on Barin--I mean Goram here. So it's a weird tug-of-war system instead of health. Although that's only one theory because I have no idea what those numbers at the top mean. Anyway, this fight is a mess. It's not obvious to me how to turn around and face the right way. Simply moving left or right doesn't cut it. It reminds me of a video I saw before of two cyclists fighting each other who weren't particularly adept at fighting. That's Prince Goram and Zzap right here. I DO like how we both seem to wearing TRON uniforms. Anyway, the computer seems to be having just as much trouble with this fight as I am and I manage to win the day on the first try using my classic tournament fighter skills of mashing buttons. KO! "Your luck holds. Targ is trying to escape. You must seek and destroy him. "Earths future is in your hands." And here I am in some sort of vehicle. Maybe it's that hover platform thing like in the movie except this one has missiles. And the wing guys are attacking me. In the movie, they were Flash's allies. This sucks! I don't want to shoot Brian Blessed! Oh! They got me! "You have failed to destroy 'Targ the Tyrannical' "leaving Earth in the grasp of the evil warlord." Well, that sucks. "Loading..." OH! I'M BACK AT THE BEGINNING! I HAVE TO GO THROUGH THE JUNGLE AND FIGHT THE PRINCE ALL OVER AGAIN?! God, I hate 80s game difficulty. Well, I'm cheating. I made a save state even that doesn't always work on Commodore 64. Time to load my game. Okay, so back to shooting the birdmen. I don't even know where to start with this part. It's hard, I'll say that. Even now, I'm debating whether this is ungodly hard or just very hard. I'm not sure I can communicate how hellish this is but I'll try. First, everything's confusing. The manual tells you what to do except not really. It's vague and leaves out specifics that you really need to know. For example, in pretty much every first-person shooter I've played, if you aim at something in front of you and pull the trigger, then you shoot what you're shooting at. No. Not here. If you aim at something right front of you, that's a sure way to die AND you'll miss. You can only hit the birdmen coming up on the side and you'd better do it at a distance, too, because if you're close enough to actually make them out, then you're as good as dead. Now the manual says you can aim up and down. Well I was pressing up and down and nothing was happening. I mean, wouldn't it make sense to have these little ruler markers to indicate the pitch? No, that's your health, silly. You have no indicator to show you how low or high your shots are before firing. Oh, and your controls are inverted, so up is down, down is up. Well, that's normal for piloting, but I'm not used to that for actually aiming. It just throws me off even more. Finally, you have to be good at this and shoot as many birdmen as you can, and FAST. "...a number of the flying guards need to be taken out. "Each one that passes makes it more difficult for you." They're not kidding. You miss too many, you'll never win, so you need to be really good at this crazy system or you'll die. You go too fast, you die. You go too slowly, you die slowly. Basically, if you miss more than a few times, you're going to die. The best analogy I can make to this level is imagine someone is shooting clay pigeons at you from multiple sides, and you need to shoot as many as you can, while on a motorcycle, dual-wielding pistols. Oh, and your pistol aiming is inverted. That's this level. Despite having save states, I died over and over and OVER AND OVER! This level is monstrous. So after all that, we finally make it through the energy gates which I guess is good. Then the minefield. Now I thought this would be a piece of cake. I'm decent at quick-reflex dodging games like this. And you know what? This speeder has good maneuverability. It's nice and responsive. The problem is Zzap here seems to be hauling a trailer behind him. You are SO WIDE in this! It's not clear at all whether you can squeeze through the gaps. You usually need a lot of clearance, but they throw so many mines at you, this honestly feels like luck more than anything else. I die and die and die and DIE! Back to analogies, this feels like trying to drive a semi through some sort of randomly generated punch card-style obstacle course. And staring intensely at the horizon while this flashing checkerboard pattern continues does not add to the experience. It's mostly luck as to whether you get through here. I did not have much luck. So a couple dozen tries later, I get to Ming. I mean, Targ! Aha! Ah, dammit! He nuked my face! AAAARGH! Back to the jungle! Yeah, it turns out, I have to aim and shoot him like the birdmen as fast as I can. You don't get a few seconds for the boss to make his entrance like any normal game would give you. You need to start shooting the second you see him. This isn't TOO bad with save states so let's do it. YEAH! And look! I don't even get the satisfaction of taking him out! He's laughing at me! "I'll be back, Zzap!" And the game glitches out. Great! GREAT! Well, all is not lost because it turns out some other lost soul out there beat Captain Zzap, too. So here's what happens. "The Earth is out of danger thanks to you, Zzap. "You saved the world with time to spare." Yeah, looks like he cheated, too. How satisfying. Oddly enough, this guy was playing Flash Gordon prior to this since his says "I'll be back, Flash". So best I can tell, nobody has seen THIS particular screen on the Internet until now. I guess that's my contribution to humanity. This is what saving Christmas looks like. Oh my, it's over. We did it. We saved the universe. So what do we make of this game? Well, two things really stand out to me: First, the difficulty. We start off with Cryptic Hard if you don't know what you're doing, Medium Easy if you know exactly what to do; then we progress to Bumbling Easy--I didn't even know what I was doing here; and finally, GRIND YOUR BONES TO MAKE MY BREAD. This last part is so brutally difficult, I cannot even FATHOM trying to beat this replaying the previous two sections every single time you die. I would even wager no one ever beat this game until emulators existed or without hacking it somehow. This is another one of those prison sentence games. And the other thing that stands out is, despite the game objectively treating me pretty badly, I still have good memories of this, if just for the jungle. The sights and sounds of this 30 year old game still have some bite to them and it really gave me this sense of being out of my depth in a constricting yet open world. Honestly, I think we need more alien jungle games like this where horrible things are out there waiting for you. Even though this map can go to hell, this part left me wanting more. And awards! Well, Best Game from an Alternate Universe. At the end of the day, this is Captain Zzap, not Flash Gordon, and I'm still not sure how it got here. So as far as games from another dimension go, this is one of the best, though, admittedly, there's not much competition in this category. So that's Captain Zzap. I hope you too enjoy the jungle and have a Merry Heart of Darkness--I mean, Christmas. [music] [roaring] [roaring] ["What the hell?"] [roaring, screaming]
Info
Channel: Accursed Farms
Views: 302,576
Rating: 4.9670248 out of 5
Keywords: Flash Gordon, Captain ZZap, Commodore 64, Videogames
Id: cksMz4709rg
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)
Published: Sun Dec 24 2017
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