Creatures Longplay (C64) [QHD]

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Developed by Apex Computer Productions and published by Thalamus in 1990

Despite being close to a decade old, developers continued to prove the Commodore 64 still had plenty of gas in the tank. An increasing number of high quality games were coming to market, continuing to raise the bar in terms of what gamers could expect from the machine.

And Britsoft developer Apex Computer Productions would be at the forefront of this new wave of C64 software.

Brothers John and Steve Rowlands had already achieve critical success with Cyberdyne Warrior and Retrograde, but it would be their third game that really captured the imagination of the journalistic press and C64 fan-base.

Effectively a combination of hardcore arcade and platforming genres, the game became a firm favourite with C64 owners, thanks to a slightly anarchic and sadistic sense of humour that belied the colourful, cartoon-like exterior.

The game earned critical praise from practically every publication that reviewed the game, focusing on its addictive gameplay and exceptional production values. It's fair to say that John and Steve Rowlands were gurus of the C64 architecture and what could be achieved, and Creatures is quite the technical showcase.

While I would never profess to understand the details, I believe the game is one of the few to mae use of the VSP scrolling method, a technique that could achieve high-speed smooth scrolling at a fraction of the CPU cost of traditional methods.

There are other tricks on display, including the use of interleaving, cycling 2 colours at high speeds to create the appearance of a new colour outside of the regular palette of 16 colours. It doesn't display so well on modern LCD displays, but you can see it in effect with certain enemies that appear to be flickering (you'll see their colour changes with alternate frames).

As for the video, it was recorded using the EasyFlash cartridge release, which removes the annoying multi-load. The quality of video output (and colour) is a big improvement on my old video from 2012, so it was definitely worth taking the time to put it together!

Time Codes
00:00 - Loader Music
01:07 - Title Screen & Music
03:13 - Level 1.1
08:38 - Level 1.2
16:01 - Level 1.3 (Torture Chamber 01)
17:10 - Level 2.1
23:10 - Level 2.2
30:06 - Level 2.3 (Torture Chamber 02)
32:45 - Level 3.1
38:06 - Level 3.2
47:06 - Level 3.3 (Torture Chamber 03)
48:32 - Ending
50:00 - High Score Music

** Bonus Content **
51:32 - Torture Chamber 01 Death Scene
52:40 - Torture Chamber 02 Death Scene A
53:47 - Torture Chamber 02 Death Scene B
54:44 - Torture Chamber 03 Death Scene

#c64
#retrogaming
#walkthrough