After being completely obsessed with Rogue for the Amiga for several weeks (and the obsession continues) I started to wonder, "How much fun might this be on my other buddy, the C64? Is it that different?"
So I downloaded the d64 file and fired it up.
First off, this is a crack. But it's a very unusual and glorious crack! I almost never say that. For one, the original program was on cassette tape. It was made in 1988 by Mastertronic, and this crack made the program loadable off of a floppy drive. Win! And it doesn't introduce any intro text or goofy epilepsy inducing flashes or graphics during load. Win!
Once it does load, you're presented with a very simple screen to enter your character's name. That's pretty much it.
After that, you're dropped into a completely different environment than the Amiga version. The game has very interesting graphics and, frankly, struck me as being quite familiar with something else I'd seen recently during my Amiga adventures. More on that in a minute.
The game is mostly mouse, er, I mean joystick-driven (it took me a second to understand how to move around after using my keyboard on the Amiga for so long). Even though the cursor looks like a bizarre left-turn road sign, it actually is an indicator of where your character will "follow" if you click the joystick button. So if you move your mouse to the right corner of your screen, your character will try to move up there unless a wall gets in your way. That being said... amazingly, your character seems to only be able to move in the cardinal positions of left/right/up/down. That's a hit and a massive detriment, for sure.
You've got your hit points, strength and armor points below the main screen as you'd expect. But in the C64 version, your STR actually ticks down - almost like a timer! Unbelievable. By the time you finish exploring level one, your STR will be almost to zero. And when that happens? You freaking die! In addition, if you encounter any monsters you'll probably die, too. In this version of the game ANY monster encounter means death. And quickly. The only saving grace is if you leave a room that has monsters in it, they don't appear to follow you. But that room better not have the stairs down, as it might as well be your death chamber. So you then run around all the way around to try and see if the stairs might be in a different direction.
As soon as you find the stairs down, more than once I spawned right next to a monster. And you don't decide what to use. You simply wield things, and the program performs the fight for you. And you die.
I can't believe this shipped like this.
Rogue is hard enough as it is. In the C64 version, it's bafflingly cruel and, well, not much fun which is really painful because the UI is so interesting. You do start the game with 1 ration of food, but it doesn't really give you very much strength back (maybe 30 points?). Which simply drains away, even if you stand still! And that might only take one minute of real time. And - I think - there is no pause, either.
One of the glorious aspects of the Amiga version (and the original, as far as I know) is there is no time. You can walk away from the game for hours and let it just sit there while you're in the middle of combat to go do some chores and ponder your next move. Not the C64 version. It's more like a timed sporting event - but more arcade-like in the sense that this game is trying to get you to stop playing as soon as possible.
That's a tragic design choice in my opinion.
Even though the game is mostly mouse-driven, if you wish to use the items in your inventory (seen on the right side of the screen, which is a nice UI enhancement) you're given a new "modal" where you have to decide what to do with that item. Either use it, or drop it basically. So rather than have a keyboard-driven interface where you might press "D" to drop any item, instead you use the cursor to "click" on an item in the right panel, then use the keyboard to decide what to do with it based on the first letter of each command.
That's when it hit me. This interface really looked familiar. Sure, since I was in the C64 low-res screen, I could only see one room at a time (maybe 2 max) but the details and UI layout were just like the Atari ST version! It's worth pointing out that if you type "T" you can get a zoomed out view of your map, which looks a bit more like the Amiga version's normal play mode. It helps you get your bearings. But back to the similarities with Atari.
So then I took a closer look at that intro screen...
I think P.D. Marshall looked at the Atari ST version and tried to base his versions off of that precedent. But holy smoke - and I've not played the ST versions - but if the game mechanics mirror the ST version, that would be freaking horrible! The game feels so unfairly broken on the 64 it made my stomach sick. I'll give it a few more goes to make sure I'm not missing something, but initial impressions were not favorable. Sure, it's kinda pretty, but that STR meter being drained felt like a very sad joke. The kind where you aren't laughing, but getting mad.
If you encounter any monsters, they deplete your STR in about 3 seconds. Your hit points won't even change, yet you'll die. And if that doesn't kill you, the lack of food (with constantly depleting STR) makes this game just feel broken.
Absolute shame. If it had these graphics and UI controls, but the Amiga's game mechanics execution, it would have been a ton of fun. I wonder if there are any roguelike clones on the C64 that are any better?