Great explanation of the dodgy dealings surrounding the game, this piece of journalism is sadly lacking in other videos I watch. It's ok to look at a game but I love the warts and all of a subject which you perfectly executed Brendan. I love how you fine tune each video you release where they get better and better. One thing I never understood is why they didn't make the arcade game longer.
Great work again. I knew there were two versions of each game for the C64 but didn't clue in that they were all USA-made; thanks for all the info. The Sega Zaxxon cartridges are well-known for stress-testing the PLA chip in the Commodore 64. If your C64 can run those carts, you know you've got a good, healthy PLA!
Thanks for checking it out , I was always curious myself about why there were so many versions ... Mystery solved 😀👍 .. the moral is don't trust dodgy lawyers
That's a very interesting backstory for Zaxxon on the C64! Man... it clearly was early days yet and a bit of a Wild West situation :) Also, I remember having a Turbo board-game as a kid! Never even played the Arcade game then. In retrospect, it seems like such a bizarre concept to base a board game on an action Arcade game but what the heck, it looked cool anyway! Still better than a Tiger Electronics LCD game.
Yeah it truly was the wild west back then it's crazy 😂 and a board game was even crazier hahahah and yes still better than Tiger products by a long shot 👍
Yeah, there were quite a few board game versions of popular arcade games back then, which makes sense when you inflation-adjust the price of home consoles and home computers. Also board game versions of popular TV shows, which could be even weirder. We had the board game version of Pac-Man, which might have been the most popular of them.
@@IsaacKuo It's something of its time I guess, though maybe it's still being done. I'm not very at home in the board game world. I find it kind of endearing that this was sometimes the only way you might (sorta) play these games back then. Also board games based on TV shows score points with me for the "weirdness factor" alone! I'm gonna google if there ever was an A-Team board game right now! :D (nothing's as bad as A-Team on the C64 anyway)
I have both Sega carts. I've had Super Zaxxon since I was a kid, but I've only had Zaxxon for a few years now. The somewhat sluggish gameplay and washed out sound do make them both less than ideal. I've always seen screenshots of the other versions and been intrigued, but never played either. When I was a kid I hated the fact that Super Zaxxon substituted the space stages for tunnels and, most importantly, substituted the robot for a dragon. I didn't think dragons in space made much sense. Both Sega versions looked really good though.
An excellent history lesson and review of the different versions. I have these in a .PRG collection and I'd been curious about the background. Thanks to you I now know the history. Subscribed!
Saw an article in the paper about this game in ‘81. My Dad took me to Vegas and sure enough Circus Circus Manor had one. I played it a couple games and the joystick came apart. FF to when I was going to college. Bowling Alley had one. I played one game and the joystick came apart. Wonder how common that was. I wasn’t hard on controls. Loved the video.
That probably explains why we didnt see Super Zaxxon over in England until around 1985/6. Love the detail on the two versions - nobody has ever explained that properly until now! Cheers
This video popped up in my feed!!!! INSTANT SUB!!! Great passion coming through such an informative look into ARCADE history! Thanks for an awesome and educational trip down memory lane!!! 👏 👍 🙏 🇦🇺 looking forward to your next project!
I've seen Zaxxon come up in Game Sack vids but hadn't thought about it outside that. It always looked like a neat game! Very interesting the whole way through! Thanks!!
Great video! I wasn't aware of the history on Zaxxon! The Synapse version was the first game we had for our C64 and I still like playing it today. I didn't even know there was a second version on cart :)
This happened to other SEGA games as well... there are two versions of Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom for the TI-99/4A, two versions of Congo Bongo for the C-64 (a cartridge version with changed perspective and a disk version with the proper isometric perspective that loads after each level) and also at least two versions of Frogger for the C-64 (not counting a modern homebrew version that has been recently made). What's interesting is the commercial they made which shows some things in full 3D... I wish someone would do a modern 3D version of Zaxxon similar in perspective to the Atari 2600 version, but retaining the original level design, only showing it from a different perspective...
Yeah there were multiple versions of those but they weren't part of shady dealings 🤣 👍 but it would be cool to see a modern 3d take like in the advert .. that could be very interesting 👍👍 . Thanks for watching
I still have Zaxxon on cart and disk for my Atari 800. I also have it for my Colecovision (who didn’t “back in the day?”). Atari 800 Super Zaxxon was one of my “grai” games, and I only recently acquired it on cart and disk as well.
Hey B Man! Thanks for the nice in depth look into the Zaxxon series. I always liked the look of Zaxxon but absolutely sucked at the game. But that didn't stop me from playing it every time I want to the arcade. Never really improved on playing the game. Guess I just didn't play it enough. Anyway thanks for the great work you do. Keep it up buddy!!! 😁
Bloody hell! PARAMOUNT did the commercial?! Also, the Sega cartridge is pretty rare. Also the usual issues from cartidges for the C64 running very slowly on PAL machines.
@@BastichB64K oh, they've been for over a decade, if not longer. But yeah, if you can, make sure to mention any ports made for NTSC machines run slow on a PAL system. Just keep most from whining about a C64 port "being too slow".
I was always curious as I had most of the versions and the reality was a bit like I expected it to be. Some bad licensing deals and/or region differences. Thanks. The era of Wild Wild West in computing was so great to live. We could actually get in a physical fight (and then still be friends) with someone that claimed his Amstrad was better than my C64 or whatever. Swapping floppies but more innocently than later.
Can't remember where I read it, but apparently the game was called "Zaxxon" after the Z-axis, i.e. referring to the way the isometric "3D" effect gave the game an extra axis of movement that normal flat 2D games of the time didn't have. Sounds plausible - but at the time I just thought it was a cool spacey-sounding name :) "Fortress" on the BBC Micro was the version I had as a kid, but that's a whole other computer...
@@BastichB64K Yep, an unofficial clone, and not a bad one considering the BBC Micro only had about 16K of RAM to play with in any screen-mode that had colour and pixel graphics :) ua-cam.com/video/Gt_VNwHp7EE/v-deo.html
One of the very first games i ever got for the C64 on tape, took several minutes to load lol, and also, i think it was the first game i ever used a cheat code (RED). Fun game, played it a lot.
Love the background music where you talking over it. Zaxxon was reviewed in Commodore User 1985, the one with red bobsleigh on cover. It didn’t score well, and was only black and white 1/3 page review. Back in the day I thought it was a decent game. Magazines had the power to make/break games?
I wonder how hard it would be to fix the HesWare version so the frequency of the shot is lower? I can't imagine that would be harder than NTSC/PAL fixing, which can be crazy hard.
Cool informative video! That was so wild. In retrospect, it's interesting that isometric shooters never really became a thing ... Was there more than just Zaxxon and Blue Max?
Cool, thanks for the examples! Looking at them, it seems they tend to emphasize combat against enemy fighters, but judging altitude against them is really difficult. Hmm ... maybe an isometric 3D version of Sea Dragon would work. Most of the "enemies" in Sea Dragon are mines anchored to the sea floor. As such, the chains provide an easy way to see their altitude. Furthermore, mines don't need frames of animation so you could have different sized mine sprites to indicate altitude (higher altitude is bigger). Your submarine doesn't need banking animation, so it could also have different sized sprites to indicate altitude.
Huh, I forgot a pretty well known isometric shooter - Return of the Jedi. They made the good decision to eliminate the altitude factor altogether, but it still left the basic problem that scrolling in from the corner of the screen is pretty awkward. Although if we imagine a weird arcade cabinet with the monitor rotate 45 degrees ...
For the first year I had the C64, I only had a cassette drive (I knew nothing about computers and thought they all used cassettes, so that's what I asked for) and the Synapse Zaxxon was the only commercial game I ever had on tape. It took about 15 minutes to load and failed about 50% of the time. I loved the game though. I'd never played the arcade game, but I knew about it from magazines and the ads for the Colecovision version. A group called Bignomia ported a couple C64 games to the Amiga and Zaxxon was one of the games they chose. Unfortunately while the others were exact ports, they decided to screw around with Zaxxon. After facing Zaxxon, the fortresses have giant toilets, toasters, etc. I always hated that they ruined the game.
Just verified by wat hing a few seconds of both versions of the game. I had a copy of the Synapse version. It is alot better than Segas own version. Lol Those backgrounds that are animated behind showing the game play get a bit distracting though.
Constructive Thoughts: 1). Maybe consider a professional voice actor to narrate? Your information is top notch so it’s a shame to let your very ‘unique’ accent get in the way. The iOS app Fiverr has hundreds of great voices ready to take any job cheaply, professionally, and quickly. 2). Maybe you should mention the source of Zaxxon’s name ie Axonometric viewing angle and how it differs from other views Great video overall 😳
@@TheTunneys 😂 you have no idea the dumb responses i get in the comments, no offence im just getting used to it at this point . Thanks for the info and sorry for been snappy
@@BastichB64K No problem. I was an Atari 8 bit owner at the time and I thought it looked better so I went and watched a video and I think it does look better than the C64 versions. I enjoyed the video!! :)
Great explanation of the dodgy dealings surrounding the game, this piece of journalism is sadly lacking in other videos I watch.
It's ok to look at a game but I love the warts and all of a subject which you perfectly executed Brendan.
I love how you fine tune each video you release where they get better and better.
One thing I never understood is why they didn't make the arcade game longer.
Cheers thanks 😀👍
That was pretty big for an arcade in the early 80's , they only really started to expand into bigger games a few years later .
Great work again. I knew there were two versions of each game for the C64 but didn't clue in that they were all USA-made; thanks for all the info. The Sega Zaxxon cartridges are well-known for stress-testing the PLA chip in the Commodore 64. If your C64 can run those carts, you know you've got a good, healthy PLA!
Thanks for checking it out , I was always curious myself about why there were so many versions ... Mystery solved 😀👍 .. the moral is don't trust dodgy lawyers
Superb video again, Brendan! 👍 Really love your work! 😍
Thanks a lot , cheers for watching 👍
My friends and I got really great at Zaxxon! We loved the sprite movements and the "air pump" sounding laser!
😂 at least somebody loved that sound effect 🤣
I was "The Master" of Zaxxon at the local arcade hall back in the days. :)
I admire that. It was too difficult for me. I've never gotten the nack of judging how high the rockets are since they have no shadow.
I hated zaxxon
@@Johnny2Feathers Of course you did...
That's a very interesting backstory for Zaxxon on the C64! Man... it clearly was early days yet and a bit of a Wild West situation :) Also, I remember having a Turbo board-game as a kid! Never even played the Arcade game then. In retrospect, it seems like such a bizarre concept to base a board game on an action Arcade game but what the heck, it looked cool anyway! Still better than a Tiger Electronics LCD game.
Yeah it truly was the wild west back then it's crazy 😂 and a board game was even crazier hahahah and yes still better than Tiger products by a long shot 👍
Yeah, there were quite a few board game versions of popular arcade games back then, which makes sense when you inflation-adjust the price of home consoles and home computers. Also board game versions of popular TV shows, which could be even weirder. We had the board game version of Pac-Man, which might have been the most popular of them.
@@IsaacKuo It's something of its time I guess, though maybe it's still being done. I'm not very at home in the board game world. I find it kind of endearing that this was sometimes the only way you might (sorta) play these games back then.
Also board games based on TV shows score points with me for the "weirdness factor" alone! I'm gonna google if there ever was an A-Team board game right now! :D (nothing's as bad as A-Team on the C64 anyway)
Zaxxon was quite something when it released and even now I think it impresses with an almost virtual feeling. The C64 Synapse version is excellent too
Great game 🕹️ simple and fun
Right on! I had no idea this was why I had two versions of Zaxxon back in those days. Super video man! Keep up the good work.
Thanks for watching , much appreciated 👍
I have both Sega carts. I've had Super Zaxxon since I was a kid, but I've only had Zaxxon for a few years now. The somewhat sluggish gameplay and washed out sound do make them both less than ideal. I've always seen screenshots of the other versions and been intrigued, but never played either. When I was a kid I hated the fact that Super Zaxxon substituted the space stages for tunnels and, most importantly, substituted the robot for a dragon. I didn't think dragons in space made much sense. Both Sega versions looked really good though.
Yeah it's a big mixed bag for the C64 versions ... Somebody needs to combine different elements to make the ultimate one 😀👍
An excellent history lesson and review of the different versions. I have these in a .PRG collection and I'd been curious about the background. Thanks to you I now know the history. Subscribed!
My pleasure , its a very interesting story 😀👍 thx for subbing
Not sure which version I had of Zaxxon. But I think it was the Synapse version. I'd need to hear each versions sounds and I would know for sure.
Saw an article in the paper about this game in ‘81. My Dad took me to Vegas and sure enough Circus Circus Manor had one. I played it a couple games and the joystick came apart. FF to when I was going to college. Bowling Alley had one. I played one game and the joystick came apart. Wonder how common that was. I wasn’t hard on controls. Loved the video.
Thx , i dont think i ever had any arcade joystick come apart and i went to those places like crazy 😂
Got me thinking of Beach Head 1 and 2, which surely warrant a video. Some good 2-player action.
Yeah they'll get a video for sure
That probably explains why we didnt see Super Zaxxon over in England until around 1985/6. Love the detail on the two versions - nobody has ever explained that properly until now! Cheers
Thx , yeah that's the reason I made the vid ... I actually wanted to know myself so I feel satisfied at least I know the full C64 story now 😄👍
That was great and informative
Thank you sir 😃👍
This video popped up in my feed!!!! INSTANT SUB!!! Great passion coming through such an informative look into ARCADE history! Thanks for an awesome and educational trip down memory lane!!! 👏 👍 🙏 🇦🇺 looking forward to your next project!
Thank you sir , much appreciated. I have hundreds of vids just like it to check out . But plenty more on the way as well 😀👍
I've seen Zaxxon come up in Game Sack vids but hadn't thought about it outside that. It always looked like a neat game! Very interesting the whole way through! Thanks!!
Cheers , thank for watching 👍
I remember playing Zaxxon on my uncle's Atari 800...loaded on cassette. Talk about waiting forever for a game to load...
Cassette gaming is the true test of patience 😂👍
Thanks for showing the Zaxxon ad, I didnt know this existed back in the day (Im 48)
Yeah it's pretty awesome , can't believe they made that back then
Great video! I wasn't aware of the history on Zaxxon! The Synapse version was the first game we had for our C64 and I still like playing it today. I didn't even know there was a second version on cart :)
Thx , yeah the C64 history is bizzare 🤣👍 I had the Synapse version as well , such a good blast
Awesome video. We can tell you have a love and a passion for the C-64.
Thx , I definitely do ❤️❤️🕹️
This happened to other SEGA games as well... there are two versions of Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom for the TI-99/4A, two versions of Congo Bongo for the C-64 (a cartridge version with changed perspective and a disk version with the proper isometric perspective that loads after each level) and also at least two versions of Frogger for the C-64 (not counting a modern homebrew version that has been recently made). What's interesting is the commercial they made which shows some things in full 3D... I wish someone would do a modern 3D version of Zaxxon similar in perspective to the Atari 2600 version, but retaining the original level design, only showing it from a different perspective...
Yeah there were multiple versions of those but they weren't part of shady dealings 🤣 👍 but it would be cool to see a modern 3d take like in the advert .. that could be very interesting 👍👍 . Thanks for watching
Great video as always man! Love your channel!
Cheers thank you 🕹️👍👍👍👍
I had Zaxxon on cartridge for the Tandy Color Computer 2, great fun.
Nice 👍
I had Synapse's version of Zaxxon back then, it was my only game in 1985 that looked like 3D.
They did a great job on that version
I still have Zaxxon on cart and disk for my Atari 800. I also have it for my Colecovision (who didn’t “back in the day?”). Atari 800 Super Zaxxon was one of my “grai” games, and I only recently acquired it on cart and disk as well.
Yeah great game in so many systems
Keep up the good work!
You sir make the mighty C64 live forever!
🤣👍 thanks and cheers for checking out the vid
I seem to remember that the disk version of Super Zaxxon required you to plug a dongle into one of the joystick ports. 1980s copy protection.
Yeah quite a few games had one of those ... Pointless 🤣 it was cracked the next day literally 😂
Hey B Man! Thanks for the nice in depth look into the Zaxxon series. I always liked the look of Zaxxon but absolutely sucked at the game. But that didn't stop me from playing it every time I want to the arcade. Never really improved on playing the game. Guess I just didn't play it enough. Anyway thanks for the great work you do. Keep it up buddy!!! 😁
Cheers , its a fun series once you get the height sorted with a bit of practice . Thx for watching 🕹️
This was the first C64 game I purchased at Toys R Us! I had the Synapse disk version!
Great start to the C64 journey 🕹️👍
Super Zaxxon with the Godzilla on the c64. I had that one. Didn't even know there were others. The 57% is definitely undeserved, should be way higher.
Yeah it's a bit low , games are way better than they say
Bloody hell! PARAMOUNT did the commercial?! Also, the Sega cartridge is pretty rare. Also the usual issues from cartidges for the C64 running very slowly on PAL machines.
Yeah the carts are pretty hard to find these days
@@BastichB64K oh, they've been for over a decade, if not longer. But yeah, if you can, make sure to mention any ports made for NTSC machines run slow on a PAL system. Just keep most from whining about a C64 port "being too slow".
Nice video mate .Very informative :) . I never knew the dodgy dealings ;) . every days a school day :) ..
Cheers thx , so many retro stories to tell... So little time 😂👍
Great stuff. Some interesting stuff I never knew. Did they end prosecuting that slimy lawyer?
All info about him pretty much is no existant after that unfortunately that I could find anyway , I'm assuming he got jail time for fraud .
Awesome video, please keep this. C64 content coming!
Plenty more coming and I have hundreds already made so check em out 😀👍
Cheers for watching thanks
Really enjoyed Zaxxon.
I was always curious as I had most of the versions and the reality was a bit like I expected it to be. Some bad licensing deals and/or region differences.
Thanks.
The era of Wild Wild West in computing was so great to live.
We could actually get in a physical fight (and then still be friends) with someone that claimed his Amstrad was better than my C64 or whatever.
Swapping floppies but more innocently than later.
Yeah it truly was good times , from experience all things come full circle so hopefully we'll get back there again 👍👍
Zaxxon,gioco stupendo,degno di un mito come il C64.hai fatto un video eccellente!
😀👍
Can't remember where I read it, but apparently the game was called "Zaxxon" after the Z-axis, i.e. referring to the way the isometric "3D" effect gave the game an extra axis of movement that normal flat 2D games of the time didn't have. Sounds plausible - but at the time I just thought it was a cool spacey-sounding name :) "Fortress" on the BBC Micro was the version I had as a kid, but that's a whole other computer...
Interesting 🤔 , I've never played Fortress but I'm guessing it's a clone game of Zaxxon ?
@@BastichB64K Yep, an unofficial clone, and not a bad one considering the BBC Micro only had about 16K of RAM to play with in any screen-mode that had colour and pixel graphics :)
ua-cam.com/video/Gt_VNwHp7EE/v-deo.html
Thanks! Great video. Eagerly waiting for the next one! Cheers :)
Thank you for watching 👍
very interesting story!!! nice video thanks!!!
Thx for watching 👍
One of the very first games i ever got for the C64 on tape, took several minutes to load lol, and also, i think it was the first game i ever used a cheat code (RED). Fun game, played it a lot.
Cool , great game to start the C64 journey with
I had the Synapse cassette version and remember it being brutally hard 😄
I never found it to be that difficult , once you got the height thing mastered it was fairly easy to complete. The arcade was much harder 😵
Great video Bastich! :)
Thank you sir , much appreciated 👍
Love the background music where you talking over it. Zaxxon was reviewed in Commodore User 1985, the one with red bobsleigh on cover. It didn’t score well, and was only black and white 1/3 page review. Back in the day I thought it was a decent game. Magazines had the power to make/break games?
In retrospect I think I should have taken old reviews with a grain of salt , sure lots were accurate but many were just way off the mark 🤣👍
Thanks so much for making another awesome video :D
Not probs , thx for watching 👍
Nice! Did you ever play Panther on the C64? Very Zaxxon-esque, but in my opinion more fun and a killer sid tune.
Yeah it's pretty good , just mentioned that to someone else in a previous post 👍
Another great video!! Thank you!
Cheers thanks for checking it out
I wonder how hard it would be to fix the HesWare version so the frequency of the shot is lower? I can't imagine that would be harder than NTSC/PAL fixing, which can be crazy hard.
Not a programmer but my guess it would be pretty tricky
Love your passion!
Thx , cheers for checking out the vid
Cool informative video! That was so wild. In retrospect, it's interesting that isometric shooters never really became a thing ... Was there more than just Zaxxon and Blue Max?
Panther and Blue Max 2001 come to mind on the C64 .. I'm sure there on the breadbin were more if I really had to think about it
Not many, but some: 3D Skramble (1984) by LiveWire Software and Leviathan (1987) by English Software are two that comes to mind. Both for the C64
Cool, thanks for the examples! Looking at them, it seems they tend to emphasize combat against enemy fighters, but judging altitude against them is really difficult.
Hmm ... maybe an isometric 3D version of Sea Dragon would work. Most of the "enemies" in Sea Dragon are mines anchored to the sea floor. As such, the chains provide an easy way to see their altitude.
Furthermore, mines don't need frames of animation so you could have different sized mine sprites to indicate altitude (higher altitude is bigger). Your submarine doesn't need banking animation, so it could also have different sized sprites to indicate altitude.
Huh, I forgot a pretty well known isometric shooter - Return of the Jedi. They made the good decision to eliminate the altitude factor altogether, but it still left the basic problem that scrolling in from the corner of the screen is pretty awkward. Although if we imagine a weird arcade cabinet with the monitor rotate 45 degrees ...
I always liked it when the C64 got 2 versions. Could always pick the better of the two.
Yeah I like it as well , they were usually quite a Lot different which just shows the diversity of the old breadbox .
Lol that commercial is so 80s, over the top - loud voices etc !
Yeah it's awesome , never even knew that existed
i had the Synapse version when i was a kid.
Me too , my fav version on the C64
this makes me want to go play it. have you tried that board game version ?
No I haven't , pretty hard to get complete without paying some crazy ebay prices
@@BastichB64K i can't think of many arcade games converted to board game.. other than Pac Man lol
For the first year I had the C64, I only had a cassette drive (I knew nothing about computers and thought they all used cassettes, so that's what I asked for) and the Synapse Zaxxon was the only commercial game I ever had on tape. It took about 15 minutes to load and failed about 50% of the time. I loved the game though. I'd never played the arcade game, but I knew about it from magazines and the ads for the Colecovision version.
A group called Bignomia ported a couple C64 games to the Amiga and Zaxxon was one of the games they chose. Unfortunately while the others were exact ports, they decided to screw around with Zaxxon. After facing Zaxxon, the fortresses have giant toilets, toasters, etc. I always hated that they ruined the game.
The Synapse version was great 🕹️ , never knew about those Amiga conversions
Just verified by wat hing a few seconds of both versions of the game. I had a copy of the Synapse version. It is alot better than Segas own version. Lol
Those backgrounds that are animated behind showing the game play get a bit distracting though.
Yeah I like it better overall as well
I like Super Zaxxon
Oh yeah…..
I never played any version of Zaxxon and I rather would play Viewpoint or The Reap
Constructive Thoughts:
1). Maybe consider a professional voice actor to narrate? Your information is top notch so it’s a shame to let your very ‘unique’ accent get in the way. The iOS app Fiverr has hundreds of great voices ready to take any job cheaply, professionally, and quickly.
2). Maybe you should mention the source of Zaxxon’s name ie Axonometric viewing angle and how it differs from other views
Great video overall 😳
1) Nope
thanks for watching👍
Erm, Atari 8 bit Zaxxon? A machine 3-4 years older than the C64. It's version spanks the C64 versions.
erm ...didnt you read the video title ? "Zaxxon and the Commodore 64"....sweet lord
@@BastichB64K Of course I did, just pointing it out! :) Sweet Jesus!
@@TheTunneys 😂 you have no idea the dumb responses i get in the comments, no offence im just getting used to it at this point . Thanks for the info and sorry for been snappy
@@BastichB64K No problem. I was an Atari 8 bit owner at the time and I thought it looked better so I went and watched a video and I think it does look better than the C64 versions. I enjoyed the video!! :)
No, we need more))) what is the difference?!
That's all the Zaxxon the C64 has to offer 🤣
So story of zaxxon on the C64 is, good graphics - bad game, bad graphics - good game 🤣
Pretty much 🤣👍
Eye member dis gayme.
Congratulations 👏