Uridium C64 Longplay (Part 3)

[jeanton1]

At least you could finish it. I have never beaten a side scrolling space shooter in my life and this game was no exception.

[KarriKoivusalo]

You never crashed into the enemy fighters in the original either; the only flying thing that could hit you was the X-shaped missile. Also, when you turned around, the Manta ship changed altitude for a brief moment, which means you could go over obstacles and avoid the missile during and for a very brief moment after the somersault.

I remember how damn hard this game was. The ship had considerable inertia, and it was a bit difficult to be precise with the on/off controls.

[saxxonpike]

@KarriKoivusalo Turning the ship takes about half a second, which is a lot of time when you are avoiding mines. :)

Compared to the layout of the motherships, the little X mines were just an annoyance anyway. Luckily, the ship's hitbox is actually very tiny.

It was pretty rare to be hit by enemy fire unless you were unlucky enough to encounter the ones that homed in on you.

[gaggarin]

Hey. I remember the end credits. That must mean I did complete this as a kid! I rock!

[tiradeoftruth]

thanks for posting, great memories

[cheekyjoe2468]

"I'm no expert at this game, but I can complete it at least.".... yeah, try it without the no-collision trainer then next time smart alec... see if you can do it all in 1 life then!!

I completed this in 1987 with 1 life.... no cheats... on the original C64, I was 7 years old

[saxxonpike]

My version of the game didn't even have a trainer, and wasn't even cracked. To get a good recording I played this game through until I didn't die once. It took a few attempts but this was the one I was most pleased with.

[cheekyjoe2468]

There are several times you passed over collision objects and I counted twice that the homing missile mine collided with ship.. Also the bullets passed through you on several occasions, haha

Nice try, no cigar... good game though, its a classic

[ljoy200]

Congrats - I never did quite finish it! Still got the c64 + original game must dig it out and play it again. As I remember it one joystick was far more responsive than the other in two player mode.

[ljoy200]

The collision detection here though is certainly more liberal than the original.

[hha052]

Excellent playing.. The best game ever!

[turtle343434]

where is the last, hard, level ???

[saxxonpike]

You would think we get one! But 14 is really the hardest it seems. I think the programmer just got so lazy, he thought "well it's going to be hell getting to this last level anyway, so why don't I fill up the space with a message?" :P

[Giflar]

its a really fun game, i had it on my SEGA master system

[Corbon440]

I broke 2 joysticks while playing this game.

As for the author, you should've mentioned that you turned the sprite collision detection off...

[saxxonpike]

This game doesn't use C64's sprite capabilities - all collision is done on the assembly level - so even if all hardware collision detection was turned off, it would have no effect (try it yourself)

[XDanSoloX]

So if enemies crash into you then you don't die in this game? Man, that's a lot easier than I remember it then.

[saxxonpike]

Actually, what I meant was disabling collision detection in the VIC-20 won't have any effect on the game - enemies will still kill you. However, your hit-box is so small (I think it's only a few pixels large honestly) that enemies can appear to fly right through you.

[badfatt]

I must say the collision detection does look... how shall I put it, rather generous? In quite a few places - with bullets and walls and particularly the homing mines. And I had thought that before even reading this comment.

Plus I would think anyone who can complete Uridium without losing a single life would consider themselves "expert" enough.

[RobotwarsKing]

Good Zapping...Turkey.

[leporidus]

I remember that I often visited my friend and let him play Uridium in front of his C64 just to take a close look at those smooth animations and screen fonts. I always wanted that horizontal scrolling on the Amstrad CPC464, but it couldn't (or I couldn't code it in Z80 assy).

[saxxonpike]

I'll say this much about Graftgold games... Andrew Braybrook was adept at pushing the machine to the limits while still maintaining a high frame rate. Doing this kind of thing on any lesser hardware would be extremely difficult :)