Real fun to watch! Even the homebrew for the atari 8-bit could be released like that, and would have been quite a good conversion - most the times the underrated xl did not even get this quality of programming... I would wonder if it may be possible to have this simple gameplay on the vtech laser/dick smith and on the TI 99/4a... im pretty sure there is a conversion for the plus 4 (must be running on the c16 also). Thank you for this pleasure for a person, whos youth was dominated by 8-bit homecomputers, I would be to call "real human hardware", that ran a shop to repair computers for some 40 years ago... 😘
I'm working on re-imagined version of this game for the C64 called Hunchback Redux. I hope to have it completed some time next year to co-incide with the 40th anniversary of the game. 🙂
I played a lot the CPC version back at the time. It's surprisingly fast compared to a lot of conversions, and even compared to the arcade original. It make it very nice to play, even if we lost the foreground and the scroll to next level. Nice comparison.
One thing that would get me is the Hunchback jumping really, really fast in the intro, but walks like an old man when the player controls him. I wonder if this was the original intention of the game, but they might have hit some time or CPU limitation This is this weird charm with the Atari version. It feels like a different game, which might not be a bad thing.
I answered "yes", but the truth is I knew a game on the TI-99/4A called "Quazimodo". I just assumed it was a 4A curiosity (certainly looks like the types of games produced by Milton Bradley for the machine at the time) and didn't discover it was an arcade port until I loaded the mame version one day and said "Hey, I know this game" Same happend with the popular 4A game "Blasto". I just assumed it was a clone of Atari Tank Battle (with better single-player options). But it too is a port of an 1978 arcade game of the same name by Gremlin Software (which featured spaceships instead of tanks, but is otherwise identical (albeit in B&W). Quazimodo and Hunchback share the honours of the most wasted screen real-estate of any game. The actual active playfield is a few scanlines tall, yet the graphics fill the screen. It's why I never suspected it was a port of a game someone got paid to create. It is reminiscent of a 80's magazine type-in game regardless of the system.
Incredibly fond memories of the (good looking) MSX version. Never knew there were a buttload of hidious other versions. Cool to see them in one of your video's OSG.
I've always sort of wanted a comparison of this one, so thank you for that. It's not a very good game, even in the arcade but it's interesting nonetheless. It was Ocean's first arcade to home conversions and it set the crappy standard of most of their ports going forward. Seriously, Ocean just sucks. Their original games suck and like 65% of the arcade conversions suck though they do got some good ones like New Zealand Story, Chase HQ (Speccy and CPC), Parasol Stars and Arkanoid, which was Imagine, i know and they were technically different companies then, but essentially they're the same and Ocean bought Imagine eventually so who cares. There's a few others, but as a whole Ocean just sucks and that even extends to porting home a game which looks like it should work well on most formats. turns out only the MSX gets a decent version. Best playing and looking by far. Unexpected for a western developed game on the system, would've excepted a lame Speccy port but i guess not for once. Other than that, the Dragon 32 is a good attempt and so is the Atari 8-bit which despite being one of the better ports was never released. every other port sucks. Okay, that's not entirely true, the C64 is okay just not what it should've been. There is no excuse for scrolling and audio that bad on the C64! Beeb and Acorn are decent enough too (creepy title screens though...) maybe even the CPC, but the Speccy that just sucks, and the Oric, well it's cool that it got a port at all but it's just not good. Way too slow. The smelliest turd of all though is the VIC-20. Yeah it was an old and not very capable computer, but it pulled off the more complex jungle hunt well enough, so why does it have to struggle so bad with hunchback? lazy developers! It's choppy, ugly, slow and just no fun.
@@PeBoVision Their licensed games were okay for the standard of home computer gaming at the time but by the time they flooded the console market their poor quality became apparent. Their arcade ports were hit or miss. Most of the time they were developing them in-house they sucked, because as in-house i mean two inexperienced college students instead of an actual company like some of their better arcade ports. Not that there weren't good ones, Parasol Stars, New Zealand story and operation thunderbolt certainly were but on the other hand you got chase h.q, robocop, bad dudes and many more, i'm struggling to remember off the top of my head. I might just be biased because data East and Taito were some of my favorite developers of the time, and that's what they mostly ported, but alot of their ports just aren't great. now, the arcade ports they outsourced to the likes of Graftgold, Software Creation and best of all, Ocean France were great. Everything Ocean France put out was top notch, well besides their Operation Wolf port, that was pretty rough but atleast looked the part but then you had Toki, Pang and the unreleased Snow Bros and Liquid Kids on Amiga. Unfortunately, Ocean UK treated their French divison like crap most of the time, cancelling many of their projects, even ones well into development like Snow bros on Amiga, and believe or not there were much more ports than that on systems like the Speccy, ST, C64 and GX4000. Ocean France usually only worked on the ST and Amiga, so those were likely the only versions there were behind, but Ocean themselves usually stepped up their game with the 8-bit ports when Ocean France was handling the 16-bit ones, Pang comes to mind, so they likely wouldn't of been so bad. Then under Software Creations and Graftgold you got Rainbow Islands, Sly Spy, Puzznic and many others, all of decent quality, so yeah I'm very divided on Ocean. They were cheap moneyhungry scumbags, that's undeniable, and anything by them on console sucks, but in terms of their computer quality it's a wild west. US Gold is still worse, though Ghouls N Ghosts, LED Runner and a few others were decent on the Speccy. I don't what it is, US Gold has a surprising amount of playable Speccy ports compared to other computers. Even Strider and Street Fighter developed by tiertex were okay. Sorry for all my blathering, but hopefully that sums up more of my feelings on Ocean. Not the best of their time, but still not the worse. Not familiar with FTL mind you, i'll check them out.
I'm careful not to accuse 80's developers of having been "lazy". They were overworked, under-paid, presented with impossible deadlines, told to code on systems who's architecture they were completely unfamliar with...all true, but "lazy" ? 80's coders were closer to modern day slaves (albeit, stoned and drunk slaves). I've known too many who have lived in the office during software development to ever call them lazy. Now granted you are speaking of developer's in general, not just the front line creative team, but I suggest that management was tyranical and money hungry, while the creatives were heroes given what they produced within the time constraints they were given and the non standardized system designs pre-MSX. Bad software is often indicative of a bad place to work not lazy workers. But I do understand your frustration with sub-standard port execution.
@@PeBoVision 80's developers definitely weren't lazy, i feel bad for them infact, having to throw together arcade ports with little source code to go off and on low budget and time constraints. The companies that allowed coders to endure these conditions were infact lazy
Estás máquinas queremos ver! Las dragón oric electron Vic 20 etc hacen más interesante la comparación, también se podría ver contra máquinas de la ex URSS.
Even as someone without much person attachment or nostalgia towards European home computers, this game fit way better on them than in the Arcade, still not famous by modern standards mind you, but you see more people talking about the home ports online than the arcade game. What a weird game to port home. It seems as if it were almost developed for computers and arcades at the same time, but no way to be sure on that.
buah , tambien vaya recuerdos, después de lo que muestras, se vuelve mucho mas dificil , lo que parece curioso es que solo la versión de spectrum y atari 8bit, el personaje es jorobado, los demás , están mas tiesos q una vela. Mujy básico, tambien en el 83 no se puede pedir mucho mas, estaban empezando a surgir profesionalmente, q mas tarde en los años 85 , tanto en arcade como en 8bit los juegos ya tenían mucha mas calidad. Me quedo con la versión de MSX, q no es un port de spectrum, se ve que lo programaron bien. Las demás , en algunos casos, bendita paciencia la tuya.... se nota que es "complicado" Xd
Buahhh, no veas lo que sufrí para capturar algunas versiones. Aunque no lo parezca, la parte más difícil para mí fue engancharme a la cuerda de la segunda fase. A pesar de que el jorobado tocaba claramente la cuerda, no había forma de que se quedara colgado y tuve que intentarlo como 20 o 30 veces en alguna versión, y no exagero. Demencial. Luego están esos saltos medidos al píxel... ufff ha sido muy duro grabar esto, en definitiva.
I just got a copy of this in a bundle of Oric games. I didn't know it was released on so many computers!
C64 version is one of my earliest gaming memories, and honestly until now I had no idea it was an arcade conversion.
I didn't know that either before I made the video, haha.
Real fun to watch! Even the homebrew for the atari 8-bit could be released like that, and would have been quite a good conversion - most the times the underrated xl did not even get this quality of programming... I would wonder if it may be possible to have this simple gameplay on the vtech laser/dick smith and on the TI 99/4a... im pretty sure there is a conversion for the plus 4 (must be running on the c16 also). Thank you for this pleasure for a person, whos youth was dominated by 8-bit homecomputers, I would be to call "real human hardware", that ran a shop to repair computers for some 40 years ago... 😘
I'm working on re-imagined version of this game for the C64 called Hunchback Redux. I hope to have it completed some time next year to co-incide with the 40th anniversary of the game. 🙂
Radical!
I played a lot the CPC version back at the time. It's surprisingly fast compared to a lot of conversions, and even compared to the arcade original. It make it very nice to play, even if we lost the foreground and the scroll to next level. Nice comparison.
J'aime beaucoup ce que vous faites continuez comme ça merci 🙏❤
One thing that would get me is the Hunchback jumping really, really fast in the intro, but walks like an old man when the player controls him. I wonder if this was the original intention of the game, but they might have hit some time or CPU limitation
This is this weird charm with the Atari version. It feels like a different game, which might not be a bad thing.
Funny coincidence: I just came back from watching Notre Dame de Paris at the theatre.
Btw never heard about this game!!
Vic20 love, but C64 🔝
Very nice channel and great retro content 👍🔥👌
Glad you enjoy it!
The ZX Spectrum looks like some angry old lady running towards someone on her lawn!
I answered "yes", but the truth is I knew a game on the TI-99/4A called "Quazimodo". I just assumed it was a 4A curiosity (certainly looks like the types of games produced by Milton Bradley for the machine at the time) and didn't discover it was an arcade port until I loaded the mame version one day and said "Hey, I know this game"
Same happend with the popular 4A game "Blasto". I just assumed it was a clone of Atari Tank Battle (with better single-player options). But it too is a port of an 1978 arcade game of the same name by Gremlin Software (which featured spaceships instead of tanks, but is otherwise identical (albeit in B&W).
Quazimodo and Hunchback share the honours of the most wasted screen real-estate of any game. The actual active playfield is a few scanlines tall, yet the graphics fill the screen. It's why I never suspected it was a port of a game someone got paid to create. It is reminiscent of a 80's magazine type-in game regardless of the system.
The C64 version if on Antsream Arcade. Maybe we will get the Arcade original version on Evercade soon.
Had a Dragon back then, and this version could have been a lot better.
Didn't know much about this game lol.
Incredibly fond memories of the (good looking) MSX version. Never knew there were a buttload of hidious other versions. Cool to see them in one of your video's OSG.
I've always sort of wanted a comparison of this one, so thank you for that. It's not a very good game, even in the arcade but it's interesting nonetheless. It was Ocean's first arcade to home conversions and it set the crappy standard of most of their ports going forward. Seriously, Ocean just sucks. Their original games suck and like 65% of the arcade conversions suck though they do got some good ones like New Zealand Story, Chase HQ (Speccy and CPC), Parasol Stars and Arkanoid, which was Imagine, i know and they were technically different companies then, but essentially they're the same and Ocean bought Imagine eventually so who cares. There's a few others, but as a whole Ocean just sucks and that even extends to porting home a game which looks like it should work well on most formats. turns out only the MSX gets a decent version. Best playing and looking by far. Unexpected for a western developed game on the system, would've excepted a lame Speccy port but i guess not for once. Other than that, the Dragon 32 is a good attempt and so is the Atari 8-bit which despite being one of the better ports was never released. every other port sucks. Okay, that's not entirely true, the C64 is okay just not what it should've been. There is no excuse for scrolling and audio that bad on the C64! Beeb and Acorn are decent enough too (creepy title screens though...) maybe even the CPC, but the Speccy that just sucks, and the Oric, well it's cool that it got a port at all but it's just not good. Way too slow. The smelliest turd of all though is the VIC-20. Yeah it was an old and not very capable computer, but it pulled off the more complex jungle hunt well enough, so why does it have to struggle so bad with hunchback? lazy developers! It's choppy, ugly, slow and just no fun.
Thanks for your detailed review!
Funny. Ocean made a few of my favourite games on Atari ST. Worst on that machine was US Gold. (Best was FTL)
@@PeBoVision Their licensed games were okay for the standard of home computer gaming at the time but by the time they flooded the console market their poor quality became apparent. Their arcade ports were hit or miss. Most of the time they were developing them in-house they sucked, because as in-house i mean two inexperienced college students instead of an actual company like some of their better arcade ports. Not that there weren't good ones, Parasol Stars, New Zealand story and operation thunderbolt certainly were but on the other hand you got chase h.q, robocop, bad dudes and many more, i'm struggling to remember off the top of my head. I might just be biased because data East and Taito were some of my favorite developers of the time, and that's what they mostly ported, but alot of their ports just aren't great. now, the arcade ports they outsourced to the likes of Graftgold, Software Creation and best of all, Ocean France were great. Everything Ocean France put out was top notch, well besides their Operation Wolf port, that was pretty rough but atleast looked the part but then you had Toki, Pang and the unreleased Snow Bros and Liquid Kids on Amiga. Unfortunately, Ocean UK treated their French divison like crap most of the time, cancelling many of their projects, even ones well into development like Snow bros on Amiga, and believe or not there were much more ports than that on systems like the Speccy, ST, C64 and GX4000. Ocean France usually only worked on the ST and Amiga, so those were likely the only versions there were behind, but Ocean themselves usually stepped up their game with the 8-bit ports when Ocean France was handling the 16-bit ones, Pang comes to mind, so they likely wouldn't of been so bad. Then under Software Creations and Graftgold you got Rainbow Islands, Sly Spy, Puzznic and many others, all of decent quality, so yeah I'm very divided on Ocean. They were cheap moneyhungry scumbags, that's undeniable, and anything by them on console sucks, but in terms of their computer quality it's a wild west. US Gold is still worse, though Ghouls N Ghosts, LED Runner and a few others were decent on the Speccy. I don't what it is, US Gold has a surprising amount of playable Speccy ports compared to other computers. Even Strider and Street Fighter developed by tiertex were okay. Sorry for all my blathering, but hopefully that sums up more of my feelings on Ocean. Not the best of their time, but still not the worse. Not familiar with FTL mind you, i'll check them out.
I'm careful not to accuse 80's developers of having been "lazy".
They were overworked, under-paid, presented with impossible deadlines, told to code on systems who's architecture they were completely unfamliar with...all true, but "lazy" ?
80's coders were closer to modern day slaves (albeit, stoned and drunk slaves). I've known too many who have lived in the office during software development to ever call them lazy.
Now granted you are speaking of developer's in general, not just the front line creative team, but I suggest that management was tyranical and money hungry, while the creatives were heroes given what they produced within the time constraints they were given and the non standardized system designs pre-MSX.
Bad software is often indicative of a bad place to work not lazy workers.
But I do understand your frustration with sub-standard port execution.
@@PeBoVision 80's developers definitely weren't lazy, i feel bad for them infact, having to throw together arcade ports with little source code to go off and on low budget and time constraints. The companies that allowed coders to endure these conditions were infact lazy
I had this on my spectrum but I forgot about it
C64 👍🏻👍🏻
MSX 🔝
Msx version is the best
Estás máquinas queremos ver! Las dragón oric electron Vic 20 etc hacen más interesante la comparación, también se podría ver contra máquinas de la ex URSS.
Huh... I've never heard of this game before...
Although many versions have been made, it is a game that perhaps is not remembered too much today.
Even as someone without much person attachment or nostalgia towards European home computers, this game fit way better on them than in the Arcade, still not famous by modern standards mind you, but you see more people talking about the home ports online than the arcade game. What a weird game to port home. It seems as if it were almost developed for computers and arcades at the same time, but no way to be sure on that.
buah , tambien vaya recuerdos, después de lo que muestras, se vuelve mucho mas dificil , lo que parece curioso es que solo la versión de spectrum y atari 8bit, el personaje es jorobado, los demás , están mas tiesos q una vela.
Mujy básico, tambien en el 83 no se puede pedir mucho mas, estaban empezando a surgir profesionalmente, q mas tarde en los años 85 , tanto en arcade como en 8bit los juegos ya tenían mucha mas calidad.
Me quedo con la versión de MSX, q no es un port de spectrum, se ve que lo programaron bien.
Las demás , en algunos casos, bendita paciencia la tuya.... se nota que es "complicado" Xd
Buahhh, no veas lo que sufrí para capturar algunas versiones. Aunque no lo parezca, la parte más difícil para mí fue engancharme a la cuerda de la segunda fase. A pesar de que el jorobado tocaba claramente la cuerda, no había forma de que se quedara colgado y tuve que intentarlo como 20 o 30 veces en alguna versión, y no exagero. Demencial. Luego están esos saltos medidos al píxel... ufff ha sido muy duro grabar esto, en definitiva.