Katakis Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 มี.ค. 2013
- Developed and published by Rainbow Arts in 1988.
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Also known as Denaris, it's pretty obvious that this game was inspired by R-Type and borrows very heavily from it. Fortunately, this is far from a shameless rip-off; it's an excellent (if very tough!) scrolling shoot 'em up.
The story involves shooting a whole load of hardware at a whole lotta' aliens, including some very impressively drawn/animated boss creatures.
You can pick up different weapon types and power each of these up, as well as having access to a super-charge shot by holding down the fire button. As with R-Type, you can get a module that fits to the front of your ship, which blocks enemy projectiles and will destroy pretty much anything that touches it. This is extremely useful when it comes to the boss fights, since they tend to shoot a huge amount of flak.
The game has several neat touches, such as destructible scenery and the fact that you get sound effects AND music; not something you got that often on the C64.
The game was coded by Manfred Trenz of Turrican fame, with Andreas Escher producing the graphics and Chris Huelsbeck on sound/music duties. It's quite interesting to note that they also did the R-Type conversion for the C64, so it seems strange that they produced this as well.
Enjoy!
#retrogaming - เกม
![Zamzara Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/NRo48Aljli8/mqdefault.jpg)
![Zamzara Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]](/img/tr.png)
![R-Type Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Bft5BhWIzTU/mqdefault.jpg)
![[C64] Katakis - Soundtrack](/img/n.gif)
this game is a great show of the capabilities of 8-bit in the 80s.
Some infos I remember from the German magazine 64'er: The uses mostly character graphics, no bitamps. Manfred Trenz used an own editor which allowed the creation of character graphics modules. These modules could be X/Y positioned, mirrored and whatever. Because the modules wouldn't align perfect, Trenz used some 'Fill characters'. They're looking totally ususeable, but they allows to merge the modules to look like a large graphic image. The method with the character graphics modules allowed the huge levels in Turrican and Turrican II. It's also possible to mix multicolor and single-color characters, so he game has a Hi-Res look, f.e. in Level 2 at 3:08 or in Level 4 the detailled electronic circuits. Shots and the Beam are also characters. Trenz also used an own sprite editor which was capable of handling 768 sprites.
Katakis has some bugs, one very bad is at 6:22 where the two small IC's gliding down. If you are dying and you have to start again at the 2nd checkpoint, you're very close to them. But the chips get invinsible and appear somwehere you don't exspect, so it's nearly impossible to get past them. There is also a rather heavy flickering in the end bosses because the raster interrupt timing to align the sprites wasn't perfect. In Turrican is no boss flickering, they also could move more freely.
Of course some people mentioned R-Type. Like a lot of other games, especcially The Great Gianna Sisters, were visible rip-offs of existing games. However, these versions were often better than the originals, so they'll stay in mind. Irem sued Rainbow Arts because of Katakis, but they made a deal which was unique in the computer gaming world: The Katakis team should write R-Type, although there was already a R-type conversion for the C64 in the works. The Rainbow Arts team used a modified Katakis engine and the game was finsished in 6 1/2 weeks. The end boss flickering also exists in the R-Type engine. Rainbow Arts re-relased Katakis with the name 'Denaris', with slight graphical changes and new color schemes, f.e. Level 2 is green: th-cam.com/video/QarSwcokuGk/w-d-xo.html
Here are the two R-Type versions for the C64:
Rainbow Arts: th-cam.com/video/Bft5BhWIzTU/w-d-xo.html&
Electric Dreams: th-cam.com/video/lrhKzB2PUdg/w-d-xo.html
Retro And More just a note. The characters graphics can not be mirrored / flipped. The C64 did not have hardware support for that so they needed to use dedicated character space if they wanted to have the same character mirrored.
@@litjellyfishHe never claimed that the hardware could do it, but that the EDITOR would be able to handle that.
@@youuuuuuuuuuutube ah… so that means that when the module was stored at disc it was flipped. Or if it was loaded from memory banks the flip was done by the CPU before landing in char ram?
Really amazing how good this game looks even today. Brilliant work and the music is best-in-class!
The multi-scrolls are crazy I never thought the C64 could do that except in a rudimentary non-game capacity
The most impressive thing in the game is definitely the parallax scrolling. How Manfred Trenz managed to pull off the parallex scrolling effects on a C64 with those huge animated bosses is beyond me.
The main trick is to use shifted character graphics. It's rather cheap affair, from a timing point of view. ASR in 8 memory locations for each frame. ACE.
(but it looks really cool)
@@Locateson how did they managed to create the moving stars on intro? Although there are repetitive patterns, I don't think rolling char is the solution
@@Starredmediasoft same method as is used in-game.
This is genius bedroom programming from the 80s. What an era
Never heard of this game but it seems like an amazing R-Type clone, and the music just fabulous!
man I was lookin for this game almost 25 years :) well played !
me too ;)
Did you know that glitch, when you pause the game during you shooting the boss with the huge blast cannon, and pause the screen on the exact moment, when you still see the blast, but the boss already flashing white, then the engine thinks you continously shooting the boss which soon dies. It is a really good trick, especially if you want to kill the mid-level "mini boss" which appears in a few levels.
Great game, one of my all time favourite.
Thank you for sharing this with us.
I was so excited as I received the cassette version of this game for my C64 back in the time. And I was even more excited every time I reached a new level. My buddy already owned the Amiga version and we were comparing the two version which were totally different.
I'm still enjoying the music - great work!
18:27 that boss looks EXACTLY like Sauron from Captain Power tv show lol
EDIT: Ooooh, they actually give credit to Captain Power for that, and to HR Geiger for the alien designs. Cool!
This brings back so many precious memories! I haven't seen, heard nor played this since I was 10 back in 91', but I still recognise the music and the boss battle sound effects! Converting to mp3 right now! Thanks so much for posting this.
th-cam.com/video/PtuC4rEg9Yo/w-d-xo.html
Check this out:
Katakis Level 3
There is nothing as good as hearing SID chip getting a hood workout. Amazing work on display here.
You really can notice the influence of Manfred Trenz. So many conformities to Turrican :)
Well played. One of the best games for the C64. Especially that soundtrack in levels 5 and in the final level. Good adaption of the Delta Force team (with Chuck Norris). Loved how the emulator even simulated the slow-downs at 8:14 and 9:08 for example.
This game must of been pushing the hardware to its limits, just stunning . Some amazing parallex on level 3
Hard as nails. Don't think I got past 2 level lol
9:07 Very impressive parallax effect.
Makes me even more pissed that Turbo Grafx couldnt manage paralax on most its games
Damn the C64 was really a beast, 50fps smooth animations, scrolling, even sound is great. We had to wait for the Amiga to finally have a computer that could beat its graphics & audio.
Best ending scene to a game that I have seen in a long time.
OMFG i loved this game SO MUCH!
And that sound!
Well played my friend, well played!!
R-Type + the powerup system from Darius.
Yes, it amazes me that so many people who scream "R-Type clone" miss that the power up system owes as much to Darius as it does to R-Type.
Music is very powerful for such a modest computer...
I'm just in the process of recording R-Type and now I can see that they're both distinct games, even if they use a lot of the same art style and concepts :)
My mind its about to explode. 2 or 3 scroll paralax planes, and multi scroll in some acts. Incredible music+FX, Full colour, very good animations and big sprites... Clone of R type yes, but this push the limits of all microcomputers in 8 bits. BRAVO!!!
It's not really a clone of R-Type, but certainly borrows a lot from that game. It also borrows from Darius and Gradius, among others.
This Game and Blood Money TOTALLY FREAKED ME OUT in those days!!!! (**)
Back in the days I was so desperatedly looking to get hands on this game but I had no money, no game store and no buddies who got it. Yeah wasnt so easy back then without downloads and the internet :P However I had Turrican :D
If I recall correctly the original Katakis was also pulled after Activision threatened Rainbow Arts (so my guess is that legitimate copies would be pretty scarce even back then). It was later watered down slightly and released as Denaris (which one of my friends did own). I never owned either version, but I did own R-Type and both Turrican games.
To my mind the best side scrolling SHMUP on the C64. Good graphics; great, catchy tunes; good weapon variety; lots of action and a difficulty that hits that sweet spot between: not so difficult that you have to start memorizing enemy patterns but also not trivially easy.
There's others that do individual things better (R-Type, Armalyte, etc. ..).but this one is just the complete package.
I don't know, I personally feel that Armalyte is the most complete shoot 'em up on the C64 and that Enforcer is essentially a more refined version of Katakis (lack of challenge notwithstanding). Katakis is certainly one of the better games on the system and a great technical achievement, but I don't feel the game has aged quite as well as some of its contempories.
Oh my, thank you for this time travel. I now remember how Katakis C64 was so much better than Katakis on Amiga, Area 12 ... (Had both, actually, HAVE both, where is Rick Dangerous...)
Best Shoot 'em Up on the C64 in my opinion. It was hard but fair, had fantastic graphics and music. Way better than R-Type. Don't know how much time I spend playing the game and how often I played it through.
BOLBY MONO
ON SELECTED COMPUTERS!
Oh I love this game ^^
Fun fact: Do you know that the name: Katakis came from a phone book(paper)? It was a name of a greek person living in Germany.
Wait, the level 5 music is actually the Delta Force movie theme!
It looks like R-type, but the music is cool and the graphics are good. for 64, it's very cool! Thanks!
that parallax FX at 10" great technique!!! was this multi-load tape game?
There are so many short tracks of the music who is still great fantastic, mostly the beginning of the levels - 12:18 bis 12:27 is my fav
Epic game
Überrrrrrrraaaagend
I remember the time when this game came out and was labeled as a ripoff of R-Type but I never had the chance to verify that claim, but wtf the second stage is a spitting copy of the first stage of R-Type, background fading in effect included.
64 kilobytes.. it's brilliant!!!
I only just now realized how many graphics from here were reused in Turrican 1, Turrican 2, and Enforcer
I miss that old sounds
This game was also re-released under the name Denaris
Man hat das Ding Laune gemacht, alles wegrotzen was sich in den Weg stellt
Looking at this all those years later, yes this is copying so much from R-Type. Katakis came in 1987, R-Type in May 15, 1987 but no one says that Katakis was also heavily inspired by Darius which according to the wiki released in February 1987. Looking at some gameplay, the title screen states 1986. The Red, Green and Blue balls that the player collects are strait out of Darius and the boss in 5:10 looks very fishy to me as well, lol. The boss at 6:55 is outright Gradius.
Manfred Trenz was really good at programming, but for game design he really grabbed with whole hands from R-Type, Darius and Gradius. At least he did a shoutout before that was a thing at 23:17 lol.
So many R-Type elements in this game...
Well, the same dude that coded this also did the official R-Type port on the C64
Scott Breon yes so that is what we are saying. So many ideas stolen from R-Type. Gameplay. Visuals etc
Supposedly "Katakis" is the name of a Greek restaurant in Dusseldorf (Germany). I do not know if that's true, but I've always thought the title sounds Greek.
I don't know the veracity of this, but the story back then was that Katakis was a name Manfred Trenz picked at random from a Greek phone directory. Turrican was apparently similarly taken from an Italian phone directory.
Sometimes it was easier to uncouple the satellite, especially for the boss of the 4th world. In my opinion the hardest one.
Chuck Norris loves the music in Stage 5 and 12
Terminator and alien references in Katakis....ha....never came that far...but then again I was like 7 so I didnt know the movies either :P
Seizure warning whenever a boss dies.
Aside from that I REALLY like this game!
But can you beat the game using a joystick (not a gamepad) without autofire?
Nice upload. Never managed to finish Katakis. After being banned, this game was eventually released in the UK, probably because the developers ended up finishing R-Type for Activision, which wasn't going too well! I have an original copy of the game on cassette.
It was a great shooter with fine graphics, music and SFX - guessing you are playing this on a 6581? I had an 8580 and I think some of the music sounded a bit better.
The emulator SID setting I use is a revision of the 6581 (R3). I find it offers the best sound/compatibility; the other settings can have a lot of break-up. As you say, the 8580 doesn't sound as good as the 6581.
Al82 Tru dat - 6581 all the way, especially for loud clear samples on the SID's pseudo fourth "thats a cool hardware bug" channel.
My copy was called Denaris.
@@AL82RetrogamingLongplays Yes that SID sounds just awful... Check other Sound Recordings on TH-cam of the Kataktis Sound. The Intro is just unbearable, and I thought my (real) SID sounds bad... ;-)
HOW DID THEY GET SO MUCH BASS OUT OF THE SID?!?!?
Area 6 (around 10 min) sounds weird.
I remember that one more clean. Is it played in an emulator?
Yes. That said, there are different versions of the SID chips and certain games will sound different on every chip (regardless of the version), so it may not be solely an emulator issue.
Great Game. Better and playable than R Type. Awesome music.
Still one of the best side scrolling shooters ever made. This really should get a modern 16 bit remake (but not the inferiour Amiga one).
Agree, the Amiga version was nothing compared to the C64. Same with Creatures, Armalyte, and quite a few others. Manfred Trenz is one of the greatest C64 coders ever. Look at Enforcer..........
I am so fucking old 😭
Woow!!!! technicaly impressive, inclusive better than Rtype; graphics, sounds, musics, animations and end scenne are all fantastic. But! What happened with the final bosses? are all beaten in the same way! that's a point missed.
that Delta Force theme :)
Sounds more like the theme to the movie 'Back to the Future"
@@peterzerfass4609 it is the delta force theme, check it out th-cam.com/video/SQUeQOIlcDM/w-d-xo.html
The lack of a shader or old crt kills the visuals.
Why are the bosses so easy?
looks good, but the sound is Horror
lol so mean xD at 15:24
Too bad it's Game Boy Color sequel got cancelled.
Fühle mich gleich viel jünger
This was called Denaris over here in North America (I live in Canada)
Scott Breon I was rereleased would wide with that name. First Katakis was stopped. R Type C64 releases and finally katakis was allowed to be released one year later as Denaris then.
Cheap copycat of The greatest shmup R-TYPE
but still good music
This game nearly resulted in another major lawsuit for copyright infringement due to the game being a very blatant ripoff of R-Type. Not a bad game by any means, but for all of Manfred Trenz's talent (and he certainly had plenty of it), he (and Rainbow Arts) also seemed to have a real knack for plagiarism.
Lot of games were clones of other games back then. Konami, for example, started out by making clones of other games. Kakatis, by comparison, isn't really a clone of R-Type, though it certainly borrows heavily from it (including the reproduction of certain assets). The real problem Rainbow Arts had is that they were a small German publisher and the likes of Activsion and Nintendo were much larger and better resourced, so the cost of trying to fight any legal action would likely bankrupt them.
very good but Enforcer is better
Yeah, Enforcer is essentially a refined version of Katakis and improves on it in almost every way. That said, Enforcer is really easy (though I still think it's the best game Manfred Trenz ever made).