Game Review: Flash Gordon (aka Captain Zapp) (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

Flash Gordon started life as a comic in the 1930s, with the main protagonist and his allies aiming to save the world against the might of Ming the Merciless.  There was of course the 1980 film with the Queen soundtrack and the infamous appearance (and speeches) of Brian Blessed as Prince Vultan. To be able to get a licence for the game must have been a considerable achievement from Mastertronic, who deemed the game suitable for their MAD label, even if by now that just marked the premium £2.99 price point with the catalogue numbers being part of the standard range.

To do the comic and film justice, the game was devised with three different sections, which are multi-loaded from tape.  These would deal with some key characters from the comic and film stories, and provide a plot to the game at the same time.  Naturally, these needed to be varied enough, and as the game loads on the Commodore 64, the sight of a high-resolution loading screen is different for its time, and the characters are well drawn and it builds up the plot to the start of the game, with a lengthy and excellent Rob Hubbard title theme playing.  This has suitable nods to Queen’s Flash film soundtrack, especially The Ring which features around half way through.

Initial Presentation

At the start and end of each section, there is a nice interlude screen with a picture of Flash Gordon, some animated planets rotating around, and the Rob Hubbard title theme.  This effectively gives you the plot of the game but drawn in a similar way to as you would be reading the comic itself.  It is a simple but clever touch and just adds more polish to some very slick presentation as the game is ready to start.  Now you just need to get Flash through the jungle.

Rumble in the Jungle

The first section takes place in the jungle, with you as Flash attempting to navigate around the jungle and to find the cave where Prince Barin is situated. This takes place with a side on flip screen view, with the top of the screen showing the jungle, and the bottom showing a sort of map (although loosely to be fair) along with the status display showing time remaining and the number of bullets you have, up to a maximum of twelve in your ammunition.  There are brown boxes on the floor where you can replenish these, so you will need to work out where they are along the way.  You also have various enemies to get past, including gorillas, skeletons, birds, spiders, deep ravines to jump over, beehives, a dinosaur breathing fire and right at the end, once you find the way, a tiger.

You have various moves at your disposal without fire pressed including low, medium, and high shots, run and duck.  Combinations of these are useful to destroy the enemies, and with fire pressed you have a jump (necessary for those ravines) and a fly kick.  It is well worth noting these moves in the instructions are based on the direction you face, so reverse these if going left instead of right.  At the junctions you can hold fire and press up to move in the junction (upwards) and down to move out (downwards.)  Sometimes you cross those paths and so to go straight on, keep facing the way you came in.

There are some arrows situated on some of the jungle screens which show you which way to go, and that can be very useful indeed to make sure that you can map out the right direction and locate any top ups of our ammunition, which you will need.  At first, this section can be confusing and especially trying to work out which way to go at the junctions, but once you map this and work out which enemies come where, it becomes easier.  Whilst the time does tick down, being hit or colliding with an enemy or falling down the ravine loses time.  The more difficult the enemy, the more time you lose, so the key here is to avoid this as much as you can.  With a few repeated plays you will soon work out the way and find the tiger guarding the cave to exit this section.

What is nice is that as you progress throughout this section, the music interactively changes in the background based on the part of the maze you have reached, with snippets of the main theme playing as you reach those, which interrupts the background jungle beats well without sounding too much in the way.  It also really makes the whole thing feel like you have managed to go the right way if that music does change too, so a sensible progression award too.  Now time to do battle…

Battling Barin

The second section has Flash in the cave, and needs to battle against Prince Barin to prove your worth and to earn his respect, which will mean you can be provided with directions to intercept Ming and a jet bike to boot.  This is viewed as a beat-em-up, with Flash in red and Prince Barin in green.  What is different is that the figures are at the bottom in a tug of war – to win you need to pull Barin all the way to the left side, by hitting him more than he hits you.  This may sound simple but it can prove to be at first not a simple task.  The key here is that Barin does tire a little over time, so you can hit in short bursts to start with and then sustain that later.

The moves are all detailed in the instructions, and well worth reading, and the joystick response is spot on – so when you are doing the high punches with diagonal up right (if facing right) then a good combination of that and the low punch can work well.  The back scorpion type kick can be handy if facing away from Barin and wanting a little surprise move, as well as the somersaults to move out of the way.  The cave’s backdrop is nicely drawn too, and all the moves seem to work very well in different bursts in order to be able to defeat Barin.  As a standalone game this would be reasonably decent on budget to start with, and could easily have been expanded upon.  Defeat Barin and it is off to the jet-bike.

On Your Bike!

The final section sees you on a jet bike and with time ticking away at a rate of knots, Flash now needs to be able to manoeuvre quickly to locate the power gates, steering through these to top up whatever energy level you can.  You do need to ensure you take out the guards too, as any one that passes you will mean that it makes the resulting mission more difficult as you cannot build a full steam of speed.  Get past the guards and the power gates, and then there is the minefield to take on, and which Ming lies beyond.  Get Ming in your targets and fire at him to destroy him.  All that sounds simple, but it can be quite tricky to get the right speed and direction to fire at the guards and destroy them.

The key is that down and up changes the elevation of the gun, but in the opposite direction, more like a flight simulator – so down goes up for example.  This should allow Flash to hit the guards that come in the shape of the birds that fly at you, but if they hit you, your shield is reduced, and if no shield left, you are destroyed and it is game over.  This can be quite challenging at first, but once you get used to the elevation of the guns and be able to shoot the enemies, you can speed up well, dodge the minefields as you need and then take out Ming in a final battle.  Will you have enough time to save the world?

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Flash Gordon are consistently good – the jungle theme in the first section is well drawn and animated, with some lovely touches such as the dinosaur’s breaths of fire, the bees having a hive which they sting from, and the little arrows in the background to direct you working well once you get the hang of it.  Flash and Barin are well animated in the beat-me-up section with the moves all well executed and feels like you are properly in control.  The final stage works well with its 3D effect and display being clear to see and work with.  The status displays add a polished touch and certainly show how much effort went in to make the game look and feel like the comic strip and film.

The Rob Hubbard soundtrack is superb – from the epic six-minute title theme which draws you in to the action with suitable film soundtrack nods, to the change of mood in the jungle being a more interactive soundtrack as you progress through that section.  The second and third sections have  a constant bass line that plays to drive you on, and shows thought and consideration into how it all worked together.  No wonder that it was the highest scoring original Mastertronic game soundtrack in Zzap! 64 too.

Final Thoughts

Flash Gordon takes three game elements and places them together in what must be one of the best early comic and film game tie-ins out there.  The three separate sections work perfectly well on their own and each could have been expanded to make a standalone budget game without any problem.  The fact that all three appear complete with a speedy multi-load meaning you do not have to wait long to get back into the action, and you have a package that is very well presented with some lovely graphics, superb sound and most crucially of all, a very playable game across all the sections.  It shows when care and consideration is taken into a game, the result is one of the most enjoyable Mastertronic releases on the Commodore 64, with a fair difficulty curve and a real sense of battling against enemies and the clock along the way.  An absolute winner.

Captain Zzap or Zapp?

And we have not ended there.  Most likely due to licencing reasons in that the obtained licence may not have been valid for all territories, Flash Gordon was re-skinned as Captain Zzap (as referred to within the game screens) and Captain Zapp (on the game’s cover).  Crucially, although all the gameplay elements are there, the plot has been changed on the introductory screens so that Prince Barin is now Prince Goram, and that Ming the Merciless has become Targa the Tyrannical.  The main Flash character has also been amended in the loading and introductory screens to have a moustache and black hair instead of light hair to not resemble any likeness.  It plays just the same with the game being disk only and therefore loading at a very good speed.  Also notable was that the catalogue number was different for the US disk release too – ICD 0129.

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