• Tag Archives Epyx

  • Street Sports (Epyx)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Source: Compute! – Issue Number 102 – November 1988 

    Sports games have been popular on video games systems since the dawn of time. The very first video game (Pong) was really a sports game of sorts. While most sports games try to faithfully recreate the sport it represents in some way, there have also been many sports games to do something a little different. There have been numerous invented futuristic sports games for instance. Epyx took a little bit of a different approach with their “Street Sports” Series of games.


    Street Sports Baseball

    In this ad, Street Sports Baseball, Street Sports Basketball and Street Sports Soccer are shown. I believe Street Sports Football came along a little later. For the most part, these games were a pretty faithful recreation of the sport. It is just that the environment was a little different.


    Street Sports Soccer

    Like most sports games, you have a roster of individuals to choose from for your team. However, instead of professional players these are kids. After all, if you are talking about playing some sport literally on the street or in a vacant field that’s probably who is playing. And I’m sure there’s always one that gets chosen last…


    Street Sports Basketball

    Also like most sports games, there are various locations in which to play. For basketball, this might mean in someone’s driveway or on a court in a park. For baseball it might be an empty field or parking lot somewhere. Because of the nature of the locations, there might be obstacles that you wouldn’t find in a typical sports games (for example, a tree stump in the middle of the field you are playing on).

    Though not the best sports games available, generally speaking, the Street Sports Series got positive reviews. They are advertised here as being available for the Commodore 64, Apple II, DOS, and Amiga. If you like sports games and are looking for something just a little different, they are at least worth checking out.

    The ad above is from the November 1988 issue of Compute! Screen shots are from the Commodore 64 versions of the game.


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  • Crypt of the Undead (Atari 400/800)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment


    https://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/189744524317/oldschoolfrp-crypt-of-the-undead-horror



    Crypt of the Undead, also known as just ‘The Crypt’, was developed by Automated Simulations which became Epyx and released in 1982. It’s unclear which platforms this game was available for. This ad features the Atari 400/800 and there was also an Apple II version but I’m not sure if there were any others.

    This game is an action/adventure/RPG played from an overhead point of view. The graphics are very simple and in black and white. The backstory is that you have woken up in a cemetery and must escape within a certain amount of time or you will become a permanent resident. You must find keys and search various crypts, ultimately looking for the key that will get you out of the cemetery. Along the way you will meet vampires, zombies, werewolves and other nasties to be battled or avoided. Of course you will also pick up various items long the way to help you out…various weapons, bagels to restore your energy and a variety of other items.

    Crypt of the Undead is a bit like a slightly more primitive version of Temple of Apshai. Combat is more turn-based and uses simulated dice rolls to determine damage. The player is warned whenever monsters are near and they will always move toward you. You have the option to either fight or run away.

    Original copies of this game will be hard to come by. The one I saw on eBay recently was being listed for some obscene amount of money and included on the disk an manual. There haven’t been any re-releases as far as I know so your best best is probably going to be to use emulation. Or you could always write the disk image back to a real disk if you have original hardware.

    Screen shots above are from the Atari 400/800 version of the game.


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  • Epyx Fast Load

    Posted on by Azrael Comment


    USA 1985

    https://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/188856766207/retrocgadsusa-1985



    The Commodore 64 in addition to being an excellent computer for its time was also an incredible games machine. The one significant drawback it had was long load times…sometimes very long. Being a computer and using a disk already meant longer load times than a cartridge based video game system but the disk load times on a Commodore 64 were much slower than they should have been for various cost saving and backwards compatibility measures for the VIC-20 that were really unnecessary. Anyway, being a computer with easy programability and expansion ability, this was a problem that could be overcome.

    One of the first solutions to this problem was the Epyx Fast Load cartridge. It sped loading up to 5x and when you were talking load times that could sometimes be measured in minutes or with games or applications that would have multiple loads, this was huge. The Fast Load cartridge simply plugged into your user port and no other effort was necessary to enjoy much faster load times.

    In addition to speeding up loading, it also added a few shortcuts commands. For instance (from memory) typing ‘$’ would give you a directory listing and typing ‘←*’ would fast load the first (or only) application/game on the disk. What was most important, however, was the faster load speeds.

    The Fast Load cartridge was released in 1984. It did have a few downsides. Mainly, it did not work with some copy protection schemes that came later. Of course, this was just another incentive to pirate games or to use pirated versions stripped of copy protection even if you bought the original. Eventually it became common and ultimately virtually universal for fast load schemes to be built into programs. This made the Fast Load cartridge much less useful but at the time it was released it was virtually a ‘must have’.

    The ad above is from circa 1985.


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