Not quite Zzap, but a baseball game flashback

Tell us about what Zzap meant to you as a lad
Post Reply
Bazza
Ken's Fishy Friend
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Jul 01, 2003 5:34 am

Not quite Zzap, but a baseball game flashback

Post by Bazza »

I remember one time back in the old C64/Zzap days when a mate and myself bought some new Baseball game. It was supposed to have both a Manager version and a "play" version.

Anyway, we fired it up and couldn't for the life of us find the "play" version anywhere. Management version was supposed to be on one side and the playable version on the other. We got completely p'ed off and duely whipped the game out of the 1541 and threw it around the room in frustration...hehehe, we even ripped the jacket off the disk and tossed it around. We just happened to have picked up the title on some jaunt somewhere and were unlikely to be venturing back to the shop.

Once our frustration had simmered, we actually decided that perhaps the management game might not be too bad...Amazing thing is, we taped the jacket back together and the thing worked perfectly! So much for handling floppy disks with care ;)

As it turned out, the most fun we had with that title was when we were throwing it around the room anyway 8)

Another fond memory was with Leaderboard Golf. We bought the original and it had some dongle protection so you could copy the disk but it would only work if you had the dongle in the back of the C64...We busted open the dongle, saw it was basically just some resistor, so went out purchased a similar resistor, wired it between 2 alligator clips, clamped it onto the back of the C64 and viola...do it yourself dongle...Looking back, I would have thought the alligator clips would have added to the resistance, but perhaps the software had quite a bit of tolerance ;) well, a lot more than we ever did ..hehe
User avatar
smila
Freelancer
Posts: 91
Joined: Sat Jul 05, 2003 12:39 am
Location: newcastle england

Post by smila »

talking of the dongle on leaderbord,

all you actually had to do was wait till the game loaded, stop the tape then press play again - that acted like the dongle . . . mental
got created the sid chip so hubbard could make music
User avatar
Mayhem
Editor
Posts: 394
Joined: Thu Jun 19, 2003 11:19 am
Location: London
Contact:

Post by Mayhem »

The dongle was there for people using the disc version who didn't own a tape drive. It would mimic the "press play" bit that most of us were actually using instead...
Another visitor... stay awhile... stay forever!
Bazza
Ken's Fishy Friend
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Jul 01, 2003 5:34 am

Post by Bazza »

Oh, never knew that about the tape version. Still, I got a 1541 when I bought my C64. I had enough frustrating times with my TRS80 and its tape loading mechanism. You'd wait five minutes whilst a game was loading only to get a "?*" in the top right hand corner of the screen (instead of a flashing "**") which meant LOAD ERROR...ARRGH..you then had to fiddle with the treble and bass and try again.

hehe, come to think of it...used to have similar scenario with the 1541 and its load LED....
Post Reply