G-Loc R360

G-Loc R360, Arcade conversion by Images Software and published by US Gold in 1992.

"In the hot seat of an experimental super plane YOU are the ace pilot. Ahead of
you lies 36 action packed suicide missions. Your weaponry is highly
impressive. Twin Rapid fire lazers, and an awesome missile guidance system
gives you the technological edge needed for your missions. In your hands you
have such advanced fire power and controls that are well ahead of your
opposition. G-LOC delivers the pulse pounding excitement you'll just want to keep coming
back for!"

This conversion is a bit disappointing when compared again other conversions. Short intro, short music and no real ending. I cant even say it looks all that great either. The flight control is a pain to work with and the game is insanely difficult and barely any fun to play. Even the spectrum game gets to laugh at this version. I bought this as a full price (bigger box) tape version and it didn't take long to regret the purchase.

Confession time - I've had to resort to cheating to make this longplay work. Like the Spectrum version (and Amstrad?) there are 16 levels and working against you is Limited Time, Limited fuel, Limited lives (Credits), Limited missiles and an ever increasing kill requirement. You start with 120 seconds to clear the first stage. After each stage you are awarded a time bonus for remaining missiles. As you need to use missiles to get anywhere in the game, they are quickly burned up so you dont get much of a bonus. You do at least get all missiles back before each stage. There are no canyon bombing runs or refill landings. If you use a credit, you have to start back with only 60 seconds. This is just too tight and with poor control, much time is wasted just lining up the enemy planes. So in order to get through the game I have cheated with 'Infinite missiles' which gives me the maximum amount of time to complete a stage.

There is not much to the games scenery and it just loops over around after level 9. It is far to easy to take damage and not so easy to avoid it. If you take too much damage, the plane zooms out for a miracle repair before getting you back into the action. This all costs time however which you have so little of. There is an Afterburner to get you to the enemy quicker, but it doesn't really do much more than burn precious fuel and are probably best off not using it. The game has 3 difficulty levels, but its not really easier on the lower settings. On Hard, you get full control. Afterburner and 360 spin. On medium you only get the Afterburner and limited turning ability. On Easy you get auto speed and very little maneuver control. You get a little more time but credits don't change.

So overall, the C64 conversion is lacking in presentation, doesn't look like anything special, pretty boring overall due to lack of scenery and stage variation and just plain sucks due to insane difficulty level due to the ever tighter time limit.

Also note, that the game has one of the worst tape loaders I've come across. The Loading picture, Intro and Game are all separate executables and you need to reset the C64 between each. How broken is that! The only positive if any is that you can just note the tape position and load the game file. After loading the pic or intro, the c64 appears to just hang/crash. What cant be excused is the lack of pic or intro on the disk version.

00:00:00 Titles / intro
00:01:25 Game