Rockstar Ate My Hamster

Rockstar Ate My Hamster, developed by published by Codemasters in 1988.

Longplay Information

Author(s): MadMattyMadMatty
System: Commodore 64
Region:
Language:
Subtitle Language:
Additional Info: No information available
Publication Date: 14/05/2022
YouTube Release: 23/02/2023
Duration: 02:07:55
File Size: 100.36 MB (102772.00 KB)
Downloads: 188 downloads
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Archived Submission Thread

Screenshot

Player's Review

"Work your way to the top in the crazy Rock Biz! Pick your group, get shock-horror publicity, gig, release records, make stunning videos - get a Chart Hit and go Platinum."

The C64 conversion of this game runs quite slow so even with button mashing my way through, it takes a while. The object of the game is to collect all four Silver Discs and go Platinum. You have one year to do it and there is a lot of rng involved. Depending on when you hot the fire button can determine when where you land in the charts. Using publicity can can either help or hinder you and it is possible for your rockers to be killed off this way. When choosing your group at the start you can think of this as number of lives although losing your highest rated rocker can cost you fans.

Getting those silver discs however isn't entirely straight forward, at least in this version of the game. The discs seem to light up after reaching sales milestones and no so much about being in the no1 spot. You need to release a Single and let it get high in the charts to generate interest for your Album release. The sales bar tracks how well your album sales are doing. Once interest in your single drops, so do album sales. The idea is to keep the album high in the charts so you need to get a new Single out pronto.

I don't know if its just this version but spending silly amounts (3mil) on the music videos doesn't seem to do much better than say the 50 grand option. A soon as you knock out a new single, the previous is removed so some judgment is needed on how album sales and chart position will be affected. It can take three or even four weeks for your single to enter the charts which can be agonising as you watch the sales slump. If you are really lucky the single might be an instant chart topper causing a spike on the sales chart and a silver disc! I don't know if i just picked a great group of band members or not, but for the entire run they did not cause any bother. Normally you would expect them to constantly ask for things or cause trouble.

Overall I like the game even though it gets a bit boring when you have so much money and are just button mashing to get through the game. I would play any other version over this one due to how laggy the C64 game feels. It's clearly a Spectrum port and not a great one at that with the only notable C64 highlight being the music clips incidentally by Gavin Raeburn. I was hoping some of the wacky death would happen near the end of the game like "Rockstar dies in a Nuclear war" but it wouldn't appear.

If I record the game again for another system, I can take what i have learned from this run maybe releasing the Album earlier with a little rng manipulation to hopefully make a shorter video for those systems.

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00:04:13 Game