Commodore 64 Longplay [111] James Pond II - Codename: Robocod (EU)

Played by: MadMatty

James Pond II: Codename Robocod, developed by DDS Programming Team and published by Millennium in 1992.

“James Pond has returned as Robocod - He’s mean, he’s green, he’s part machine. Dr. Maybe’s dangerously fishy plans for world domination continue. In a slimy effort to sabotage the world’s largest toy factory, he has planted penguin-bombs in toy factories inside the North Pole! James Pond bubbles to the rescue as Robocod in another massive oceanic adventure!”

A conversion to the commodore 64 was never going to be as pretty as the 16 bit original but what we got looks initially impressive but soon goes sour. Once the game has loaded you are presented with the intro sequence which is a good rendition of the original. The game looks promising and you feel like the developers cared in making a great conversion.

But then the main game loads.You notice the background is just think multi colored horizontal lines. While it does scroll slightly vertically when moving upwards, if there are no objects on screen it can be hard to know where you are when jumping for platforms. Anyway moving on, you run to the castle and it looks impressive enough although the framerate is very choppy. It can make controlling robocod a little difficult as he is slippy, slippy and inertia driven. It’s way too easy to slide/fall off platforms. The familiar music sounds alright but its the only tune in the game and grates after a while. While running around the castle you notice there are not as many level doors as other versions.

Everything is generally fine for the first few levels. They are small with very few enemies and are quickly completed. This is where the problems start. After quickly going through the next set of the levels it looks like a few bonus rooms were stitched together and called complete. The developers appeared to have gotten bored and not bothered to complete the game. There is an audio problem at world 3 where the music just bugs out and is gone for the rest of the game. I tried a couple of versions and emulators and all exhibit the same behavior. (Original disk image used to record the game). I find it odd that this issue was missed in all the magazine game reviews. There is an early bonus stage that also breaks the audio so I skipped over it and show it at the end of the video.

I don't recall how life/energy worked in other versions of the game but here no matter how much energy you have at the end of a level you have, it resets at the start of the next level which can be really annoying

In the longplay I have tried to show all bonus levels, but there might be some I missed. The game certainly loses its appeal once the music stops working. With so few levels and some really short levels it feels like the game wasn't fully completed and what they had was quickly stitched together and shipped. I feel the game could have been notably better than what we got.

One last note, avoid the easyflash version of the game as the final level does not load. -
Disclaimer: Most videos by World of Longplays use SaveStates!

[cbusbyuk]

Unbelievable! One of my favourite games on the Amiga. I had no idea the humble C64 got a port as well. Doesn't look too shabby either!

[infernal_monkey]

21:53 I like how the music never comes back after this point

[Dukefazon]

I don't know how much I played this game but that music is burned into my mind, still after around 30 years. I might have only played 1 session, never finished the game but I vividly remember having fun with it.

[RSS]

Incidentally, the tape version does not suffer from any of the bugs the disk versions of this game have. Sometimes longer loading times for a bug free game is a good sacrifice.

[Ringtail]

another fine product from the lads at Data Design Interactive

[sarahranderson]

I used to love playing this on the C64...always crashed on jelly land though!

[felipesouza]

Man you can give me a tip and ifreta the boss in shinobi

[mrk]

James Pond was a fintastic game, though at times it cod have been batter.

Sorry.