Arnie

Arnie arrived on the Commodore 64 in 1992 from Zeppelin Games, and that publisher matters. Zeppelin was one of the British budget labels selling cassettes for a couple of pounds to players who could not stretch to full price. Budgets were tiny, but competition inside that price bracket was fierce, so the better cheap games had to deliver something immediately understandable.

Our record describes a single-player action game viewed from the side. The name nods at the action-film icon of the period, which was standard practice for budget releases: a joke or a hint replaced an expensive licence and told the buyer exactly what to expect, meaning plenty of enemies, plenty of shooting and short rounds.

1992 is late in the Commodore 64's life. 16-bit computers had taken the market, yet the 8-bit machine kept going on the strength of an enormous installed base and precisely these inexpensive tapes. Many interesting releases from that stretch appeared outside the attention of major magazines and now surface in catalogues rather than in best-of lists.

No level count and no programmer credit are stored in the database, so neither is guessed at here. The year, the publisher, the platform and the single-player format are the documented facts.

Budget cassettes had a look of their own as well: a simple painted cover, a manual printed inside the paper inlay, and a game that had to make its case within the first minute at the counter.

This is one of the titles that starts up in your browser on OldGame.cz, where its release year, publisher and screenshots are stored as well.