Overdue Reviews is an occasional series in which I pretend to be a videogame journalist. This week: The Spy Who Loved Me.
The Spy Who Loved Me is a vertical scrolling driving game based on the Bond film of the same name, released in 1990 for the C64.
I have two good memories of it.
The first is watching two of my younger cousins intentionally playing it badly. They were too young to play it well - they could barely hold the joystick - but they knew how to make Bond's car drive straight into the scenery and the resulting explosion pleased them greatly. They sat there for ages, doing the same thing over and over, giggling with delight every time.
The second is the music - an up-beat, funky variation on the classic Bond theme. My friend had the Amiga version of The Spy Who Loved Me and it was superior in every way - except for the music, which only played on the title screen. The C64 version had the music in-game, which I revelled in as a triumph for my plucky underdog computer.
I realise now that both of these things are subtle indicators of the overall quality of the C64 version. The explosion when you crashed wasn't just a few pixels flashing on and off, it was a proper series of fireballs that peppered the scenery. The music wasn't just a few scratchy beeps but a tune strong enough to fill the length of the game.
Probably the best thing about it was how Domark managed to make a fairly decent game out of a ten minute section of a two hour movie, and still make it feel authentic and in keeping with the source material. While some aspects are reasonably exaggerated and somewhat illogical (why would Bond need to pay his own government for upgrades to complete his mission?) it's packed with detail - ramps to jump, oil spills that spin your car, pedestrians that run out of the way, traffic cones that can be knocked over.
It also has a cartoony graphic of Bond's Lotus in the status bar and if you die the game over message is 'Bad show James'. What could be more Bond than that?
