TWO-FER #27: Fantasy Software Special

1. The Pyramid

Designed and written by Bob Hamilton, with additional graphics by Darren and Ian Hamilton. Originally published for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum by Fantasy Software in 1983.

Converted for the Commodore 64 by John White, and published by Fantasy Software in 1984.

2. Beaky and the Egg Snatchers

Designed and written by Bob Hamilton, and originally published for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum by Fantasy Software in 1984.

Commodore 64 version by Bob Hamilton and John White, and published by Fantasy Software in 1984.

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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS, PLURAL

Because the first game comparison for 2025 was so utterly C64-centric, I thought the situation should be balanced out with something that was originally made for another platform. It just so happens, that there were only two games ever published by Fantasy Software, that were available on more than one platform, so I decided we are going to have them both in the same entry. In fact, none of the other games by Fantasy Software were ever ported to any other computer than C64 from the ZX Spectrum, so these two are somewhat special. So, let's see if this attempt at balancing works out.

At the time of starting to write this entry, The Pyramid has a score of 6.8 from 14 votes at Spectrum Computing, which is a bit lower than the 8 years old original World of Spectrum score of 7.67 from 43 votes. The C64 version has a 6.67 from 24 votes at Lemon64, so it's not too far from the Spectrum version's current status. Beaky and the Egg Snatchers enjoys a similar score with 6.3 from 4 votes at Spectrum Computing, compared to the original WOS's 6.8 from 10 votes. Again, the C64 version is pretty close to this with 6.67 from no more than three votes. So it's definitely the less celebrated of the two games. But because this comparison entry was possible to do this way, then why not. Perhaps it will raise some awareness.

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HISTORY, DESCRIPTIONS & REVIEWS

One of the sadly short-lived, but somewhat successful software houses from the early 1980's was Fantasy Software, founded by Bob Hamilton and Paul Dyer, and most of its games were written by Bob Hamilton. Fantasy's first two games, The Black Hole and Violent Universe, were published under the name Quest Microsoftware, but the rest of their catalogue of no more than seven games were published as Fantasy Software. Their story ended in 1985 with declining interest in their products, and reportedly, a considerable debt.

Fantasy's best remembered cult classic revolve around a character called Ziggy, who was introduced in the company's biggest hit game, THE PYRAMID. Unlike Ziggy's later adventures, which we will be looking at briefly at the end of this entry, The Pyramid is a rather simple single-screen shoot'em-up, in which you control a flying device within otherwise empty rooms of a pyramid, except for the respawning enemies that are different for each room. You need to collect some sort of token gems dropped by dead enemies, and use them to break through energy barriers leading further down the pyramid. It's an arcade game in the classic sense, where there is no real ending, nor do you really expect to have one, and it's considered as one of the most memorable early Spectrum games for a good reason.

The other game, BEAKY AND THE EGG SNATCHERS, is admittedly an inferior game, and draws most of its inspiration from Joust, but it does have its own personality. You control an Andromedan Armed Condor called Beaky, whose purpose is to protect your unhatched eggs from the Egg Snatchers and weather elements, and once they have hatched, you need to feed them; all this for four seasons in different areas, resulting in twelve long and tough stages of frantic action. There is a certain JetPac-like quality to Beaky, and as a single-player experience, it can be considered a bit more interesting than Joust, if not exactly as fine-tuned as a game. It's not a bad game, as such, just entirely too time-consuming considering its simplicity, and unfortunately, it serves no real purpose in the history of computer games. The cover looks pretty nice, though.

On a more personal note, my introduction to both of these games came around the same time, as late as 1995, when I managed to find a compilation called The Thriller Pack (also known as A View To A Kill Pack) for the Commodore 64. This compilation featured three Domark games: the aforementioned James Bond game, Friday the 13th and Codename MAT II; as well as CRL's Test Match and these two games from Fantasy Software. To be honest, these two games were probably the two of the highest quality on the compilation, which says a lot.

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LOADING

What we have here this time, is an odd assortment of loading times for two releases of two games for two platforms. If there was supposed to be some sort of a rule here, to make some sort of a distinction between certain loading schemes, I'm not aware of it.

-The Pyramid-

SPE, Fantasy: 3 minutes 50 seconds
SPE, Paxman: 3 minutes 18 seconds
C64, Fantasy: 6 minutes 39 seconds
C64, Paxman: 4 minutes 6 seconds

The Pyramid loading screens. Left: Spectrum - Right: Commodore 64.

The SPECTRUM version is quite obviously the winner here, even against the C64's quicker re-release. Perhaps the SPECTRUM loading screen is also more iconic, largely thanks to its animated entrance, but I do prefer the C64 version's more thematically appropriate loading screen.

-Beaky and the Egg Snatchers-

SPE, Fantasy: 4 minutes 34 seconds
SPE, Paxman: 4 minutes 42 seconds
C64, Fantasy: 6 minutes 47 seconds
C64, Paxman: 3 minutes 59 seconds

Beaky and the Egg Snatchers loading screens.
Left: Spectrum - Right: Commodore 64.

This time, the C64 re-release wins the race, but not by more than 35 seconds. I find this a bit odd, since the loader used by the Paxman Promotions re-release is the same as used by their version of The Pyramid, which is less effective on squeezing the loading speed than in the case of Beaky and the Egg Snatchers. At least the loading screens look good enough in both versions. Of course, the C64 Paxman version using a turbo loader, the loading screen is missing from both games.

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THE PYRAMID: PLAYABILITY

Once the game has finished loading, you need to select your preferred control method. The SPECTRUM original features no less than seven different control methods, three of which are different keyboard setups, while the C64 version uses two: joystick in port two or definable keyboard controls, which will be prompted after selecting keyboard.

When you start the game and enter a room, you will notice that you are in charge of the one thing that looks different from all the other moving objects in the room; a vessel with a circular frame and a man inside on a plain seat, holding a weapon of some sort. The circular vessel floats downwards at a similar speed the other objects do, but you can control the thing to go in all the directions your joystick or keyboard can offer. Moving around makes you move faster than any of the other objects will, at least in the beginning of the game, so it's easy to get a grasp of how to play. The weapon you are wielding within the flying vessel shoots a horizontal beam of some good length, and the length will decrease considerably, if you keep the fire button down for more than half a second.

The idea is to shoot the enemy objects to reach a quota, upon which a white diamond will fall from the ceiling. If you try to take the diamond while fresh, you will take damage, but wait until it becomes blue (after turning yellow for a second), and then you can pick it up. This blue diamond can be taken above one of the two exits at the bottom of each room, and drop them to break the energy barriers, or at the very least, diminish their strength. This is the tricky part: if you collide with an enemy object while carrying the blue diamond, not only will you take damage, but the diamond you carried will also be lost. As you make progress, you will need to become extra careful with that, then, because the further down the Pyramid you descend, the more powerful barriers you will encounter on your way, and the more objects you need to shoot to reach the diamond quota. Note, that while the diamond is still white, it can destroy any object in its way, but the moment it turns yellow, it becomes vulnerable.

If this premise feels simple upon reading about it and even when looking at the game, the reality of the game's difficulty curve becomes apparent after only the first couple of rooms, when the enemy objects start moving about in different ways than just up and down. The problem with objects going sideways, and even more so, diagonally, is that you will be having a hard time trying to dodge everything, shoot what you can, pick up the diamond when possible, and get to your destination before taking too many hits.

Oddly enough, as simple as the concept is, there are some considerable differences between the two versions. The first, and most immediately recognizable difference is the screen size - the C64 version's screen is much wider, and as such, the way you move around in the rooms feels like you need to do a little bit more than in the SPECTRUM original. To balance that, the enemy objects are a little bit larger too.

The second-most instantly recognizable difference is, that the SPECTRUM version has rather wide collision detection areas for all moving objects, whereas this has been fixed to be pixel-perfect in the C64 version. Of course, this is helpful, which in turn requires some other adjustments in playability to bring some other things to ramp up the basic difficulty, and that is homing enemy objects, which often start appearing already in the second room. At least they will not appear in every room onwards, but rather randomly instead, yet in increasing numbers. The C64 version also has a minor visual upgrade, where your vehicle changes colour, when you are dangerously low on energy, but it doesn't really affect gameplay.

With all these changes, it is surprisingly difficult to decide, which one is more or less playable, because overall, they seem to be equally difficult on the long run. The SPECTRUM version's annoyingly large collision fields do give the growing difficulty level a much more unintended and forced feel, while the C64 version's balancing acts feel like they were added in to make the game feel equally difficult to the original, while retaining its more perfect playability. So, it's really a matter of familiarity, which will likely determine the winner this time, and I'm forced to give the two a shared score.

ZX SPECTRUM - COMMODORE 64 : 1-1

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THE PYRAMID: GRAPHICS

The Pyramid is a game that was never going to be praised for its graphics, although it cannot be denied, that there is a certain atmosphere created by the scarcity of backgrounds and variations. So, you might ask yourselves: "what is there to actually look for here?"

The Pyramid control options, or title screens. Left: Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Right: Commodore 64.

Well, let's start with the screen that greets us upon having finished loading. It is a title screen of sorts, if you want to think of it that way, but more than that, this is where you select your controls. The SPECTRUM version of the screen looks like something out of a Durell game, with the blue background, some yellow highlights and otherwise white text, which is always a nice and clear option. The C64 version gives us a light brown background and red text, which do not go together particularly well. Not a good start for the C64 here.

Progress and Game Over screens. Left: Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Right: Commodore 64.

The actual title screen is the progress screen, in which we see your current location within the Pyramid. Your route is marked with red colour, and the unvisited rooms are cyan/turqoise. The game title and credits are always displayed at the bottom of the screen, and all the text printed on the screen uses the basic system font. The SPECTRUM version of this screen uses a little bit more colour, as well as lower case letters in a couple of places, which the C64 version doesn't. In these sorts of cases, it's the small details that count. As you can see, the same screen acts as the designated Game Over screen, so it's rather compact.

In-game screenshots from the Sinclair ZX Spectrum version.

All the game's screens are just basically black background with red borders, and four animated energy barriers blocking the exits. The enemy sprites all have their own specific animations, as well as their specific disintegrations, so you can imagine, with 122 rooms, and therefore 122 enemies, you need to have some room in the RAM dedicated for all the animated sprites. Add to that, your own circular little floating device, its simplistic dotted beam weapon and the colour-changing diamonds, it's a surprising amount of graphical information to have in store. Then, you still get a rather visual animation of your little hovercraft's destruction, with bits flying all over the place, leaving vapor trails and other bits floating behind.

With all this going on, it leaves the info panel a bit scarce and hard to read. From left to right, the "A" value represents the amount of kills you need to make to get a diamond - I don't know what the letter 'A' means, though; the "P" value is probably "Power", which is really your energy meter; the "S" value means your current given score for beating this room; and the "L" is the level number.

In-game screenshots from the Commodore 64 version.

The C64 version's screen looks somehow more stuffed, because although the screen is wider, the slightly bigger sprites makes the rooms always feel a bit crowdier. Similar to the SPECTRUM version, all the rooms feature their own specific enemy sprites with their own animations, but somehow, they have a somewhat more bulkier look to them overall. On the good side, you get no attribute clash and there is an added grey version of your sprite to indicate extremely low energy, but the bad thing is, your explosion animation is considerably less visual.

I cannot help but feel like this is one of those times, where the machine's given basic palette is largely responsible for giving the game its mood. Also, the many small colour and font related things are really what makes The Pyramid such a SPECTRUM game.

ZX SPECTRUM - COMMODORE 64 : 1-0

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THE PYRAMID: SOUNDS

Now, what can you really expect from a game that was designed to have no music at all, and all the sound effects are different fart variations? Yeah, I could count four different sorts: shooting, killing an enemy, taking damage and the explosion that results in Game Over. You might think that the C64 version could do better, right?

Of course, you would be absolutely correct there, because all the sound effects mix up together much better, and the sound effects are of different kinds as well. Sadly, still no music, but it's still a much more impactful set of four sound effects.

ZX SPECTRUM - COMMODORE 64 : 0-1

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BEAKY: PLAYABILITY

Beaky and the Egg Snatchers starts off muchly in the same manner as the other game: the control options. Also similarly, the control options are much more varied in the SPECTRUM original, than they are in the C64 conversion, which again offers only joystick in port 2 or definable keyboard. Once you have made your selection, the game starts immediately, without even a "Get Ready" screen.

While the game starts off looking like a Joust-clone, it is quite a bit different, actually. Unlike the jousters in Joust, Beaky the condor is capable of avoiding any unnecessary collisions with sharp platforms, but that capability in itself makes maneuvering Beaky somewhat awkward thanks to the automatic avoidance system. So, a considerable amount of time will be spent on trying to come to terms with how to control Beaky, even though there's only up, down, left, right and fire button to use. You have no lives, either, but rather a constantly depleting magic meter, which has to last for all three sections.

To be perfectly honest, until I started working on this comparison, I had never actually gotten through the first screen, because I had not bothered reading the game's instructions. The thing is, you need to collect all the eggs from the first level and drop them into the next at the bottom, but since you cannot actually pick up an egg from the ground and lift off, you have to let the Egg Snatchers pick up one of them and then shoot them, so they drop the egg, at which point you're going to have to pick it up and make the delivery by making a smooth landing on top of the nest. It is actually rather easy, once you notice that the Egg Snatchers all follow their specified patterns. Once all the eggs have been gathered, you need to keep the fire button down for a few seconds to exit the screen. This, you could never have known if you didn't read the manual, which makes it bad, unintuitive design.

The second screen is much clearer, since it has a time limit you just need to get through, which is thankfully not that long. The idea is to keep your eggs warm, which means you need to destroy the snowflakes dropping straight down onto the eggs as early as possible, to make the resulting water drops also vanish before they hit the eggs. There is also a green long-legged monster that you need to keep out of the egg basket, and this you can prevent by shooting the large randomly hovering circular thing when it is right above the monster, because the large circular thing breaks into pieces and drops a smaller cog-looking device, which drops straight down and knocks the green monster down into the ground.

The third screen is all about feeding the chicks, which on paper should be easy enough: just pick up the green worms (or snakes), and bring them to the hungry chick in the nest, until the time counter has finished. Well, there is, of course, another monster flying about, dropping some sort of yellow things into the nest, which makes the resident chick hungrier. In the second and third sections, your magic meter is only depleted by shooting and taking hits from the enemies, which is why you need to be as quick as possible completing the first section.

Once you have completed the first set of three sections, you move on to the next one, now introducing rotten green eggs that drop down from the sky at regular intervals, and you must keep them out of the nest. The game is not over until you have completed four full sets. All these sets have different level designs, so there is plenty enough to play, particularly as the difficulty level also ramps up accordingly.

As with The Pyramid, the C64 version is not all that different, but it plays a bit faster than the original, and the collision detection area between Beaky and the platforms is a bit smaller, so it's easier to move around in each screen. Unfortunately, this also means that the second and third sections are always more hectic than in the SPECTRUM version. Therefore, the two versions are surprisingly balanced between themselves.

ZX SPECTRUM - COMMODORE 64: 1-1

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BEAKY: GRAPHICS

Beaky and the Egg Snatchers control options, or title screens.
Left: Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Right: Commodore 64.

Beaky and the Egg Snatchers' title screen / control options screen is not particularly different from The Pyramid's, which to me seems pretty lazy, but at least they show a unifying style for Fantasy Software games. The one good thing about the C64 version here is, that the chosen colours work better together here than in The Pyramid.

Levels 1 - 3 from the Sinclair ZX Spectrum version.

The general style of the original SPECTRUM version can be pretty much caught from the first level, or section, already. Basically, all of the backgrounds are black, and the platforms are really the only element, that determine the colouring of any given screen. Your enemies that can be shot are all yellow, as are the collectable eggs; the snowflake and its immediate watery form are white, but the less frozen water is blue; the green monster in the second section is green, as is the worm that needs to be caught and fed to the chick in the third section; and the only object that uses multiple colours is the round frisbee-like thing in the second section, that breaks down into a smaller round thing when you shoot it. Beaky in his basic form is a white bird, but when picking up an egg or a worm, he changes colour to indicate that something is being carried.

While the lack of background graphics makes this a little bit boring on the long run, it has to be said, that the animations are rather brilliant, particularly Beaky's taking off and landing animations. Also worth noting is, that each of the three sections use their own specific info panels, with your Magic meter being the only somewhat constant element, although even that one changes colour.

Levels 1 - 3 from the Commodore 64 version.

As you can see, the C64 version looks vastly different, with the only similarity being the monochrome sprites, which are more or less the same as the ones in the SPECTRUM original. The only clearly different sprite is the green monster in the second section, which has a larger, or at least taller face.

All the screens that I have seen of the C64 version so far, feature different background graphics, which could be considered an improvement, if you're in the "more is more" camp. In this case, the backgrounds feel a bit too busy, particularly in the lighter areas, such as the first screen, where the action of the brightly coloured sprites can get obscured by the almost equally brightly coloured background graphics. I do like the fact that there was an attempt to give the game a better sense of location and otherworldly atmosphere, and it does work sort of okay in the darker screens, but in all honesty, the background graphics are not that nice to look at. The animations are equally good in the C64 version as in the SPECTRUM version, although some of the finer details go to waste because of the higher speed of the game.

Levels 4 - 6 from the Sinclair ZX Spectrum version.

Later levels bring in some more colour for the SPECTRUM version, which is always welcome, and the Egg Snatcher monsters also get more variety. The fourth screen also introduces the green eggs that fall from the sky, which isn't much, but it does raise some interest, when it happens.

Based on what I have seen elsewhere, the rest of the game continues this pattern, with only the enemy sprites bringing in some variety to the rest of the game, and the platforms feature some new floor patterns. Hardly anything that you give much thought to while playing.

Levels 4 - 6 from the Commodore 64 version.

The C64 version also continues in the same vein, except someone must have noticed the inconvenience of bright colours in the first screen, so they focused on darker screens for at least the second set. If there exists some more interesting backgrounds later in the game, I am unaware, and frankly, it makes no difference at this point.

Progress and Game Over screens. Left: Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Right: Commodore 64.

If you remember the progression and Game Over screens featured in The Pyramid, Beaky and the Egg Snatchers was given a similar treatment, only without any actual graphics in here, apart from the scores using a different font in the SPECTRUM version. Otherwise, it's all basic system font text with some highlighting colours. The C64 version is just that little bit less designed in this regard.

What we see here is evidence of the C64 version being given more graphics, perhaps simply because it can handle it - not necessarily because it looks better that way. Both games are animated equally well, and the sprites look similar enough, but again, the C64 version feels not only a bit forced to have a more advanced look, while ending up looking a bit cheap instead. Sometimes, less is actually more.

ZX SPECTRUM - COMMODORE 64: 1-0

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BEAKY: SOUNDS

Similarly to The Pyramid, Beaky's soundtrack only features sound effects to keep you aware that your TV is still fully working. There aren't too many of them, of course, to keep the game lightweight for your ears, as well as for the RAM, so I could only count four different kinds of sound effects in the SPECTRUM version. Apart from one screech-type noise and a single tap noise, I can only describe the others as different kinds of fart noises - the kind you usually expect from Spectrum games.

The C64 version features a few more different sound effects, which become more apparent as you reach the second screen. These sound effects are more melodic in their design, although there are some pulse-groups and other odd sounds that might be familiar to fans of old Interceptor Micros and Anirog games on the C64. In all honesty, I cannot say that the C64 sound effects are any more effective than the ones in the SPECTRUM version, but at least there are more of them.

ZX SPECTRUM - COMMODORE 64: 0-1

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OVERALL + VIDEO + ETC.

So, what have we ended up with today? Two Spectrum-originated arcade-like games that don't really showcase the C64 in any particularly impressive manner, and yet, they both do something that the originals don't. But, the question is, are the changes for the better or for worse?

THE PYRAMID

Playability: SPE 1 - C64 1
Graphics:    SPE 1 - C64 0
Sounds:      SPE 0 - C64 1
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OVERALL:     SPE 2 - C64 2

BEAKY AND THE EGG SNATCHERS

Playability: SPE 1 - C64 1
Graphics:    SPE 1 - C64 0
Sounds:      SPE 0 - C64 1
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OVERALL:     SPE 2 - C64 2

Hard to say, really. The results are, according to these scores, exactly the same for both games - the two versions are practically equal in all the important aspects. Except, perhaps they're not. In this case, I would say it's more about your perception of what is enough and what's not, as well as how does your personal nostalgia drive your opinion here. I cannot really say either way, because The Pyramid works well enough on both platforms, and Beaky feels just about equally annoying on both. You just have to try it out yourselves, folks, but just to give you a better idea, here's a two-fer video by yours truly.

Yep, that's about it for these two, and this also closes up any other chance of games from Fantasy Software being featured on the blog in the future, simply because there are no more comparables. The Pyramid can be a relatively fun game still, if you're not too bothered about the lack of background graphics. Beaky and the Egg Snatchers could have been a better game, but it should have been given more time to hone the controls to perfection, because as it is, it's not a very fun game.

Remakes by Langford Productions: Commodore Amiga (top) and Windows (bottom).

In 1993, Richard Langford did a remake of The Pyramid for the Commodore Amiga using AMOS, but it plays quite a bit differently to the original, so it's not exactly comparable. Instead of a laser beam, you shoot slowly moving firebolts, and the diamonds drop down from the ceiling already vulnerable to enemies and ready to be picked up. There are some pretty nice background graphics and the usual Amigaesque sound effects, which make this a pretty nice attempt at a remake, overall, particularly for its time, yet it's not too well received for being too outdated.

Langford didn't stop there, though: he got back to revamping The Pyramid, and released a complete remake for Windows PC's in 2015, which now includes music, bonus levels and an end-game boss fight. Personally, I thought this one was vastly superior of the two remakes. You can download both of these remakes from Langford Productions' website, but just to whet your appetite,  I have included some footage of both remakes into the accompanying video.

Screenshots of the sequels to The Pyramid, exclusive for the ZX Spectrum.
Top row: Doomsday Castle (1983). Bottom row: Backpackers Guide to the Universe (1984).

And finally, as promised, here are the quick mentions of Ziggy's further adventures on the ZX Spectrum. The same year Bob Hamilton finished and released The Pyramid, he also wrote the first sequel called Doomsday Castle, which takes the basic idea of The Pyramid a bit further, by having Ziggy shooting blocked passages open to gain access to diamonds and further areas. It's a bit trickier than it first appears, which makes it a nice variation to the main idea. In 1984, Ziggy starred in one further game called The Backpackers Guide To The Universe (part 1), which was supposed to be the start of a trilogy of its own, but when Fantasy Software went down soon after, so did Ziggy. The Backpackers Guide is more of an explorative arcade-adventure, in which Ziggy has stepped outside of his trusty old floating device, and is now on foot wearing a jetpack in some sort of monstrous cave maze somewhere in deep space. As per the usual genre rules, you collect things to gain new abilities and at first, you really have no idea what you're supposed to be doing. An interesting game, nonetheless, but a bit too complicated and unwieldy for its own good.

That's all, folks - see you next month with something more modern!