ChinnyVision - Ep 518 - Glider Rider - Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, C64 

Yes! Chinny's back 👍

I used to play this game on the ZX Spectrum 128K simply to listen to the excellent David Whittaker music. The game itself was just too hard and I don't think I ever destroyed one reactor in all my time playing it. Thanks for the review, it was great seeing the game on all the 8-bit platforms.

Another game I totally forgot about. I loved Glider rider as a kid. Cheers chinny

Well that's solved the mystery of where one of my most remembered cracktros got its music from.

I spent hours playing this. One of the last Speccy games before upgrading to the ST. Great video!! That music 🎶 ❤

1986 was a great year for Isometric games, this one was enjoyable (apart from the glider switching).

I loved the banging soundtrack on the CPC, but could never get to grips with the whole 'going down hill/waggle joystick' thing to switch to the glider. It didn't help that I no idea what I was meant to do, though that was kind of the norm for me in those old games!

Welcome back, Chinny, we've missed you

Great video. I played this on the CPC via an AA covertape and couild never get anywhere..

Glider Rider or Just Cause's grandad as I like to call it.

Hooks and riffs from Lazy Jones in that soundtrack. Maybe Florian Senfter should lift this one too.

"100 screens... I can't verify that" - the island appears to be square so you only have to check if it's ten across and ten down.

Dropping bombs on reactors... what could go wrong.

Glad to have you back! 🎉

Looks like a game that might be worth writing for the C128 and use the extra speed to draw the graphics. It might be able to add scrolling too which is badly needed.

Best music ever

That looked like Dungeness in the distance.

I imagine this game properly converted to MSX, with ZX backgrounds & music, hardware sprites for the bike/glider and tweaked controls for better gameplay on locating towers/supressing laser/destroying generators. It would be a nice memory game.

Had this on CPC and this is the first time I've ever seen the Glider. Don't know if my copy was broken, but pulling opposite way on stick made it flick to glider for about a milisecon, then instantly turned back into a bike. Had about 10 people try to get it to work.😂

Wow, this triggered a memory of getting this on an Amstrad Action covertape. I was never very good at it. Music was amazing.

I swear you'd done this one. I always thought there was a sub to find out on the water, too. I asked John Pickford where it was on Usenet years ago. His reply was "What submarine? There isn't a submarine!" from what I remember. Like many urban myths in retro games, the Submarine was an invention of manuals and/or imaginative journos.

Welcome back

Quicksilva sold their back catalogue to Argus Press, much of the team transferred across - but Rod Cousens went off to Electric Dreams. Argus also bought up Bug Byte and Grandslam. It would have been so much better to have a launch button than the overly complex manoeuvre on the hills. The David Whittaker music is the best bit of the C64 version.

Here he is ! Shame about the c64 version, it should have had the map drawn At the start in black screen mode and then scroll around it. That would have solved the problem.

I think I recall reading a news snippet about Argus taking over the distribution of Quicksilva (and some other companies?) games. As to the game, I never played it but I can see I missed an under-developed and frustrating affair.

A title who's C64 music, i had heard so much about, i never bothered to actually find and try the game itself, just had a friend put the music on audio cassette for me.

Loved the soundtrack, never really got on with the game.

There WAS A C64 Version Of Motorbike Madness By Mastertronic.

This was the first 128k spectrum game I ever played. A classmate had bought this shinny +2 and we went hunting through our c90s full of pirated goodness for 128k enhanced games. First game we tried was glider rider. The music blew me away and made me very jealous as I only had a 48k speccy with its little buzzer. We had no idea how to play the game and it took a long time to figure out how to launch the glider and even then we never realised you had to bomb the reactors rather than carpet bombing everything in sight. Weirdly, I really dont remember that `dont waste bombs` distracting screen effect. Played it recently and apart from the soundtrack it hasn't aged very well. I would love to see a version with scrolling on a more modern machine as the core of a great game is hiding under all the technical limitations. Is that an old Airship hanger in the background of the drone video at the beginning?

I remember obtaining _Glider Rider_ on an _Amstrad Action_ covertape in 1992, and the music is probably my favourite tune on the Amstrad CPC. It's one of those games that I would load just so I could listen to the music. Shame about the rest of the game, though.

Looks like they tried to do a direct port for the 64, but it's just too different internally, hence the screen drawing issues, and horrible graphics.

I saw screenshots of this and it looked great... but it doesn't look it now. Where Time Stood Still does isometric scrolling and at speed but there's a lot less on the screen. The flip-screen looks annoying and the bombs are like party poppers... Lovely music and neat ideas though.

This one's frustrating in that there's the seed of a great game concept in there, but it wasn't realised very well nor all that interestingly. The technical limitations of the time sadly seem to hit it, and even beyond that the game area just feels lacklustre and not all it c/should be; all versions feel too sluggish to be of much excitement, too (again, maybe those limitations of the era). It feels more like a budget "okay for a few goes on a Saturday afternoon" kinda release, but shame it never received a sequel or port to later systems as there's definitely something in there, just poorly realised.

A game clearly designed for the Amstrad green screen monitor!

Why do the lasers attack you when not flying on the non CPC versions? Thats REALLY irritating. I play this with a poke just to listen to the music.

I have this for my speccy, its definitely one of those games that really should have been brilliant, but it just wasn't unfortunately, I just got frustrated tbh, but it had a cracking soundtrack, shame about the gameplay mate.

Stroker is better

Seems the C64 suffers less from its lack of CPU power and more from lack of skill (system specific) from the coder. Could have used hardware scrolling which this game is crying out for.

Rubbish game.