Newzealand Story, The

A highly playable conversion that looks good, sounds great and will certainly keep Tiki on his toes!

Okay, looking back on this game, it shows that it really has dated and hasn't stood up well at all. For me this was another rushed Ocean conversion and it shows. Graphically it is poor. The backgrounds and sprites are badly drawn without any real love and care or attention to detail. The Tiki character doesn't even resemble the arcade version. The gameplay is a poor patch on the arcade and the jumping mechanics are all wrong. The sprite multiplexor is working overtime and it shows - numerous sprite glitches with other sprites moving in between the two sprites used for Tiki. The ingame tune is a truncated version of the arcade and really starts to annoy after a couple of minutes, even though there are some other tunelets present in the game. The caves level is especially bad - the backgrounds are just too obtrusive and are painful to look at. I think Zzap!64 were caught up in the whole hysteria at the time and gave it an over the top score. I don't think it would even strike 60% today on reflection. It would definitely benefit a complete re-write.

Is this the same game I just played to the one that everybody praises to death here? Yes, it's cute and colorful, but the controls are unpredictable, while the imprecise collision detection leads to comical bugs like enemies getting trapped in the scenery. It doesn't happen often but it happens. To add insult to injury, the strict time limits and randomly respawning enemies result in a very punishing game early on (level 1-3), while the machine chugs when there are too many enemies on screen. An OK game at best. I don't say this often but in this case: play the 16-bit version instead.

The C64 conversion of New Zealand Story is very good, although even more difficult than the arcade original. The technically flawless and addictive gameplay makes up for that but it t takes quite some perseverance if you want to get somewhere in the game, even in cheat mode. If you like highly playable and challenging platformers, this is your thing. 8/10.

I f*ing love this game!! Very hard ... But once you knew the lives cheat it was guaranteed hours of fun (even so I still never passed it) The levels were huge and had great variety

The graphics were colorful and engaging ... Tho I could never tell what most of the baddies were meant to be!! Music was excellent too

One of my favourite 64 games. Superb. Hard as F**k though lol.

One of those games that made you wonder whether you're not too old for this stuff... But then, this one is too difficult for kids.

Nice one, all in all, and a good conversation.

Very cute and I like the concept! But it was too hard... Must be heartrending for all the little kids playing it to see the Kiwi die all the time...

A little delusion to me when I buyed it. It could have been the best, or cutest, platform ever for C64 but the realization is aproximative, difficulty is too high, enemy sprites are blocky, without the original sense of humour, and you're NOT a kiwi but a chick.
Good colours, nice music and all original levels, but nothing more...

Pretty good conversion, using the C64 as best it can. It still pales to the console versions, unfortunately. The NES version had a Tim Follin soundtrack, too.

Incidentally, the cheat for infinite lives is down the bottom of the page. I've always imagined this would be really hard on a PC keyboard, with ghosting and all...

Quite a good conversion.

I dig it.

If I remember right there was a level where the platforms are icy and the game becomes quite impossible to play.

Great game but it was hard.

Cute cute cute! A good conversion of the arcade game, managing to capture the look and feel quite well. However I think the little kiwi moved liked he was stuck in mud sometimes, especially when falling. Still, it's a frilly cutie game and lots of fun.

The graphics were nice and it played quit well. The best thing about this game were the wacky characters. They gave the game it's own look and feel.

This was a decent platformer and conversion.
Sound was OK too.

Brings back memories playing this excellent little conversion. I used to play this when I was about 9 or 10yrs old, and loved everything about this game.

Looking at the arcade version, this is a very faithful conversion, which doesn't really lack anything. Worth your time this one.

Where else can you find nowadays a game that has a cute-looking little bird... That blasts his enemies with a lasergun?! Fun game, but not perfect. Collision detection could be better, but graphics and sounds are good.

For the record, the kiwi bird is brown and has a very long beak. But then, I've never seen a pink whale either. Wacky Japs.

A cracking conversion, pretty good fun to play.

I remeber this game so well, I just remeber at the start screen all you have to do is bash all keys down at the same time until the border colour goes grey and then you had unlimited lives, one draw back is that when you start getting to the very later levels the game starts to crash, maybe it was just my tape courrupted or it was the flaw in the cheat, but a very good game none the less.

What is this game... ???

I think that New Zealand Story is a great jump and flyer on the C64! There were some bugs in the program, but as a coin-op conversation, Ocean made a very good job! I enjoyed it a lot and rate it 10/10

I love the arcade and I used to love the C64 conversion. Looking at it now, it has many flaws, though: terrible music (why did they cut it this way?), awful collision detection (both sprite/bullet and sprite/platform), no warps and tricks (minor niggle, considering C64's limits). Still, a nice game, but not as top as I thought back then. 7/10

Great coin-op conversion of an all time classic. One of the best platformers for the C64.

What a game! A recall myself playing it on the arcade and completing it with just a single credit! I was the first to figure out the way to get out of the maze! Anyways, when I got the C64 version I wasn't expecting much but I was wrong! Great conversion, nice graphics and atmosphere just like the coin-op version. Hurray! A solid 10!

Cute but very odd game, never got very far on it which was a shame, and I gave up on it after a while

One of my favourite platformers, too. Extreme playability and nice looks!

One of my fave platformer games ever, didn't play the C64 version much though... PLayed it on the Master system

I didn't like it that much, I felt the graphics were overdetailed and blocky and it wasn't up to my liking.

YEAH! What a great game. Nice graphics, well done sound and excellent game-play. It's quite addictive and it'll make ya' wanna' play it over and over again... SUPERB !!!

I played this in the arcade when I was about 6 and the machine messed up and gave me infinite credits for my 10p. From then on I was hooked. A truly marvellous game with a great storyline for the time.

A decent conversion and a worthy outing for any gamer!

I don't know about the C64 version! But the Amiga version is Fantastic. One of the best platformers out there...

Good Game! Good Game!
You wont see a much better conversion of this game on any other 8-bit computers.

Good but to long, and the music which is cut and shorter than the arcade rev will surley drive you insane after awhile.

A great conversion that was (and still is) extremely easy to get hooked on.

Same as the guy below me. But not as good a game as CJ's elephant antics - which was the same game, but with better GFX, sound and was two player. But then again, elephants havent got, nice yellow feathers or wings that just sit at the side of your body and flap occasionally, when the mood takes them.

There isn't many coin-op conversions on the C64 that is as faithfull to the original arcade as much as this one is it!!!