C64 Game Memories - Revisited 30+ Years later : Thrust

Thrust, for the C64 is probably one of the best budget range games ever released. Many games in the budget scene should never have been released and it was very hit and miss as to the quality. Despite Mastertronic knocking out games every week winning on quantity, Firebird ( a subsidary of British Telecom) in my opinion released the better quality with the likes of Booty & Thrust.

The aim of the game was to guide your spacecraft through each level where you must pick up a pod from caverns and then bring it back to the surface. The tricky part of this game is that everything is subject to gravity and intertia and you can only move up by using the thrust on your spaceship but this uses up fuel which is limited and can only be replenished on your travel through each cavern. The movement of your ship is not unlike that of Asteroids, the arcade game.

Each level gets progressively more difficult with more and more wall turrets that shoot at you and more caverns that you have to move sideways through which is by far the most difficult movement in an enclosed space.

I actually got pretty good at this game but once you get to a certain point, the game reverses gravity and I could never get past this.

The sound is average, but Thrust has a decent title track and the graphics are presentable but have a certain basic style all to their own. Thrust is certainly one of those games that proves you dont have to have flashy graphics to have great gameplay. This could easily have been a full priced release and goes into the 'still playable today' bracket.