The C64 version of Beach Head (along with the Atari 8-bit) was developed by an American company called Access Software. The UK founder of U.S Gold Geoff Brown liked what he saw and bought the rights to publish it in Europe in 1984. The graphics, concept and playability of Beach Head may seem a little poor and simplistic compared to later C64 titles, but in 1984 Beach Head was way ahead of its time.
During the game there is no real indication of what nation you’re fighting; other than that the island of Kuhn-Lin has been taken by an evil dictator and it’s your mission to take it back.
The game begins with the player moving a fleet from an Aerial viewpoint; you could choose to engage the dictator’s fleet straight away or try to attack via a hidden passage. The passage sequence had you maneuvering your ships in-between mines and avoiding on-coming torpedoes. Completion of this sequence would give the player more ships in the next level. It was quite tricky, but not overly hard.
The next sequence the player controlled an anti-aircraft gun and had to shoot down the attacking enemy aircraft. This was probably the best section of the game, and the one that everyone remembers the most. You could move the gun left and right and alter the gun elevation to shoot down those pesky bombers as they swooped in. I was (and still am) impressed by the sound the planes made as they moved off having dropped their bombs (assuming you missed them), their engine noise was very realistic, an early sign of what the C64’s SID sound chip was capable of.
Having fought off the air attack, the next stage involved destroying (or in my case attempting to destroy) the enemy fleet. This was done by correctly guessing the distance of the enemy ships and knocking them out with your main battery before they destroyed you. I always found this bit tricky and I must admit I never got past it when I was a kid, but I was only five or six years old, so give me a break!
The last but one stage is the beach attack (ah, now I know why they called it Beach Head!). In this stage you needed to protect your tanks as they advanced towards the dictator’s fortress. In the final section the player must destroy the fortress, which was basically a big mound of earth with a big bloody gun on the top. To destroy it the player had to fire at the different targets on the hill, this must be done before the ‘big bloody gun’ on the top has completely turned. Completing this section destroys the gun and effectively ends the game. If you don’t do it quick enough the gun fires and you’re dead.
In retrospect the early C64 titles such as this were great for their ease of play and simplicity, which made them a joy to play at a young age. Beach Head was also a single load, which kept my attention longer. I wasn’t a great fan of multi-load C64 games when I was younger. All I wanted to do was play!
Say what you like about the graphics and gameplay of Beach Head but it will always be a classic game to me.
