Tilt Commodore 64 game

Both ‘DTM Race Driver’ and ‘Colin McRae Rally’ belong to the very best game series of their genre. In the last years Codemasters had become a real expert in creating professional racing games and is one of the longest running British game companies by now. But that wasn’t always the case...

In the eighties and early nineties Codemasters (at that time Code Masters) had specialized in the development of low budget games – titles like e.g. ‘BMX Simulator’, ‘Rock Star ate my Hamster’, ‘The Sword and the Rose’, ‘CJ’s Elephant Antics’ and particularly the platform game series with egg protagonist ‘Dizzy’ became very popular...

But the most extraordinary program of this success story is ‘Tilt’ without doubt...

What is ‘Tilt’?
Do you remember the wooden marble labyrinths, in which you’ve to guide a little silver ball through a maze with holes, without dropping the marble in one of these holes? By tilting the platform, you’re able to change the rolling direction of the marble. A real classic – maybe you can find such an exemplar on your parent’s attic...

That is the concept ‘Tilt’ is based on – however, here the labyrinth contains no holes (apart from the ‘goal hole’). Instead of that Codemasters inserted doors in the maze! By pressing the fire button, all doors open at the same time – unfortunately they remain open only for a few seconds and will close again! If the marble collides with a (closing) door or a wall, it loses energy and will be taken back to the starting point...

By using the joystick, you’re able to alter the tilt angle of the platform. But each alteration consumes a little energy – if it’s exhausted, the game’s over. Fortunately after each re-start the energy bar will be refilled a little and already opened doors disappear from the screen – furthermore you’ll get points for each door you’ve passed...

If you’ve succeeded in guiding the marble to the goal, the next level follows. But that doesn’t just appear on the screen! Instead of that a nice animation sequence will be shown – two transport rollers move down to the labyrinth and place the next one on the monitor. A nice gimmick...

Physical Correctness...
The animations of the platform look absolutely great – albeit the graphics aren’t that sensational. But the tilt effect is very impressive. The marble behaves very realistic, too – amazing...

During the game the player will be confronted with several inconveniences: for example the size of the marble doubles or energy barriers block the way. However, after a while the program becomes a little monotonous – the gameplay doesn’t change and further groundbreaking innovations don’t appear anymore...

Nevertheless ‘Tilt’ is a real nice and, most of all, remarkable title. Like someone mentioned here, this program is a kind of ‘Super Monkey Ball’ ancestor – well, he’s absolutely right...