Aztec Challenge

The Good
Aztec Challenge is an excellent game from Cosmi. It is not to be confused with the game that bears the same title, made by the same company, and released for the Atari 400, TI-99/4A, and VIC-20. Whereas that game is the precursor to the endless runners you can download on mobile devices, the Commodore 64 version involves a lot more. It has a mixture of viewpoints from 3-D, 2-D scrolling, and isometric.

The front cover for the game is well designed, consisting of a young woman being chased by a man with a whip and the temple in the distance. Requirements and accessories are found here and on the back cover. The screenshot is of the Atari 400 version of the game, not the C64’s, but it actually looks like one that Activision slapped onto their Atari 2600 covers.

As a person who ends up in the capital of the Aztec Empire in the year 1500 A.D., you are to be sacrificed, and the only means of escape is to complete seven tasks. The game gives you a brief description of what you need to do. Your first task is to make your way toward the temple while avoiding getting killed by the spears thrown by your fellow Aztecs. Then, providing that you get past this first challenge, you have to climb up stairs, get through a series of rooms (each of them containing their own booby traps), and swim among the piranhas. I enjoyed watching the protagonist die, especially on level three.

Cosmi knew that Aztec Adventure would be a difficult game, so you only have to restart the level if you lose all your five lives, rather than going back to the start. This encourages you to keep trying that particular level you failed until you master it. Of course, the game gets even more difficult if you manage to conquer all seven levels.

Out of all the levels, I really like the gauntlet. As you progress through it, you see the temple in the distance getting closer to the screen. It reminds me of one of the mini-games in Space Quest I. Unlike the games that were released around the same time, this one has background music that gets more intense as you progress through the levels.

The Bad
I noticed that, apart from the first level, the music takes a long time to load when you begin a new level. As far as the first level is concerned, though, the music restarts when you lose one of your lives rather than continuing on.

The Bottom Line
Aztec Challenge is an excellent game from Cosmi released for the Commodore 64. Due to the amount of graphical trickery involved here, especially in the first level, I don't think it would have been suitable for it to be ported over to other eight-bit computers, so the others had to put up with a 2-D endless runner.

In the C-64 version, there is fantastic background music that gets more intense the more it plays through the levels, the instructions for the levels are clear enough, and Cosmi themselves were generous enough not to warp you back to the start when you run out of lives. An ideal game that could be played whenever you are taking a break.