IO - Into Oblivion C64

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 6:16 pm

I just came across this game called IO Into Oblivion for the C64 by Kinetic Design.
It was mentioned in the top 25 Shooters Thread by 3 users and the simple “IO” title, caught my attention.

http://www.c64gg.com/I7.html

I've also seen someone here using an animated gif with the main ship as his avatar, but I thought it was only a pod-satellite similar to the Craw of Thunder Force III!

I never knew it was actually the main ship from a stand alone shooter.

That small gun-turret in the screen-shot above looks very similar to the ones appearing in the Gradius series.

I must admit that the C64 realm remains untouched by me, as my primary domain has been the all mighty AMIGA since 1991, so I can only imagine what to expect from the legendary C64.

So is this game worth fiddling with a C64 emulator and getting it to play IO?

Thanks.

mice · Post by **mice** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 6:34 pm

Aaah, the memories.

IO is probably the best shmup on the c64. It's hard as hell, until you get into it and memorize much of it.
I remember the wonderful gfx, at the time, it totally blew me away.
Yes, it's worth the fiddle with the emu to get it running.

Check out Armalyte as well, 2:nd best c64 shmup.

battlegorge · Post by **battlegorge** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 7:11 pm

I have played the remake from http://www.remakes.org/.
Its a nice game but the remake only has 1 stage.
But i bet you wont beat it within the first 10 tries.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 3:00 pm

awesome game, great graphics. the power of IO compells you... to fiddle around with WinVICE...

and i love the C64's palette. ^_^

edit: and that remake, they need to fix that firing rate. no excuses. i mean come on give me shots on screen!

K-J N. · Post by **K-J N.** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 9:36 pm

Yeah, I'm the one with the IO avatar.

Great game. Brutally hard but keeps you comming back for more. Nice echoy sound effects to.

Marc · Post by **Marc** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 8:58 am

Great game, but hard as hell. There was another shooter with a similar loko to this on C64... Paranoia maybe?

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 2:55 pm

IO felt almost impossibly hard but it is possible to 1CC it.
Along with Armalyte and uridium, it is one of the best c64 shmups.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 4:00 pm

Marc wrote:Great game, but hard as hell. There was another shooter with a similar loko to this on C64... Paranoia maybe?

i was gonna suggest Phobia, but looking back the graphics aren't nearly this good...

in retrospect, i think i was blending together the c64 and amiga versions graphically.

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 4:12 pm

Well the best shmup i can remember on the C64 was by a chap called Stavros Fasoulas and released by a company called Thalamus.
The game was called Delta,always remember this one level called the Sea of dreams,brilliant graphics and a stunning soundtrack by the one and only Rob Hubbard.

Guardians Knight · Post by **Guardians Knight** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 7:32 pm

also River Raid is a great conversion, and Raid Over Moscow, Dr Destructo and Blue Max are also Gods among mortals in terms of c64 shoot em ups

Shocky · Post by **Shocky** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 9:46 pm

Yes.. IO looks and sounds great, but it was mad difficult :/

I always liked Warhawk, it's one of those ancestors of contemporary CAVE/ATLUS games. Nice music by Rob Hubbard \o/

Delta was great.. especially the clever weapon selection system. It was so clever that to this day I still don't get it =)

Another good one by Stavros Fasoulas was Sanxion, the only shmup I know that shows the player's ship from two directions at the same time. And once again music by Mr. Hubbard.

Edit:

Forgot about Armalyte, that game seriously rocks. It's much more rewarding than the ridiculously hard IO. There was an Amiga version too but it was disappointing.

Thalamus really did great stuff, and some of it was quite weird, like the Amiga shmup Venom Wing, anyone ever beat that one? I didn't :/

Hewson was another interesting company.. besides Uridium, they did a great Thrust-style Amiga shooter called Zarathrusta. And they were also into horizontal scrollers starring nekkid angels... Insects in Space:

Almost forgot this one: Myth, it was maybe the most hyped C64 semi-shmup. And gotta admit, some stages had amazing graphics and ideas.

mice · Post by **mice** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 7:11 pm

Also, there was a budget game called Slayer, that was a rip-off of IO.
I never played it myself, but it got tons of good reviews.

Worth checking out.

K-J N. · Post by **K-J N.** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 1:58 pm

Interestingly I don't think IO was ever short for Into Oblivion. It was allways only called IO in game or the instruction manual or any of the reviews at the time, the Into Oblivion name was probably something that came from a cracker and then stuck.

Herr Schatten · Post by **Herr Schatten** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 2:13 pm

K-J N. wrote:Interestingly I don't think IO was ever short for Into Oblivion. It was allways only called IO in game or the instruction manual or any of the reviews at the time, the Into Oblivion name was probably something that came from a cracker and then stuck.

I think so too. I always assumed the title referred to the Jupiter moon Io, but I could be mistaken.

Fenrir · Post by **Fenrir** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 2:34 pm

I am one of those 3 people who voted for Io.
Actually I spent part of my youth memorizing every single step of it because, as you have already been told, it was incredibly hard. Yes it probably is the best C64 shmup, and the horror of the mid and end bosses music still haunts me at night

It is, probably, the shmup I played for longer in my life.

By the way, not many know that Io was recompiled and released on Amiga by an amatorial team who was pretty in love with that shmup.
That version only hit the PD scene, sadly, but it was great. The boss tune was metal-remixed and the graphics got sleeker. Too bad it had infinite continues and resisting to the urge of hitting continue was really hard.

And yeah, I've always called it Io, I've never heard that "into oblivion" myself.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 3:57 pm

Fenrir wrote:I am one of those 3 people who voted for Io.
Actually I spent part of my youth memorizing every single step of it because, as you have already been told, it was incredibly hard. Yes it probably is the best C64 shmup, and the horror of the mid and end bosses music still haunts me at night
It is, probably, the shmup I played for longer in my life.

By the way, not many know that Io was recompiled and released on Amiga by an amatorial team who was pretty in love with that shmup.
That version only hit the PD scene, sadly, but it was great. The boss tune was metal-remixed and the graphics got sleeker. Too bad it had infinite continues and resisting to the urge of hitting continue was really hard.

And yeah, I've always called it Io, I've never heard that "into oblivion" myself.

Argh. Searching for "Amiga" and "IO" gets you lots and lots of italian websites

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Sun Apr 02, 2006 6:52 pm

@Fenrir

Do you have a link where to download the PD Amiga version? I'd love to compare it to the C64 original.

Fenrir · Post by **Fenrir** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 8:29 pm

I am sorry, I made a few researches but no cake.
I've got it on an amiga floppy and I usually play it on my A4000.
I took that disk back in 1990 from a friend of mine, and I don't know where he got it too :/