Hazard Ball
In 2004, Chris Eastwood created great game based on the ideas of the Rock'n'Roll a lot. Some levels are very close to original Rock'n'roll levels, and it also offers possibility to uniquely control the ball using a mouse - as it was never seen from the times of real Rock'n'Roll! It's really worth of try, recommended by 10 of 10 Rock'n'roll fans :)

Rock'n'Roll Game Music
Statistical info about game, game music downloads and other info stored in Game Music Base.

Date added: 20. 10. 2000

I write these words on November 1st of 2000. I write them 11 years after the game Rock'n'roll was released. Why? Because this day I've completed game Rock'n'roll without any training nor cheat. I've simply played this game 11 years until I finished it! Of course I didn't play it every day :) but I really spent very much time until I saw one crazy congratulations screen. This game is so great, that I simply need to dedicate part of my homepage to it. Not only because it's one of the best games I've ever played, but also because this game didn't have any special commercial success in the times when it was released - that only shows how can end up great things only because people are dumb and like Laras more than Games. :)

But enough of nostalgic cryings of good times when games were games. I don't listen to advertising campaigns, I don't buy most shining things in shops - and you'd be very surprised what I find sometimes.

Rock'n'roll has been done in 1989 by German software group Rainbow Arts on Amiga, C-64 and PC (maybe also for another computers of that era). The best version was released on that time's best computer - Commodore Amiga. So this article will describe the game for this platform. Object of the game is simple - you need to control the BALL to the EXIT. You see the game from the top view and the ball can be moved in four directions (north, south, west and east). Controls of the game is absolutely original - you control the game with MOUSE. Yes, with MOUSE, although it's clearly arcade game - it was very original idea and I don't remember any other game that has it until now. So, with mouse you control the ball. There are many obstacles in your way - especially shut doors, which need keys to open with. Then - missing floor which causes instant free fall into nothingness. Just for luck you have some repair-tools, but they cost money. So you have to find money, tools, keys and exits. That's really not all, but I'm not here to write the review of game :). So I tell only that the game is really VERY VERY HUGE ! It has 32 levels plus one bonus level - average completion time of one is cca 5 minutes, so you can complete all levels without losing a life in 3 hours. But you have only three lives and no passwords. There are some "continues" in the game, but you have to find them and that's not easy.

The game has two more great things that have really "overtaken the time". First thing was great "warp level system". You don't get codes of levels, nor possibility to save your in-game positions. But to not repeat the same levels during play the authors have made some "secret warps", which can move you from lower levels to higher. But you don't know where these warps are when you start the game. You can only buy the "hint" in game and this costs you money. In practice, you'll get with last life and last piece of health e.g in level 11. There you'll buy very expensive "warp hint" which tells you how to jump from level 4 directly to level 11. Bingo, you don't need to play whole 11 levels again, but the game doesn't bother you with any savings or passwords. I wonder why this system has never been used in another games...
Second great thing, which was then used in several other games, is save-score-system. The game automatically saves your score to your floppy disk, so you can still compete of the best times in levels. At the end of this page you'll see my best times from every level and best score at all. If you played this game and have better times, send me your ADF file with these times, I'll update this table. Anyway I'm very curious if somebody plays such a great game like Rock'n'roll except me.... :)

I'd like to say few more interesting things. Firstly, this game really gets all the blood from your mouse. If you haven't absolutely perfect mouse, you can forget it, because small bad movement cost you mostly one of your three lives and you know very well what it means. Maybe that was the reason why this game didn't have much success in the times when it was released - mouses for Amiga came from Malaysia and they didn't have very big quality. I personally destroyed two mouses on this game and couldn't play it long time because my mouse wasn't 100% balanced. When I bought again an A500 (it was in 1996, I guess), I bought absolutely new mouse from Amiga Technologies only because of this game. This mouse has survived until now and I used it only for Rock'n'roll. I think I completed this game in the right time, because movements are now at the edge of playability and I'm afraid I'd have to buy new mouse soon if I didn't finish it :) Btw., the mouse is also the reason why the game doesn't work properly on Amiga emulators like UAE or Fellow. You can play it, but you can't complete some harder obstacles that need proper calibrated Amiga mouse. So you need real Amiga to play this game :). And one more thing to mouse control - after some time I must say that it was really great idea to make this game mouse controlled - it gave her so much originality you can't imagine - you need to play it to believe.

Last, but not least - the music. THE music. Although I really don't know exactly who made it. Maybe it was Chris Huelsbeck, maybe it was Ramiro Vaca - I know there have been some changes - originally was Ramiro Vaca supposed to do the music, but he didn't like Rock'n'roll, so Chris helped him. Nobody knows, how much.. But I don't care. The music is great. I don't like rock'n'roll very much, but rhythms in this game aren't only rock'n'roll based. They are mixes of rock'n'roll and classical game styles. I'd be nostalgic again, when I said, where are so nice musics in todays games. Oh yeah...

So here are some facts about Rock'n'roll.


Name:                                   Rock'n'roll
Creator:                                Rainbow Arts
Year of birth:                          1989
Year I got this game:                   1991
Year I wrote this article:              2000
Date I completed this game:             1 Nov 2000
Cca clear time I played this game:      150 hrs
Place in my Amiga TOP 100:              2

Records:

LEVEL               PLAYER              SCORE/TIME  TIMES COMPLETED

Total score:        MIRSOFT2000         175200
Level 1:            LUBOS               3:17:4      >5 times completed
Level 2:            MIRSOFT2000         1:41:0      >5 times completed
Level 3:            MPC                 3:16:7      >5 times completed
Level 4:            MIRSOFT             1:13:0      >5 times completed
Level 5:            LUBOS               1:33:3      >5 times completed
Level 6:            LUBOS               4:44:6      3 times completed
Level 7:            MIRSOFT2000         7:54:9      3 times completed
Level 8:            MIRSOFT             4:41:8      3 times completed
Level 9:            LUBOS               2:41:2      3 times completed
Level 10:           LUBOS               4:56:4      3 times completed
Level 11:           MPC                 2:34:5      >5 times completed
Level 12:           MIRSOFT             3:22:2      >5 times completed
Level 13:           LUBOS               3:31:9      >5 times completed
Level 14:           MPC                 7:05:1      >5 times completed
Level 15:           MPC                 3:37:5      4 times completed
Level 16:           MPC                 5:28:2      2 times completed
Level 17:           MPC                 7:50:1      2 times completed
Level 18:           MPC                 2:43:1      2 times completed
Level 19:           MPC                 14:54:1     1 time completed
Level 20:           MPC                 1:13:4      4 times completed
Level 21:           MPC                 2:16:2      3 times completed
Level 22:           MPC                 13:48:1     2 times completed
Level 23:           MPC                 9:27:3      2 times completed
Level 24:           MIRSOFT2000         2:34:6      >5 times completed
Level 25:           MIRSOFT2000         3:39:1      >5 times completed
Level 26:           MIRSOFT2000         9:30:4      >5 times completed
Level 27:           MIRSOFT2000         3:59:5      >5 times completed
Level 28:           MIRSOFT2000         6:26:5      2 times completed
Level 29:           MIRSOFT2000         10:39:9     2 times completed
Level 30:           MIRSOFT2000         8:04:8      2 times completed
Level 31:           MIRSOFT2000         12:52:1     1 time completed
Level 32:           MIRSOFT2000         23:22:9     1 time completed

Note: I used different names only to know in which years I reached which record. I was really Mirsoft all the time, but I used firstly name LUBOS in hiscore tables (that could be sometimes between 1990 and 1993), then it was MIRSOFT when I got A1200 (1993 - 1995), in 1996 I bought again an A500 and used MPC (1996 - 1997), followed by MIRSOFTIK (1998-1999) and the MIRSOFT2000 was (who would it say? :) ) in 2000 and that means with this nick I completed this game.