Target Renegade

01 · Controls

Direction chooses the attack

Choose a direction, then change facing or release fire. The result shows one tested update from a neutral fighter. With fire held, horizontal directions choose a front attack or back kick according to facing. Up starts a jump; diagonally up also sets a horizontal jump step. Down ducks and checks for a dropped weapon.

These are the recorded results of one native update from a controlled neutral state, with enemy slots cleared. Thirty-six input/facing cases were exercised. A diagonal jump begins its horizontal movement on following updates. The pose number is the engine's animation index. It does not name a fighting move.

02 · The joystick

The whole game is played with a joystick in port 1

The game reads a joystick in port 1. The title screen starts on fire from that port, and a test with the same press on port 2 changed nothing. The Commodore key pauses and resumes play. The manual says it pauses.¹ The title screen shows Space as the switch between MUSIC and FX. The main loop runs the music driver when the byte at $0200 is zero and the effects driver otherwise ($811E). In the normal play tested, Space did not change it.

The manual draws two diagrams. With the fire button up, the stick walks in eight directions. With fire held, each direction is a different move.¹ Zzap!64 put it as "everything is done from the joystick", and Commodore User noted that the first game's moves no longer needed the space bar.⁹^,¹⁰

03 · The moves

Eight directions with fire held

Stick, fire held	The manual calls it	What the code does
Up	Jump up	Starts a jump.
Up and left, or up and right	Jump kick	Starts a jump and adds a horizontal step.
Left or right	Back kick, and punch or swing weapon	A front attack, a bat swing, or a back kick, chosen by the way the player faces (`$A278`).
Down	Duck, or pick up weapon	Ducks, and checks for a dropped weapon within reach (`$A2D6`).
Down and left, or down and right	Duck punch, and "shrug" opponent	Two special moves with their own poses (`$A1A4`, `$A21C`). The diagonal toward the way the player faces starts pose `$16` and does nothing during a hold (`$A1A4`), which fits the duck punch. The diagonal away from it works against a hold, and the held enemy loses a point of health (`$A21C`), which fits the shrug. The manual's diagram is drawn for a player facing right.

The code finds the direction by combining four on or off bits from the stick into a number, which indexes a table at $A035. The control pad above shows the result for each direction and each facing. Thirty-six combinations of stick and facing were tested against the real code.

04 · Technique

Mashing the punch

Two of the reviewers described what the controls reward. Gordon Houghton wrote that "frustratingly precise and sometimes illogical timing" was needed at first, and that practice then makes it addictive.⁹ Paul Glancey found that many opponents fall to the stick held in the punch position and repeated presses of fire.⁹ A weapon "replaces the punch", according to Commodore User, and the manual says weapons work better and score a better bonus.¹⁰^,¹

Readers on Lemon64 complain about the timing, and one calls it exact to the frame. The timing of a punch against the enemy's hit window has not been measured here, so it is open.