Target Renegade

01 · The aim

Each stage runs on its own clock

The game ends in two ways. Running out of lives, or out of time, sets a negative end flag and returns to the title ($8283). Defeating the final opponent sets a positive one and plays the ending ($9ABA). Each stage has its own clock. The table at $A8C2 holds six starting values, 8, 4, 4, 4, 4, and 4 minutes, indexed by stage. If it is indexed from the first stage, the car park gives eight minutes and every later stage four. Zzap!64's level 1 screenshots show the clock at 6:18 and 6:24, which fits a start at eight minutes.⁹

This page describes no completed route. The captures of later stages come from explicit state changes, and none of their fights was played to the end. The advice below comes from the manual, the magazines, and the tables in the code, and says which is which.

02 · Staying alive

A bullet costs twice what a blow costs

Fact	Where
Endurance is 44 units, refilled on every new life.	`$8D67`
An enemy's blow costs 2 units, so a life lasts 22 blows.	`$9BD1`
An object that hits you, such as a bullet, costs 4 units.	`$8B88`
Each enemy you defeat gives back 2 units, when the total stays below 44.	`$9ABA`
A new game starts with five lives. An extra life comes after passing 50,000, then after passing each threshold another 100,000 points higher, to a maximum of nine.	`$8000`, `$FC00`

A bullet costs twice what a blow costs. The manual advises taking evasive action until the gunman’s ammunition runs out. Defeating an enemy restores two units only when the resulting total stays below 44. That can repay one ordinary blow, but a recovery that would reach full endurance is rejected.

03 · Stage by stage

What the manual says about each stage

Stage	What the manual says	What else is known
1 Car park	Motorcyclists try to run you over or strike you. Kick them off their bikes, which "will only render them unconscious for a very short time". Gang members "creep up on you unawares".¹	The bike code tests whether the player is in the air (`$8E44`). Zzap!64 says this stage "depends on getting hold of a club", and Commodore User that a weapon "replaces the punch".⁹^,¹⁰ The first stage's map is four levels joined by a lift.¹⁰
2 Street	The "ladies of the night", and their boss with a gun and "a limited number of bullets". You must "take evasive action until his ammunition has run out, then you can attack him man to man".¹	The armed type uses up one from an ammunition byte for each shot (`$9232`). The manual's hints say not to fight him while he is shooting, but to wait until his supply of bullets has run out.¹ Zzap!64 mentions "thankfully limited ammunition".⁹
3 Park	Skinheads. "Pure punching, kicking etc is the only way you will be able to progress to the next level."¹	Readers say the baseball bat appears only in stage 1.² That is not checked against the stage tables.
4 Shopping mall	The Beasty Boys, with their dogs.¹	Commodore User calls the dog "quite wonderful": it "opens his jaw like a crocodile and takes big chunks out of you".¹⁰
5 Bar	Mr. Big's bodyguards, then Mr. Big, "a major force to be reckoned with".¹	The fifth stage forces enemy type 7 for its ordinary enemies, with 8 health each. Type 8 has 15, and defeating it ends the game (`$8738`, `$9ABA`). Commodore User says Mr. Big "takes more than a couple of taps with your toothpick of a baseball to stop him".¹⁰

04 · Advice

Advice from the people who played it

The manual's hints are to use weapons wherever possible, because a weapon has a greater effect and also gives "a better points bonus", and to "eliminate your enemies before you progress".¹ Paul Glancey found that many opponents fall to the stick held in the punch position and repeated presses of fire.⁹ Gordon Houghton found the timing "frustratingly precise and sometimes illogical" at first, and wrote that practice "really does encourage progress".⁹ The review's own caption warns: "Turning your back on the opposition isn't advisable, even when they're on their knees."⁹

Whether the game can be finished is not in doubt. A reader at Lemon64 wrote in 2024 that they had finished it again, after about thirty years.² The score and lives are the other way to measure a run: see Gameplay.