Thanatos

Thanatos

Game No.	478
Voting	4.00 points, 1 votes
Developer	Design: Mike Richardson Programming: Rod Barrington
Company	Durell Software
Publisher	Durell Software, Encore
Musician	Original score: Julian Breeze C64 arrangement: Rob Hubbard
HVSC-File	GAMES/ S-Z/ Thanatos.sid
Release	1986
Platform	C64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad
Genre	Arcade
Gamemode	Single player
Operation
Media
Language
Information	Release 1.0

Description[edit | edit source]

In this magical game you take control of a dragon, "Thanatos the destroyer", whose eternal destiny lies in conflict with the forces of the underworld. The dragon which is very large and superbly animated, flies, walks, swims, and burns its way through the landscape. It must collect a beautiful young enchantress, "Eros", who then rides on its neck and guides it through the castles, to collect the book of spells and find the magic cauldron. On their way they have to fight fierce knights armed with lances and foot-soldiers with long-bows, as well as a variety of weird mythological creatures. The game features fantastic landscapes with a totally new panoramic scrolling action.

Design[edit | edit source]

Thanatos Boot Screen

Level start of Thanatos...

Attack 1: Soldiers fighting against dragon Thanatos in a stone age scenenery.

Attack 2: Birds attack the dragon.

Attack 3: A dark cave with dangerous spiders...

Attack 4: Attention - falling rocks in another cave!

Attack 5: Attack of the killer bees!!

Once a night: Flying over a beautiful Greek ocean with ships and my fire spitting dragon (no attacks!).

Thanatos has beautiful HiRes graphics and a nice melody in the title screen and sound effects in the game. An antique charset is used in the title menu and highscore.

The information board shows you (from left to right):

Life energy of dragon Thanatos
The scored points
Fire power of dragon Thanatos

Hints[edit | edit source]

The game menu.

Don't lost the sorceress!!

Game over and entering a highscore place.

Controlling

Using joystick in port 2 or keyboard with defined or standard keys and also keys 1-8 in menü.

The standard keys are:

A : Up / higher
Z : Down / lower
N : Left / slower
M : Right / faster
Space : Fire and drop down catched soldiers
Space + M : Turn the dragon to right side by walking on earth.
Space + N : Turn the dragon to left side by walking on earth.
← : Abort game.

Menu

1 : Change alter skill easy to hard (keys 1-8)
2 : Change alter Playing Keys
- 1 : Standard Keys
- 2 : Define Keys
3 : View score table - highscore
4 : Play - game start

The Game

You must fly firstly to the right side.
The game is over if the dragon is red blinking. This means the dragon hasn't enough life energy. This life power goes down by too fast or too slow flying and injuring by fightings and enemies. Life power is recovering by running slowly on earth.
Points are given by killing people with the dragon fire, touching or pick-up and fall down. The dragon fire can recovered by eating witches near the castle.
- 10 points each killed soldier
- 20 points each killed bird
- 30 point each killed bee
Soldiers are fighting with stones and arrows and also pets like birds, spiders, bees, etc. are also against the dragon Thanatos, who loosing life energy by by hitting.
The game can be win by taken a waving white enchantress at the first castle. After that you must carry the enchantress to the next castle for searching a spell book. At last you fly the enchantress to the last (third) castle, where is a cauldron and the game is finished.
But if you loose the enchantress and she dies, the game is also over!
Use carefully the dragon fire, because not in each level is a witch (fly left after burn down the wooden castle door)!

Solution[edit | edit source]

The first castle, but the door isn't open...

The game has got three episodes at each end is a castle, which are important things to collect! In each episode are several different phase of attacks and landscapes.

Episode 1

sea 1 - ships*
land - soldiers
sea 2 - ships*
land - birds
cave - spiders
cave - falling rocks (can drop dragon down!)
land - bees
castle 1 - door (first slowly walking, after burning down wooden door to open castle)
castle 1 - soldiers
white girl with waved arms (sorceress get on dragon, if dragon is landed near white girl)

After spitting fire the wooden door was burn down and the way is free.

In castle 1 you meet the sorceress (a white girl).

Important: After that you must finished the game as a couple!

A quiet village - nice to meet witches...

Attacks of sea snakes in higher sea levels...

Episode 2

castle 1 - soldiers
land - birds
sea 1 - sea snakes
land - soldiers
sea 2 - sea snakes
land - bees
cave - falling rocks (can drop dragon down!)
land - houses*
cave - spiders (first can drop off the sorceress and kill them, go slowly on earth, a few drops are ok)
land - birds
castle 2 - door (burn down wooden door to open castle)
castle 2 - sorceress get magic book by landing*

Episode 3

land - fighting two-head-fire-dragon
cave 1 - falling rocks (can drop dragon down!)
cave 2 - spiders (first can drop off the sorceress and kill them, go slowly on earth, a few drops are ok)
cave 3 - falling rocks (can drop dragon down!)
land - birds
sea 1 - ships*
land - birds
sea 2 - ships*
land - bees
land - witch and soldier on horse (go back to here if you haven't no fire power after you reached door of castle 3)
cave - empty*
castle 3 - door (burn down wooden door to open castle)
castle 3 - sorceress goes to cauldron after landing*
successful end of game

* no attacks

Cheats[edit | edit source]

Cracks with different trainer versions are also available at CSDb.

Skill level

This is normally set from the main menu, ranging from 1 to 8, however it can be set to 0 by modifying the memory location at $65 while at the menu. In VICE that can be done from the monitor with:

> 65 00

Infinite energy

This is the code which checks if you are running out of energy:

.C:2902  A2 00       LDX #$00
.C:2904  A9 FF       LDA #$FF
.C:2906  C5 66       CMP $66
.C:2908  F0 32       BEQ $293C   <<< replacing by 2 NOPs avoid dying if enery is zero
.C:290a  E8          INX
.C:290b  C5 6C       CMP $6C

So in VICE monitor you can set the NOP instructions with:

> 2908 ea ea

The equivalent POKEs would be:

POKE 10504,234
POKE 10505,234

One of the already existing trainers used the following (with the difference that you do run out of energy but never die):

> 2954 ea ea

Infinite fire

This is the code which decrements the fire available:

.C:308e  38          SEC
.C:308f  FD 7A 30    SBC $307A,X
.C:3092  8D 78 30    STA $3078
.C:3095  B0 02       BCS $3099
.C:3097  C6 68       DEC $68 <<<<<<<<<<<<<< replace by 2 NOPs to avoid decrementing fire
.C:3099  A9 C8       LDA #$C8
.C:309b  18          CLC
.C:309c  6D 79 30    ADC $3079
.C:309f  8D 79 30    STA $3079

So in VICE monitor you can set the NOP instructions with:

> 3097 ea ea

The equivalent POKEs would be:

POKE 12439,234
POKE 12440,234

Enchantress falling from dragon

This is the code (commented) for the enchantress falling from the dragon in the spider cave:

.C:2597  8D 24 A0    STA $A024
.C:259a  06 B1       ASL $B1
.C:259c  D0 A0       BNE $253E
.C:259e  05 20       ORA $20
.C:25a0  A2 23       LDX #$23
.C:25a2  B0 18       BCS $25BC  <<< checks if the enchantress will fall, or jump to RTS at $25BC
.C:25a4  A5 2D       LDA $2D
.C:25a6  29 40       AND #$40
.C:25a8  F0 12       BEQ $25BC
.C:25aa  20 E4 1C    JSR $1CE4  <<< enchantress falling
.C:25ad  29 50       AND #$50
.C:25af  D0 D1       BNE $2582
.C:25b1  A5 2D       LDA $2D
.C:25b3  29 BF       AND #$BF
.C:25b5  09 02       ORA #$02
.C:25b7  85 2D       STA $2D
.C:25b9  20 2B 20    JSR $202B  <<< enchantress slain
.C:25bc  60          RTS        <<< nothing bad happened
.C:25bd  20 21 4B    JSR $4B21

By causing the above to always redirect to $25BC or simply returning from the subroutine (with RTS) when it checks, the enchantress will never fall. This is the modified code:

.C:25a2  60          RTS
.C:25a3  EA          NOP

So in VICE monitor you can set the above instructions with:

> 25a2 60 ea

The equivalent POKEs would be:

POKE 9634,96
POKE 9635,234

Voting[edit | edit source]

Voting of the C64-Wiki-User (10=the best vote):
4.00 points at 1 vote. You need to be logged in to cast a vote.
Lemon64	5.9	19th October 2018 - 22 votes