assorted 2nd-generation console videogame reviews

7/29/2019 Assorted 2nd-Generation Console Videogame Reviews

1/6

Liffle Ef oooHomeqf lqsfET JIJAtarUAtari VCS

Dy Fronk LoveceAs the otherworldly ET told his earth-friend Elliott atthe climax of the movie ET, "I'll always be here."That's for sure. Before boarding that lightship for home,ET evidently sat down with his agent and signed a fewdeals for ET T-shirts, postcards, bumper stickers and, ofcourse, a video game. Alien he may be; stupid, no.Like Atari's video game adaptation of director StevenSpielberg's previous movie, Raiders oJ the Inst Ark, ETis an adventure game with multiple playfields. Yet ETseems designed for players younger than those of mostadventure games-and this immediately gives it achildlike charm. The instruction book has ET himselftalking about "that nice little alien-Elllleeott" and"those tasty energy pills . . . Reeesgseess Peeesssess."In this one-player garne, you're represented on-screen not by Elliott, but by ET. You have to guidethe little guy from a forest through ravine-pockedfields to hunt for energy-giving candy and the threepieces of his "transgalactic communicator" (whichlooks a lot like a telephone), and then take him backto the forest to meet his ship, thus winning the game.

out of energy bcfore his ship arrives, he gets three tofour "mergings" u'ith Elliott for temporary rejuvenationbefore going into hibernation. In game variation three,

the characters are ET and Elliott only; in game two,there's also an FBI agent who must be avoided; and ingame three, a scientist joins the show. There's even awilted flower ET must revive.Given this chummy charm, what's hard to under-stand is why the directions are so hard to understand.The game play itself is easy enough to grasp, but theinstruction book is not. There are, for example, six ill-named "zones" during which ET can perlorm onefunction (other than moving) apiece, such as eatingcandy or calling his ship. It takes reading between thelines to grasp the idea that these zones "appear" in-visibly on the plal'fields and ET physically moves fromone to another. Unless you can figure out that thesezones are invisible and the symbol for each is not ap-pearing at the top of the screen as a function ol say,time, you can get very frustrated.Scoring. too, is complicated. Rounds ofplayare continuous, as long as ET retainsener$/, and you can be penalizedin subsequent rounds

When he falls intoat the expense ofpoints.a well he can levitate out.precious energ/Should ET run

JANUARY 1983


2/6

for collecting more than 3l pieces of candy in anyone round, and things score 49O or 77O pointsat a time, and points can be taken away as wellas added, and there are bonus points at theend of each round, and the whole affairis very cumbersome.Worse, though, is an idioslmcrasy in ttre programwhich makes it difticult to levitate ET from a well with-out immediately having him fatl back in-over, andover sometimes. This is maddening. Given the atterttionspan of humans in general-forget about the uery shortattention span of most kids-it's worse than mad-deningl: It's incomprehensible. Atari addresses thisproblem in its instruction book, yet the compuly'ssuggeston of tuming left or right immediately after thescreen changes from the well to the ground doesn'tseem to work a lot of the time.However, graphically, Atari has rarely done anythingbetter. The "credits" screen that appears before thegame actually begins features a mosaic-like porLrait ofET that, given the limitations of the VCS, is stunning.I wish that there were some way to animate it.Young players won't be let down by this adaptation.as often happens when a character is translated fromone medium to another. And though the holidays areover, this game is still one way of wishing for Reese'sPieces on earth and good will toward humankind.

claws moving in and out, in and out. And the incessantvibration of the dragonflies'wings, accompanied bytheir droning humming sound, makes you feel as if youought to be swatting.All in all, the game is challenging, intriguing andmaintains interest. It's dilficult, but not so difficult thatyou get discouraged. So it's every duck for himself.Take your corners and come out spitfing.

DEADLY DucK Tt;.r E;lox Games/AtariV(Dy Sherry Jocobs JAVBREAKER II/n childhood there was Donald; in the bathtub it wasRubber; on your table it's Peldng and now, on yourtelevision screen, it's Deadly. Deadlg Duck.The obJect of this new game from 2oth Century FoxVideo Games is to move deftly back and forth across apond while avoiding brtcks dropped by crabs. Allies tothe crustacern enemy are dragonflies who, unlike thecrabs, are indestructible. They carryr bombs. Deadlydoesn't simply bite the bullet and avoid destruction, hespits bullets. From his bill. And he aims them ratherdeffly by turning his head upward towards the enemy.Brave duck, he.Thts single-player game has four levels of difllculty.Each successive level brings two more dangerousdragonflies. Ifyou hit a dragonfly you get extra points,but a direct hit also causes a rain of bombs from thegreen insectsYou start wtth four ducks. At first the game is a pieceof cake but, by level four, you find yourself white-knuckling it. And if a brick hits you, it's goodbye Dead-ly, hello Pressed.The graphics are brilliant-colorful and extremelyrealistic. The crabs look good enough to eat, with their

T-lg erutston/ Atart VCSDy Roymond Dlmetrosky

openings in the walls which allow you to take short

With everything from movies to comic books beingtumed into games for the Atari VCS, it was inevitablethat computer games would follow. After all, if a gameis popular with computer owners, why shouldn't it bepopular with owners of the VCS?ln Jaubreaker, you control a munching set of teeth.Your goal is to devour as many candy bars (dashes) aspossible without being chewed up by one of the smilingfaces. However, if you eat a vitamin pill, you gainspecial powers and then you can eat the smiling faces!Sound familiafYes, no question about it, this game is similar to Pac-Man, but it's not a ripoff The scene is made up of anumber of horizontal rows filled with dashes. There isno complex maze to travel through. However, there arecuts from row to row. The walls and theiropenings move back and forth at vary-ing speeds, constantly changing theirpositions. Therefore, you have to try

ELECTRONIC FUN WITH


3/6

InfiItrate is fun for a time, but it doesn't take long tomaster, which means that more intrepid thrill-seekerswill probably be searching for new playfields to conquerbefore long.

GORF /ICBS Games/AtarM By Klm Mllls

Just like its arcade predecessor, the CBS Gamesversion of Coy'is "frog" spelled backwards and, Justlike its arcade predecessor, this has nothing whatever to

is frustrating in the extreme. A Gorfian flag ship patrolsback and forth across the top of the screen, droppingheat-seeking tracldng missiles over your ship. All youhave to do to destroy the flag ship is score a direct hitto its "intemal power reactor vent"-which looks likethe spot on a bug where the head meets the body. Theinternal power reactor vent is about a quarter of an inchwide and not all that tough to hit. For some mysti[ringreason, it takes about half a dozen of what look like on-the-money stdkes before the flag ship explodes.If C'of doesn't sound great it lsn't-but itpacks one surprlse: The game can only be playedby one person. This piece of information is not men-tioned in the instruction booklet (unless you countthe place where it says, "Plug a Joystick Control-ler firmlg ireto LEFT Controller Jack of yourvideo system").

sulclDE MlssroN l/StarpatVAtari YCSDy Frcnk Lovoco

The name of a game can be its claim to fame.Starpath (formerly Arcadia) knew this from thebginning. One of its very llrst games was taggedbmmunlst MutantsJrom Space, already one of the all-time gleat video game monikers. Now that samecompany has a game called Suicide Mission, and if thename isn't as colorftrl, it ls accurate-play it longenough and you could bore yotuself to deattr.It's one of the more blatant versions of ttre classicAsterotds, which isn't so bad in itself. Asterotds is agreat game, after all. Sutclde Mi.gsion isn't the flrstgame to be inspired by it. The new Starpath ofering is,however, an Asteroids clone with even slmpler graphicsthan the sketchy outlines found in the origi:eal, andvirtually no change at all ira the game play.do with the game. Also Just like its arcade predecessor,the home version is four, four, four games in one. Itspremise-like most outer space games-is that Earth isbeing attacked by aliens and yourJob is to save theplanet.The Ilrst is a shameless rip-offof Space Inuaders,whlch Gofs designers called Astro Battles. But youwon't be fooled by this watered-down imitation. Even ifyou play a medicore game of S.L, Astro Batfle won'tblow you out of the slry.Mission 2, called Laser Attack, consists of a laser shipprotected by llying C'orfs. As the laser ship tries toobliterate you, kamikaze ships swoop at you from thecorners of the screen,Mission 3, is annoyingly weird. As usual, you arebelng attacked, thts time by ships that emerge one at atlme from a "space web" in the upper center of ttrescreen. The attacking ship flies in a spiral pattem,shooting at you as it zooms in and out of an invisibleshield. When in it, the ship, too, is invisible.The last variation, called Flag Ship, looks simple but

ELBCTRONIC FUN WITH COMPUTERS AND GAMES 69


4/6

There are virtually no significant distinctions inSuicide Misston. Here, as in Asteroids, you'rerepresented on-screen by a torpedo-spewing ship. Here,as in Asterotds, large forms float ttrough the void,forms which break up aft.er one hit, break up furtherafter two hits and finally disappear after a third, well-placed volley. Here, as in Asteroids, a small, torpedo-firing attacker appears to home in on your ship.Differences: Rather than being able to enter h5rper-space, you can instead self-destruct and take all yourenemies with you, scoring big points. (In fact, I foundyou cur score more than 12,0OO points-a sizeablechunk of the 2O,OOO needed for a bonus ship on theeasiest and hardest levels-just by killing yourself. Ho-hum.) You also have the choice, using the A/B difficultyswitch on the VCS, of having your craft fire rapid orsingle shots.The instruction book carries on some silliness aboutyour controlling a miniature submarine in a humanbloodstream and firing "penicillin torpedoes" at viruscolonies. There's nothing on the screen particularlyrelevant to this unappetizing scenario, and you mightbe better off, if you want to play doctor, by going withImagic's Intellivision-compatible Microsurgeon.LADY BUG JJLJbleco/hlecoulsion

Dy Morjorie CtoneThe dictionary defines ladybug as "a small, brightlycolored beetle which feeds on other small insects." Thisdefinition was obviously premature in light of Coleco'snew Ladg Bug gane for the ColecoVision. Webster'sshor:ld make way for the 1982 uideo definition, to wit:

"A small, brightly colored digital bug which feedschiefly on dots, hearts, letters and a variety ofvegetables."

The play begins with a short tune which sounds likesomething played by the Yankee Stadium organist. Youare then thrown into action with a screen that, in manyrespects, resembles the Pac-Man screen. Your task is toeat your way through arnaze ofdots, hearts and letterswhile avoiding deadly skulls and ravenous insects.Grab the vegetable and you get lOqO points.Each screen consists of walls and doors which openand close according to the dAection you steer yourladybug. Each maze contains approximately IOO dots,three hearts and three letters. With the latter you mustspell the words SPECIAL and EXTRA. If you succeed inspelling these words in a specific color (yellow or red,for example), a jaunty tune is played and you getanother lady bug. Spelling SPECLAL in red lettersrewards you with a Vegetable Harvest Bonus Screen,consisting only of vegetables which you can eat to yourheart's content while racking up thousands of points.Coleco has successfully combined great graphics andadorable music in this near-perfect adaptation of thearcade game. The color is rich and brilliant right downto the details of the vegetables. As for the music, I amanxiously awaiting the release of the album. The ex-citement is constant and the fun never-ending, I havespent many of my waking hours in the pursuit ofhappiness with my vegetable-eating lady bug. I nowleave you with a little expression my mother usedrepeatedly at the dinner table when I was growing up:"Eat your vegetables. There are ladybugs starving inChina." I guess she must have known something then.

SPACE SPARTANS /I/MatteWntelliuiston with IntelliuoiceDy Morc Bermon

The fall of Greece gave rise to the Roman Empire. Italso inspired Mattel to come up with Space Spcrtans, atalking game that says just about everything except"Beware of Spartans bearing lasers."The object of this one-player garne is to score pointsby blowing up the alien ships before they disable yourspacecraft. One by one, the alien fire weakens anddestroys your shields, tracking computer, battlecomputer, impulse and hyperdrives, impairing yourability to maneuver and aim. At the same time, yourenerry is being drained and you must retum to one ofyour starbases now and then to refuel and makenece$saq/ repairs.Male, female and robot voices report the statusof the ship's systems, energ/ level, progress ofthe repairs, number of aliens and location of attack.


5/6

AIRLOCK JDataAgelAtartVGS

over a barier, get bowled over by a torpedo, oreven take more than one leap to get a key, andwhen those first lO seconds are up, you're sunk.But once you've got that ffrst level down, eachprogressive level becomes easier because you accu-mr.rlate unused seconds.There's little to this game once you've passed the ftrstlevel. The torpedoes are easy enough to avoid, and thegrand trick of timing your man to leap over both barierand torpedo at once doesn't take much practice. Andgranted, video games ought to be as free from the closescrutiny of logic as movie musicals, but this gamedoesn't even have internal consistency.Why, for example, do the torpedoes pass ghostlikethrough the bariers while your hero can't? Why doeseach level flll up with water in the blink of an eye,scuttling your hero even if he's made it to an elevatorand is no more than a fish's whisker from the nextlevel? Sinlidng vessels may take on water quickly, butnot thaf quickly, and having the man slosh throughristng water may have made the game more interestlng.Even the central conceit-that you can win.byescaping-lces its gloss when you see your characterJumping forJoy atop a soon-to-be-ex-submarine, with norlescue ships in sight.I have to give Data Age credit for fleshing out one ofmy vldeo game fantasies-beating the machine-butwith Alrlcch even when you win, you lose.SPACE ATTACK J Jttr$UPERCHALTENGE DASEDALL IIMatteUAtartVCS

Dy Suzon PrlnceOne of the ptoneering M Network space gamesisSpre Attack, which ts a translation of the Intellivisiongame Space futtle. Here the AtarlJoystick does prove

Dy Fronk Lovece"Winnfng,:' Vince Lombardi once intoned, "isn'teverything. It's the only thing." Vince Iombardi obvi-ously never lived to play video games. The best any-body can do,ts hold out as long as possible until theend.What distinguishes Airlack, then, isn't its gfaphics,its pW rralue or its degree of challenge-all of wttich arepretty undisttngutshed-but the fact that it's one of thefirst vldeo games ever that you can win. NotJust tumthe counter over, or walk away from when the timerruns out, but urin. Vince would've liked that.The fact yorh can beat Airlock isn't enough to saveyou from a fate similar to that which befalls the on-ff ffi.ffff;S,F#H$ffiffii jfr t"hg1going dovm with hfs ship or, in this &se, sub- iltmarlne. You only get to drown in boredom. 1|lAtrlock ls one more variation on the DonlcqKong theme, with your protagonist leaping-

=lover vaguely described"barriers" androlllng torpedoes knocked loose "by an eerie currentfrom deep under ttre sea floor." He must retrleve, in'order, two alrlock keys for each of the submarine levelsto whtch he must ascend via elevator. He has 49 or 99"seconds" to reach the top level and escape, with waterflooding successive levels every lO "seconds." (In real

time, lO game-seconds takes about 2O seconds in theeasy mode and 15 in the dtftlcult.) You can choose flve-or iGlevel, as well as one- and two-ptrayer variations(which doesn't make much sense to me, since yo.u onlyget one man per game and could Just share a single Joy'sflck).At ftrst, the game is challenging because, in thedtfftcult mode at least, you can't slip up even once. TtipELECTRONIC FUN WITH COMPUTERS AN GAMES 6t


6/6

ELECTRONIC FUN-C

Itgilneighbors with a machine that talks back. The wizardsat Odyssey have clearly done a remarkable job in givingtheir system a voice which can get its electronic tonguearound the vagaries and inconsistencies of the Englishlanguage.But it has some odd quirks, and frequently dronesaway in a dialect pretty much alien to these parts. Forexample, TVpe & ?ell flatly insists on pronouncing mycousin's last name, Straight, as "Stray-might." Yet itmanages to get her first name, Elizabeth, ri$ht.Here's how it all works: First you type in each letterof your message, which is then displayed in individualblocks within a larger matrix of 72 separate blocks.Then you simply press Enter, and the little com-puterized guy inside reads it back to you. (Wonder whythey setfled on a man's voice?)Generally, with enough fooling around, you can comeup with a close approximation of what you want Tlpe& TeII to say. Here's one I tried, just to see if the litflegenius was napping inside there-Rhodabelle BeardsleyLevis, my sister's narne- I swear it's true. Tgpe &TelIobviously didn't care fof the name and mangled it thefirst time around. But, with the addition of a few let-ters-and the substitution of one vowel for another-itfinally got it, though the voice seemed to be getting alittte hoarse and gravelly toward the end. One otherthing. Yes, kids, it can talk dirty.

PLANET PATROL JJJISpectr auisio nlAtar i VCS

By Fronk LoveceThe Chevy Impala isn't called the Chevy Armadillofor good reason. "ermadillg," you might say, lacks thatcertain drive. Same with the narne Planet Patrol,which, coupled with a package description that rightlyplaces the accompanying game in the Defender schoolof spacejet-versus-oncoming-missiles, leaves ygu ex'pecting something as scintillatingas PIan NineJromOuter SpoceThe name garne, it turns out, has little to do with thevideo game, which is outstanding. Despite the limita-tions of the Atari VCS, Planet Patrol has exceptionalgraphics and the mark of a designer who must've

neighbors with a machine that talks back. The wizardsat Odyssey have clearly done a remarkable job in givingtheir system a voice which can get its electronic tonguearound the vagaries and inconsistencies of the Englishlanguage.But it has some odd quirks, and frequently dronesaway in a dialect pretty much alien to these parts. Forexample, TVpe & ?ell flatly insists on pronouncing mycousin's last name, Straight, as "Stray-might." Yet itmanages to get her first name, Elizabeth, ri$ht.Here's how it all works: First you type in each letterof your message, which is then displayed in individualblocks within a larger matrix of 72 separate blocks.Then you simply press Enter, and the little com-puterized guy inside reads it back to you. (Wonder whythey setfled on a man's voice?)Generally, with enough fooling around, you can comeup with a close approximation of what you want Tlpe& TeII to say. Here's one I tried, just to see if the litflegenius was napping inside there-Rhodabelle BeardsleyLevis, my sister's narne- I swear it's true. Tgpe &TelIobviously didn't care fof the name and mangled it thefirst time around. But, with the addition of a few let-ters-and the substitution of one vowel for another-itfinally got it, though the voice seemed to be getting alittte hoarse and gravelly toward the end. One otherthing. Yes, kids, it can talk dirty.

PLANET PATROL JJJISpectr auisio nlAtar i VCS

By Fronk LoveceThe Chevy Impala isn't called the Chevy Armadillofor good reason. "ermadillg," you might say, lacks thatcertain drive. Same with the narne Planet Patrol,which, coupled with a package description that rightlyplaces the accompanying game in the Defender schoolof spacejet-versus-oncoming-missiles, leaves ygu ex'pecting something as scintillatingas PIan NineJromOuter SpoceThe name garne, it turns out, has little to do with thevideo game, which is outstanding. Despite the limita-tions of the Atari VCS, Planet Patrol has exceptionalgraphics and the mark of a designer who must've

OMPIJTERS&GAMES

devoured Frank Herbert's Dune trilogy in one sitting.There is dawn, there is dusk and there is pacing.After your fighter gets through a daylight wave of dronemissiles and indestructible heat-seeking torpedoes, thendemolishes a trio of enemy bases and dodges the result-ant debris, evening falls and the enemy becomes harderto see. By nightfall, the attackers are invisible save forthose moments when your spacejet fires.As with a number of new home video games, this onerequires you to watch a fuel gauge. Your spacejet cantake one pit stop per day, requiring little more than aneasily maneuvered landing. The trick is the stage beforethat: making it through enemy-base debris whichscatters in different, seemingly random pattems eachtime, making a surefire evasive strates/ virtually im-possible.The instmction book is a riot, and a harbinger, in alllikelihood, of instruction books to come. Spectravision'stalking Mi.:ssion: Impossible seriousness here, with thebooklet tumed into a notice that all leaves have beencancelled and that you're to return immediately to yourstar base and then take off for the planet "Spectra."Thanldully, the game action lives up to its grandioseinstructions. Even if the graphics weren't as good asthey are, the varieties ofattackers, obstacles and ob-jectives create welcome diversity. The point valuescharrge as you progre$s through five screen days-lOthrough 5O points each for downed drones, lOO to 5OOeach for rescued pilots, 2OO to 1OOO each for decimatedenemy-base clusters-and stay at the maximum as longas your spacejet (four per game) remains intact.As far as strategr goes, don't worryr about wiping outtoo many of the first-wave missiles-just get throughthem alive and move on to more point-profitable waves.Night flying is troublesome, but just keep firing andmaneuvering. Stay away from the top or bottom of thescreen during this phase or else you can get boxed inby just two heat-seeking torpedoes.

ELECTRONIC FUN WITH COMPUTERS AND GAMES 63

assorted 2nd-generation console videogame reviews

Documents