In many ways, 1983 was over very fast, in others just long enough. I started with 96 games and ended up playing 22. Which is roughly 1/4th of what I wrote down. What happened? I start more aggressively culling things I had no point in talking about. After all, we're now right in the middle of the industry going on an economic downturn, most strongly affecting consoles and action games. For every game released this year that feels like some incredible leap, there are a dozen more that have rightly remained forgotten.
Could you tell this came from 1983 without checking?
So, I don't really have a different opinion on the games of 1983 than I have for proceeding years. That said, we are getting to the point where the standouts aren't just merely good for the time, they're getting to be fun period. By the same token, being old is becoming a lot less of an excuse for getting a low score. Games have reached the twenties, a trend I foresee becoming a lot more common soon.
Any other suggestions for things you think should be in this kind of chart, feel free to make them, I lack the middle management gravitas towards charts.
I have prepared this handy little chart. Doesn't really tell you much you didn't already know. 1983 was better than 1982, but only because I pruned out a lot, sure, it did get a better high score and a better average score, but only just. The same number of games might even have resulted in a lower score than 1982. The cause of a partial gaming crash and all that.
It's not necessarily the systems themselves that are creating a score of retro shooter black hole of quality. Outside of maybe the Apple II and the Atari 2600. We're not really seeing the best these systems can do most of the time. Obviously with strategy and adventure games there's more leeway with making games that are not as smooth to control, but I don't think we've seen the best these systems can do. Ironically enough, the best these systems could do seems to all be from the early '90s, which is exactly the worst time for them to work to their fullest. Although there is always the chance that these later games prove to be cases of style of substance; most games from the '90s and onward definitely look good in screenshot form, but nobody rarely are their gameplay virtues discussed.
Game of the Year - The Dreadnaught Factor The game I ended up enjoying the most this year is also a game that basically nobody has ever played. The Dreadnaught Factor is a game about fighting against a squadron of dreadnaughts, posed to take out your home planet. To accomplish this task, you have a series of starfighters, each with lasers and bombs, who make attack runs against these dreadnaughts, until it is destroyed or you are destroyed. Time is a factor, but you can increase your chances by taking out engines, the game's party piece. Each ship is big and consists of many independent parts, some which shoot at you, some which are important to the ship's function. Some components are vital, others decrease the ship's fire rate or engine speed.
Underdog of the Year - The Dreadnaught Factor Not really much point otherwise, The Dreadnaught Factor is both obscure and the best game by a large factor.
Technological Advancement of the Year - Encounter Encounter is a surprising game, just another Battlezone-clone at first glance. But this is 1983, a year when a fast paced FPS is unheard of, especially on home computers. It is outrageously primitive today, yet practically witchcraft even considering someone released a FPS just as fast the year before, just, you know, without any enemies. It's worth a short trip today, if only to see what the Atari 800 was capable of doing, before the constant one against one fights on slightly different planets becoming repetitive.
Personal Favorites: Bosconian (1981) Night Stalker (1982) Sinistar (1982) The Dreadnaught Factor (1983)
Rather short this year, but oh, well.
Unfortunately, 1984 has quite a lot of games, and I have already culled it of any obviously awful titles. Its all "quality" from here on out. There's not a lot I recognize, to the point that what I'm holding out hope for are licensed titles. Yeah. I've barely played anything from the year before this, just Elite and SunDog. I think that this year will take much longer to get through than past years, not just because there are many games, but because I'm going to take more breaks from the current year. When I first started this I expected the more annoying end of the scale to be populated by shovelware FPS titles and now unappealing flight sims, not what I've gotten.
That said, I expect stuff to start hitting the 30 point range next year. Impossible Mission seems to be a really beloved title and I'll be replaying F-15 Strike Eagle on a proper platform rather than a lazy DOS port.
Encounter, at first glance, is yet another Battlezone-clone. There are two things that seperate it from the pack, it's the best looking first person game so far, which doesn't mean a lot now, and more importantly, it runs like a dream. These two combinations are very much a winning combination at this point in time, because games are still trying to do something interesting and to do something fast.
Paul Waokes, if you don't know, was basically the developer of Novagen, a British software house known for Mercenary, a game I haven't played but look forward to. It's an interesting story as the the development of this game and the formation of Novagen. Waokes was a member of a local computer club, who, coincidentally worked for a newly formed software store owned by Andy Krouwel, who would help Waokes form Novagen...later. In the beginning, he merely encouraged him, like everyone he knew, to get the game published.
This resulted in the first of the game's many publishers, Synapse Software, an American company. Unfortunately, while the game sold massive numbers for the time, Synapse only paid him once. This company somehow ran out of money in 1985. It's a bit weird that I've already covered two games released in the '80s by Brits who got scammed by their publisher. I assume a lot more people got scammed, but it's kind of weird that I can cite two examples off my head like this now. (The other being the boring sub sim The Hunt for Red October)
Now, I should point out that while Encounter is a very impressive game from the get go, being a more impressive version of an arcade game, Waokes is a genius. Not just because he developed an impressive game, but because that's just what he can do. One thing you wouldn't notice just from this is that the Waokes developed a way to make cassettes load much faster than the usual speed at the time.
I tried out the original Atari 8-bit release and the 16 computer releases. Unlike a lot of games, the technically inferior Atari 8-bit version is still a very solid game. Because of issues getting the more advanced systems working during this time, I played that original version. The only real thing I'm missing is slightly nicer graphics and an intro tune.
A portal, bringing in an enemy.
It works like you expect most early FPS/"tank sims" work. Functions like any pre-mouselook FPS, minus the ability to sidestep. That it, it works, but you're liable to get shot from behind. It works very well for the time, but as could be expected that missing sidestep ability and the length at which you have to take to turn around are annoying. You're basically helpless against some enemies if they come up behind you. The gun is very nice though, very good rate of fire. Everyone dies in one hit, be it you or the enemies.
The game has several difficulty settings, which basically just affect the speed of things. I played on novice, but there's also advanced and expert. No matter what you do the game is going to more or less stay the same. You against a horde of flying saucers with no Z-axis affecting things. They spawn in, one at a time, in an endless green plain whose only distinguishing feature are pillars. Your shots and enemy shots reflect on these pillars. You have to get lucky to take out an enemy with these, but they're very helpful. No, I can't say you can hurt yourself with your shots or enemies with their shots.
Not the prettiest flying saucers now, but passable.
Two types of enemies, one that wanders around before shooting you, and one that chases after you or drones. For the first kind, they pop in through a portal, then after a little while they start shooting at you, with the same gusto you can shoot at them. As you can imagine from the controls it can be difficult to dodge these bullets, so the most effective way of dealing with them is not to be that close and to take them out quickly.
Then, the drones, which the manual implies are missile drones. They run directly at you, and if they hit you, you lose a live. They're harder to deal with than the other kind, because you have to turn to face them with the game's turning arc. That's the real challenge, even though they zig-zag to dodge your shots. Both types of enemies are implied to have advancing AI as the game goes on, but I didn't see it too much with these guys.
This is about to end badly.
After killing all the enemies you're required to on a stage, you can then advance to the next one via a portal. Be quick or you can't reach it. This gives you a section where you have to avoid big planets. I kind of question it, but considering the entire game would be doing the same few things over and over again otherwise I can't entirely fault the logic. I found it more annoying. It feels quite random as to whether or not you have the kind of planetary placement that allows you to advance, sometimes I lose through no fault of my own. Dying here merely returns you to the last level, advancing takes you to the next level.
Come to think of it, the skyboxes might just all be palette swaps of each other.
Level 4 is where the game gets interesting. The shooting enemies are now very eager to start shooting, and this is where the pillars stop being a novel part of the landscape and an actually interesting part of the game. Now no longer an interesting, it's practically required to bounce shots off pillars, all while safely behind another one. It doesn't happen all the time, because curiously, the AI varies up to whatever level you're currently on.
As I get through these later levels the game starts really coming into that tank duel idea it seemed to be pushing, the shooter tanks more often start being clever, or annoying to kill depending on how you feel. Enemies fly around, taking potshots at you, and actually catching up to them can be as much of a challenge as actually shooting him. Conversely, despite the increase in difficulty, the game isn't actually more fun. I get the idea, but it turns out chasing someone around an endless void is really boring. I found myself too disinterested to continue at around level 6.
Weapons: Decent fire-rate, but a generic blaster weapon. 1/10
Enemies: The AI feels very clever for 1983, but unfortunately it has a negative effect on how fun the game is as time wears on. 2/10
Non-Enemies: None.
Levels: A repeating grass plain marked by pillars along with the odd interstellar journey. It's okay. 1/10
Player Agency: If it weren't for the eons it takes for the tank to turn around, I'd find this a good scheme, as it stands, merely okay. 4/10
Interactivity: None.
Atmosphere: Another game where you feel like you're against the universe, despite being a part of some sort of military organization. 1/10
Graphics: I can see someone in 1983 being blown away by the way this game looks. Now it's kind of plain. I like the skyboxes though. 2/10
Story: None.
Sound/Music: Simple but effective sound effects. 2/10
That's 13. Which might just make it the best of the very early FPSes.
That said, I look forward to future Novagen games.
I'm just going to put in an aside about Time Bandit. If you don't know what it is, it's another proto-Gauntlet kind of game, the Atari ST version being very advanced. To the point where if it that was a fair port of a 1983 game it would be so far ahead of everything else it would be funny. Except, originally, it was released on the TRS-80, in a very different state, one I don't wish to play. As such, while I may get around to it much quicker than every other 1985 game, it will be as a 1985 rather than 1983 game.
Also, Freescape/3D Construction Kit games. I played a bit of a couple of them and I realized that this was not really what I wanted to spend my time on. The engine was never really the strongest on the FPS side, and these felt far more like adventure games. I don't enjoy navigating through these games, so, I just cut them out. That leaves some Japanese stuff as the only remaining games for 1991, outside of replays.
The sequel, I guess, to Android One. I had very little nice to say about that game. Android Two at first glance seems considerably more interesting, until I realized it was broadly the same game as the original, just with a more open-ended level. At which point I was going to cross it off my list...but then I realized that wasn't necessarily a bad thing; that this is closer to a remake of the original rather than a true sequel.
The starting area, surrounded by red robots. No idea what the radar in the lower right is supposed to be, but just above it is a mine detector.
Rather than the straight-forward and rather boring design of the last game, we have a fancy-looking open-ended game of the same nature as last time. Oh, and this is being done on the pride and joy of Britain, the ZX Spectrum. It's actually a good game on the surface. The objective is to find five millipede robots, kill them, then return to where we entered and the process repeats.
Blue robots at the top, they have a path to the millipede through the upper right hall.
The controls are simple, but slightly obtuse. OP move left and right, Q1 move up and down. Space shoots. The gun has a range of about 6 tiles. It's not the most precise thing I've controlled, but it works well enough. It's at a weird point where it's not good enough to work perfectly, but just enough that successfully dodging a tricky enemy feels exciting.
So the complex you're put in is a somewhat complex looping place, starting you off at a teleporter. This is of course where you have to return. Stopping you from reaching your targets are two types of robots. A blue robots that moves around in any line, left-right or up-down, and can be shot, and red robots that are invulnerable, but move in a single line in a predetermined fashion. Also, mines.
Damage is weird in this game. The manual describes it as you having lives, but it's basically five HP. You don't spawn anywhere else, you just remain where you are. Red robots walk in the other direction, blue robots die, and the landmine you stepped on doesn't harm you unless you step on it again. Kind of weird.
The really lucky times there are three at once!
The big enemy, the robot millipedes, will eventually be found. It's not a big place. To kill one, you shoot it in the head three times. This surprisingly works really well. Spaces are tight and you have limited range. This means you can't just sit somewhere safely and shoot it three times. When it works, it works really well, when it doesn't, it feels like your usual coin muncher. They move like the blue robots, except when they are unable to move, they flip, the head appearing where the tail was. Except this can happen at any time, not just when they can't move period. It's also annoying dealing with them and they're butting heads with a robot in a corridor, because it'll slowly follow the robot until it can't anymore.
For the most part it's all fine and dandy. You can easily predict where an enemy will move, and more importantly where they won't move. In a wide enough space without many red robots, you're fairly safe. As blue robots and millipedes increase, even the widest space is best left alone. Fortunately, you can camp out somewhere safe and wait for something to come after you. Everything still moves off-screen. Which can also be a problem. You can only predict the behavior of things you know are there, and blue robots can be anywhere. If you go into the place a red robot just went into, thinking you're safe, only to get battered by the red robot.
While it is exciting to move past a red robot or even a group of them successfully, a lot of the time these feel extremely generous considering the controls. You turn before you move, which means if you're tapping a button lightly, like if there's a landmine, you turn before moving. There are quite a few locations where you have to move around landmines in addition to red robots. Making it tense for all the wrong reasons. Finally, the time. You have limited time, just in case you thought you could camp for enemies. This actually makes things worse than you might think, because it's very unreliable to track moving millipedes, as I mentioned, so you have to wait for them to move, lest you get put in a horrible situation. I understand why it was put in, but it feels considerably at odds with any actual game design beyond extending playing time.
I eventually managed to do what I thought was a win. Kill the millipedes and then return to the start. Then I discovered that there's a second area, out of three. With no saves and no ability to restore health, my chances of getting any further were nil.
Weapons: Simple weapon. 1/10
Enemies: Three enemies that despite their problems create very interesting tactical situations. 3/10
Non-Enemies: None.
Levels: A somewhat interesting looping level. 3/10
Player Agency: Despite the annoyance of both ZX Spectrum key placement and typical lagginess, it works. 4/10
Interactivity: None.
Atmosphere: Despite the system, genuinely tense as a game. 4/10
Graphics: Garish but readable. 1/10
Story: None.
Sound/Music: Very annoying sound. 0/10
That's 16. Better than its predecessor, good for 1983, but not a must play today. Just what games of yore aspired to be, fun and simple. As such, not a whole lot to say about this one.
It's the home stretch for 1983, with only 5, maybe 4 games left.
As a general rule, I don't know which games ahead of time are the ones people actually know about. There are exceptions in obviously popular titles and in some periods, but otherwise I placed titles like Galactic Empire and Midwinter in the same mental pile ahead of time. I bring this up, because until writing this, I had placed in the generic category of Japanese computer game, even if it seemed intriguing. Not so, Thunder Force is a long running and at least somewhat important Japanese series that outlasted the company it was created by.
The story is that the ORN Empire has built a giant asteroid, from which they've launched their attacks into Galactic Federation space, and the player is going to destroy it with the advanced Fire LEO. The Federation is your obvious human faction, while the Empire is apparently a group of robots that look like demons. I don't know if that's a spoiler or not, because I don't have the manual and I doubt the story matters much in-game.
I'm torn on whether or not that crosshair actually helps with anything.
I could tell by the screenshots that this would be interesting. Its rare to see an over-head scrolling game like this in 1983. That's not a stationary game like so many others, or a game that scrolls in one direction. Every direction. And it runs fairly smoothly. There's some slowdown, but this only happens when you move diagonally, but isn't going to be the usual kind of slowdown where everything grinds to a halt. Its even convenient to the gameplay at times.
The game is controlled by the numpad, you constantly move in the direction you pressed. Note, you cannot stop, but this isn't a problem. Z & C drop a bomb, the same bomb I think, and X fires a shot. You take out ground targets with the bombs and flying enemies with the gun. It works rather well for a game released for computer systems which seem to regard pressing multiple keys at once to be witchcraft. Pressing directions rapidly sometimes didn't register. You die in one hit, and while the game starts you off with 10 lives, they don't give you any more.
The shield base, just above the ship.
Don't confuse that with generosity, this game is absolutely brutal. Ground targets shoot without warning and flying targets fly around like crazy. This is one of those games that's easy to continually lose lives in. The objective is to somehow survive long enough to destroy two targets which contain shields. That's the entire objective for the first half of every stage. However, this is randomized, either when the stage starts or after you destroy each ground target, it doesn't matter. Some times it happens quickly, other times its a slog.
So while this game is really hard, the game does play fair to some degree. Enemy patterns can generally be exploited. So long as you don't find yourself in a situation where you can't even get a shot off, you can win assuming you don't make any mistakes. Its no inevitability. Flying back and forth, that is, sideways of where an enemy is, generally allows you to survive. For flying enemies and some stationary enemies, this is obvious, the kinds that shoot at you generally don't rapidly fire at you, so after a shot they're vulnerable. However, other stationary objects actually shoot in the opposite direction you're going.
For flying enemies this isn't an instant win, since they move around, back and forth, on and off the screen. More of them appear as you take out ground targets, but at least these guys aren't consistent across games and lives. As you take out more and more ground targets they tend to overwhelm the game to the point that you're just taking these out to stay afloat. God help you if they're thick enough over some ground targets, because that makes it very difficult to actually take out anything below it.
Then we have the ones that chase after you and shoot at you. They're slower than you, but that's the only mercy you get. Because of how fast the game can be, you barely get enough time to react to these guys before you're already dead. While the game is fairer than most of its compatriots, it doesn't always feel like you have a chance. I know it isn't true, but it seems like shots have a way of homing in on me, even if I manage to dodge them initially.
The ground here looks a lot like there's some secret message.
Eventually, you'll get to the second half of the stage, where you have to destroy...something to get off this section. The same rules apply, except I think you're supposed to take out a specific target. I didn't quite figure out what that one was, but the entire section has a new selection of stationary and flying targets, of which you will have considerable troubles figuring out thanks to the undoubtedly drained supply of lives you have. One of the stationary targets in the first section shot them out in a shotgun pattern, which is a theme here.
Apparently I did make it here with a lot of lives once, not that it helped me.
It didn't take me too long to win that, leading me to stage 2. Yeah, that's right, that wasn't just the entire game. There's a lot more to it. Unfortuantely, at this point they crank up the speed, meaning I didn't make it very far against the hordes. Certainly not long enough to figure out their patterns. It seems like luck that I can even get past the first stage despite having some understanding of what makes it tick. Between the less than ideal controls and a game that doesn't even seem to have a pause button, my patience ran out.
Weapons: The usual take out this kind of enemy weaponry. 1/10
Enemies: A decent enough variety of enemies, but nothing special. 2/10
Non-Enemies: None.
Levels: If it weren't for how utterly brutal the difficulty is, I'd think this was a pretty nice setup. 3/10
Player Agency: As functional as computers from this era seem to be able to produce. I loathe how small the game screen is, but I can't say they didn't try to make up for that. 4/10
Interactivity: Basic building destruction. 1/10
Atmosphere: There's something innately neat about flying through a green area gradually seeing the destruction you've caused. 2/10
Graphics: Perhaps I'm just being generous from all the lackluster stuff I've seen this year, but this looked nice. No real animation though. 2/10
Story: None.
Sound/Music: Outside of a cheesy THUNDA FORCE that echoes whenever the game first begins, solid 8-bit sounds. 2/10
That's 17. Were it just a little bit easier to manage, I think this would have had a shot at the 20s. In a sense, this is crueler than the usual fair, because it pretends it plays fair compared, like Lucy tearing away the football.
Curiously, while setting this up, I also tried out the PC-98 version, and dealing with speed issues there nearly screwed over one of my emulators. I made the mistake of playing it on the same emulator I was playing Shadowcaster on. The important thing is that the game seems to have different layouts. The Sharp X1 version I played was the easier version.
A programming note. There are 7 games left in 1983, meaning I should be done by this month or next month. Secondly, 1990 is down to 2 games. I was going to play Castle Master 2, but decided I had nothing new to say about the franchise. By the same token, I was going to play Midwinter again, but couldn't actually say anything new I hadn't said years ago. Funny.
Enix is a weird company. For most people, their pre-merger with Square output is solely defined by Dragon Quest, maybe ActRaiser and...Star Ocean!? They're responsible for that confusing mess of a series? Yikes. Otherwise, like me, you're vaguely aware they released some computer games and published one of the most important Japanese games, Portopia Serial Murder Case. But what's the real story?
Enix was originally a newspaper company, when its owner decided to venture into the world of video games. Rather than the usual practice of having an in-house staff, Enix would hold programming contests in which they would publish the best titles and pay out royalties. This worked wonders, and at least for a little while, caused Enix to dominate the Japanese computer scene. Limitless Warrior was not one of those successes, only selling 3000 copies allegedly. But judging by reviews in English, this doesn't mean that its a bad game.
Whatever story the game has is unknown to me, but its probably not important. The player is the warrior of the title...presumably. You move around with the numpad, 789 activate a jetpack. 123 increase the speed at which you go down. To attack, you get a rapid fire laser by pressing space, grenades which fly nicely in a downward arc, and rockets shoot straight and move you back a tile. You have limited ammo for the latter two, but they're restored to 20 and 10 respectively whenever you die. You start with three lives, and get one at 10k, and probably another at 20k. I never reached the second threshold.
A little ways down, the opening section is just a giant hole.
Once you begin the game, you're unceremoniously dumped into a giant hole. A triumphant theme tune plays which is probably a legally distinct version of some famous movie theme. Once it stops, which is a surprisingly long amount of time, you start falling. This game has fall damage, or rather death, which is why that jetpack is important. Whether or not you die from falling is determined by how fast you're going. And its pretty quickly clear that while the game's controls work on a superficial level, you can only have one button's action working at once. Shooting stops any movement you have, outside of momentum. Pressing one movement button cancels out another.
Enemy design here is pretty broad. You start off against turrets manned by aliens. Destroy the turret and the alien does nothing. Perhaps the reverse is true, but that's one heck of a situation to set up. They aren't repeated for a long time. Just a little ways down are more stationary objects, round things you have to walk into (or use explosives) to destroy. Walking into them causes an explosion, which destroys the two tiles below them. Thus revealing the gimmick of the game to anyone randomly starting it. Explosives destroy scenery.
As such, the game is basically a balance of using explosives when required, using it to avoid fights you can't win, and managing lives so you don't run out of explosives in an awkward position. For a game from this year, that's fairly impressive. Touching enemies is also not instant death, depending on your foe. With touching ranged enemies doing nothing, while you can stand safely on all enemies. Most only kill you via shooting you, though one group of flying enemies has the ability to kill you if they touch sideways.
The enemy at the top shoots, the middle one just flies around, and the bottom one just walks back and forth shooting mindlessly.
The game does a good job of mixing up the design of each "section" of the game. You can see the two different forms in most of these screenshots, falling and hallway crawls. Even though I found the falling sections annoying, for many reasons, they did a good job of mixing them up. Assuming you don't get stuck, each section lasts for a relatively short period of time. There are also numbered coins, which mostly exist for you to shoot in order to get points. Note, shoot, not blow up.
Missiles and stationary objects tend to kill you when they touch you.
Now, obviously this game has some faults. Quite a few of them. Firstly, the music is nice the first few times around and rapidly becomes annoying. The little intro tune grinds the game to a halt, because it happens every time you die. Even discounting hearing that dozens of times, because of the way its set up, its easy to be in a situation where you're likely to die when it finally unpauses. Sound is also annoying. When some enemies are on-screen, they cause a constant noise, like morse code.
In order to get past here, I had to wait for those things to rise up to where I was standing. Very fun.
Despite the nice variety of enemies, there's one glaring problem. They act completely randomly. Sometimes you can get the drop on them, other times they just sit down and let you kill them. Worse yet, while its neat that you're travelling down one large level, falling puts you in a position of constantly being at risk of the game just deciding you're dead. It is truly comical how the game can easily screw you over.
On a simple level the controls don't really work. That much is already clear, but it works on a more insidious level than that. You can walk over holes if you do it right. However, this distance isn't consistent, and often I found myself falling in. Flying out is a tricky thing to just right, because too much height and you're a prime target to get shot by the thing you're trying to destroy. Precision is impossible. Considering the way to destroy stationary targets without explosives is to walk into then, which creates holes, this can rest in considerable annoyance.
I got as far as about 400m, out of a total 600m. This game can be won, but as I keep saying, this is annoying due to the randomized nature of the game. The real roadblock is one type of enemy that shoots homing missiles. Because of the way the controls work, I find this too troublesome to deal with.
Weapons: Each weapon has its own use and purpose. I like that. 3/10
Enemies: Just enough variety to make things interesting, even if they are designed to screw you over. 2/10
Non-Enemies: None.
Levels: I like the design and concept well enough, but the randomization puts me off. 2/10
Player Agency: Functional only in where the keys have been placed. Otherwise its a fight to do what you want. 3/10
Interactivity: About the only thing that is well executed. Destructible walls are always nice too see, and in this case it can save you from an otherwise unavoidable encounter. 4/10
Atmosphere: I'm sure that early '80s Japanese computers have an appeal to someone. Just not me. 0/10
Graphics: Garish, bad, but everything is distinct. 1/10
Story: None.
Sound/Music: Pure noise. 0/10
That's 15.
Its a neat little thing to see, but outside of its central gimmick, nothing worth talking about. I'm surprised this wasn't that big a hit back then, because for the year this seems mind-blowing despite its issues. All you'd really need to do to fix this is remove the music, get rid of the starting delay, and fix the controls. Undoubtedly, some indie game exists which does solve that. Perhaps not one with consistent level design, but some roguelite or Minecraft-esque title. Come to think of it, that's not too dissimilar to Starbound. Which would bring up a whole new set of worms.
Over the course of this blog I've discovered many games that beat beloved classics to the punch. Games like Midi Maze and Space Vikings predate often-cited firsts in their respective genres, even if today they're quite primitive. Its just one of those funny things you end up finding when you try to explore a genre as much as you can. But, for the most part, its just me saying this, titles remain woefully obscure, in part undoubtedly because my own writings on early titles tend to be simple. Not today's game, no, today's game is something people already know was important, even if its not something they really think about. Because Dandy is Gauntlet before Gauntlet.
The concept, if you don't know, is that the player has to navigate their way through 26 mazes, killing monsters while gathering food and treasure. You move with the joystick. You can fire arrows at hostiles, this is done by holding down the joystick button and moving the stick in some direction. You can only have one shot on-screen, but it moves quickly and you can shoot diagonally. In the right situation it works wonders.
In addition to that, you also pick up food items, represented by red crosses. They're less food and more a healing item. You can carry up to 9 and use them by pressing the 1 key. They fully restore health. The game also has smart bombs, which blow up everything on-screen, activated by pressing shift + 1. In multiplayer, apparently up to 4 players. No split-screen, they all share the same screen. Which sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Opposing you in this task are various enemies, which mostly run at you and drain your health, killing themselves. These come in three varieties, one that looks like a man, a square block and a smiley face. When you shoot a smiley, it turns into a block, which then turns into a man, which then disappears. Rounding out the somewhat lackluster selection are a stationary heart which doesn't hurt you, but when shot turns into a smiley face, and a monster spawner. None of these things have AI beyond just running at you.
These harm health based on how many shots they have left before dying. The smallest causes 10, and so forth. You can't ever be higher than 90%. The heart actually has a purpose in two player mode, in which a player who dies can be brought back by shooting the heart. Difficulty determines how fast enemies move, from laughably slow on trivial, mostly manageable on easy, to hard and deadly, both fitting the speed you deal with.
Starting off, levels are okay. There's not really a lot the game can do with its monsters. They're either placed in a way that so long as you don't go running around like an idiot, you should be able to kill them before you, or on the other side of a divider. Even when you're in a hallways with monsters on either sides of the walls its considerably less dangerous than it seems. The screen moves pretty well though and this is one of the first games of its type to have real levels.
Level E is where the game starts trying to be clever. A series of corridors three tiles wide divided by hearts. Each room contains three enemies of varying types. An interesting idea, nevertheless, not very fun. I'm sure it was fun at the time, but now it just feels like busywork. Shoot in a certain direction for a while, then go to the next room, until you hit a dead end or the end of the level. I tried it again on hard and it honestly wasn't any better.
But its level F where the game starts to succeed. The trick with the heart is that you were only ever in danger if you put yourself in danger, but now, in addition to ramping up the number of enemies and enemy generators, you have money or a door blocking enemies from reaching you. When you move into something slowly, you have to put in a deceptive amount of movement to do so, holding the stick or key down for slightly longer than you would expect. Better be quick backing out. Level G follows it up with having a monster generator on either side of the entrance. Wow, and I doubted this game could do much in the ways of interesting things.
But as I clear more and more levels I can't shake off the feeling of this game feeling like busywork. I'm just shooting an endless amount of enemies with an endless supply of ammo, and while the sound's nice, what I'm doing feels lifeless. The game even throws a level where you have to aim at everything diagonally, and exploit how AI works in such a setting. It was okay.
Level J stitches me back to a more interested opinion of the game. Its deceptively clever. There are a few areas here where if you approach one way, its easy to end up in an unwinnable situation. But if you break away from the whole area and approach from a different path, the whole thing gets much more manageable. Each few levels it focuses on a new trick, before discarding it for the next one. This would make the game pretty good if it weren't for how lackluster the game feels. This rollercoaster continues for a good amount of time.
But outside of level V, most levels around the back 10 or so just feel like the author gave up. Even Level V's idea consists of trying to reach a monster generator slightly offset from where you can attack it, except that you had to enter a diagonal hallway to reach it. Things are placed in a very haphazard, what else can I do, kind of way. The final level even caps things off with a giant treasure room that loops back in on itself. So much for score being important.
Weapons: Simple but effective. You have a generic gun for most situations along with a smart bomb with takes out everything on-screen. 1/10
Enemies: As annoying as it could be sometimes, enemy generators did make this game play a lot better. As in the end it doesn't matter how many enemies you have and how many hits they take, they're still really dumb. 2/10
Non-Enemies: None.
Levels: As sort of could be expected for an early game with actual level design, there's nothing special going on now. There are attempts to be clever, but its not very memorable. 4/10
Player Agency: Diagonal attacks and movement are a little hard to reliably pull off. It takes a bit too much effort to move your character in one direction. Regardless, these are minor issues, the controls are fine for a game as simple as this one. 5/10
Interactivity: The way static items work in the game are kind of clever. Most of them enemies from moving into them, and you're the only one who can do anything. Smart bombs out in the work can even be activated by shooting them. 2/10
Atmosphere: None.
Graphics: I can tell what it is I'm looking at, but none of it looks nice. 1/10
Story: None.
Sound/Music: The sound is interesting. Each enemy is created and killed with a unique sound, so in the heat of combat there can be a strangely musical effect to what you're hearing. 2/10
That's 17.
Dandy is ultimately a game of its time, very impressive when it came out, but today it has nothing going for it. There are flashes of brilliance in-between amateurism. Alas, it seems the game didn't make much of an impact at the time, outside of Gauntlet's developers. This was the only game of note from developer John Palevich, though he did other work at Atari, while the Atari sub-label that published this ceased publishing the same year this came out.
Name:Dragonriders of Pern Number:162 Year:1983 Publisher:Epyx Developer:The Connelly Group Genre:Side-Scroller/Strategy Difficulty:3/5 Time:3 hours Won:Yes (58W/56L)
The Dragonriders of Pern series is one of those series I must admit to having no familiarity with. I have a spotty reading of sci-fi and fantasy canon, and Anne McCaffrey's work is one of those missing spots. I even have one of the early books I picked up...somewhere, probably for a small sum of money.
Its just a series about people riding dragons, and fighting each other, right? Wrong, this is a science fiction series masquerading as a fantasy series. As the introduction to Dragonflight tells us, Pern is not the native home of humanity in this universe. Instead, its the colonized planet of a group of people who desired to return to a simpler life. Pern has no resources to speak of, its only plus side is its a green planet capable of supporting human life. This is not reason enough to care in the Pern universe, which I find interesting.
Pern is cut off from the rest of humanity thanks to a surprise from a wandering planet trapped in the orbit of Pern's star. A red planet, containing a lifeform dubbed the Thread. The Thread eats a cow in seconds, and is incredibly hostile to other life. The colonists fend off the Thread, but the cost is high. Realizing the gravity of the situation, they take advantage of their advanced genetic engineering to create dragons from local lifeforms. They are to bond with humans who have high empathy and innate telepathy. Also, dragons can teleport apparently.
So over the centuries they build up a medieval lifestyle, forgetting that any life exists beyond their planet and that of the red planet. Dragonriders become knights, and society revolves around ensuring they can defeat the Thread. The sort of rulers are called Weyrs, who get tithes from the everyone else, since they can't exactly dedicate time to something other than thread. You've got things like guilds called craftshalls, led by master craftsmen. Craftshalls are at least in theory supposed to give goods and services neutrally. Then there are various other holds of gradually decreasing holds.
Oh, yeah, holds. Because there's a limited area the dragons can defend, people are limited to various holds. These are carved out of solid rock and metal, a rare occurrence thanks to the planet being chosen for its limited resources. (apparently that extends even to iron) They do this during the Long Intervals. A 200 year period of peace in which no Thread falls, as the Thread falls regularly during a 50 year period. The first novel starts with a period of peace nearly over, but uh-oh, people have started to believe that the Thread is a myth.
Unfortunately, there's only one Weyr left, and a scant 200 dragons. Humans are more numerous compared to the days of old when there were six Weyrs, so they're really in a bad place. Even the discovery of a woman who was the hidden child of some noble bloodline bonding with the new queen dragon doesn't help. (queen dragons are the only ones who can lay eggs, this is incredibly important, both the dragon and her bond) But the woman and her dragon can travel through time to the point where the old Weyrs disappeared and all is well.
If this sounds like a lot of backstory. There are ten pages of this backstory in the third novel, and I'm not even getting into the plot of the second novel! (this all seems to be in the manual's backstory too) The second novel gets into the politics of the setting. Especially now that a bunch of people from the past are clashing with modern, liberal craftsmen who are still getting over their belief that the Thread was a myth. They resettle the southern continent, which was left because it was unstable. They find fire lizards, which are like dragons, and ground grubs which undo the damage caused by the Thread in the soil.
Pern is credited with rehabilitating dragons in the eye of pop culture, something I can't rightly comprehend considering what I just read. Its easy to make a cop out and say this is Twilight for boomers, but the twists this story takes make Twilight look subdued in comparison. Pern is also better written, at least when you get past how incredibly dense it is. Its only natural that someone would make a video game about it, since it was apparently a huge deal back then. The game takes place around the second novel. Political intrigue between the old Weyrs and the modern, liberal lords of the holds. Fire lizards and the southern continent are discovered during play.
You are given a variety of options, but the most important part is game mode. You have regular, no thread fighting and thread fighting practice. No thread fighting just makes the thread fighting automatic. So I guess I better talk about the thread fighting from the practice mode.
Thread fighting is one of the most brilliant bits of combat I have ever encountered in a game. The sheer tactical depth boggles belief. The adrenaline-pumping action leaves you on the edge of your seat as you duck and weave in and out of the falling threads, burning as many as you can. You can hear the screams of the men below you as they're ripped apart by the threads you fail to fell, urging you to fight better...
...which is what they would have liked people to say.
This is the only screenshot I took of the action game, befitting that there really isn't anything worth seeing
In practice, the fighting is a bizarre trifecta of simplicity, bad controls and being too easy. Thread fighting has a depth option, which before you understand what it means, you'll be using it with one, and dying thanks to the weird controls. You attack with the fire button, and move up and down with up and down on the joystick. Left and right, meanwhile, change what direction you're going, left, right, inward and outward. This makes turning around very awkward, but thankfully the screen wraps. This is about the only praise-worthy decision the game offers. Finally, by pressing the space bar, you teleport, which you should be doing after getting hit by the thread, lest you die. The only sound is that of your fireballs.
As you can see from the video, the game is easy once you get this down. Laughably so. Depth makes the controls less bad, but its a really slow process moving from the different depths. There's also not a good difference between the thread at the two deeper depths, one thread just feels slightly longer than the other. It does feel complete compared to lower depths, but there's seemingly no reason to select a higher depth. Its fun at first, but rapidly it becomes just as interesting as the lower depths.
Before I talk about the strategy section, I'm going to point out that The Wargaming Scribe is also going to be covering this. As he knows more about strategy games than I, I'm sure his coverage will be considerably more in-depth than mine. I'm not sure the game really deserves all this extensive coverage, but its too late now.
What about the strategy game? The overarching aspect that was supposed to make this a whole? I note that the game offers multiplayer. You know how a lot of crappy games are said to be fun with friends? Dragonriders is not fun with friends. Playing this with friends back then would have been torture. You don't even need to bring someone into it to know its going to be bad. This is a game where you spend a lot of time looking at menus extensively.
There are 6 Weyrs, of which 4 may be player controlled. The objective is to be the first to get to 20 Victory Points before 20 holds become infested by the thread. To get Victory Points, a Weyr needs to enter into an alliance with a lord of a hold (2 VP) or craftsmaster (1 VP). You select the length of the game in turns/years, each of which consists of 240 or so days.
Strongest supporter might not mean much, I've seen them have an attitude of indifferent despite being there
So let's look at the obvious problem. The way the strategy game controls. I've played a lot of strategy games. I'm not very good at them, but that's neither here nor there. Strategy games have learning curves, even in modern strategy games. Modern games generally don't shorten this, as their benefits in easier controls and tooltips don't necessarily come with easier mechanics or GUIs. To say nothing of games getting more complex. The problem with Dragonriders is that the system is incredibly simple, its just presented in such a way that makes it awful.
I'm sure there was a reason this happens, but it really just seems random
There are 16 lords and 6 craftsmasters, along with some minor holds unimportant except as fodder. Each ruler has feelings towards each Weyr, general attitude, attitudes towards dragons and thread. Thus you have to manipulate him in the best possible way. I have no problem with this, its basically how the relations between characters work in most strategy games. The issue is that this game puts across this information in the most obtuse way possible. These names don't really matter, because game to game and sometimes turn to turn they change into completely different people, even discounting deaths. Yeah, characters can die in this game, for all that matters.
This game is played in real time, you set the speed at the start. From slow to lightning fast. This, I guess, was done because its a strategy game for action players. Who I'm sure already left when they realized how absolutely boring the action game was. When you press your key or joystick button, you can select one of eight options. But since you don't know what any of the rulers feelings are, you have to select description. Because every time you do this the game stops for a moment, this ruins what little momentum the game has.
Crom is apparently a coal mining town, though I believe its food for the dragons here
You have to mentally figure out your plan of attack, and only menus stop the game. Meaning looking at the description of a lord happens while actions are going on. Usually, pressing an action button stops the game before entering a menu. In a multiplayer game this might be something of an advantage, since a friend can't mess you up with information you wanted to know. Although now he too, knows the info you wanted and might just try to take the prize first.
Negotiating with rulers seems to primarily rely on the right attitude from yourself, along with potentially a guildsmaster offering assistance. Once I got past my initial test runs, I figured that getting into an alliance with the Harper's Guild would be best, because he tends to work best with improving relations. All you can do after performing an action is wait. You can only do one action at a time. You get two events you can use to improve relations with multiple people, dragon hatching and wedding. The former happens with some regularity, while the latter only happens occasionally. Dragon hatching only appeals to those that like dragons and I'm not quite sure about the latter. In either event, you want to strategize your time so that you aren't wasting time approaching people for either that long ahead.
Shields are Weyrs, blocks are minor holds and the white h shapes are major holds
Every so often, the waiting stops to signal that Thread is falling somewhere. You decide if and how many wings you should send to each thread fall. The issue I noticed is that you don't necessarily know where a hold is and if its one you should be caring about at this moment. You just know if its going to be falling on your own land. Not if the hold is allied with you, which applies to every other hold on the map. There is no way to see this map outside of the locations of holds either, and I'm not sure it really matters.
Eventually you get the results of your negotiation back, and if you think you've gotten enough done you can try for an alliance. This seems kind of random at times, but I note you need to have a successful tone and to be held in very high regard. That seems to work most of the time. Even against lords allied to other Weyrs. Yeah, you can do that, and so can others. Though I note that the AI tends to not go for yours.
Then there are conclaves, for both dragonriders and lord holders. I wasn't really sure what the purpose of the two were. I noticed the lord holder one happened a few times, preventing me from interacting with the hold lords. So I tried it with the dragonrider one, which caused everyone to stop what they were doing. All this did was cause one of the wounded Weyrs to be rid of his wounds. I feel like this is only good for two things, screwing over other players plans, and helping someone who isn't in the lead.
I'm never even sure why other Weyrs duel, it just happens
What does duel do? Why, you duel someone. You don't actually get to duel them, it happens off-screen. Whoever loses get injured and can't do anything for a period. Or maybe they did. I feel like this is the most insulting aspect of the game, even amidst all its crap factor, it isn't even offering you another action section. With that in mind, it feels like rolling the die against someone far ahead of you and hoping it lands favorably to you...and then I realized you can do it against people who aren't other Weyrs for...some reason.
In-between these, random events happen. Someone dies, someone finds a clutch of fire lizard eggs. My least favorite, because the game always directed it against me, someone decries you, which has a pretty noticeable effect on reputation. Meanwhile, the events that deal with how many dragons and dragonriders you have seem to have more vague effects, even as exact numbers are given.
This is the end of the first turn, because no holds are infested
At the end of every year you get the scores of everyone, and then each player in turn fights...one thread section, assuming he contributed anything. Its just one, for good or ill. Performance makes some difference. Its not major enough that none of your dragonriders die or that you even prevent all the threads from reaching a hold. But it does mean you can survive for a little while longer.
After failing to make any progress whatsoever, a thought occurred to me. An evil thought. Rather than being self-interested in my own holds, I'm going to be aggressive. I'm going to sent my wings to the holds the other Weyrs are going after, and I'm not going to kill a single thread. I'm just going to let it fall. In a way, this tactic adds some depth to MP. (the AI is too stupid to see what you're doing) Mutually assured destruction, you don't sabotage my holds, I don't sabotage your holds. At least I think so. This is what you get for not including dealing with the setting's big enemy as part of your victory condition. I note its more fun to dodge the threads than it is to fight them.
Of course this more or less seals that I'm not getting in an alliance with the holds I do this too, but considering they'll be not complaining about much in a few years it seems a small issue. The guy I was courting didn't seem that ticked off at me. But something weird happens, and I don't know why. One of the holds I do believe I was letting thread fall on suddenly decided I was a great guy. Huh? Both in game and out, my atrocities broke him.
Unfortunately, this plan doesn't work, I end up losing 5 to 9, but that's just because I only played 3 turns. Though, I think this is a better tactic for the long game. As I'm not sure the overall effects of thread fighting, I decide for my next game to do a little test. What happens if I do what I'm doing here, but instead of using minimal wings to not fight the thread, I maximize my coverage of thread fighting?
No, if anything, I do worse in the long term, because somehow the opinions of every towards me are constantly falling. I think I discover why though, it turns out that despite killing every single thread on-screen, because I've been sending one wing of dragons, they've still been getting through in some holds. Ouch. I technically win this one, by number of victory points even if the game says I don't. So...the actual idea is to strategize which holds I defend so I can form alliances better and hoping the game doesn't decide to let too many through.
This basically makes actually getting anywhere near the maximum possible length impossible, unless you play as 4 Weyrs. Four people are not getting together to play this for 99 in-game years. Not unless its a Desert Bus for Hope kind of situation. I feel like there are better strategy games for that kind of torture anyway. It does reveal that my other plan isn't going to work unless I was about to lose anyways. That's starting to feel less like an aspect of the game that matters and more like an aspect of the game they hastily tacked on. Threads just don't matter until everyone loses the game.
So I play one final, big game. Things go well at first, I manage to get the Master Harper into negotiations, then get into an alliance with him, all within 100 days. I even do well with my first hold, but the alliance doesn't go through right away. Because of this, I end the first year in third, behind the two players that managed to get a hold to ally with them. Now onto the thread fighting and everything...
Did Telgar lose men despite not contributing anything? Weird
...is awful, somehow. That's 14 infested holds, if you don't want to do the math. I, despite doing perfectly, apparently caused 4 holds to become infested. Suddenly I don't think I'm going to win.
There are holds sharing the same name as all the Weyrs, hence how Ista is holding a wedding at a different Weyr
Still, I'm going to give it a good try. There's a Lord Holder Conclave in the beginning of the year which prevents anyone from doing anything with them for a while. I push forward on negotiating with one hold until they hold me in high regard, then forming an alliance. Despite some other Weyr using the Master Harper in his own negotiations, thus preventing me from using him, I get two holds. Muahaha. This means I can now invite people to a wedding. I'm not sure if this is something that actually helps more than just bruteforcing things, but I might as well do it so I don't end up having to work against a position of absolute hatred later. I also end up inviting the craftmasters to a dragon hatching on the same logic.
And at the end of the year I'm now in the lead, with two holds and one craftsmaster. I see that there are only two thread infested holds now. Do the things the game says matter matter in this game? Do words have meaning here? I don't grok it. 12 threads get through this turn, four from me, 10 from Ista Weyr, because they really screwed up, actually losing a significant number of dragonriders. I still have no idea of any logic in this game's decisions regarding thread, because I repeat, I fight perfectly.
I start off the third turn trying to ally myself with the Master Farmer...and then I see Lord Rautha die while also starting a duel against the Master Harper. Nice, that's great, he's trying to screw with my allies while I myself basically have no option of retaliation other than dueling him again. Not that it matters, since both end up wounding themselves. At least Lord Rautha is going to be out of commission for most of the year. And that Lord conclave happens again. Still I make the most of the interaction, getting the Master Smith too. A lot of people tend to be more happy to see me this game, so I guess my strategy actually is working?
Still, I end up with 11 points, far ahead of everyone else. And there are 3 infected holds. So ten thread let through equals an infected hold? Seven threads? Unfortunately, I only protected one hold this turn, since I anticipated more. Instead the AI lets through a ton, 38. They're not trying my nuclear strategy, because they lost dragons in the fight.
As stupid as this sounds out of context, in-story its a creature that protects the soil against the thread
The fourth turn turns out to be a diplomatic blitzkrieg for me. Boom, you're an ally; Boom, you're an ally. By the hundredth day I had two more holds and a craftsmaster in my alliance. Either weddings work a lot better than I thought or doing perfectly at the thread fighting completely breaks the game. The only thing slowing me down is one of the AI's decisions to negotiate with one of my holds, along with an alliance failing to form for once. And then the Weyr High Rchs engages in a duel with me.
Someone really didn't think this through
This goes poorly for me...but not as poorly as it did for him. I wonder what would happen if I die in a duel, but I don't wonder enough to try it. This basically puts me out of commission for the rest of the year and most of the next too. I'm not so sure this isn't a net benefit for him though, since he doesn't get delayed in the slightest. The new Weyr starts right away.
...not that any of that mattered too much, as my idea of a long game was apparently 4 turns. One might say that I got lucky, but this was feeling like a beatdown they were never going to recover from. Maybe I lose one and another guy gets another. So what? I'll just keep plucking away at one guy at a time before regaining my place.
Weapons: It is nice that you can aim the fireballs to a certain degree. 1/10
Enemies: This is curious because the two different modes of the game have vastly different objectives. The thread is a joke the game glosses over, while the other Weyrs are worse at this game than I am, somehow. Its at least interesting in that any lord not another Weyr can be won over to your side. 2/10
Non-Enemies: ...but at the same time allies in the strategic game basically only ever contribute victory points and maybe help with negotiations. I never thought I'd be sick to be negotiating in a supposedly action game, but here were are. 1/10
Levels: I don't really think this qualifies here, its not what they were trying to do, is it? 0/10
Player Agency: The combat section generally works, if a little confusing at first. The strategy game section also works, except it feels like a struggle to get anything done. 2/10
Interactivity: None.
Atmosphere: There's a distinct C64 children's game vibe to the game. That picture book-esque game where it tries to paint itself as a fantasy romp...but its a bit miss whenever you're waiting for something to happen. 2/10
Graphics: There's not a lot of real effort applied here, but I like the places they tried. The combat background looks nice and the animation is well done. 2/10
Story: All the words I wrote regarding the story don't matter, all the story of the setting basically doesn't matter. 0/10
Sound/Music: A few simple sound effects. I like the musical cues, but I feel like they're preventing me from playing music during this. 1/10
Subtracting one for not being a good combination of strategy and action, that's 10.
This isn't good as an action game. It also isn't good as a strategy game. Its just not good. The action game is simplistic bordering on being a programmer's first action game; The strategy game has a desire to over complicate simple matters in a way that makes it all annoying. Further, it feels like you're missing quite a lot of possible actions, while those related to events are confusing to figure out.
I think the problem this game has is that neither element of the game is all that connected to the other element. Its possible for a game to be an action/strategy hybrid, but the combination has to let a player lean on one over the other if they so desire. No amount of skill at one aspect is going to help you with the other. I struggle to think of a proper title, but Mount and Blade works to this somewhat. This is just a stitched together monster. Its a decent enough distraction for me, compared to some of the other titles from 1983, but if you actually owned this then, I can see this as being disappointing. Doubly so if you actually liked the books.
