Alien Sector (1985)

Name:Alien Sector AKA Baraduke
Number:254
Year:1985
Publisher:Namco
Developer:Namco
Genre:Side-Scrolling Shooter
Difficulty:5/5
Time:50 minutes
Won:No (113W/83L)

Putting Wolfenstein 3D off for a week owing to it being at an awkward length where I can't really finish it in one but can't stretch it out to two. Here's something quick and dirty in Namco's Alien Sector, also known as Baraduke, one of Namco's lesser known franchises. I've seen a lot of comparisons to Metroid, but this seems to have less to do with the actual gameplay and more because they both star female leads who are hidden behind power armor, and echo the sort of thing that would appear in Aliens.

When you place it like that, it looks ominous.

This is all the plot you're getting. You're some gal in a spacesuit, now shoot aliens who are holding Pac-Man-like creatures hostage for some reason. From what I can gather we're supposed to be protecting the Pac-Man creatures from other aliens, but why is something of a mystery.

Controls are quite simple. Kissy moves like your typical side-scroller protagonist, except she has a jetpack. She moves left and right, slowly falls to the ground when applicable, and when you press up, she goes up. Pressing down increases your downward momentum, but not aggressively so. You move smoothly, but not too fast.

A typical sequence. The blue enemies are the ones you have to primarily take out.

Shooting is also straight-forward. You fire, you get knocked back. There is no aiming the gun beyond general left/right aiming. There are various power-ups which increase the power, but these are rare. I think, it appears so seldom and has such little effect it might do something else. For most of the game, you're going to have the same thing, which only allows two shots on-screen.

Each level is simple. There are a number of monsters with giant eyes. Your goal is to shoot them until they explode. When they're alert, they spawn smaller, weaker enemies. They also shoot at you. Some of them have a sort of chair, which means you can't shoot them from that side.

Some pods, along with an evil version of the PC.

Taking them out creates a spherical pod. Go over it, and something will pop out. Maybe it's one of those gun power-ups, but more likely, it's either going to be a gem, a strange Pac-Man-like monster, or a little friendly alien. These come in two varities, ones who run away or run towards you. You should always grab them, they're always helpful. Sometimes even absolutely necessary to progress.

As you stay in a level more and more, more things start appearing. Enemies dropping down from the ceiling or from the sides and shots just popping out of nowhere. The thing is, this tends to start way, way too quickly. To the point that you get seconds to look at a level before it starts happening. It's easy to end up in an endless loop until you run out of shields and die.

There's a wide variety of these things, ranging from the mundane to very oddball. A lot of variety is in the amount of enemies that seem to pop up as you try to get through a level. A considerable number of these fall into the category of enemies which seem like they can't be killed. Either because they don't get damage frames, or because they can only be hurt on one side.

A reasonable and balanced game of roulette from a later stage.

Whenever you finish a level, you get this roulette-like mini-game. As you pick up friendly aliens, more slots fill up with shields up. As you get more shields, more slots get filled with shields down. Hit a shields up and all the friendly aliens are taken from your inventory. Hit a shields down or nothing, and they remain. While it is possible to avoid most attacks, the game is throwing enough stuff at you that you need those extra shields. It's not that hard to get it roughly where you want, which is somewhat helpful.

One of the harder bosses, despite the seeming simpleness of it.

Every five or so stages is a boss stage. You should keep some of the friendlies for this, because they automatically pop out of your inventory and hurl themselves at the boss, stunning them for a time. For some bosses, this isn't really necessary, since hitting the weak spot (Eyes, always eyes) is simple enough. For others, it's hard to tell if you're doing it right. I've never actually lost a boss fight, so even the hardest must have something simple about them.

Normally, when I play these arcade games, I feel like even if I'm not very good at it, there's a path to where I could be good at it. Maybe I just don't want to spend the time, maybe I'm just not good at what the game wants. Not here, not at all. This is just straight-up a matter of luck. Unless you're being fed the answers ahead of time, you're going to have to guess on which direction is the right one to go, or if some enemies are even killable at all. They are, but it doesn't feel that way a lot of the time.

One of said chokepoints, sure, you can take out the guys at the top, but you'll still have to land to further aside of the blue guys, all while more enemies spawn in.

There are a lot of sections where whether or not you can get through them seems like luck. The enemies are in perfect chokepoints where you get unlucky with enemy placement, like the game spawns in a guy who jumps around and shoots like you do, there's no winning that level without a generous helping of luck. Something which is not going to be in your favor for very long.

It doesn't help that while the game is generous with your ability to move and your hitbox, there is no mercy otherwise. Enemies only hurt you once while they're touching you...technically. It's very easy for enemies to combo you, simply because of how much stuff is on-screen most of the time. Winning is all about not getting into a situation where stuff is on-screen, a losing proposition most of the time.

This is not a fun game. This is all the unfun parts of a hostage situation without any cathartic shooting of the hostage takers. Because there might be a hostage inside the taker, or there might be another enemy. I feel like I'm playing a weird game of SWAT without any of the things that make SWAT fun. Even recounting it leaves my head aching and feeling like mush. I eventually just gave up on one of these sections at about the 24th level. I strongly suspect I'm not missing much.

Weapons:
A basic gun, with power-ups that do nothing distinguishable. 1

Enemies:
A variety of creatures which appear too often, but do present interesting situations in which to deal with them. 3

Non-Enemies:
The little friendly aliens add a bit of depth to what is otherwise a mundane game. 1

Levels:
Very basic stuff. Some levels are effortless, others are slogs, and there's little in-between. 1

Player Agency:
Could have really used some aiming, but what we get works. 4

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
Actively unfun. 0

Graphics:
Nice-look sprites, but too little variation and not much animation. 3

Story:
Too sparse even for an arcade game. 0

Sound/Music:
You can tell what everything is, but there's a soft, wateriness to each sound which makes it annoying. Getting damaged is the worst, because you get hit and a harp sound plays. Like someone randomly playing strings. As you get damaged, there's a background noise. It's supposed to be a heartbeat, but it sounds more like a set of leaky pipes. 2

Taking 2 points off, we get 13.

As I said in the start, there are a lot of comparisons of this to Metroid, and I'll echo my opening statement. There's nothing beyond the lead being a woman who you don't find out is a woman until the end. It's a bit weird seeing people talk about this game, since they're trying really hard to oversell this as something interesting, when it really isn't. I'm no Metroid superfan, I just really like the Prime series, but even the original, which I can't stand, is leagues above this.

Next time really will be Wolfenstein 3D again.

TeddyBoy Blues (1985)

Name:TeddyBoy Blues
Number:177
Year:1985
Publisher:SEGA
Developer:SEGA
Genre:Side-Scroller Shooter
Difficulty:5/5
Time:50 minutes
Won:Not possible

Games related to real music are always weird. Most of the time it seems like it's not so much that people license the music for a genuine idea as much as licensing it to sucker in fans. Especially in the action sphere. It's always either some super popular band/artist everyone knows or some literal flash in the pan nobody would remember a year after the game was released. To say nothing of how every one of these games feel like some bizarre fever dream. This isn't limited to old games either, modern phone games are just as liable to be a series of bizarre situations as ye olde console/computer games.

TeddyBoy Blues is nominally related to singer/actress Yoko Ishino. (translated as Yohko Ishino on the title because that was how they did it then) Singing the song Teddyboy Blues, of which the game takes it's title from, is how she got her start, before becoming an actress and "media personality", which I presume is code for famous person who appears on shows because they need a famous person but also want to not spend too much money. Of interest outside of Japan, she holds the dubious fame of being in Godzilla vs Destoroyah.

Why do I say her music career is only how she got her start? Well, based on my knowledge of the Japanese music industry, if you aren't selling a ton of CD/vinyl albums, you're a failure, and she only has two albums. Even today in Japan, heck, even today in the world where streaming is king, a lot of these so-called famous musicians seem to make Yoko Ishino look like Davie Bowie.

Her backup band consists of most monsters in the game.

The game's attract mode has a pixel version of Ishino playing an instrumental 8-bit cover. This also plays throughout the game, I think. It's awful. No getting around it. The actual song is no real prize either, but there's actually something to it, the game's music is just all noise. I'm sure with someone else as a singer the real song could be something really nice, but Ishino just feels bland as a singer. We also get some of the monsters as musicians...for some reason? And get a good look at her now, because this is the best she's ever going to look in this game.

The ice blocks here don't make you slide, rather, you can shoot them to destroy them.

Now, what I can say about the game itself is...it's a side-scrolling shooter. You shoot, you jump, and you move left and right. No aiming beyond left/right, no crouching, no double jump. Your firing rate is only tied into how many times you press the fire button. Almost everything dies in one hit. The game does nothing really, to distinguish itself here.

It's kind of hard to get a good screenshot of this in action, so here are the jelly enemies.

There are basically two gimmicks in this game, the only thing that really makes it unique from what would be an otherwise wholly unremarkable game. Firstly, the way the monsters spawn and how you deal with them. At the beginning of each stage, there are these dice, which, over a period of time, depending on the stage, spawn monsters. Once you defeat them, they turn into a baby form of themselves and you have to grab them before a set period of time or they drain your time meter. Once they're babies, they're out of the game as far as fighting you goes.

Secondly, the levels loop. Not like in a lot of games where there's a lot of real estate before that happens. No, on a lot of stages you don't even get a complete screen. You could call this game Claustrophobia and it wouldn't be inaccurate. This basically feels like the real appeal of the game. It's not unusual for a game to loop around, but it doesn't happen as often in side-scrollers and never in all four directions. It's very disorienting and if you're not careful, you can find yourself just completely lost despite the practical area of the game being really small. Remember, everything can fall in an endless loop.

There might just be all the enemies in the game here, but good luck getting there.

Now, you're not given free reign to deal with this as you please. No, you have a time limit. It's generous enough for most stages, but if you aren't quick on capturing the baby enemies you can run out. Then if you camp somewhere, the game shoots a fireball at where you're standing. This doesn't hurt you, but does destroy the floor beneath you. Or the air beneath you if you keep jumping onto something. This isn't uniformly bad, you can exploit this to take out a floor which is going to inconvenience you or is getting in your way.

The enemies I fought in the game, which I suspect consist of most enemies most players will see, are as follows:

• Blue Ninjas, they walk in one direction, jumping whenever the situation calls for it. As such, they're the most basic enemy to deal with in this game.
• Bouncing Worms, a series of individual segments that bounce around. Depending on where you shoot it, it make break apart into two worms. They don't often bounce enough to get over walls, so if they're in a tight spot with no way to enter it can be tricky dealing with them.
• Bouncing Men, like the worms, except they're either weird men or crickets. They have a higher jump, but mostly the strategy is the same. They usually don't get stuck like the worms though.
• Black Teddy Bears, these guys jump around quite aggressively. They can take you quite by surprise if you aren't expecting them.
• Worms, they crawl along the walls until they get over you, and then drop straight down. Their AI is intentionally a little stupid, so they don't check if there's another floor between you and them.
• Snails, like the worms, they crawl along the walls, but unlike the worms, they more or less just crawl everywhere. Even against the backdrop. These guys are really annoying, because if you hit their shell, as in their flesh part isn't facing you, they just retreat into their shell and become invincible for a certain period of time after you stop shooting.
• Jellies, these guys are the only enemies, that I encountered, that take more than one shot to kill. They move around slowly, jumping over obstacles, and only stopping whenever you shoot them. They're pretty annoying to beat.
  

This is the kind of image you would get if someone was holding a gun off-screen.

The game occasionally offers one of two mini-games, chosen the first time it's available. A shooting gallery, and a treasure hunt where you play as Ishino. The treasure hunt is the better of the two, if only because I feel incredibly bored by most virtual shooting galleries. First, you get an image of Ishino that, were I her, I would sue the hell out of Sega for.

And she doesn't look much better whenever you don't find something...

Then you have a small period of time to find 42 treasures. The total is just something you find over the course of each time you enter the mini-game, with each further time having a shorter period you can check for items. Basically, you need to approach certain edges of each object in order to get treasure. Some objects have multiple treasures, others might have none. I didn't get all the treasures so I probably missed something. I feel like the game just doesn't give you any time on later returns, which is just one of those many ways the game seems to encourage the player not to play the game.

Yes, this is the first thing any player will see on this stage.

Now, that's a weird thing to say, you might be asking. Well, the game really wants to screw you out of your lives. This is the first arcade game that pulled the cheap gotcha of having an enemy spawn when you start. In an arcade game, I feel less like that's a cheap move and more an outright greedy move. You barely get any lives in this game to start with, and you get no continues. I know that you get more lives, but even for an arcade game it's tight with them. And this game knows how to abuse its systems to get those lives.

Weapons:
A basic weapon, you don't even get an autofire button. 1/10

Enemies:
It tries to do something clever, but with the constraints placed on the game itself, the enemies don't really excite too much. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
While erring too much on the difficult side of things, the unique gimmick does create a very interesting series of levels. 3/10

Player Agency:
It's a very basic side-scrolling shooter. 4/10

Interactivity:
You can shoot some walls, and the game can occasionally destroy other, otherwise invulnerable walls at it's desire. 3/10

Atmosphere:
Whether or not the developers intended to make something that plays like a cutesy nightmare, they succeeded, perhaps too well. 3/10

Graphics:
It's okay, nothing special. 2/10

Story:
Apparently the story is that you and Yoshino are lost in some nightmare labyrinth and have to get out. In game there is nothing. 0/10

Sound/Music:
I feel like if I just randomly played this then found out that the music was licensed, I would be surprised. It's all just noise after a while. 1/10

I'm going to take away a point because the game just got boring after a while, so that's 19.

Not really a lot to say about it. Beyond the novelty of the music connection and the weirdness of the looping mechanics, it's kind of a boring game.

Big news, I'm finally done with 1983, I couldn't get the game I designated the last game of the year running. It was a game I thought was going to be fun, but nevertheless I'm not unhappy that I'm done with the year. Expect to see that summary, a maximum of one game in the future.

The Alien Island 3D

This actually changes color as you view it

Name:The Alien Island 3D
Number:102
Year:1985
Publisher:ASCII
Developer:Nobuhisa Fujinami
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:5/5
Time:1 hour 50 minutes

Like all computer systems, there are aesthetics to the old Japanese computers. The one I've been attributing to the first half of the '80s or thereabouts is that of high dithering, low palette and very little action. But I haven't played anything from the earliest playable machines, that is, the PC-6001 and the earliest, the PC-8001. Though I'm playing this in a PC-88 emulator because it works here.

Looking at this game, I'm heavily reminded of the ZX Spectrum, my least favorite of all the home computers. At the very least this game shares the palette of that machine. Since its entirely in English its pretty much just a forgotten title of that system. Its about as complex as those titles get anyway. The story is, the player is a human going to an island via boat to stop aliens from eating trees. He stops them by shooting them. Any questions? I hope not, because I don't have answers.

The approach

Its fairly simple. The control scheme uses the numpad, 8-4-6-2 move in the expected directions, while 7 and 9 turn. Space fires. Unlike in some games, you don't want to be hammering that down aggressively. Shots continue until they hit something or go off the island. Hitting trees or your boat causes you to lose points, and in the latter case, lose a live. Further compounding the issue, some aliens leave corpses you have to push into the sea, or they'll spawn smaller aliens.

All the deaths are this flat screen, plus your point total

Its very easy to play at first. Too easy. Unless you're rushing in to save the trees its a very casual stroll through an island, even with the corpses. Unless you get turned around destroying the boat is impossible, and there's no penalty beyond score for losing all the trees. I was about to call this game a rip-off before the game told me there was a second island.

Talk about no mercy

On the second island, the game begins placing a treasure on the map somewhere. I think nothing of this, blasting away the aliens as per usual. The game is telling me there's more than one way to kill enemies, which I think counts as an example of in-game tips. Beats the Catacomb series, anyway. While doing this, I, firing too much, destroy the treasure. Oh, well. I continue to kill the aliens. After they're all dead, the game throws this at me. Couldn't bother programming in a death in this situation?

That tree on the right? That's what I would hit if I sidestepped to the right

Okay, time to play this seriously. And I get killed, three times. Seemingly by sheer dumb luck. Wait, is this actually better than it looks? No...it can't be...can it? Its a bit more complex than it seems at first glance, but only a bit. You can get very easily blindsided, but once you figure out where you actually are in relation to everything else, it gets easier. There are tons of little ways to get killed, wait too long and the treasure gets destroyed, walk into your own shot, walk into something you shot that's still smoldering and walk into a pond.

Dead alien in front of me, small alien in the corner, note the radar down there

As long as you get a favorable enough spawning of enemies, exercise a bit of caution in firing too many shots, and go slightly faster through the island than you would plan on, it isn't too hard for the first section of the game. The game starts really cranking up the number of trees too, functioning more as annoyances than things to save. At about scene 7 the game throws in trees that reflect shots and scene 10 the game allows aliens to shoot back. In fact I thought scene 10 was a fairly good ending point, since the game has no saves and only three lives. By 10 it seems we've hit a pretty natural ending point, but no, it keeps going.

Note the screen is going funny because of the warp

Even early on it never felt like it was playing fair with the player. Instead it was stacking the deck against him as much as possible. Without save states I don't see how you could even get this far. The game is vicious, enemies seem to walk in a straight line towards you, and the addition of them shooting at you is another easy way to die. In the heat of battle you're unlikely to see a short message of "the alien has shot the bullet" in-between the game telling you for the 9123rd time that you can kill aliens by ways other than shooting. Hell, the same instant the same instant an alien spawns could very well be the same instant it shoots you. Try blocking that.

Every line on the radar is another enemy

The game instead ends at level 13. Boy, does it make you work for that. Three trees are back down to normal but the game just floods you with enemies. The game pretends to allow you to deal with enemies before they become a problem in the form of alien eggs, and has for a while, but in the past these weren't close enough to the start for me too notice. Since this final level throws a lot of enemies, probably like 50, in a game where space is at a premium. Eventually, I win, and after the customary fireworks sequence, the game calls me crazy for beating it. I suppose so, but what about your next game, Fujinami-san? Oh, wait, there wasn't one.

The primary issue is that despite the cool tech, the gameplay itself feels outdated for 1985. This feels like the kind of game you would play at an arcade and have to spend hundreds of quarters to win. I do not see how you could possibly beat this game legitimately. The game employs so many tricks that give it an unfair advantage that the only way to counter them is to cheat. If you get a bad enough seed on each island you're screwed no matter what. A human simply can't compete.

Weapons:
A simple blaster. 1/10

Enemies:
The big enemies dying and having to wait or toss them into the ocean is more annoying than interesting. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Randomly generated islands. Its very cool that the whole level, even the parts that aren't on-screen, is thought of at once. 1/10

Player Agency:
This game's control scheme seems smooth at first, but once you start getting into serious fights, it reveals itself as being pretty bad. You just can't move with any urgency. You can't move and shoot at the same time and shooting after moving seems delayed. 2/10

Interactivity:
Being able to shoot trees and treasure chests to destroy them counts...I guess. 1/10

Atmosphere:
Weird, but not too pleasant. Feels very horrorish in concept and execution, but sort of that 8-bit horror where its not really scary or even Halloween-ish, even if its trying. 1/10

Graphics:
Very, very simple. The scrolling is very smooth, especially for a system that wasn't very capable of such things. 2/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
Blips and bloops. 1/10

That's 10. Not bad for a game that's a chore to beat legitimately. Its by far the most mundane of the Japanese FPS titles so far, and seems to fit in with the sort of annoying difficulty these games employed.

There are no contemporary reviews of this game, owing to coming out for the PC-8001 series computers in 1985. The system was discontinued in 1983. The only modern mentions of the game are that its an early FPS from Japan, which is about the only positive thing you could say about the game.

Dimensional Fighter Epsilon3

Name:Dimensional Fighter Epsilon3
Number:94
Year:1985
Publisher:Bullet-Proof Software
Developer:Bullet-Proof Software
Genre:FPS/RPG
Difficulty:5/5
Time:10 hours 00 minutes

Dimensional Fighter Epsilon3 is the first FPS/RPG hybrid, at least according to what little there is on the game around. Take Wizardry, strip out most of the RPG part, then take a light gun game, add in limited ammo, have battles be the light gun game and the Wizardry-lite be the RPG part. As a result its sort of questionable to call this the first FPS/RPG. Its not really a FPS, and its hard to call it a RPG, since I barely felt like I was gaining any sort of stats.

Published by Bullet-Proof Software, previously mentioned on this blog for Faceball 2000. The man who founded BPS is truly a man of the world. Henk Rogers, born in the Netherlands to Dutch and Indonesian parents, before they moved to New York. He studied computer science at the University of Hawaii before founding BPS in Japan. He's also attached to the American releases of Tetris, becoming friends with Alexey Pajitnov. Unfortunately, I don't know much about the actual developer of this game, one Eiji Kure, except that he likes making RPGs.

Can you spot the enemy here?

This is the first PC-88 game I've really played, so there's a bit of confusing stuff going on. Firstly, none of the emulators I tried have a great screenshot function, nothing bindable, just ALT+F2 or whatever they pick, assuming its useable at all. Secondly, the game had V1 after its file, which I ignored for the first couple of sessions. This was a mistake on my part, because it wants me to play in V1 mode, as the system had modes like that. I don't understand it, but I don't have to. Playing the game in V2 will cause the game to look like an unholy abomination against god and man, and this isn't an appealing-looking game to begin with. There were ghosts of walls.

There's this cool cutscene where the camera slowly moves up the mech and its much nicer than what they drew deserves

The story is the player is controlling the last hope against a superior enemy that wants to eradicate all life. To stop them, the player has to free 3 cities. Starting it up, there are two modes, a play mode and a demo mode. Demo is a demo, but doesn't really show much. The game has a slightly confusing start-up procedure. You need the game disk in one floppy drive and the user disk in the other, otherwise you'll get stuck in an endless loop. From there you pick a city and start playing. That implies you have a choice, but playing anything other than the first city will result in your swift death. This is easy to screw up even when you have some idea of what you're doing. Saving is accomplished by going back to the building you started at and going forward with Numpad 5.

A typical gameplay scene, I'm almost dead, but otherwise in good shape

Visually, it looks like Wizardry, except outside, and kind of weird. You can see about three squares away. Movement is done with the numpad arrows, along with numpad 5 to enter buildings. This is necessary because many, many things are inside these buildings. There are also things you pick up on the ground. You can access a menu with M or change the scenery and enemy colors with F. Its still the kind of game that I feel the need to take frequent breaks from.

A typical battle, I'm not losing yet, but it will happen

It doesn't take long for the meat of the game to happen, combat. This is done like a light gun game, move your crosshair, and then try to hit an enemy's weakspot. As seems to be usual with this sort of game, whether or not you can actually win these fights seems to be as much down to luck as it is skill. Well, more skill than luck than it seems usually. Some enemies seem like they're constantly running back and forth, but they're really just moving because you have your crosshair over them. That's not to say its good, just that it gets...tolerable, I guess.

The screen changes colors as you take damage, this isn't the worst it could be

This runs into the same problems that Death Duel had, the only way to make such a game difficult is to require precision. To achieve precision in a game where I aim a crosshair with my keyboard is something that isn't going to happen. Further, there are nasty things going on, there are mine enemies that move in and out of the ground, you can't hit them while they're in the ground. Some enemies in city 2 I could miss even if my crosshair was on the target. Missiles sometimes took so much time to reach a target I was already at zero shield by the time it hit them, thus negating the point of firing it.

Mines, possibly the most annoying enemy in the game

 As the enemies increase in difficulty it doesn't feel like you get any way of countering it. Heavier weapons are not commonly given out, and lighter weapons don't seem to do any damage. Since there's no indication of whether or not you're hitting the weak spot or just firing at the body pointlessly, you can waste those heavier weapons, and probably die.

A tiny bunker, after it has been destroyed, note my drained supplies

But there are elements that I like, enemies usually don't fire when they're standing still, I.E., the point I'm most likely to hit them. Enemies usually go down pretty quickly. Battles have two lengths, short and painfully long, and when its the first one, it isn't that bad. When I miss my opening salvo battles become death marches, and if I don't win they come straight back.

Some buildings have these graphics and you get stuff. For some reason, this one looks like a stereotypical Italian

Your weapons, which you change with the A & S keys and fire with the Z & X keys, take time to hit your target. There is a limited supply but with beam weapons you can get a recharge back at base. Your missiles, on the other hand, don't replenish. You have to hope some monster you fight drops them. That's not to say there aren't some beam weapons you can only get from enemies, but its obvious you're going to hold tight on those. Energy is also in limited supply, and powers shields, weapons and movement. Fortunately, enemies drop energy, and you can sometimes find it on the ground.

An unceremonious game over screen

This game has a major flaw with it, in that the game is designed in such a way that it takes the worst elements of both genres. RPGs around this time required you to map them otherwise you would never finish them. This is not a problem if the game is designed so you have distinct landmarks you can use to orient yourself. DFE3 does not, you start in a small circle of buildings and then an empty wilderness. There is one unusual building on the north end. You have to fight constantly to get navigation tools, like a compass, which has reversed east and west directions for some reason.

A good half of the gameplay the first hour

The map itself is deceptively big. You have a large area surrounding the start, and then random scatterings of buildings. The meat of the "city" is a city connected to a giant bunker. The map loops around itself, so exploring at first might make you think there are two cities, but really, there's only one. This is quite different from the usual RPG experience where every square might matter. At least that's what's important outside of the city, inside you have to check every building, every square, possibly even every wall. There are many important items hidden in buildings, not like weapons or energy, but items that grant you new abilities.

You have to destroy each one, and yes, you have to hit a precise target on them that isn't fully explained

This isn't the only thing inside buildings, in addition, there are pairs of turrets you sometimes encounter and dark rooms where enemies sometimes appear. The reward far outweighs the risk, even though at first you need an item to see those enemies. The issue is that once you go over the area once or twice there's not really any obvious next step. The pairs of turrets respawn after a time, so clearly that's not the way forward. There's a big bunker on the north side of the city or south of the starting area, but it only has a map function. Which isn't all that helpful. Going to the next city (as in map) cranks up the difficulty of enemies to a degree higher than I was capable of reasonably dealing with.

I didn't notice the old-style mainframes there. I guess its got more to do with '70s sci-fi than '80s sci-fi

Which resulted in me quitting. It wasn't the difficulty, the controls or the shoddy in-game navigation tools. The lack of an immediate objective. It felt like I had done all there was to do in the first city, and yet the second was still difficult fight, some fights were effectively game over. Every building wall could contain an entrance, even if the others do not, which is just too much work for too little reward. Having to hunt down every wall for secrets isn't something I enjoy in actual FPS titles, let alone this game. I've seen enough to know I'm not going to like what I see at the end.

Weapons:
While there were a few special weapons that changed things up, the weapons are basically interchangeable and all take time to hit a target. They feel weighty, but I never feel like I'm hitting anything. 2/10

Enemies:
There are four types of regular enemy, and three stationary kinds, these get upgraded after each city. Some are more annoying than others, but they all have interesting behavior going on. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
While RPGs have different standards than FPS games, and this falls more into the former category, I don't think this is all that good there either. Far too many areas require you to count how many steps you took in order to get an accurate picture, which is a problem considering how high the encounter rate is. With, of course, all that wall-humping. 3/10

Player Agency:
Outside of the combat controls its pretty good. The special items are clearly marked once you figure out that M is menu. They all work very well. That combat though, its never going to get any better. 2/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
There is something there. There's something interesting about the way the game is set up, with its black skies and outdoor Wizardry-style gameplay. Its certainly unique among its kind. 2/10

Graphics:
I feel like this game is a weird monkey paw. I like seeing attempts at B&W games and this applies the same principals you would see in one of those titles. Most everything is one color and black. The enemy graphics are nice, but there's not a lot of animation. The full-screen shots are awkward-looking. 2/10

Story:
Generic save the people story, doesn't really come up in-game.

Sound/Music:
A few blips and bloops. 1/10

That's 15 in total. Which is about average in what I give games, but not a good rating.

I can't really recommend it as a RPG, or a FPS, but there is something about this game that's fun and interesting. I think I would like to see a remake of this game, one with mouse aiming and a reduced encounter rate.

Curiously, I'd attribute one thing to this game that isn't mentioned anywhere, secrets. Since none of the doors are visible until you actually go in, they're all secret. I mean, its not good, you have to find secrets in order to win, but it exists, which is the important bit.

In theory, this marks the end of the first half of the '80s for FPS titles. There are a ton of Japanese titles on personal computers that we don't know anything about, and the only way of finding out is to actually fire them up. This is the flaw in me playing FPS titles on a separate list than the rest of them, I don't have time to properly go through everything. Currently, I'm exploring the PC-6001, which has an interesting library. There are many strange games and programs on the system, some of the less interesting ones may make an appearance here.

Game 68: The Eidolon

Name:The Eidolon
Number:68
Year:1985
Publisher:Activision
Developer:Lucasfilm Games (AKA Lucasarts)
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:3/5
Time: 1 hour

Before Star Wars: X-Wing, before Monkey Island, even before Maniac Mansion, there was The Eidolon. Released as the second installment of a revolutionary 3D graphics engine, first used on Rescue on Fractalus*. The Eidolon is set in an alternate dimension, where I pilot an advanced steampunk machine, The Eidolon, that I found in a cave. Its not a deep story, but it is a story. The real interesting bits I'll talk about when I get to Rescue, a year or two from now, but suffice to say that Lucasarts started off because Lucas himself thought games would be a good idea, hence why their earliest output doesn't consist of movie licenses. As an aside, I keep wanting to call this The Eidolan...to the point I didn't even realize it wasn't called that.

When I first booted up the game I was struck by just how gorgeous this looks for 1985. I'm overselling it, but this barely looks like a Commodore 64 game. I kind of want to see what something like this would look like on a modern PC. The controls, which I had to find the manual to understand, require me to use the joystick to move and shoot, the space key to collect fireballs, and the number keys to select them. In short, this game really feels like a C64 FPS, the ones we all know and love. Naturally, this doesn't keep on giving.

Eventually it turns into the other proto-FPS games, one that requires you to use your noggin more than your reflexes. The monsters are explained in the manual. Some of them are not exactly hostile, because they don't chase you, but they can kill you. But the weird thing here is that all characters just stand around, frozen until you get close enough. This is explained in the manual that the enemies feed off the energy in the Eidolon. There are also constant streams of fireballs floating around on later levels. these hurt you.

Rounding out the roster are guardian creatures that requires a gem to awaken, they're tougher than the other enemies. I assume there's a unique one for each level. I couldn't get past the third level boss, or rather I quite easily gave up on him. I tried taking him out with a nearly full energy tank by firing all 4 kinds of fireballs at him, but that did nothing. I could have just missed that I was supposed to get past him by non-violence, but that would be giving this game too much credit.

The GUI, despite taking up half the screen, wasn't of much use. Its useful knowing which gems you have and your energy but the rest of it is of nominal usefulness. The compass doesn't always work well, sometimes sending you into a wall. The C-H meter, which I assume is a Cold-Hot meter, isn't more useful than the compass. I legitimately have no idea what the numbers do and the four things in the corner of the compass are which fireballs you can use.

Now the big problem here is basically the central concept to this game. Enemies feed off your machine's energy. Shooting drains your machine's energy. Getting hit by fireballs drains your ships energy. Energy does not replenish between levels, which would be good if that didn't screw you over. I notice that there's just enough energy on a level to get the gems and the end guardian, if you have a full supply. I'm not an expert on this game by any means, so I could be missing out on some exploits. You have infinite lives, I think, and you continue at the current level, but that's annoying in my opinion and I hate it.

Weapons:
You have four different types of fireballs. One is a regular attack and the other three are gimmicks. I never really had any use for those outside of the bosses. 1/10

Enemies:
While there is an attempt at variety, they can mostly be boiled down to just shooting at them. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
None, since technically everything kills you.

Levels:
Endless grey hallways aren't my thing, as I've said in the past, and no matter how impressive the tech behind it is, its still endless grey hallways. 1/10

Player Agency:
A little slow moving around, but I chalk that up to technical issues. Also, if an enemy is behind you, you're going to take a bit of damage. 4/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
It manages to put forth a very slight other-worldly vibe. 1/10

Graphics:
The technology here is very impressive, which wowed me quite a bit. The wall graphics were really cool. It isn't enough to carry an entire game though. The enemy graphics are simple. They exist and I don't really have anything good to say about them. 2/10

Story:
While its clever that the story required you to think about it, it doesn't really affect the gameplay, and to be honest I didn't really care. 0/10

Sound/Music:
The music here was really disappointing, a vaguely otherworldly, but not that much above a PC Speaker soundtrack. Otherwise sounds were typical Atari-style sounds. 1/10

That's 11. Which is the same as Castle Wolfenstein. Which seems to be the range that really old games that were really cool, but ultimately unappealing to me fall in. But what did others think?

Firstly, I saw that there was a longplay. I think I chose wisely in giving up when I did. In addition to not understanding that I can steal the energy from the guardian dragon's attack, which I blame on the manual, two of the very last levels are dark. I stand by the opinion that you should give this a shot, but actually beating it? Screw that. There aren't any video reviews or anything on the subject. This is one of those games I could beat, but I just don't care to.

Most English reviews were very positive, especially praising the graphics. The ones that weren't don't really put into words why they didn't like it. The only others were German reviews, most of which seem to take a measured take on it, but I don't speak German and I don't honestly think this game is worth translating reviews for.

*Which I don't have as a FPS game, so it'll be a while.

Game 65: Buggy Blast

Name:Buggy Blast
Number:65
Year:1985
Publisher:Firebird Software
Developer:P. Hibbard & D. Lowe
Genre:Rail Shooter
Difficulty:5/5
Time:1 hour

Another early alleged attempt at a FPS. Buggy Blast's title screen, complete with color-changing flames, puts me more in mind for a Battlezone-clone than something interesting. Something I just cut out. Its not enough to not be interesting, it has to be a straight-clone or actively repungnent to even try. ZX Spectrum games are starting to become the latter for me. The sound of the tape working its magic has been getting on my nerves as I play through each "Speccy" game, determine it isn't a fit, and then quit. If this wasn't the third such game I would have quit while the game was still deciding if it wanted to load or not. Its sort of like Megarace, a set track where you have to kill the enemies on that track. I'm not sure what to call it, beyond trash.

In my limited wisdom regarding the Spectrum, when the opening...question...asked me if I wanted to use cursor keys, I assumed that meant I'd use the arrow keys. Not that I'd use 5-6-7-8, not even on the numpad, but the regular numbers. I question the system's emulation if I can't even use my numpad. Must be for those high quality keyboards I keep hearing about. Bitterness about keyboards aside, this does not result in a fun system, although even if it were the WASD or arrow keys, it would be objectively awful.

Functioning much like a looping rail shooter, you'd be wondering what the keys controlled. Aim, 0 shoots. Only problem is, I lack a crosshair, and the aiming system is in that perfect sweetspot where you can't aim in close quarters but you're too slow to move to the other side of the screen. Its all just completely unplayable. Even the section that seems like a shooting gallery was too much to aim properly in.

Buggy Blast gets a 1 for effort. It looks nice, has some nice graphical effects, but none of the rest of it is redeemable.

Game 8: F-15 Strike Eagle

There's not a good title screen, so here's the mission select.

The year is 1985, not only are the Soviets still around, a fear of a nuclear war is constant. At any moment a group of nuclear subs could unleash Hell on Earth, or a platoon of jet fighters could drop a nuke directly on the President's summer home. F-15 Strike Eagle comes in as the most realistic* flight sim of the era, bringing all the thrills of thermonuclear war and Mutually Assured Destruction, minus the dropping of the bombs. The developers at Microprose have developed the most faithful* depiction of the F-15's HUD humanly possible. The president of MicroProse, one Captain Bill Stealey, assures me it is so in the manual, and asks to drop him a note if I have any way to make it better. Oh, I don't think I'm going to do that.
The manual also goes on to laboreously explain the concept of how flight works.

GETTING IT TO WORK:
This game is not so much difficult to start as it is difficult to play, although you will want to turn down the speed. The game requires use of the manual to understand, and even with the manual its very confusing to play.

I'm going to let you know right away, this isn't something I worked to complete, this game would've been fine in the '80s, but when you already know what wonders the '90s will bring it kinda brings a damper down on a plucky little CGA simulation from 1985. If this were the movie industry there'd be a fancy reissue bluray with special features next year, so I guess that's one point in favor of the people calling video games not art. Perhaps that's for the best, as my first impression of this game is one of confusion and disgust really.

Like some games from the era, it starts off with a simple mission selection screen. I pick the first one, it starts. Things happen, I guess. I test my abort and eject options, really could've used that in the A-10 I used to use, but I guess that's for the fancy F-15 pilots and their fancy strike eagling. You're kidding, spellcheck doesn't think eagling is a word? A bit more seriously I screw around with my weapons. The machine gun is automatically switched back to whenever you fire off a missile. I guess that's one way to increase feedback. I, uh, hit an enemy with my missile. Its a sign. The simulation is, uh...well...see for yourself.

You know, I'm no Sid Meier, but I'm going out on a limb and say that if this was the best I could do for a game, I wouldn't do that. I'm no computer programming pioneer though, in fact, I'm not a programmer. I'm not saying it looks bad or anything, but I know very few games that are worse on the graphical scale. This certainly wins for worst-looking 3D game...
At first I thought I would just play the first mission, call it unenjoyable today, then forget about it until the sequel/prequels, but I played through the first mission and didn't completely hate it. There are many problems, enemy planes just seem to spawn in. I feel like I'm going to have a seizure if I play this for an extended period of time. Bombing targets are difficult to hit thanks to your bombs being dumbfire and very easy to miss. (there's a real reason for this, I'll explain) You need the manual to understand what your mission is. Oh, and the sea turns the ground purple.
I promised to explain the bombing problem. You see, this game takes place between 1972-1984, on all very real missions. This I suspect is before many systems we now take for granted. The missions take place in the entire map of the country they're supposed to be in. I slightly question the scale, but I admit I don't know if an F-15 could cross the entire country of Egypt in under 5 minutes. The manual tells you of an additional mission you can do in Egypt where you replicate some anti-terrorist strike in '86 and a bombing run against some tin-pot dictator. Playing A-10 before this was a horrible mistake, wasn't it? Now, its worth pointing out that originally this was supposed to have copy protection. Given the immense amount of information in the manual you need in order to understand this game, I can't honestly understand that, but that's just my opinion.
There are four areas of the screen:
The playing screen, which at first seems useless, but is actually slightly useful. I like the little sun that shows up.
The map screen, which is very useful and lets you figure out where you went wrong.
The radar screen, which is what you'll be mostly looking at. Pressing the R key changes the radar distance.
The ship screen, which tells you how much ammo you have left.
That leaves combat, which seems to be a bit of a point and shoot affair. I only went as far as the 3rd mission on Rookie difficulty, so it probably gets more difficult later. Probably.
Let's see what that gives the game:

Weapons:
Its worth pointing out that this is supposed to be an indicator of not just how interesting a game's weapons are, but how these weapons feel. Given the almost complete lack of sound, this game is suffering a handicap already. Given the lack of any feeling beyond anticipation whenever you fire off a missile or bomb too, it has another handicap. The machine gun might as well give 25 bullets to the bullet fairy each time you pull the trigger. If you need to use that you might as well head back to base for a refill. 2/10

Enemies:
The enemies come in four flavors, three planes, one SAM. I can't say I ever found the planes a threat or that they were anything more than blobs I shot. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
There are none. 0/10

Levels:
The gameplay loop is a very simple one once you get the controls down. Avoid SAMs, shoot down enemy planes, hit target, hopefully have enough fuel to return home. The problem is that due to the way the game looks graphically these missions all come off as essentially being identical, despite being not. I didn't really have the desire to get past the 3rd mission. 1/10

Player Agency:
There's a lot of clever stuff going on under the hood here, despite the game's rather lackluster control scheme. Movement doesn't come off quite ideal to me and the game doesn't have any good methods of letting you know what problem is going on without extensively focusing on the manual. There's nothing wrong with the controls beyond the usual finicky not always responding to controls thing. However, I do question having both a eject (premature end of mission) and a quit option, but that's just me. 5/10

Interactivity:
There is nothing beyond shooting planes and targets. 0/10

Atmosphere:
This game does not give any atmosphere, in fact I feel like a disconnected blob in a sensory depravation tank. 0/10

Graphics:
You know, I'm not going to say these are bad, since you work with what you had at the time. I'm sure there was a competent artist on staff who didn't have much to work with, and there are special CGA modes that make it look better. A bitterly given 1/10

Story:
This game functions as a greatest hits of the F-15's operating history. It doesn't have a story and the missions jump all over the place. 0/10

Sound/Music:
Kill me. Kill me now. There might be sound, but it is simple PC speaker and very annoying to my modern ears. The bluops are fine, but making someone listen to the jet engine sound is probably torture in several countries. 0/10

That's...10. Its not so much bad as horribly outclassed by most later games. I say most because I'm certain there are going to be games worse than this. Its certainly worth a shot if you're one of the twenty or so people still interested in flight sims. For the rest, I'd suggest picking some at least from the EGA era.

Its worth pointing out that the designation Strike Eagle refers to the F-15E, introduced in 1986. There is no sign that they were influenced by the title of this game or if this game was influenced by a common nickname for the F-15. The eventual replacement of the F-15 is not the F-16, as some might think, but the F-35, a fighter intended to be modular and replace all the planes in US and NATO service. As of 2019, it is apparently nothing more than a paperweight the Air Force uses to shuffle around money**.

*For 1985.
**Okay, so its a conspiracy, but do you really think the Air Force is going to list "Top Secret Floating Plane" or "Alien Tech Plane" on their list of expenses?