#oneaday Day 95: Yars Rising – First impressions

My copy of Yars Rising, the new game from WayForward and Atari, arrived today. I’ve been playing it for the last three hours or so and I really like it. It’s a solid exploratory platformer with a great soundtrack and the interesting wrinkle that in order to unlock new abilities, open doors and acquire upgrades, you have to play numerous variations on the Atari 2600 classic Yars’ Revenge.

I’m disappointed by how some people I know have been reacting to this game, though. Today I’ve seen people writing it off without trying it on the grounds of its anime-inspired art style, the dialogue in its trailer and even its price. (For the record, it’s £24.99, which I think is an eminently reasonable price for a good quality game with decent production values, which is what this is.) I also saw people prepared to write it off based on its first two published review scores, which both happened to be low.

This is one of those situations where, I suspect, review scores will be utterly useless. I defy anyone to play it and conclude that it is a “4/10” game, which is what those first two publications suggested. Yes, one of them was the notoriously stingy Edge magazine and can thus probably be ignored by most people. The other complains of “poor execution”, which is simply nonsense however you look at it.

Anyway, I am satisfied with what I have played so far; it is very much in line with what I thought when I tried the demo in a Steam Next Fest a while back. It’s a smooth, slick exploratory platformer with satisfyingly weighty combat, a wisecracking heroine who manages to be cocky without going full Marvel movie about it, and some interesting mechanics. The soundtrack, featuring music from some very cool artists including frequent Atari collaborator Megan McDuffee, Moe Shop and more, is excellent, and the voice acting is of very good quality.

Most of all, it just plays well. Anyone who has played a WayForward platformer will know what to expect from this one: an expansive map that frequently teases you with areas that you can’t reach yet and thus will have to come back to later. One of the best things about Yars Rising is how these areas are marked on the in-game map: not only are “blocked off” areas marked as such, they also indicate what the “problem” is when you select them. The map also updates to show you newly accessible areas when you acquire new abilities, too, so you can always quickly see at a glance any areas you might want to return to in order to investigate.

The game invites this sort of exploration pretty much from the outset. While there is always a big flashing beacon on the map indicating where the next major story event is, at any given moment there are usually some other areas you can go off and investigate. The game doesn’t specifically point you at them so in theory you could “miss” them, but anyone who has played this sort of game before knows how to be thorough, I’m sure.

Yars Rising also resists the temptation to make getting around too easy. There is a “fast travel” system of sorts in the form of the elevator in the QoTech building, but accessing each set of doors (which becomes a fast travel point from thereon) is generally behind a relatively challenging platforming sequence that you’ll have to overcome. The game strikes a good balance in this regard, though; while you will have to redo some tricky platforming sequences when backtracking or exploring, any particularly time-consuming sequences such as avoiding patterns of lasers are usually a “once and done” sort of affair, with the lasers turning off after you’ve passed through or activated the terminal beyond them.

And the Yars’ Revenge-themed hacking sequences are excellent. I was concerned in the demo that they might run out of ideas pretty quickly, but so far there have been no direct repeats. As you progress through Yars Rising, more and more individual mechanics are introduced to the hacking sequences, and the more challenging hacks (particularly those in optional areas) combine these different elements together in creative ways. Of particular interest to longstanding Atari fans will be the way in which these sequences pay homage not only to the original Yars’ Revenge, but also other Atari classics such as Missile Command and Centipede. There’s even some non-copyright-infringing Space Invaders-style sequences, which acknowledges how the port of Space Invaders to Atari 2600 was something of a “killer app” for the console in the early days.

This is a game that has been made with love and respect for both the modern exploratory platformer genre, and Atari’s heritage. It disappoints me to see how many people are refusing to even contemplate it based on something exceedingly superficial — with some coming annoyingly close to the usual casting of aspersions on anyone who likes games with an anime-inspired art style.

But anyway. I’m enjoying myself, and ultimately that’s what really matters. If you enjoy a good exploratory platformer and have a love for classic Atari, I encourage you to check it out; it’s a good time.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

#oneaday Day 50: Another Project Complete

As of today, I now have videos recorded for all 25 of the games included on The400 Mini, the miniature games console based around the Atari 8-bit. Not all of them have been published yet — the final one, which covers both Centipede and Millipede, will be out later in the week — but it’s nice to feel like another creative project is “done”. If you’re interested, I set up a playlist on YouTube here:

As you’ll note from the thumbnail, this playlist includes both videos that I’ve previously recorded that happen to cover the games on The400 Mini and new vids that I’ve recorded specifically to look at everything included on the system. The Atari 5200 games included in the playlist, covered during my “Atari A to Z Flashback” project, where I made videos for all 150 games on Atari Flashback Classics for Switch, are fundamentally identical to their Atari 8-bit counterparts, and a few others I’d previously covered on the 8-bit-centric “Atari A to Z” series.

I’m pleased with this, at least partly because it means I can now get on with exploring the broader Atari 8-bit library once again. The games included on The400 Mini are a fun cross-section of what was out there on Atari 8-bit, but they are just a fraction of the whole picture — a picture that today includes some incredible efforts from modern developers who are still putting out amazing stuff for the platform.

One of the things that I hope comes to light for people who watch my videos is that a lot of games that ended up being very famous across multiple platforms actually got their start on Atari 8-bit. Off the top of my head that I’ve covered already, there’s Boulder Dash, Alley Cat, Spelunker, Lode Runner, M.U.L.E. and plenty of others besides.

All of these are arguably more famous in other incarnations (except perhaps M.U.L.E.) but I feel it’s important to acknowledge where they came from in the first place; a lot of self-styled gaming historians don’t give the Atari 8-bit the credit it is due, assuming it to be a niche system on the level of stuff like the Oric Atmos, Dragon 32 and suchlike. But no; while the Atari 8-bit never had the same widespread acceptance of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, it was still a lively, active and well-supported system (supported by everyone except Atari for significant portions of its lifespan, anyway) with some excellent capabilities that the platform’s more talented programmers really got to grips with.

I realise this all might sound a bit fanboyish, but that’s just because, well, I’m an Atari fan. Always have been. And I feel it’s a bit silly for big chunks of computing and gaming history to be ignored just because they didn’t happen on the most famous platforms.

And so I will continue to bang that drum on my YouTube channel. I have a platform there, and have amassed a following of quite a reasonable size. If the stuff I do convinces just one or two people to explore things a little beyond the usual scope of “retro” — or just to acknowledge that Atari home computers exist — then I’ll feel like I’ve done a decent job.

2424: This Month in Old Gaming Magazines, 1988 Edition

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Since I’ve spent the last two days downloading approximately 40GB of old magazine scans comprising near-complete collections of ACE, Atari User, Page 6, Antic and Analog, I thought I’d look back at a few of them to see what was going on this month in the dim and distant past.

Chosen entirely arbitrarily by seeing which issue of ACE had “September” on it first, I thought we’d have a look at 1988 today.

“Games Without Frontiers”, ACE issue 12

“Once upon a time it was just you against the Galaxians,” writes Andy Wilton in issue 12 of ACE. “But revolutions in communications technology are going to bring about tremendous changes in the way we play — and who we play against.”

This should be interesting.

The article begins with a discussion of PBM (Play-By-Mail) games — as in, games you played through the postal service — which, as ridiculous as it sounds today, was once a viable means of playing multiplayer games. Obviously this style of multiplayer lends itself primarily to turn-based strategy experiences, and indeed the first example Wilton mentions is legendarily cynical backstab-o-rama Diplomacy.

Wilton’s designs for PBM are somewhat grander, though; he goes on to conjecture that “if the Royal Mail lets you run a game that’s inconveniently large for a living room, why not set up a game you couldn’t possibly fit in a house?” Why indeed.

Wilton then goes on to discuss play-by-email games; indeed, this remained a viable way to play games as modern as Civilization IV until relatively recently, since the format of the email messages could be made in such a way that the computer program could decode it without any external input required. Clever, but largely irrelevant to today’s constantly connected world.

“Far more exciting things are afoot than postal or pseudo-postal games,” continues Wilton. “For some time now there’s been the technology to get a whole load of people playing the same computer game by means of networking.” He then goes on to describe what we now know as server-based play, or taken to its natural extension, massively multiplayer online games. He does not, however, predict that one day we will have network setups specifically for games, or indeed the Internet: “for a networked game to really catch on,” he writes, “the network it runs on must already be in use for other purposes. Hardware’s the important factor here: setting up several machines, close together, connected with special cables, is a lot more effort than most people will go to for a game.”

Interestingly, Wilton then goes on to discuss distributed processing — the kind of thing Microsoft promised with its “Xbox Cloud” nonsense and has never quite managed to show any real evidence of. While there are noteworthy examples of distributed processing being successful — Folding@Home is a well-known example — it’s yet to be leveraged for gaming.

The article then concludes with the conjecture that the new frontier in multiplayer gaming will be using satellites. Well, plausible — a number of Japanese companies in particular experimented with satellite distribution of games — but again, it never really caught on, because the Internet became a thing.

An interesting article through modern eyes.

“Very Clever System”, Atari User Vol. 4 No. 5

Two issues before it was consumed by its longtime rival Page 6, Atari User took the bizarre step of kicking off a series of deep-dive articles exploring not the Atari 8-Bit, nor the Atari ST… but the by then 9-year old VCS/2600 console.

Actually, it’s not quite as unusual as you might think; the 2600 actually enjoyed a lifespan that the PS3 and Xbox 360 would be proud of; indeed, article author Neil Fawcett notes that an estimated one million 2600 systems were sold in 1987, with more than a hundred thousand of those in the UK.

Fawcett kicks off his article with an examination of how the 2600 differs from the Atari 8-Bit range of home computers. In other words, he defines what a games console is.

“It’s basically a dedicated box of electronics to be attached to your television to play games plugged into it,” he writes. “You can’t attach a disc drive or tape deck, nor can you type in the listings which appear in Atari User.”

On that latter point, one interesting thing about the computer magazines of the time was that in lieu of the downloadable demos or cover-mounted discs we take for granted these days, many magazines simply filled their paged with program listings that you could copy into your computer, save to floppy disk or tape and then run at your leisure. Free software — if you were willing to put the time in to type them in, of course. (Side note: I attribute my speed and accuracy of typing today to the sheer number of these listings I typed in as a kid.)

A little disappointingly, Fawcett’s article doesn’t delve deep into how the 2600 itself works, though he does include an annotated diagram of its guts, for all the good that does to someone who doesn’t know how electronics work. Instead, he reviews both old and then-new 2600 titles, in this case California Games from Epyx (“nice graphics and neat sound effects add a wonderful feeling of reality to each game”), Ghostbusters from Activision (“considering the 2600 is only a games system, the standard of Ghostbusters is superb”), Kung Fu Master from Activision (“The 2600 version may not be as graphically good as the arcade version, but it has the atmosphere and playability of the original”) and H.E.R.O. from, again, Activision (“the best conversion of a home computer game I have seen for the VCS”).

“Adventure!”, Page 6 issue 34

Page 6 often had themed issues or at the very least cover features, and this edition was very much focused on adventure games — the kind we now tend to describe as “interactive fiction” rather than the more recognisable point and click adventures we see more of today.

There were several type-in listings of adventure games in the issue, but the real attraction for adventure game fans was the in-depth interview with Level 9, a British software company that specialised in these games.

When I say in-depth, I mean it; the interview goes on for seven full pages with very few images; a far cry from the obnoxious “too long; didn’t read” mentality of many modern readers.

Level 9’s Pete Austin described his company’s formation as being born from a love of Dungeons & Dragons. “The form of D&D that we played is very unlike that played elsewhere,” he admits. “We played political D&D where, frankly, if you had to fight your way out of a situation then you had done something wrong. The basic idea was to bluff and blackmail people in the game and use political intrigue and spy techniques, that sort of thing.” It’s clear to see how this approach to tabletop gaming would naturally transplant itself to creating narrative-centric, text-heavy experiences that were entirely turn-based.

The interview goes on to describe how the team at Level 9 went on to produce their own programming language called A-Code to create their games, in effect creating one of the earliest examples of a game engine, albeit a text-based one. It also describes how Level 9 had people asking for clue sheets for their games even before they were released, showing that even back in 1988, some people still wanted to get through games by fair means or foul. This is perhaps more understandable for narrative-based games such as text adventures, however.

CES ’88, Analog no. 64

In his editorial introducing the September 1988 issue of American Atari magazine Analog, Lee Pappas notes that his 14th Consumer Electronics Show (CES — a show that still goes on today) was one of mixed emotions, in that he had “nothing to report on the 8-bit news front”.

Instead, what he discovered was a world where “the big names in software now read Nintendo or Nintendo compatible. Even Apple Mac and PC supporters were missing.”

The trouble Atari was having at the time was that its peculiar computer-console hybrid the XE Game System didn’t really know what it wanted to be, and being based on already dated technology — the 16-bit computers such as the Amiga and the ST were already available by this time — it struggled to secure releases that were 1) technically impressive and 2) good.

“Most of the games are starving for state-of-the-art graphics and just don’t have the imagination that is clearly evident in the Nintendo and newer Sega products,” writes Pappas. “Face it, the Nintendo and Sega don’t have keyboards. In the Nintendo’s case the unit is plain and boring in appearance and the controls are simple. What those have, however, are spectacular, well-thought-out programs, many of which go far beyond the shoot ’em up concept.”

True indeed. And while the Atari 8-Bit computers certainly weren’t short of imaginative titles in their heyday, by this point we were well into the age of consoles — an age that we would never look back from, with one exception; PC games eventually found a way to thrive alongside their console brethren. But the dedicated, proprietary-format computer was well on the way out.

2262: Have You Played Major Havoc Today?

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Continuing my exploration of Atari Vault on Steam — and partly in honour of the fact that for some inexplicable (but welcome!) reason, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell followed me on Twitter earlier today — I thought I’d take a look at another game I was previously unfamiliar with: Major Havoc.

Major Havoc is one of those games from the early ’80s that eschewed sprites, bitmaps and pixels in favour of vector graphics, giving it a very distinctive, recognisable look that stands alongside other vector games such as Asteroids, Battlezone, Red Baron, Tempest and Star Wars. In keeping with the inventiveness of video gaming’s youth, Major Havoc is a rather peculiar game with some ambitious concepts, and quite possibly one of the first attempts at cross-genre gaming.

Major Havoc is split into several phases. First of all there’s a quasi-3D shoot ’em up section, where you control Major Havoc’s spaceship at the bottom of the screen and shoot incoming enemies as they come towards you. The interesting thing about this part is that it’s not just straight Space Invaders-style waves of enemies: the first level features enemies that turn into a different form and home in on you when you hit them; the second features Galaxians-style swooping enemies, and the third starts with swirling, spiral enemies that draw lines on the screen, which subsequently become a maze you have to navigate your ship through as you approach your destination. (I can’t get past this one, so I can’t speak to what comes later!)

Following this, you have a Lunar Lander-lite section where you have to land Major Havoc’s ship on a flashing white platform atop the target you were approaching in the first phase. Then Major Havoc gets out of the ship and you’re seamlessly taken into a side-on platformer with weird gravity (hold the jump button down and you keep rising; let go and you’ll fall) where you have to find a reactor, set it to explode and then get back out to your ship before you blow up with it. After that, the process repeats with a different wave of enemies, different platform to land on and different maze to negotiate.

It’s a really cool game that tries some things I certainly haven’t seen before, and the blend of space shooter and platforming hasn’t really been attempted again (to my knowledge, anyway) until FuturLab’s very recent Velocity 2x on PlayStation 4 and Vita.

It’s also a stark reminder and interesting reminder that differences between Eastern and Western games have always been very apparent, though not always in quite the same way as today — Atari’s games of the early ’80s capitalised on the popularity of futuristic sci-fi thanks to Star Wars and made effective use of technologies such as vector graphics to create that aesthetic, while Japanese games of a similar era were often based around pixel art with cute aesthetics and more mascot-like characters.

Major Havoc, then: pretty neat, and another nice discovery from the Atari Vault. Looking forward to discovering more. (Also, hi, Mr Bushnell, if you’re reading, which you probably aren’t. Thank you for following.)

2260: Have You Played Liberator Today?

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I like retro compilations, not just for the ability to play games from my youth on modern hardware, but also to discover some classics that, for whatever reason, I missed out on when they were first released.

Such has been the case after just a few minutes with Atari Vault, a new release on Steam that packages together about a hundred Atari 2600 and arcade games from the late ’70s and early ’80s — including a few previously unreleased prototypes, which is kinda cool.

One such discovery I made today was an interesting (and surprisingly impressive for the time) game called Liberator, a quasi-sequel to Missile Command that flipped the concept of the original Cold War-inspired game on its head by putting you in the role of the aggressors, attacking enemy bases on planets in order to liberate the population from the villains.

Liberator, I’ve discovered, was quite a rare game even on its original release, which might explain why I’ve never come across it before. According to Gaming History, the original arcade machine sold for a whopping $2,000 and did not prove particularly popular, with only somewhere in the region of 760 cabinets actually being made — all this despite it being a game absolutely made for cross-promotion with Atari’s “Atari Force” comic series. The curse of old-school Atari constantly and consistently failing at marketing strikes once again, I guess.

Anyway. The game plays quite a bit like Missile Command in that it’s a somewhat different take on the shoot ’em up. Rather than firing directly at things, you fire at a crosshair on screen, and your missiles detonate when they reach the point you fired at. Thus, to destroy things, you have to cause explosions at locations where the enemies will be when your missiles arrive — usually meaning you have to fire ahead of them carefully, anticipating their movements.

Much like Missile Command, you can fire from several different places on screen, and these missile launchers — here depicted as starships orbiting an enemy planet — can be independently destroyed, acting as your “lives” for the game session. The game, then, becomes a matter of balancing your offense on the planet surface, which requires you to destroy enemy missile bases on the rotating globe ahead of you, and defending yourself against incoming missiles and other attacks. Not every attack is guaranteed to hit you, either, so you also need to spot which things you need to prioritise destroying and which you can safely ignore.

It’s an interesting game; very simple, but undoubtedly addictive in the same way that Missile Command is. It’s a good-looking game for the time period (1982), as well, with some decent pixel art for “Commander Champion”, who briefs you on your mission, and a well-done 3D rotating globe effect for the planets you’re orbiting. Sound effects, meanwhile, are the same bleeps, burbles and booms from Missile Command — nothing special, but certainly iconic of this particular period in gaming.

There’s a lot more to explore in Atari Vault, but I anticipate that Liberator will be one I keep coming back to!

1554: Hyperlynx

The Game Boy apparently turned 25 recently, but I didn’t own an original Game Boy when they first came out. (I did later pick up a Game Boy Pocket, a Game Boy Color and indeed every Nintendo handheld since, but no original Game Boy.) As such, I don’t have quite as many fond memories of the little yellow-and-black wünderkind, because our household instead elected to indulge in the Atari Lynx for their handheld gaming needs. (More specifically, the Lynx 2, which was considerably smaller than the monstrous original Lynx but still far too big to even think about putting in your pocket.)

The Lynx was a surprisingly impressive machine for the time, boasting a full-colour backlit screen, a 16-bit processor (compared to the Game Boy’s 8-bit) and hardware scaling for smooth “zooming” of sprites and images a la the SNES’ Mode 7 facility without the “rotation” part. All this technological advancedness (spellcheck tells me that’s not a word, but I’m going to use it anyway) came at a price, though; the system gobbled batteries like they were rapidly becoming extinct. (In fact, the rate the Lynx consumed AAs, it’s a wonder batteries didn’t become extinct.)

So bad was the battery life that it was literally impossible to make it through the entirety of a game such as Gauntlet III without having to plug the AC adapter in partway through the play session. And with the Lynx’s “game card” cartridges lacking any sort of battery backup functionality (and, consequently, the ability to save games) this meant that every time you started playing a game you had to begin from the beginning again, unless the developer had thoughtfully included some sort of “password” function. (Oh, remember passwords? What a hellish time we used to live in.) This meant that games either had to be very short or friendly to replaying. Certain games handled this well. Others, like the otherwise excellent quasi-point-and-click adventure based on Dracula, did not.

There were some really solid games, though. Unofficial Pole Position sequel Checkered Flag was a particular highlight due to its impressive use of the Lynx’s sprite scaling facility (albeit on a distinctly “retro” style of racer, and Warbirds proved that it was indeed possible to have a good crack at a flight sim on a handheld device. The aforementioned Dracula had some impressively stylish visuals and was a good adaptation of Bram Stoker’s story, lack of save function aside, and Gauntlet III was arguably the best version of Gauntlet the world has ever seen thanks to its wide variety of characters and sprawling, interesting levels.

One of my favourites was Electrocop, a game whose technological achievements were really quite impressive for the time. Effectively a 3D third-person shooter before anyone knew what those were, Electrocop cast you in the title role as you wandered around a 3D base from a side-on perspective blasting robots and hacking terminals to open locked doors. It was far more than a straight blastathon, and the side-on 3D effect, in which you could run left and right as well as “into” and “out of” the screen in smooth motion, was utterly gobsmacking for the time. I also vaguely remember it having cool music. Let’s see if I can’t find some.

Also of particular note was the Lynx version of Klax. Klax remains one of my favourite puzzle games of all time — there was just something so satisfying about it — and the Lynx version was pretty much arcade-perfect, right down to having a vertically-oriented screen.

Yes, the Lynx was not at all afraid to demand that the player hold the already unwieldy device on its side with the joypad at the top and the buttons at the bottom (or the other way around if you preferred — there’s a feature that modern handhelds don’t offer!) and indeed boasted a number of vertically-oriented games, of which Klax was one and the aforementioned Gauntlet III was another. After you got your arms used to the initial awkwardness of the arrangement — a problem mitigated marginally on the slightly smaller Lynx 2 — it was actually quite a good way to play, and an eminently sensible solution to the problem of how to accurately represent ports of arcade games that originally played on vertically-oriented monitors.

Anyway. I sold off my Lynx a good few years back now, along with the hefty collection of games I had for it. There are occasional days when I regret doing that, but unlike a lot of the old Game Boy games, many of the Lynx titles don’t hold up particularly well these days, sadly. Although there were a few standout titles — most of which I’ve mentioned in this post — the majority of the library was fairly mediocre in retrospect, and would probably come as an unpleasant shock to people used to the incredible depth and breadth available in handheld games today. Like many systems that failed to endure as well as others, the Lynx was an impressive gizmo in its day, but today, I feel, owning one would be little more than a curiosity rather than something to take particularly seriously.

Or perhaps just a Klax machine. Which, frankly, is actually probably reason enough to own one.

#oneaday Day 131: Thoughts on Star Raiders

1979’s Star Raiders and its 1986 sequel are, to me, two of the most memorable games I’ve ever played. The original Star Raiders was notable for being a pretty convincing simulation of what it might like to be to fly a spaceship and defend a galaxy that absolutely, 100% wasn’t ripped off from Battlestar Galactica, oh no, from the “Zylons”. Sure, it had crude graphics and sound, but its interesting blend of spaceflight, combat and light strategic elements made it a compelling example of early gaming that is actually still perfectly playable today, unlike many other retro “classics”. It also taught me what “red alert” meant long before I ever saw my first Star Trek episode.

Its sequel upped the ante with better graphics, a wider variety of foes to battle against and more things to do than just fly around and shoot Zylons in space — you got to orbit planets, take on motherships, bomb bases and all sorts of things.

Now, some 25 years after the last Star Raiders game made an appearance, we have a brand new one for both Xbox 360 and Windows (and, if Sony ever gets PSN up and running again, PS3.)

I will preface this by saying that if you are thinking about playing this game on a console, just don’t, all right? If you never played Wing Commander III on PlayStation 1, you’ve never known the horror of having too many controls and not enough buttons on your joypad. Hint to developers: if you need to include a “shift” button in your joypad-based control scheme, you may wish to rethink it somewhat.

Try it on a PC with a proper Giger alien-penis joystick and some not-inconsiderable control redefining, though? Now that’s more like it. What we have here is a relatively simplistic space game that, unlike many recent examples, remembers that space is three-dimensional, and that it is, in fact, possible to “loop the loop” in space, along with go up and down, turn left and right and roll around your axis.

A good start. Add a transforming ship to that mix and you have some interesting possibilities. Your all-new Star Raiders ship (called, inexplicably, “Jasper”) can transform between “Attack” (constant forward movement, high top speed, poor turning, guns and missiles), “Assault” (mech-like move-and-strafe, lower top speed, excellent turning, guns and heavy laser beam) and “Turret” (rapid aiming, snail’s pace movement, super-powerful heavy weapons) modes. When I first started playing, I wondered why you’d ever want to switch out of “Attack” mode, until I realised that I was spending an awfully long time chasing down Zylon fighters that were more manoeuvrable than me. So I switched to “Assault” mode and found that I could kill them rather more easily. And “Turret” mode came in handy for dealing with capital ships.

The first few missions were a bit samey, despite claiming to be “recon” and “combat” missions — they all seemed to involve “destroy [x] number of Zylon fighters”, possibly against a time limit. But then the fourth “story” mission came along, which tasks you with finding a piece of a secret weapon that will help you deal with a Zylon secret weapon. Said piece of secret weapon is stashed somewhere in an asteroid. And this asteroid is pretty big. So big that when you’re flying over its surface, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were conducting a planetside mission. Not only that, but part of the mission involves going inside the asteroid, at which point switching to Assault mode effectively turns the game into Descent, which is awesome. I’ll ignore, for now, the fact that the game crashed on me at this point just as I was about to finish that mission.

I wasn’t sure what to think of Star Raiders when I first started playing it. Then I looked at the clock and realised I’d been playing for nearly two hours. So something must be right somewhere. It’s clearly not the original game in any shape or form — the “galactic map” interface in the game is a glorified mission select screen rather than the strategic overview of the original — but what it does offer is a good, fun, if simplistic space combat game with some nice ideas and a horrendously poor control scheme on console.

At £6.99, though, you can probably afford to take a chance on it, though, right?

Oh, if you’re interested, then…

Old:

New (previously-mentioned Descent bit):

#oneaday, Day 7: Video Games: A Primer

A lot of my fellow One A Day bloggers are avid video gamers. Many of them even write words about them on a professional basis. But there are others, like Pete Fraser, who are understandably bewildered by the whole thing. Sure enough, it’s a fast-moving, exciting medium which many believe is difficult to penetrate if you haven’t been along for the whole ride.

To that I say: pish, pfaugh and nonsense. There’s never been an easier time to get into video games and find out more about them. Let me explain why.

It’s unfortunate that the early days of gaming were plagued with stereotypes (which some people, see the delightful Jeff Minter, pictured to the right, are still more than happy to live up to) and this put a lot of people off getting into the hobby. It wasn’t a “cool” thing to do. It was the thing that “nerds” did, and the sort of thing that could potentially get you beaten up at school if you were in a particularly rough and less-enlightened place.

The thing is, though, at least some of the stereotypes had partial basis in fact. Early gaming demanded many things. Patience. An understanding that you were dealing with a brand new technology that wasn’t particularly refined yet. In many cases, a mathematical mind. A willingness to practice things until you got better. Early games were frequently simple affairs that artificially inflated their playtime by being ludicrously difficult. This made the hardcore gamers very happy when they were able to finally beat a particularly difficult level, but for people who might be interested in passing? They didn’t want to spend that much time in front of a TV listening to the whining and squeaking of a cassette deck loading games.

Over time, though, games have become more and more sophisticated, family-friendly and accessible. A big part of this movement has come via games consoles, which have actually been around almost as long as home computers. Games consoles are made to be hooked up to “the big television” of the house and, in the early days at least, were often filled with experiences made to be shared—indeed, the very first gaming machines were primitive multiplayer “tennis” affairs. Later, we got many arcade conversions, and TV advertising, particularly the cringeworthy efforts from Atari, encouraged family participation and friendly competition.

As consoles became more and more sophisticated, developers started experimenting with a greater focus on developing narratives throughout their games. We saw titles such as the ambitious Final Fantasy series telling surprisingly mature, sophisticated (if now clichéd) stories through the SNES and PlayStation 1 periods having graduated from their primitive roots on the original NES. Graphics improved at a rapidly-increasing rate, giving us games that wanted more and more to be like the movies. But still they were tied to arbitrary control schemes that required practice; there was still a barrier of entry: “you must be this skilful to enjoy this medium”.

Until we get to this generation. This generation of gaming has exploded. We’re at a stage now where gaming is accessible to pretty much anyone. We’re at a stage where gaming is no longer confined to one specific demographic. We’re at a stage where you don’t even need a controller to work your Xbox if that’s the route you want to take.

Love them or hate them, several things have done a huge amount to make gaming more accessible to the masses. The Wii and the variety of plastic-instrument music games such as Rock Band brought family-friendly, “lifestyle” and party gaming back, reminding people how much fun it was to get together with friends and play in the same room. Kinect for the Xbox provides entertaining, active games that kids and adults alike can enjoy without having to remember which button does what. Facebook games like Farmville, while shallow to people who have been playing games for years, provide bored office drones and soccer moms with fun things to do on the Internet. Call of Duty lets the frat boys (and girl-equivalents) of the world blow seven shades of shit out of each other whilst shouting racial epithets at one another. And the blossoming independent development scene sees digital artists and creative minds pushing the boundaries of what “interactive entertainment” really means.

Games may or may not be art—that’s an interminable question that may never be answered conclusively. But one thing games aren’t? Just for teenage boys. Give ’em a shot. You might surprise yourself.

What is Your Alternate Reality?

I’ve been banging on about ancient 8-bit RPG Alternate Reality since the last SquadCast now and am finding the process of revisiting it with an adult’s mind (i.e. one that understands what an RPG is) equal parts addictive and frustrating. The reason for this is that Alternate Reality itself is an incredibly ambitious game with very grand designs… yet its difficulty level at the outset is absolutely maddening… and yet (again) this difficulty level makes it incredibly addictive. You start think that if you could just get a little further… or if you hadn’t tried to punch that knight in the face while not wearing any armour… things would be better.

At this point, let’s pause for a typical playthrough from beginning to inevitable early death. Strap yourself in, we’re going to another world.

picture-1 It’s a typical day in the city. Perhaps I’m on the way to work, or on my way to meet a friend. But disaster is waiting just around the corner, because…

picture-2 Holy shit! Aliens! AAAAHHH!!

picture-3 And now they’re abducting people! Interestingly, I’m not the only one abducted… it looks like the ship picks up three others. (I’m not sure if these other three people are ever mentioned… or perhaps it’s a reference to the fact you have four “save slots” on your character disk)

picture-41 Uh-oh… we’re leaving. But where are we going…?

picture-5 Ah, yes, space. Of course. They are aliens, after all. Wait a minute, I know how we can lift our spirits…

picture-6 A little sing-song! Maybe this won’t be so bad…

picture-7 As the song ends, two sets of big scary doors slam shut and I’m locked in a green room where I am invited to “become a new person”.

picture-8 When the doors slide open again, I’m in front of a gate with a force field over it. Numbers rotate over the gate. As soon as I step through the force field, the numbers freeze in place, defining who I am to be in this new world.

picture-9 There’s a flash of… lightning? Static? Something, and then…

picture-10 Apparently I am “joined”, and ready to enter an alternate reality.

(In the subsequent loading break, you have to swap disks twice unless you have more than one drive. You thought you had it rough with JRPGs.)

picture-11 And here I am at the Floating Gate, ready to begin my adventure. You’ll notice my statistics are distinctly average. From left to right, we have Stamina, Charisma/Charm, Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom and Skill/Dexterity. These have a potential initial maximum of 21, so Stamina, Charisma and Skill are pretty good, but Strength, Intelligence and Wisdom are pretty feeble. Fortunately, Skill is probably one of the most helpful stats early in the game, as it allows you sufficient mobility to avoid attacks from early enemies.

So, first job? Find a weapon. You begin your adventure in the city of Xebec’s Demise with only the money given to you by the strange portal at the beginning, no equipment and only some basic clothing. Fortunately, your starting area is the City Square, with the Floating Gate in the middle and shops all around. So, let’s take a look.

picture-12 A smithy, huh? This sounds promising. I know he’s in at the moment, too, because I can hear him hammering away inside. (And yes, you actually can. This is just one of the cool “environmental effects” that you hear throughout your travels). So, let’s pay him a visit.

(Single-drive users can expect a disk swap at this point.)

picture-13 The Best Armorers, huh? Sounds expensive. However, as the smith seems quite happy to stand there singing while I browse his wares, I take my time and consider my options carefully.

picture-14 7,424 coppers? I was right, this place is expensive. In fact, there’s nothing I can even nearly afford in here. I tell him to forget it rather than risk offending him by making him a paltry offer (which might make the smith reluctant to deal with you in the future, when you could potentially afford his wares – one of the many things that AR keeps track of in the background). I step back onto the windy streets, still distinctly lacking in equipment. Time to explore.

picture-16 As I leave the Best Armorers, it starts raining, which makes it difficult to see where I’m going and slows me down. Thunder crashes and lightning flashes. But at least I haven’t run into any ne’er-do-wells as yet.

picture-17 Spoke too soon. A wandering zombie notices me but doesn’t have time to act. I don’t fancy taking it on in my current state, so I run for it. Fortunately, I managed to get away before it was able to do anything unpleasant to me.

picture-18 A little further down the road, I surprised a rabid-looking Giant Rat. I elect to leave it alone as I don’t fancy adding a disease to the list of my woes. It’s still early days in this strange place.

picture-19 After a little exploring (and a Hobbit surprising me, then running away without saying a word) I hear the sound of a smithy again… but there’s no doors in this building. Curious. I press against a wall and find myself slipping straight through it. A secret door!

picture-20 Sure enough, it’s another smithy. Occums Weaponsmiths, to be precise. It’s cheaper… but still way out of my price range. Curses.

picture-21 Outside, it’s still raining, and worse, I run into a Goblin. Desperate, I try and sweet-talk it into stepping down and maybe giving me some of its treasure and equipment. The conversation doesn’t go well, with the Goblin responding to my polite request by trying to stab me. This place is just like Southampton. Maybe I haven’t gone anywhere at all.

picture-23 I respond in kind to the Goblin by punching it in the face. It’s a feeble attack, but at least it connects, which is more than can be said for the Goblin’s attacks. With my high Skill, I nimbly avoid and parry all of his blows and manage to knock the foe to the ground without sustaining any injuries myself. Unfortunately, the Goblin doesn’t seem to be carrying anything of value. I do, however, gain a total of 59 experience points from the whole encounter.

picture-25 Night falls, and it’s still raining. I surprise a Fighter in the street, but he looks tough so I decide to avoid him while he’s still surprised. I begin to think it might be an idea to try and find somewhere to spend the night. It’s clear the City is an inhospitable place, but I imagine this becomes even more apparent in the night-time.

picture-26 In search of an inn, I get mugged by a Skeleton. What a bastard. Fortunately, I manage to get away before he can attack properly. But how much did he steal…?

picture-27 I check my pockets. Fortunately, I don’t seem to have lost anything irreplaceable, and I still have a few copper coins to my name. Enough to spend the night somewhere, hopefully.

picture-28 I encounter a Dwarf a little further down the road. I’m not sure if he’s friendly or unfriendly, so I decide to turn on the Charm and see what he has to say about that. Bizarrely, he dies. I think this is AR’s way of telling me that this was a successful encounter, not that my tongue was so silver he simply collapsed and died in wonderment at my words. Possibly. Whatever actually happened (and I guess we’ll never know), I now have 205 experience points. Not yet enough to reach level 1 (You have to earn level 1! The indignity!) but a step closer, nonetheless.

picture-29 A Troll shows its face next. It looks scary, so I try and disengage from it and escape. I do so, but not before it steals some of my water and food. This isn’t going well.

picture-33 For a worrying moment, despite working with a map (an absolute necessity, as this was, of course, the days long before automapping) I think I’m lost, and I haven’t bought a compass yet. Fortunately, I get my bearings shortly afterwards and manage to stumble my way to the doorway of Mom’s Bar, where the giant rat I ran away from earlier (possibly) is waiting for me. The rat tries to steal some more of my food and water then tries to bite me, but I dodge it and duck into the bar to get out of the rain.

picture-35 The bartender informs me that the band are on a break, but invites me to watch a dwarf dancing. Since I’m hungry and thirsty, I decide to take him up on his offer and sit at the bar watching the dwarf and listening to his quirky music.

picture-36 I order some water and a food packet to take with me. This only costs me a few coppers, fortunately, and should give me enough sustenance to get through the night… I hope. I step back out of the door. I wonder if it’s stopped raining yet…

picture-37 It has. But it’s still dark and I need a place to sleep. I stumble through the city streets some more, pausing only for another giant rat (the same one again?) to steal the food packet I just bought.

picture-38 Eventually I come across a welcome sight – a door marked “Inn”. Unfortunately, as I reach for the handle, I’m attacked by a Gremlin. I ask it very politely if it wouldn’t mind awfully stepping aside if it would be so kind, and it dies at my words, finally giving me enough experience to reach level 1. Not only that…

picture-411 TREASURE! The Gremlin drops a potion. I can’t work out what it is, but it tastes dry and is red in colour. I decide not to quaff it right now just in case it is deadly poison, which is entirely possible in this harsh world. The Gremlin also drops a shield, which looks “mundane”, apparently. I pick it up and wield it on my off-hand, not caring that I look ridiculous wielding a shield but not a sword. Cutting a rain-drenched yet distinctly self-satisfied figure, I barge into the Green Boar Inn.

picture-481 I elect to spend the night on the common room floor as despite having my first taste of acquiring treasure, I’m not exactly flush with cash. I hand over 10 coppers and spend the night on the floor, asking to be woken at 9am the next day.

(Aside: This is, I think, the longest I’ve ever survived. It figures that the one time I decide to show you a “typical playthrough” and make reference to “inevitable early death” I’m here for ages.)

picture-51 I step outside the door and give a charming greeting to a passing commoner. The commoner is obviously in a bad mood and promptly stabs me in the stomach. I try and apologise, but he stabs me again, so I run away, bleeding a bit. I’m also now very hungry and very thirsty. Time to pay that tavern another visit.

picture-52 Seriously hungry and thirsty now, and my stats now starting to drop from thirst, I impulsively spent my remaining coins on food and drink – some grape juice, a couple of food packets and some chocolate cake. When I leave a few hours later, I’m still thirsty but I’m not hungry any more. Plus I enjoyed the band’s song.

picture-531 Back on the street, the sun is setting (Already? I must have been in that tavern longer than I thought) and I encounter a Thief. I charm him successfully and take his two pieces of silver that he was carrying – this equates to twenty copper pieces. It paid for the chocolate cake if nothing else.

Incidentally, reading the official guidebooks and cluebooks for The City indicate that successfully Charming someone is indeed killing them – you pretend to be their friend then stab them in the back. So to the Dwarf I met earlier… uhh… sorry! This is something you have to be careful of in your time in the City. Encounters fall into three categories – Good, Neutral and Evil. You can safely do whatever you like to Evil creatures. Attacking a Neutral creature (and these include most of the humanoid ne’er-do-wells such as thieves and fighters) first before they do anything to you is considered an evil act… and tricking or charming a Good creature is a very evil act. As you might expect, dropping your reputation in this way is a sure-fire way to get the whole city pissed at you.

In a case of art mirroring life, I find myself “very thirsty” again, much as I am feeling now, sitting here writing this with a sore throat. Keen to prevent my already feeble statistics (in-game) from dropping any further, I head back to Mom’s Bar to rehydrate myself.

picture-54

I order three glasses of water and sit at the table for a while, sipping them. It’ll be time to sleep again soon, which should help me recover the injuries I sustained with my ill-advised encounter with the Commoner earlier. The band sings an entertaining if unnerving song about not going into bad parts of town at night for fear of being set on fire.

I stagger out of the tavern and head back towards the inn. Perhaps tomorrow will be a more productive day.

picture-55 I wake up and, once again, I’m hungry and thirsty. Time for breakfast at Mom’s Bar.

picture-56 Unfortunately, I get jumped by a Swordsman outside the inn. The swordsman steals all my coppers then cuts me up with his sword. Fortunately, he proves easy to Charm. I hold my hands up in truce until he comes over, then I snap his neck. Unfortunately, he seems to have eaten my coins, so I’m now penniless, hungry and thirsty.

picture-58 I’m not proud of what I do next. I use my not-inconsiderable skills of persuasion to “convince” a passing Courier to part with what he was carrying. Unfortunately, he was the walking equivalent of a white van with a “NO TOOLS ARE KEPT IN THIS VAN OVERNIGHT” sign posted on the back, as he is carrying nothing but a bitter-tasting potion which disappears in a puff of smoke when I attempt to quaff it.

I do hit level 2, though, so it’s not all bad news.

picture-59 I’m reaching desperation point now. I come across a Fighter and attempt to sweet-talk him out of some coins. This fails and I get hit again. I manage to run away before too much injury is done to me, but things are starting to go downhill.

picture-60 Saved! I find another tavern – this one called the Misty Mountain. But they want three thousand copper coins before they’ll let me in. Given that I don’t have any copper coins whatsoever, I am quickly ejected from the premises.

I begin to feel that my demise might be on its way. Death is peering over my shoulder. I slink back onto the street, dejected, weary and very thirsty. I manage to dredge up a food packet from my pocket to satiate my hunger for the moment, but there’s no water anywhere to be seen.

picture-61 Unable to help myself, I stumble into the path of a robber and attempt to beat him back, but I fail. He takes my last remaining possessions and runs away. By now I’m parched and starving, and I can feel myself weakening moment by moment. I must cut a pitiful sight.

picture-64 I collapse somewhere around the city’s walls and am confronted by a guard. My attempts to mug the populace out of desperation have not gone unnoticed, it seems, as he attacks me without warning. By now, I am grateful for the attention. I put up some meager resistance but secretly, within, am hoping for the sweet release of death as this existence has become too difficult.

I am slain by his greatsword and crumple to the ground, never to be heard from again.

picture-65 Alas, I am dead.

So there you go – in slightly longer format than I anticipated, but never mind.

Alternate Reality: The City is one of those games that is infinitely better when you treat it much as I did above – as a “playground” where you make your own story. This is largely because the game has no aim as such – partly due to its design, and also partly due to the fact that the whole series was never finished – a crying shame, as the whole series had a huge amount of potential.

For the unfamiliar, the series was originally planned to be split into several interconnected volumes – The City (and the Dungeon beneath its streets), The Wilderness, The Palace, The Arena, Revelation and Destiny. Only The Dungeon ever made it out onto shop shelves – as a separate game rather than part of the original City package. The Dungeon had much more structure and actually had an “end” too – or more specifically, a point that clearly led onto the final two chapters, Revelation and Destiny.

Revelation and Destiny were the interesting-sounding ones. Towards the end of The Dungeon, the player character was supposed to acquire a keycard, which could be used to enter the Revelation area where everything suddenly became a bit more futuristic. The player would find themselves walking the corridors of an alien spacecraft, looking out through windows into a dramatic spacescape, while Destiny would allow the player to finally discover the truth – that abducted humans had been placed into a form of suspended animation within “cocoons”, each living out their own parallel life in the city of Xebec’s Demise and its surroundings.

Hold on a minute, you might think. This all sounds a little bit familiar. A bit Matrix-y if you will. And you’d be right.

Philip Price, author of the series, claims he once met a pair of movie directors who wanted to discuss Alternate Reality. It’s never been verified whether or not this was the Wachowski brothers, but there are certainly plenty of similarities between the two series, and it makes a nice story for geek folklore nonetheless. It’s a crying shame that Price never got to realise his ambition, however, as the whole thing would have been a magnificent achievement had it come to fruition.

As it is, The City and The Dungeon stand as two extremely interesting (not to mention playable and addictive) curios – role-playing games that were many, many years ahead of their time that arguably could finally have their original intentions fulfilled nowadays. It would certainly be interesting to see Bethesda working on a re-imagining of the series. But I guess we’ll never know.

Some great info and links on Alternate Reality can be found here and here. Check it out. Oh, and here’s that glorious intro sequence in full – a five-minute long intro on a 48k machine isn’t bad going, is it?

POKEY my SID

Forget Sega vs Nintendo, it’s time for the battle of the old sound chips.

As I commented on the recently-released 8-Bit Computer Retrospectacular Squadcast (which I really do recommend you go and listen to – it’s our best yet), I was an Atari boy growing up, largely because that’s the system we had at home – there was none of this “own every system” malarkey that goes on now, partly because the systems were a lot more expensive in relative terms than today’s consoles, and partly because pretty much the same stuff came out on all of them anyway.

The bitterest battles that we Atari people fought were against the might of the Commodore 64, a machine of roughly equivalent power and capabilities to the Atari 8-bit series of computers. Both had very similar specifications, so it was common for owners of the two systems to try and outdo each other whenever possible. This constant effort of oneupmanship often took the form of trying to outdo each others’ graphics as seen here in this equivalent screenshot from Alternate Reality: The Dungeon on Atari (first) and Commodore (second).

Atari fans were quick to point out that clever programmers were able to get 256 colours on screen at any one time while the Commodore often seemed to have a more limited colour palette. But then Commodore would strike back with something like this shot, the title screen from Draconus (again, Atari first, C64 second):

Facepalm. “Hey, where’s all your colours now, Mr Atari?”

Graphics were all very well and good, but some of the bitterest battles were fought on the aural front, with both systems having a great sound chip far ahead of anything else at the time – Atari being armed with POKEY, Commodore with SID.

Okay, I may be exaggerating when I say “bitter battles” but it’s clear that there was some rivalry here. Some compositions sound clearly better on Atari while others are clearly superior on the C64. And it’s the SID chip’s sound which has endured in today’s chiptunes. There’s still POKEY players and archives out there, sure, but nothing on the scale of, say, the High Voltage SID collection, an exhaustive library of pretty much every piece of SID chip music, both retro and contemporary, you would ever want.

So, let’s take a look at a few examples. That is why you’ve read this far, right? To hear some funky old chiptunes? All right. Here we go.

Zybex – Adam Gilmore

Atari version:

C64 version:

Two versions of a cool song that you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read my past entries on game music. Adam Gilmore worked on a lot of music tracks for both the Atari and the C64 (including the theme for Draconus, pictured above) and was clearly very familiar with how to get the best out of both of them. It’s difficult to say which one is the best out of these two – or even if there is a “best” one. The Atari version, to me, has a cleaner sound, while the C64 version has some more interesting synth effects.

Warhawk – Rob Hubbard

Atari version:

C64 version:

Rob Hubbard was one of the undisputed masters of the 8-bit sound chips, with games featuring his music frequently marketed due to that fact – even if said music only appeared on the title screen, as was the case with most games, including Warhawk here. In many cases, the demands that pushing the sound chip hard enough to produce complex music put on the processor meant that having in-game music was often impractical.

I’ve gotta hand it to the C64’s SID chip here, the Warhawk theme sounds hugely better on it – partly because it seems that Hubbard actually wrote a more complex piece of music for it. Listen through, though, and you’ll hear the kind of effects that you’d expect to hear on a standalone synth – vibrato, tremolo, chorus, echo – it’s impressive stuff.

M.U.L.E – Roy Glover

Atari version:

C64 version:

A much older and simpler piece of music than the kinds of things Rob Hubbard dreamt up, the M.U.L.E. theme is still a catchy little piece. For my money, I prefer the POKEY version of this one as the sound envelopes that are used, particularly on the melody line, just give the whole thing a bit more “fullness” than the C64 version which sounds a bit “dry”.

Action Biker – Rob Hubbard

Atari version:

C64 version:

Oh dear. It’s clear where Mr Hubbard’s loyalties lie now, isn’t it? The pathetic, short loop used in the Atari version of Action Biker becomes an actual piece of music on the C64. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Digital music

Bonanza Digi (Atari):

Digi Freaks Digi (C64):

What many people didn’t realise (even now, in some cases, and definitely not in the early days) was that both of these sound chips were more than capable of reproducing and sequencing sampled sounds, leading to much more realistic-sounding pieces. Of course, the sound quality is nothing to write home about, but there’s something gloriously 80s about the sound of “noisetracker” pieces such as these – a phenomenon which continued with the 16-bit machines, particularly with the C64’s 16-bit successor, the Amiga, whose sound chip was so far ahead of Atari’s equivalent effort for the ST (which in many cases sounded inferior to POKEY) it was ridiculous.

So there you have it. A few selected examples from the Atari and C64’s sound chip back catalogues. Back in the day, I was genetically predisposed to hate everything Commodore but on reflection, there are many examples of its superiority in music production. There’s certainly got to be a reason that the sound of the SID chip has endured as long as it has and remains popular to this day, while POKEY remains relatively obscure. I’ll always have a soft spot for those Atari sounds, though.

If you’re interested in making chiptunes, this plug-in for VST- and AU-based DAWs provides a good way to get started for low-cost, while fans of the old NES sound should check this (free!) one out.