Spacewrecked - 14 Billion Miles from Home: Intro

The text goes slowly enough that it doesn't feel like an emergency.

Rather than a Tomb Raider mod this week, we'll instead be seeing the start of another game that's slipped through the cracks over the years. Finishing up, as far as I know, our little jaunt in the land of RPGs that are really FPS games, we have the vibrantly named Spacewrecked - 14 Billion Light Years from Earth or BSS Jane Seymour: Federation Quest 1/Federation Quest 1: BSS Jane Seymour. However, the title in-game is just Spacewrecked, but the other was the European title, and I've seen it both ways.

The story is...I'm not actually sure what the story is. The intro says that you're someone whose ship was destroyed after an asteroid storm, then finding the BSS Washington in a strange state. We received a message that quickly ended. Basically just like Xenomorph, except it probably isn't going to be the bootleg xenomorphs but rather some other kind of alien. I can tell because I can see the enemy descriptions and they're a motley assortment of designs.

The character picture I didn't go with. The stuff above the text box is fluff.

Spacewrecked was released on the usual three platforms, Amiga, Atari ST and DOS. I tried the Amiga version, but as per usual it crashed on me. Fortunately, DOS has actual music and sound effects, including Roland MT-32 support. Oddly, the music has a very Amiga feel to it. I wonder why? You're given two choices of character, both of whom look like they're badly grayscaled images of mugshots, but I'll take the blonde lady for looking less like she's murdered thousands of people.

Thanks, I'll need it.

The game seems to be controlled entirely through either your mouse, joystick or keyboard aiming. Yeugh. Movement is like your typical DM-clone, directions with turning. Though that turn function is a bit annoying, since it isn't obvious until I accidentally hit it. Everything else is an icon. Menu is the floppy, and the inventory is that printout. Everything else seems to be contextual.

This is a lot of space, and it is nice that they tell you what everything is.

The inventory is annoying. You can only move items on the inventory screen, outside of switching items on your hands. It gets better. To use an item or examine it, it has to be in your hand and you have to be on the main screen. This doesn't seem like it's going to be a problem for weapons, but for other things, that could get annoying. That said, floppy disks seem to be the keycards, colored of course, and work automatically.

There are about five items in the opening rooms. A "Manual Gun", a book called "How to Beat the Game" in an alien language, very funny and respectful of the player, an empty 3 liter glass flask, a gray floppy and a magnesium flare. I go from a shuttle bay, can't reenter the shuttle, to a hydroponics lab with just a random flare to a computer room. The manual quite helpfully tells me that the door disk/access cards are ranked from red to white, and gradually lose color as they are used, but may be recharged in a recharging station. Oh, joy.

Well, it seems like there isn't much worth worrying about right now.

You can see a lot here, from information on the crew to information on aliens. Out of context, it tells me absolutely nothing. Well, the ship status tells me I need to fix the navigation system. Probably. Then there's a map which just shows where I've been. Which is actually kind of helpful, though I note that as far as I've gotten, I'm not having trouble navigating. We'll see how far that goes though.

If I'm reading the manual right, this is a Grampsoc, which has low hostility and shouldn't be chasing after me.

Outside is a long corridor. Seems like you can see, and thus the affect the world, in a 2 tile radius, that is, two tiles in any direct direction, one tile diagonally. This helped me a lot when I spotted this guy. So, combat. You need your gun to be in your right hand or you can't use it. Because whenever your gun is readied your cursor goes into a combat stance when it's on the visual part of the screen. You can tell it's in a combat stance because it keeps moving around randomly across the screen. Instead of the game acting like a random number generator for hitting a target, you're the random number generator for hitting the target. At least the cooldown seems normal. Oh, and my character gradually has her face turn into more and more of a skeleton until she dies. Shades of Nitemare 3D.

The manual quite helpfully tells me that some weapons can be recharged and others are dead when used up. I'm guessing that means no reloads. Further adding to item fun is that you seem to need a repair kit for some items. There is a knife, but the only advantage it offers is that doesn't cost ammo. Yeah, it still does the weird thing.

Well, let's see where else I can go first. Upon restarting I notice that the door disk I have is actually yellow, not gray. Odd and slightly worrying. I can't help but think that yellow is a hard color to properly get across in a computer game using pixel art. Especially when you have a limited color palette. Anyway, I find a shower room which has a blue door disk and a flashlight. Guess they were dirty.

The cabinets sure are...boring.

The next room I find has a stasis chamber, one pod on the wall, uninteractable. That's just what this game is going for, well-thought out but static world. But there is a cabin connected to it for some reason. Inside is a medical chip and a capacitor that I can only carry in my hands. Well, let's go back to a room I noticed but didn't enter when I first tested this game.

Past another stasis chamber is the robot room. It's actually the power room, but it has a robot in it, which is more important. The manual makes a big deal about them, see robot section later and then gives six pages on them. They're basically AI companions that you can command and program, you can have six with you at once...which sounds frustrating. For now, all I can do is put my medical chip and a force shield chip I found on the floor in the robot. Oh, there's a red herring on the floor, because the authors are having a laugh at you.

Hmm...what can I do here?

Programming is very free, but seems useless unless you know exactly what it is you want to do, which makes it seem pointless right now. You can have the robot go anywhere, pick up and drop anything, but it needs to have the number to the item and room. No idea yet about using said items, seems like you need a chip for that.

Now I need more than good luck.

At this point, I quit and save and then come back later. As I reload my save...the game breaks. In a weird way. A new, empty three-floor ship is generated and I can explore as I see fit. The only thing here are two knifes. A similar glitch happens if I change to the other character, who logically, shouldn't exist. It seems as though the version I got didn't rightly work. Why am I not surprised? At least this happened early on.

Anyway, there's also a life-signal detector, a coolant sprayer and a flexsteel sprayer. I'll know when I should use the later two, but the detector is useless. Even if combat is annoying as it is, there's no point in it. I gradually go through the rooms. I find a store room with a white door disk and a flamethrower. This guy is something I appreciate, nice, big target.

I appreciate the honesty.

So I take it to the creature. Three shots and he's dead. Overkill? Probably, but my only advantage right now is health regeneration I have no shot at killing something otherwise. I'm probably not going to be able to recharge it either. Since it takes up two slots when it's empty, I'm going to have to dump it.

Two guns! Muahahaha.

One of the rooms the creature was guarding was a recharge room. For a robot, a flashlight and access cards. I find a blaster on the floor, some decent environmental story-telling for once. My flashlight has enough charge, but I bring the robot back over here since there's no point it in being away from the power right now. I explore a little more, finding a knife in a terminal room with broken lights, flashlight works, and a communicator in a room next to the recharge station. Further in is a 1 liter glass flask, a repair chip and another white door disk. Why do I need so many disks and why do I need all these flasks? Don't tell me that this is going to be one of those stupid water jug puzzles.

I'm not quite sure if the time is accurate to how long I've been playing or not, but there it is.

Usage of door disks is tedious. It doesn't automatically activate, you have to use it. Which means opening the inventory, replacing one of your two hand items, closing the inventory, using it, opening the inventory, putting your other item back, and then closing it again. An unnecessarily complicated act. Inside is a 2x2 foyer with a door disk and another communicator. I'm guessing items are trying to fit into a naturalistic sort of thing rather than what the player will actually use. I hope, actually, that means I might have a chance to kill something eventually.

I leave the room and notice the door is still locked. It relocked itself after I exited but didn't give back my charge. Why? Because power is failing in the ship and doors are now down to okay. I checked the systems after checking the map. It won't actually show you all of a corridor even if you can see all of a corridor, you have to have been there. That means there's a soft time limit, which for me right now, is a hard one. Which doesn't work with how I write about games, if I'm honest, as there isn't a pause function.

There are three more locked doors here, one leads to a cabin with nothing in it, and the other two lead to two connected foyers which lead to the rest of the ship, including the lift. I get another blaster, but more importantly, I find a chip which I think means coolant management. Clearly, I need to have the robot do something with that, so I go back and grab it. Perfect excuse to recharge the disks anyway.

The game is overplaying it, you just hit him.

I go out the other end of the foyers and find myself fighting another enemy. They have names, but it's a pain to go back to a terminal and the manual is low-resolution enough that I can't quite tell unless it's a unique-looking enemy. I'm not really sure if the gun does any more damage than the knife, but it's basically just a case of slugging it out.

Cursed orange juice.

Nearby is a laboratory with a repair kit and a coolant dispenser. That's what the glass containers were for. There must be five different kinds of bottles you can fill up and then use somewhere with the coolant applicant. Oh, and sometimes the dispenser decides your glass bottle won't work and destroys it. Yippee.

I'm not sure why I really need coolant to fix this, but okay...

The next room over is life support, which needs the repair kit, the coolant applicator and coolant to repair. So you pour coolant in, not too much or it overflows, which is toxic. Sometimes I do randomly lose health with no apparent reason, but this doesn't seem to do anything. Once done, you get a chance to repair it, more coolant means a better chance. And sitting here, you have no context for how much you need to repair. Or why I'm repairing it.

Everything on this ship wants to kill me.

At this point I fight a Chee, a flying jellyfish which vomits acid. Presumably in a different way than humans vomit acid, more like an offensive method. It just constantly gobs it at you while I try to shoot it. For a game with twenty varieties of aliens, they sure are all doing the same thing.

Wow, everything on this ship really does want to kill me!

After this, I lose track of what I'm doing. I run around, get some armor, and more worryingly, a spacesuit. More blasters, but it seems that most recharge stations don't work for them. At some point, I find one of the crew. Huzzah, I think to myself. No. It isn't huzzah at all. He has, to misquote someone from Dawn of the Dead, gone gorillacrap. He does actually run away from me for some reason. I try the communicator, better than nothing, but just shoot him.

At this point the ship becomes more or less too damaged for me to do anything reasonably, and I decide to end the session before the inevitable happens. So far, my observations are not good. I feel inclined to simply state that this is not a good game and quit. Comparisons to Xenomorph are very forthcoming. I don't remember if I said anything about how annoying it could have been if the game's systems all worked properly, but this seems to be what you get if they did. It's going to be an uphill battle to get anything done. I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be doing, just fixing the ship. Checking a manual, I see that the crewman must have popped out of a cryo station as a failure of a ship component. I also noticed that terminals were not working half the time.

My continued playthrough of this game solely depends on whether or not I can actually solve this ship. I can cheat to the final ships no problem, but if I can't figure out how to actually get to them, then there's not much point in cheating to get there, is there?

This Session: 2 hours 40 minutes

Crystal Caves (1991)

Name:Crystal Caves
Number:231
Year:1991
Publisher:Apogee
Developer:Apogee
Genre:Side-Scroller
Difficulty:4/5
Time:6 hours 50 minutes
Won:Yes (101W/73L)

My experience with Crystal Caves is a bit of an odd one, I never played it back in the day, instead, I ended up playing it years later when I felt like going through more of Apogee's catalog. I don't know why I went on this one, since I thought before that it wasn't actually a shooter of any sort, just a side-scroller where you collect things. So I was surprised to find out that it was using the same design as Secret Agent from the following year.

The story is, Mylo Steamwitz is a low-life space trader interested in making a quick coin and not much else. Something which isn't working out in his favor, because he's currently being pursued by creditors. He's also somewhat dim, since he tried to sell blood stones to vampires. His current scheme is to head to the Altairian star system in order to mine their crystals to get enough cash for a Twibble farm. Which seems odd, considering that this is his objective, yet he objects to working on his uncle's farm. Apparently they are the rage right now, but chances are by the time he finishes mining there will be little point. I get the feeling that Mylo is the epitome of the expression "How do you make a small fortune? You start with a large fortune."

The hub level of Episode 1.

Your objective, thus, is to collect all the crystals in each level in the game. There are the usual controls, arrows to move, ctrl shoots, alt jumps and oddly enough, interacts with objects. That won't be annoying. Some enemies die in one shot, others multiple and a few require a limited time item to kill. The gun is weird, one shot on-screen only and it accelerates as it stays on-screen, starting slow and quickly shooting across the screen. There are colored doors, which instead of a key, you just flip a switch. The game refers to Mylo's health as lives, but it's clear that it's hits. You may restart a level an infinite amount of times.

Crystal Caves works differently than most Apogee games we've seen so far. There's a hub level and then you pretty much have free access to all the levels from this one. Also, sometimes fruit appears here, which you can get for score/money. Apparently a strawberry costs $5000 in whatever year this is. Inflation's pretty bad in the future. It takes about 100 crystals to equal a strawberry, so maybe this wasn't Mylo's best idea.

To the left, a wall gun, with the switch that turns it off also visible. There are hidden spikes at the bottom. The glass blocks are shootable, while those 8-pointed stars are just background scenery.

First level I play starts the player off under fire. Nice. Still this is as good an introduction as any. The game is not afraid to force you to jump to pull a switch, which I'm sure will be made tricky later. You get your usual traps, guns on the side, hidden spikes, hidden things in the walls, and falling spikes. The usual shootable block walls. Enemies are more interesting. There's a spider that goes up and down which shoots webs at you. Some sort of flying worm which goes in a random direction when it hits a wall. So in order to kill that, you have to be in such a place that you can shoot it without it dodging. There's also a minecart, stays in one place, then drives to the other side of the platform it's on. Can't kill it without the special gun pill.

The robots are about to get Mylo, he simply hasn't any hope of escape.

Another one where the player is under threat and a lot more interesting objects. To start with, there are chests which you need to find a key to open. Just one key and they will all pop open. You can also jump up, but not down these platforms. You better believe the level works around that. Then we have more enemies. Robots, which have very odd behavior, they can't be shot if they can attack you, but they'll turn around if you shoot them sometimes. I don't understand quite how it works. Some sort of invincible monster that looks like it came out of a Keen game. A T.Rex lookalike which chases after you if you shoot it. Then some thing walking around quite randomly which can be shot.

This doesn't look very much like a cave...maybe a hill in front of a castle.

This level has snakes, which are annoying because their corpses can hurt you. It's a low gravity level, that means shooting pushes you back. To top it off, there are green mushrooms on this level which kill you instantly. So most of this level is just waiting past the snakes, no point in shooting something that'll hurt you anyway. Like Duke Nukem before it, there's signs that this game is trying to push the limits of your jumping distance but because of the way the engine works, it isn't that annoying. Yet.

I know it's game logic, but I'd prefer that the magic gun pill just gave you a limited number of magic shots rather than be on a timer.

Lemmings pillars? Four new enemies here, a thing under a rock you have to use the pill to kill; A triceratops which shoots fireballs; A rolling ball which is immune unless it's sleeping and also shoots fireballs; And a pair of eyes that just floats around. All of them are set up so that they're easy to avoid. The pill is near both rocks. The ball is at the bottom of a pit you can easily get out of. The triceratops isn't even somewhere you need to be. That oddly, was the only one that killed me...because I shot the oxygen machine behind it. I forgot doing that killed you.

Are there bats here? You'll never know until it's too late.

This one has a few mean tricks up its sleeve, like black bats against a black background and having to go a long way if you fall down. I did learn that you can actually kill those eye monsters. You have to shoot the eyes while they're open, then you can take out the central body.

In particular, this bird is of no trouble lest you unwisely rush in.

Two new enemies on this level. There's a bird which lays eggs which spawns more of itself. Obviously owing to how that works, usually the ones they spawn aren't in too good a shape. Then there are centipede enemies. You know the kind, shoot the head, the next piece becomes the head and so forth until it dies. Otherwise, there's a gravity pill which reverses gravity. It's mostly typical, albeit the optimal path requires some back and forth.

The purple mushrooms are just scenery, as well as those purple rope things.

I like this mushroom forest level. Note the green grass and note that the spikes are green. In general, I notice I've been getting hit the most by spikes I keep missing. This level takes it to an artform. Even better, there are other nasty little things hiding from you, like flame shooting out of a pipe or spiders in tight corners. It also feels cruel because there are some mundane rocks (which look like the enemies) and spikes which don't fall. By actually not being cruel it seems just as cruel. If this were Arctic Adventure, I would hate this, but between the better movement and having hit points, it's a lot easier to both survive and dodge such situations.

The oil drums are things you can walk on, not something dangerous.

Ah, something annoying, gun above, tied to the switch on the right, and pipe dropping the usual liquid that hurts you. Now's a good time to mention that Mylo is well-animated. He's got a nice little charm to him despite being presumably as dumb as a sack of rocks. That animation also applies to his death sequences. They're nice, not adventure game nice, but still nice. Unfortunately, they're unskippable and kind of long.

Something could be out to kill Mylo right now and I could never see it!

Then there's a level, where after getting unpinned by a T.Rex, you have to make your way through a shootable block maze. It's actually quite annoying. Because it's quite possible to screw yourself in such a way that you won't realize it for a while. The way bats pop up here makes it difficult to get out unscathed. Those black enemies on a black background are tripping me up.

This level is clearly a crystal lab, not a cave.

This level looks simple, but on the lower right, you have a robot that it is quite tricky to get safe shots at. If you go to those crystals the direct way, you will get hit. Finally, the danger sign will fall down if you're under it, and the blue door requires a lever found elsewhere. Once you get past that, it's one act of dodging water drips after another.

Reverse gravity levels feels like a cheap way to use assets in different ways without an easier way to place them all the opposite side of the block.

Levels with reverse gravity for the entire time are a bit tricky, but not for the reason you might think. Because the hidden spikes are all on the top side of the block, where you walk with normal gravity. Walking on the ceiling can blind you to this. And there's the usual collect letters to get a bonus thing, which I didn't notice until now because I didn't realize they were inside the eggs. I assumed they were random collectibles, like the pickaxe.

"My flashlight does nothing!"

The last two levels I reached each had a new gimmick. One was just in the dark until you found the light switch. Though it did have other ways of screwing you over, like a section where if you don't find a switch to the moving platforms or the doors first, you end up trapped. The other had constantly falling rocks. It wasn't that annoying, but I would say that I probably got lucky there.

Mylo really just goes everywhere wearing a mining helmet, huh?

The episode ends with Mylo getting exactly what he wanted, the Twibble farm. Of course, they're explosive breeders and the fad is dead. So now he has a planet full of the things, which of course, is dying thanks to Mylo's lack of foresight. So he decides to leave the planet he has completely ruined and get some more crystals. Episode 2 starts with him selling his Twibble farm and deciding that he should buy himself an Organian Slug farm because they're needed for medicinal purposes thanks to a war. Can Mylo destroy two planets?

The gems change appearance between episodes, which I guess is neat.

The first level I play in this episode turns out to be quite tricky. Starting off in darkness and in a situation where you're about to get attacked by the birds. This is especially tricky owing to this being the start, and the ammo factor of Mylo's gun, which will probably never come up again after this, actually matters. This doesn't really improve as you go through the level, since you constantly have to go up so the birds don't have free reign over you. And of course, in order to do so, you have to make a lot of long jumps, onto moving platforms which you often have to jump on and off so you aren't knocked off by some standing block.

I wonder if the design of the crushers is a joke or a miscommunication?

And the second continues my troubles. To start with, you have to jump over poisonous mushrooms, bit trickier than just one, to grab a stop sign at the right moment so you don't get killed by that hammer. And then there's a group of shootable blocks you have to climb up. I see we're getting some of Broussard's evil nature back.

Welcome to crystal...construction zone.

Acid pits, lovely. A pattern emerges regarding level design, throw the player over some dangerous location and put in a ton of blocks you can get caught on. There's still that pesky block-based collision detection going on, at least in some places. Still, it's a lot less difficult and a lot more time-consuming, which is a positive for the worst part of Apogee's level design.

I was so concerned about this level I didn't even take a proper screenshot!

This one is hard to explain, the real threat here is nothing you would expect. Oh, sure, there are the surprisingly difficult birds and bats, but the real threat are those green things and the snakes. Remember, those create corpses when they die that still hurt you. They also take multiple shots and stop sometimes for no reason. There are multiple sections here where you have to get past two in tight quarters.

Yes, the spider blends against the cave wall, but that's not noticeable in motion.

A gun on you at the start, falling rocks and the only way out is by bumping into some invisible blocks. This isn't difficult per say, just tedious, because you have to slowly go up, step on a moving platform over an acid pit, go down a long jump, then open a door and activate another moving platform, wait for it to come down, then repeat with two more doors and then you can go out. On the bright side, the game won't drop a stone on you if you're near the top of the screen.

I don't know if this is the right screenshot, but look, Keen's helmet!

Oh, wow, it's another one of those long and tedious levels. I'm starting to regret mocking previous games for not being consistent with their difficulty, because this is getting on my nerves. You basically get no shots out of this level, there are a bunch of enemies you need to kill in the right way or else on the way back...through the entire level, you will deal with them twice. Oh, and to top it all off, the beginning/end is a moving platform ride over an acid pit, and you need to jump on top of non-moving platforms in order to not die...without any leeway whatsoever.

Oh, wow, it's another one of those long and tedious levels. I'm starting to regret mocking previous games for not being consistent with their difficulty, because this is getting on my nerves. You basically get no shots out of this level, there are a bunch of enemies you need to kill in the right way or else on the way back...through the entire level, you will deal with them twice. Oh, and to top it all off, the beginning/end is a moving platform ride over an acid pit, and you need to jump on top of non-moving platforms in order to not die...without any leeway whatsoever.

The crystal above Mylo right now might genuinely be the hardest one to get, I'm not joking.

This one is annoying, but not too difficult. You have to avoid a ton of enemies that you either can't kill or leave deadly corpses behind. Either way, you can't win. To add insult to injury, there's a pistol pill at the top, where it does the least amount of good, the unkillable enemies are all towards the bottom. And it doesn't help that so many crystals are placed in such a way that reaching them is very tricky. One particular one was so tricky I wasn't sure it was possible to take.

I'm impressed someone managed to put so much "it is what it is" into one EGA image.

After finishing Episode 2, Mylo's scheme actually works out...until the slugs bury themselves underground and hit a salt deposit, resulting in all their deaths. I'm not surprised. I'm really not. Episode 3 starts with Mylo now resolved to get into...real estate. What could possibly go wrong?

The hint is that the items are on top of invisible blocks.

Have you ever wanted to go through a level consisting almost entirely of invisible blocks you need to bump into to be able to walk on? Good news. Unfortunately for me, I didn't. I actually had to come back to this level, because shockingly, I needed more ammo for this one than I had by this point. Though frankly even with the starting number of five shots it was kind of tricky. Though by now I'm going for the egg bonuses simply because I don't want Mylo to completely suffer.

You can go right where the rock monster is, or you can go for the gravity pill. That's it.

Speaking of tedium, there's a level that proves the game was avoiding making the player jump at the very limit of their ability, because this one requires it. The annoying bit is that despite Mylo not being that fast, it seems like it's a bit trickier than most games to successfully pull off. So much so that I restarted the level because I didn't realize I could do that and thought I did something wrong with the first gravity pill you get. This is a jump to get the second, there's no other way to win this level.

I probably should be more annoyed by the constant breaking of that "can't get killed by an enemy at the start" rule I have.

This. Freaking. Level. To start with, you are right next to a spike and one of the rock monsters. You have a few seconds to jump away. Your safe platform isn't safe, it has a snake on it. The left path is to a spike...and another rock monster anyway. To the right is the safest. This is the beginning of this level's annoyance, because there are a significant number of platforms you have no way of getting past without a power pill. Which is far away. I didn't mention it, but the pills are on timers. The power pill has one for 15 seconds. This is the first time it's been such a big problem. Even with it, it's still impossible to beat this level without getting hit at least once. Getting it right was tense because I did not want to have to do things so precisely again.

You can't jump up from here, instead you have to jump to that block in the middle, then left, and of course, right again. While dodging water drops.

The funny thing is that right after this I played the easiest level in this episode. The jump in the screenshot is the only difficult thing here. Otherwise it's just some nice, pleasant smooth sailing, including a section where you can either shoot or jump over a dinosaur at your leisure. Apogee's gotten good enough at balancing where these levels end up that I suspect this is an intentional choice.

I'm screwed in this screenshot, I have no way out of this area, the platform isn't moving.

This one has an egregious way of forcing the player to do things in a certain way. To start with, you're on a ledge with a snake, and below you is one of those ball enemies. Good thing you can't start this level first. Then you have the level divided into two halves, a top and bottom half, in which you can only get to the top via a gravity pill. Even at the top there are two areas where if you don't do things right, you're stuck in that area.

Skipping over another one like that, we get a reverse gravity level...also like that. This one feels clever because you're doing things in a different way than usual, like using a gravity pill so you don't have to jump over falling spikes or walk above one of those crushers. It's weird how a simple trick like that can improve what would otherwise be an annoying level.

In the upper left corner of the main level, there's a section that you can't get out of. Oddly, these are some of the easier levels in this episode. This is fixed in the HD remake, but that's not the one I own. So instead, they're the ones you'll end the episode on here. Easing one out, which seems to be a theme with Apogee titles so far.

I guess the green planet wasn't a gas giant...

The episode ends with Mylo flying back to the trading post so he can buy himself a solar system. The man Mylo is buying it off of is suspiciously eager to sell it to Mylo, and forces him through the signing of the contract. After he goes off, the star explodes into a nebula. Mylo is ruined...or is he? The text cuts to a few months later where Mylo has built a burger joint. Where two burgers, two fires and two malts costs $60, which isn't too bad considering current inflation. And so, Mylo ends the game in pretty good shape.

Despite some issues, Crystal Caves is a pretty solid game. As the levels go on, there's a real problem where there's a single solution to the level and doing anything else results in death or an unwinnable situation. Some of the ones I didn't mention just fall into this pattern, while others are solid but unremarkable. Bad sticks in your memory more. Most levels are short enough that you can easily just pick up and play a few if you need to pass the time.

As such it falls into that category of game where if you want something meaty, you aren't going to find it here. But in it's goal of being a simple little platformer, it doesn't leave a lot to be desired. With that, let's get to the rating.

Weapons:
I like how the projectile speeds up as it goes on-screen, but ammo feels like busywork and the low-gravity levels are more annoying than a clever trick. 1/10

Enemies:
Could have used more as the game goes on, rather than putting them all in the shareware episode, but there's a nice variety. 5/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Even in the worst case, a level isn't going to take you more than half a hour. Most levels are fun and quick to beat, so the good outweighs the bad. 5/10

Player Agency:
As I said the shoot button, the button to activate switches/levers being the same button is annoying, but it turned out to be because the game exploits that bit to place enemies in places where you can't shoot them because of a lever. Otherwise I only wish you had control over the height of the jump. 6/10

Interactivity:
Not as interesting as Duke, but we still have some minor item messing about compared to your usual game. Not sure I could the oxygen machine you can shoot and kill yourself with as a positive either. 2/10

Atmosphere:
Solid as a sci-fi spoof and as a platformer, but doesn't really stick out in either regard. 4/10

Graphics:
Simple but effective. Most importantly, I can see whoever's doing the animation has improved, Mylo has a lot of neat animations. My least favorite part is actually the big graphics, Mylo always looks weird as opposed to the Duke-esque hero he is in-game. 4/10

Story:
As weird as it is to say, I liked it even if it was basic. I know Mylo's victory is going to be short-lived, but it was nice to see him win if for a moment. 2/10

Sound/Music:
Basic but inoffensive PC Speaker sound effect. 2/10

That's 31, Apogee's best in-house effort yet.

Nothing else, really, to say about this one. As I mentioned, there was a remake a few years back, which also adds in another episode. I imagine what I said about this game will also be true about that one, albeit with nicer graphics.

Apogee would try this style of game one more time with Secret Agent, before going entirely with big levels and usually a Keen-style of graphics. Based on what I've gleamed online, people liked this one, but didn't care for Secret Agent, no doubt an influence in the choice. As to what I'll be covering next, I think I'll take a detour from the finish line of 1992 and play another Tomb Raider mod.

Gunbuster (1992)

Name:Gunbuster AKA Operation Gunbuster
Number:230
Year:1992
Publisher:Taito
Developer:Taito
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:2/5
Time:2 hours 30 minutes
Won:Yes (100W/73L)

An arcade FPS. Not as a metaphor. A FPS on arcade hardware, that plays like one of those computer FPS. Made in Japan even. That's such a winning combination that I assumed going in that there was something wrong with the game. You have this game that does all these important things that anyone should be waving around games media. This isn't the usual ugly things I champion, this is just as attractive as the big boys, yet possibly more advanced. What gives?

Also, I have to point this out, this has nothing to do with the Gunbuster anime. People in Japan just liked naming things Gunbuster. The anime seems to be a space opera, while this is more of a cyberpunk thing. I haven't watched the Gunbuster anime, so I could be mistaken. It'd hardly be the first game to be a weird adaptation.

If you move the cursor too far to the right or left, you get to see the heatmap, then skeleton of the characters. I don't understand the purpose of it.

Once you put your quarters in, you can select one of four characters. Everything seems to be the same for gameplay purposes except the special weapons. We've got four, Mine, Flame, Laser and Spread. Mine is an explosive attack and has the shortest recharge time. Flame also explodes, but leaves fire behind and has a mid-recharge time. Laser shoots through enemies and has the longest recharge time. Spread is basically a shotgun blast. I lean towards Mine and Laser. Mine you can simply pump out fast enough to make up for its lower damage; Laser deals a lot of damage and deals with pesky enemies in front of the boss. Spread is basically unnecessarily in comparison to the others and I didn't see anything Flame had over Mine.
 

Putting "warm up" in quotations makes it sound a lot worse than it probably is supposed to sound.

Before each mission, you get a briefing from a creepy-looking databroker of some sort. He tells you what's about to happen on the stage, though his presence is hardly necessary. The intro text you get during the attract mode informs us that cyborg criminals are ruining the city, so bounties have been offered on them. The player is a bounty hunter.

How polite of an arcade game.

The first stage is simple, get used to the controls while a flying monster rotates around an elevator into nothing you're on. No, seriously, the game is seriously focused on letting you get used to its bizarre controls, which are on original hardware, a joystick and a light gun. Emulated, this is WASD and a mouse. This isn't quite true mouse aiming, but it's close. The light gun controls a cursor, reach the edge and you turn.

Oddly, it's this subtle shift in control that feels off. Most of the other arrow movement with cursor aiming kind of games come off as more smooth experiences. Something about this one seems odder than the more odd titles. I'm going to attribute this to being just close enough to what the usual method is that my brain stops trying to parse it as something different and my desire for a standard modern FPS kicks in. I also noticed that turning is very slow, which may have something to do with my issue. I'm also really not sure how two players was supposed to work out, only one gets control of walking, but turning seems like it could be tricky.

Back to the boss, he shoots flying rockets that you can shoot down, and occasionally pops out a drone you can also shoot down. He is the opposite of complex; If this is new to you he's easy, if you aren't he's a joke. Taito really wasn't screwing around with making this easy for players.

And then we have the second stage. This guy's on a hoverbike, not that you would know it by the way he stays in place waiting for you to catch up. Everyone is actually flying, including the player characters. I don't know why. This level seems designed to help you get used to movement...which is kind of helpful knowing that the game is a bit weird. The boss has one trick up his sleeve though, he drops a set of four mines which you will hit if you don't shoot all four.

I suppose that's one way to put it...

The third stage has a boss which shoots projectiles that you can't shoot, instead, you have to dodge. He just goes around in a figure 8 pattern. There's also a person hiding in the corner and another person who if you get close to, attacks you. Basically just a random jump scare for no apparent reason. There's no explanation for it, they pop up here and in one of the variations on stage four.

It's at this point that the game feels weird. You get a choice of two targets, one cheaper than the other, and usually weaker. This continues on until the final stage. I'm not entirely sure why considering that a complete game of this feels incredibly short. I'm through about a third of the stages of one game, even if the later ones are longer. The difficulty hasn't spiked yet, the closest thing to a problem has been that you can't heal, your health only comes back if you die and put another quarter in.

On each level where minor enemies pop up, there are doors that they come out of, so you're never truly out of them.

I'm going to just mention those that I found interesting. Either way you go off the start, you're going to end up fighting mostly the same boss which now is surrounded by a bunch of little tanks and the occasion other flying dude. This is basically the archetype it settles in for the rest of the game.

The next interesting level is a hoverbike gang. This feels like more effort was put in even if it's basically just a rail shooter stage. You automatically move around in a circle, sometimes in front of the boss, sometimes behind him. In general, you're trying to dodge him and the minor gang members. It sounds simple, but it works a lot better than some of the other stages. Even though I basically demonstrated why I don't like rail shooters...burned up the most coins outside of the final stage.

One stage has two fellow Busters who apparently went all psycho killer and killed someone they shouldn't. Or did they? Since if you shoot them enough they turn into robots. Or are all the Busters cyborgs and nobody knows who is going to kill next? Food for thought. It's actually odd, because outside of them looking like two of your possible characters, they're not that interesting. Other bosses use your special attacks, so that doesn't make them special.

One of the final possible bounties is a guy attacking a cruise ship. At first this is a quite simple level, except that the guy goes under the water occasionally, until he spawns two snake robots. These are annoying, they have hard to dodge shots and fly around in and out of the water. I feel like while I understand most of the rest of the enemies attack patterns, even if I can't avoid them, these feel like you need to work miracles to avoid.

The final stage decides that the best way to make itself harder is to have four bosses. The first you kind of fight two at a time, but in practice they were easily isolated from each other. Owing to the level being designed in such a way that there are sliding walls that divide one boss away from you. Gun one down, then take out the other. Once you do this a third boss pops up, and then random enemies start popping in. You can mitigate this a little by shooting some of the targets around the start, because those are unactivated versions. The boss is basically impossible to dodge...unless you aren't in front of him. I'm not quite sure what his pattern is. Once you take out the third boss, you have to flee the stage to...an elevator downstairs.

Then the game goes weird and the true final boss is a brain in a jar. A jar that shoots out lasers. This guy is a real pain, even after getting used to the rest of it I'm still trying to get past him without putting in a couple of quarters. He stands still at first, shooting out a pattern of laser beams. First, two at your sides, then one towards you. Later on he adds another towards you afterwards. About the same time he starts running after you. And don't think you can dodge them by hiding behind a pillar, there are more cyborgs around and he can shoot over the blocks. There was a process where I was mentally like, oh wow, creepy, then just ignored it. I think I should be acting like this is impressive now, but it just feels like a cool little trick.

Kill him, the place catches on fire and then starts exploding. You automatically start flying away, seeing your guy fly away from the explosions.

And I win. You get a win screen depending on the character. The first time, with the Mine dude, he gives an end speech about how he drinks. Damn, that's hardcore. Takes some balls to end your mindless arcade shooter with something akin to "life sucks and then you die". Others include "I enjoy killing cyborgs", "My revenge is pointless." and "I'm glad to get back to my girlfriend now."

I'm going to repeat a point I made earlier. Every level is basically just you going around in a circle shooting at the boss and his underlings...outside of the first which is the boss going around in a circle and you shooting at him. This connects into an interesting design choice. There's an invisible fog of about 4/5 tiles, can't tell which. If the boss is outside of your vision the game will outright tell you in which direction he's in. It might sound like hand-holding, but you don't really have a chance of finding him otherwise.

While this game is never going to win any awards for graphics, I do like the scope of destruction effects it has. Not just your usual scenery objects, but on enemies themselves. As they get torn apart by your shots, they gradually reveal more of their cyborg skeleton. Sometimes limbs get shot off, which affects their damage output...not always in your favor. Oh, and there was a timer which I guess kills you if it runs out. I never remember it running out.

As I close this out, a thought occurs to me. Three out of the four main characters have an ending that shows as much dissatisfaction with the establishment as with the antagonists. If you believe the level where we fight the crazy Gunbusters, they're cyborgs too. The guy who gives us our contracts is a creepy guy who is hooked into some weird machine. This game might not be treating it's story with much focus, but even so, it does feel like it's asking if what we're doing is truly for the good of the city.

With that, let's get to the rating.

Weapons:
Because you get two weapons per character, the game feels limiting in the moment. It doesn't play out like Hexen, it plays out like a flight sim. And because there are no specific targets like there would be in a flight sim, some weapons are of less utility than others. 2/10

Enemies:
On one hand, there are a number of interesting enemies, on the other, there is a lot of fodder. Sort of balances it all out. 4/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Every level is basically the same and the only real difference is the occasional gimmick fight or switch between rooms. 2/10

Player Agency:
Even in contrast to most early mouse aim games, this is awkward. Because this technically isn't mouse aiming, but a light gun and a joystick. Except that this game uses a specific light gun, there's a second button on the trigger which uses the secondary. Outside of original hardware, you're never seeing that, so awkward mouse aiming it shall likely remain for us who don't have the money and space for a 30-year-old arcade cabinet. 7/10

Interactivity:
There are plenty of destructible objects, but not much else. 2/10

Atmosphere:
This is one of those block-based FPS games where after my session, no matter how I played, I felt like I had been at it for forever. Considering this one is about 30 minutes long, that's impressive. 1/10

Graphics:
Linework is nice, but shading is incredibly simple. Just simple pillow shading. Animation is all but ignored, since the characters are designed in such a way that animation is unnecessary. Oh, and the raycasting is often awkward with scenery objects moving in incredibly illogical ways. 4/10

Story:
I'm probably overthinking it, but there is some ambiguity in an otherwise ignored story. 2/10

Sound/Music:
Nothing objectionable, but none of it is very interesting or meaty. Which might be MAME, since I had to put my speakers at max to hear the game. 4/10

That's 28. On the high end, but I'm satisfied with where it ended up.

It's not really a mystery why this didn't take off. Even if you're just a semi-good light gun player, this isn't going to cost you much more than the $4 I would have spent to beat this. Another $4 to play the other paths and suddenly you've seen all there is to see. This just doesn't have a whole heck of a lot going for it, and judging by its rankings in arcade revenue at the time, most people felt the same way.

Instead, the reason to play it, today at least, is because this game is an incredible oddity. While it suffers from the same design philosophies that made the VOTOMS FPS awful a few years ago, it's still interesting. Mouse aiming almost like what we expect today, on an arcade system. It doesn't matter if it is good or not, what matters is that it did what it did. To give the game a lot of credit, we're still arguing about the Build Engine's implementation of mouse aiming, and that was one of the two engines responsible for bringing it together as we know it.