Resident Evil (GBC): Neither Itchy or Tasty

Since last time I used maps to show where I was going, I'll continue again here, but since the in-game ones are of poor quality, I'll instead be linking to Evil Resource's maps for the PSX game. Differences in items I'll mention.

Still on the ground floor, let's go for the "Itchy, Tasty", room located in the central hall on the west side. I'm concerned I won't be able to get anything here, but at least it isn't anything important. Just some ammo. There's no turning around in time to deal with a zombie directly behind me. 

And...uh...well, I feel like this is a damning statement even if this unfinished. The zombie's just already out? Given the way the file system works, it's not like picking it up even does anything. You've already got most of the Itchy, Tasty journal in there, along with a message from a researcher to his girlfriend Alma. Most of it, the last bit's gone. All that creepiness, gone.

One hallway south, and I enter the piano room. It's fine, I guess. The sheet music's on a shelf in the corner. Use it on the piano and the game fades in and out, revealing a passage in the wall. A quick jaunt to an itembox, then to the dining hall to pick up wooden emblem, and the freshly dropped blue jewel. Replace the golden emblem inside the room. Do the reverse in the hallway and the grandfather clock in one corner moves to reveal the Shield key. I briefly looked it up to make sure there was nothing this game was missing, but no, that was always the sequence. I expected the clock to need a specific time, but that is a common puzzle.

I continue on through to the entrance, going first through the door on the northeast side. There's a zombie inside here, easy stuff, but curiously, I didn't find any items. It's perplexing, but most of it was just ammo, which I don't really need, so small loss. Second trip through the southeast hallway gets no zombie dogs either, but judging by the weird scripting going on, I suspect this is just something the game is incapable of dealing with.

Eastern-most door leads to an outdoor herb garden, guarded by two zombies. Probably confusing this with the remake, but I could have sworn there were dogs here. Once again, only one of the herbs gives you herbs, but in this case, it gives me three red herbs? How very generous. I got so confused by this mess that I went to the way to the second house, only to find no dogs there. Well, we're not going to be meeting any until we go outside then.

The gallery puzzle proves to be annoying thanks to something I haven't really mentioned, hotspot trouble. Now, this wasn't enough of a problem in the original that I don't remember any issues off-hand, but here, it's a pretty big issue. You can only turn in about eight or so directions, and where you can pick something up and what your character looks like they can pick up are two different things.

Normally, this hasn't been much of a problem beyond the usual one this game is giving, it's very tedious. Normally. Here, this sort of has an odd effect, because you actually need to use the paintings in sequence. From the cradle to the grave goes the painting that I couldn't activate. Unfortunately, one of the paintings is situated that you can only activate in an odd way. I didn't get it right a couple of times thanks to this, but the crows aren't here, so it doesn't matter. 

I head to the set of bedrooms located above the eastern safe room. There's a zombie, more camera awkwardness, and Barry again. It's another cutscene, where Barry shows Jill the Researcher's Will, the document I mentioned last time. It's the start of the traitor plotline, where we all wonder who could possibly be the traitor. The cutscene is very strange in this version, partially because it doesn't actually show you what is being read. 

This is only the beginning of this screen's awkwardness. There's something in the coat by the door and believe me, this is a pain to get...only its an ink ribbon. Oh, I worried about that? Ha. The second is that there's a hidden item here. At first I thought this was something I needed an item for, but just flip the switch and it reveals some shells. Where it's actually supposed to be grenades. I looked up this room to find out what the note was. Guess I'm not using the Bazooka then.

The other room also has shells, in addition to a red herb and the lighter. Finally. This means I can head all the way to the end to the fireplace and get the second floor map. Since the game is only letting me look through maps I've acquired, it's nice to be reminded of where I'm going...and if you've guessed that it doesn't actually do anything, you've started to figure out that this game isn't playing nice.

I'm going to go ahead to the trickiest crest next. The one guarded by the snake. The entrance here is south on the eastern reverse C-shaped hallway. Richard's in this opening room, the usual conversation about how he found a snake demon and is badly wounded. In this case, it looks like his head has been taken off. The cutscene is weird, because there's no sound except the music, so once again the only indication there's something here is when it actually pops up. A quick jaunt to get the serum and I have the radio.

Before I reach the attic, I need to clear out the two areas before this. Even if there's no point to picking up ammo. First problem, the zombie in the area between Richard and the snake is programmed to come out of the wall. Not literally, this game just has poor design so it only looks that way. Lucky I didn't get killed. Otherwise this area goes as you expect it to. The other room with candle to reveal...shells. I go back to the west safe room, do the blue jewel in the tiger room, and load up on health items. 

I was worried about this fight for a while. The snake is a tricky enemy when you have good agility. Here I feared it might genuinely stop the game. I wouldn't be able to dodge and fight successfully. Not at all. Dude's cute as a button and doesn't even move. Is this what all boss fights are going to be like?

Right, final crest, the one with the push puzzle. The easy puzzle where you push statues over vents. It's just so simple in the original...and yet that simplicity doesn't come over here. I died for the first time, possibly ever, on this puzzle. Between the moving of these objects and how poor you can see some things, I missed one of the vents. A problem that didn't exist in the original.

The four crests are in, still no dogs, and it's time to see what's in the shed. For once, you don't need to push the stairs to get the square crank. There's also another small key. Eh, that just opens ammo caches, I don't need that! I get interrupted in my search by accidentally activating the door out.

Ah, outside. Now we'll fight some dogs. I carefully advance screen by screen only...for nothing to pop up except Brad trying to contact someone to find out what's going on the ground. There's a map of this section and if you guessed it does nothing, you'd be correct. There aren't any herbs either. You know what, I will grab that small key. There's also nothing else from here to the second house. No snakes after you use the crank, no dogs, not even any herbs. Just emptiness. Also, that crank is a pain in the butt to use. Hotspots in this game continue to be terrible.

The guardhouse starts off uncomfortably empty. There are no blue herbs here. Which I hope means there is no poison. Really hope that. In the meantime, these areas are surprisingly empty of anything unrelated to advancing the game. Sure, there are still zombies, but seemingly no wasps or anything else. The traitor plots advances as we find Barry talking to someone over the kidnapping of his family, but at this point, everything seems pointless but seeing what little remains of the game.

Downstairs is surprisingly mundane. There's just one block to push, and there are no sharks in the water. The water doesn't even really exist as a thing, just as another visual. I'm not doing the whole V-Jolt thing, so the meeting room is pointless, but oddly enough, trying to enter the room next to the control room is a problem. Moreso because keys tend to just disappear when they should be used...except here it does it and now I can't enter anywhere.

After reloading, I get the third key inside the armory and head for the third dormitory. Red book in the place where the white book was. I did not forget where that was, no siree. As you might expect, Plant 42 is disappointing. There are many disjointed angles and I'm not sure that shooting it is doing anything. Probably because if I touch it nothing happens. It's just...there. The key is in the fireplace as usual, and now it's time to find out if there are Hunters.

First though, there's a conversation with Wesker in which he deflects concerns about his disappearance and tells Jill to go to the other house. Presumably, that part didn't get put in despite the game being otherwise perfect at depicting the text of a cutscene. There's also Brad asking for a sign on the radio when I'm outside, since the radio Jill has can't send messages.

Back in the mansion, I walk through the opening hallways with tension. There will be no cutscene of course, but if something happens, something will at least appear on-screen. I make it to the room off to the side. There's the usual, magnum rounds which look suspiciously like grenade rounds, and the second doom book. I enter the room outside the save room, only to encounter nothing. There's nothing here. They only programmed in zombies.

Most of the rooms opened by the Helmet key have no point now. There's a herb in the room off to the center of the entrance, but otherwise, it's straight to the second fight with the snake. Who has the AI of a zombie. Eventually I manage to break away and start unloading...and he dies in four shotgun blasts. It's not obvious where the place to go next is, because nothing changes after he pops up.

Randomly pressing A around the area that the hole should have appeared when the snake popped up eventually gets me to the hidden grave. Which doesn't have Barry appear, for some reason. Instead, you just walk over to the grave, the rope has appeared, then walk back and Barry does his apology speech. What, is waiting too difficult for these people to program in? You can't do anything inside the grave besides this, and the game doesn't give you the passcode. Instead, you just have to guess that. Or look it up.

The passcode opens a door on the second floor, one which has more zombies and originally had some blue herbs...and still does despite there being no poison enemies in the game. This area is pretty much the same as it was in the original. Just the puzzle with the statue is simplified owing to how the game can't let you push something in more than one direction. I come out of it with the MO disk along with the battery for the second elevator. Which means I can reach the area hidden by the waterfall back outside.

Underground has no Hunters, no boulders and no Barry. We still have Enrico...at which point Barry shows up. He explains the whole traitor plot, and as he starts to explain that Umbrella caused all this, he gets shot. By someone. Could be Barry, could be Jill, really, nobody knows with this engine's cutscenes. He gets shot so hard his corpse disappears and so does Barry. Hex crank shows up where the mysterious assassin is, and a janky action later, I can go through the rest of the caverns.

The only thing that pops up is the spider room. No spiders, but the door is still webbed and thankfully, there's a combat knife here. I drop it off in the safe room a bit down. I've nearly filled the item box, so that's nice. I have actually been ignoring some items for a while, since it isn't like I'll need a clip/magazine or magnum rounds...ever. The rest goes pretty much as you would expect this would go, janky, simplified versions of already simple puzzles, and I have the two medals for the fountain and the second MO disk.

The lab is somehow both completely intact and quite a bit broken. Enemies in the main corridor are less in number, and sometimes are beyond the planes of existence. The game simply isn't capable of showing four enemies on-screen at a time. They managed to bring in the whole computer password puzzle.

There are none of the Chimeras around, so putting in the power is easy. Getting the passcodes is trickier, hotspots in this game are trash. This brings us to Wesker and the revelation that he's the traitor. The game keeps cutting to a strange, broken image for some reason while this dramatic cutscene happens. I will say that having this all in text form does reveal how some of the weirdness of the game's dialog is down to the voice acting, but a lot of it is just very strange writing.

The cutscene stops and I'm moved inside the Tyrant room. The Tyrant is just there, in front of the tube. The only reason why he's the Tyrant is because of context, otherwise he's just a black creature which turns into noise if you shoot him. Four shots, like everything else. At this point, a cutscene is supposed to show up. It doesn't. So I look around for about five minutes, trying to find a key, only to get nothing. This is as good a place as any to end.

This Session: 3 hours 30 minutes

Final Time: 4 hours 15 minutes

Normally, I would summarize my thoughts in a separate entry, but I don't feel like this deserves a rating. Yes, it's bad, a terrible adaptation and the ilk, but what annoys me most of all is how they've done so much and so little. Reading up on the production, I got the impression this was nearly finished. It...it isn't. What is here hasn't really been through any kind of quality testing.

As a tech demo, this is impressive, however, I feel like this should have led into something original rather than attempt a 1-to-1 remake of the PSX game. It's very impressive, yes, but there's a lot that the PSX version has that a GBC game simply will never be able to do. I'm not talking about voice acting, there's simply so much in the cutscenes that can't be done here.

I could talk endlessly about how the game fails, but I think that's worth talking less compared to what this game is actually a useful example of. How any game can go wrong if certain factors are changed. More importantly, how some games are simply doomed due to the scope of what they're trying to do and the limitations of what they can do.

Next time, something from 1984.

Resident Evil (GBC): Introduction

I'm fascinated by the concept of demakes, versions of modern games intended to look like older titles. Making games which change more modern concepts into older frameworks and often graphical designs. To a certain extent, it's an independant developer shamelessly stealing the popularity of something else to further his own. The inevitable DMCA is hardly shocking. It's playing with fire and then expecting to not get burned.

Resident Evil on Gameboy Color is sort of a strange predecessor to this genre of games. It's the Playstation classic, now on a portable system. It's entirely official, which I'm pretty sure has never happened since, and it wasn't really intended as a demake. It's just one of those ports to a system that shouldn't really have it. Kind of like Resident Evil 2 on the Game.com. It doesn't matter what it plays like, what matters is that it is a port to the system.

Except it was never released for reasons that seem to make sense. Let's make an original game for the system, and thus Gaiden was born. Except this wasn't just weighing two different prototypes. Even back in the day when we just had earlier versions, this game went pretty far in the game, as far as the Lab, so I've read. This is a recent leak of what was one of the final revisions, and it's just missing beta testing, you can get to the end and everything. I don't understand why you would go through the more expensive part of developing a game and then flake out on actually selling it.

I'm unable to use my usual emulator, which is the multi-system Mednaffe. Instead, I'm using Sameboy. Which I'm going to say that while I hate looking a gift horse in the mouth, unpaid labor for allowing me to play a game that by all accounts, I shouldn't be able to, but would it kill someone to include an in-emulator screenshot function? There's all this complicated stuff to decide how you want to emulate the system, but nothing for making a simple screenshot?

Asides over, time to get to the game. After a series of company logos we get a bit-crushed voice saying Resident Evil. Less the creepy intro of the console games and more a bored man in accounting. That eye's kind of creepy. If I wait on the title screen, it cycles through a bunch of game backgrounds, promising scenes straight from the end of the game. They're quite variable in design, some being simple with very little dithering, others being obvious Game Boy-ized versions of the PSX backgrounds. 

There's the usual choice, with these screens obviously being copies of the PSX shots. I'll be playing as Jill, as I normally do.

 

The game removes the intro cinematic and instead just shows the intro...narration? I don't quite remember how it went, but we get the classic opening dialog. They barely made it to the mansion past the dogs, and Jill is worried about Chris. You can almost hear the classic voices saying the dialog. It's odd hearing it in dead silence, except for when a gunshot (or what passes for one on this sound system.) attracts our heroes attention.

There are also the door animations. Because the GBC comes off as a portable NES, this feels somewhat Sweet Home-ish. Somewhat.

First impressions, the graphics look odd and the music feels like it should be in a Castlevania game. Because the GBC has only four buttons the controls of the game suffer. Start pauses, total pause, select opens the item screen. The D-pad moves, tank controls, A is activate and B holds up your current weapon. A then shoots. There is no quick turn, but you can run by going forward and holding B. Turning speed is horrifically bad, but walking is good enough. 

It's obvious from the get-go that the game is a bit different than what I was expecting. Okay, maybe it's been too long since I last played the game, but I'm pretty sure there was a big table here, as Barry says, this is the dining room, and windows. There's the clock and there's a vase with nothing inside it. Wasn't there an ink ribbon here? I feel like I'm missing a lot of stuff here.

The inventory has what I expect it to, a gun, a knife and a first aid spray. The first problem is that I don't know how many bullets are in the gun. The second is that if I use the file function, I get most of the game's files. Some of the cracks are already starting to appear. What's worse is that while I was testing the gun seemed to have infinite ammo. I'll try to use the knife anyway, since I'm man enough for it. 

Barry is doing his usual "I hope this isn't Chris's blood" schtick on the other side of the room. At this point, I feel compelled to say that the font in this game is terrible. In a random sentence I wouldn't know if the small g is supposed to be a b. It's not really creepy and it doesn't add to the atmosphere, so I don't understand it. Also, the second I move around, Barry disappears.

The first zombie just gives you this image when you approach. Which is...eugh. Somehow it manages to keep the nastiness of the guy. That, or I'm attributing some of the nastiness of Return of the Living Dead to this guy. Since that film does have a few notable bald zombies and it's very likely these original developers saw that film.

Combat is crap. Because you move slower, it's easy for this guy to grab onto you, and you can't actually go too far or he gets loaded out of memory and doesn't move. Also, when you kill them, they just fall on their knees. Which is something that definitely could not be exploited to make suggestive screenshots and I would never do something like that. There's a magazine on Kenneth's corpse.

I return to Barry, and the usual cutscene plays. Jill panics, the zombie walks in and Barry blasts him. Three bullets! Did I misremember the original? That's a lot from a magnum. They decide to return to Wesker. Which I have to walk to manually.

They call out for Wesker, but get no answer. Barry tells Jill to search for him, but not to leave the hallway. This, oddly, is automated. They try to figure out what's going on here, and he says we should split up and search for our compatriots. He hands Jill the lockpick, and says to search just the first floor. Later, we should meet back up here.

Before I continue on, I decide to check the nearby typewriter. It has an ink ribbon, but like the gun and magazine, it has no item count on it. I should check the save system anyway. There's an "interrupt" save system, where if you turn off the machine while on it, it allows you to continue from there. Which feels like it's very impressive coding, all things considered.

In the next room is a map. The usual one. Gotta say, pushing in this version is terrible. Slowly walk against it and something slowly moves. This won't be annoying later. You can see this room is taking the heavily dithered approach. I suspect characters aren't for simple ease of animation.

Also, this map system is not intuitive. You have to press buttons without any idea that you're even getting anything. You don't even get a map if you don't find it, either. I had no map until now. Not sure if they would have fixed this or if this little tidbit of knowledge would be in the manual, but either way we're not getting squat.

Right, time to deal with that one zombie in the little hallway here. Once again, he only exists in his little corner of the world and...oh, I can't get away from him. I'm stuck in an endless loop.

I'm dead. This is making me feel a lot better about having infinite ammo when the enemies can just stunlock you. I try again, only to end up with Jill facing away from the zombie and she isn't turning around in time. Okay, if I don't clean out this room, I won't have a chance later on against the real threats. And I get him...once he gets stuck on the wall. This is a really bad sign. Which brings us to the next room. Yeugh...

The hallway with the dogs. They're going to jump out and I'm going to be screwed. How the hell can I even begin to fight something with completely superior speed and agility? The answer is...uh...we don't know yet. The dogs don't jump in through the window. It's possible they jumped in behind me and there was no sound effect, but once I made it around the corner I didn't really stop to check.

There are no zombies in the hallway past this...which isn't suspicious at all. Nor is there anything in the bathroom near here. Which makes me think they either didn't put as much in this game as they should have or they're intentionally gaslighting the player. Either way, I'm just going to be grateful when I have the shotgun or the grenade launcher.

Speaking of which, the shotgun should be an easy acquisition. Should be, we all should know how to get it quickly. There's nothing else in there, though the walkable areas for where Jill can go seem to be improperly done, so Jill sometimes seems like she's walking on air, considering what she can go on. The shotgun is still there, albeit very ugly. 

The cutscene where Barry gets you out of the trap is odd, you don't get to see the ceiling descend, it's just Jill yelling while Barry knocks from the outside. He...opens the door somehow and then Jill pops out of the area. Barry is nowhere to be seen. Well, I'm still not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

There's something odd about the shotgun. Besides the infinite ammo. Perhaps it's because I'm not using it from an optimal distance, or perhaps it's this version, but zombies are taking three shots from it to take out. In the PSX version, if I were ever using the shotgun against a zombie, I'd wait until he's close, but since that's suicide here, I'm using it from a distance.

I clear out the whole hallways, each zombie gets three or four shells. The sort of thing that would be horrifying if I weren't playing a game which was broken. So broken that sometimes the hostile AI doesn't activate, and the zombies just hang there, like actors who have missed their cue. Barry isn't back in the center of the hallway, but the doorway to Forest's corpse is open.
 

Curiously, there's a desk key here. Which should be the least of my troubles, but I guess certain items are being improperly loaded. Hopefully Chris won't have any trouble. Barry gives us Forest's grenade launcher, which for once doesn't have any ammo. Perhaps the game might have some balance to it after all. Yeah, right. 

 

As I make my way through to the western most hallway on the second floor, dropping the statue down to the dining room, I realize something about the way the game works. It's the pathfinding that's screwing over the zombies. Sometimes they just plain can't figure out how to get to you even when it should be obvious. Not going to complain. When I finally make my way down to the western safe room, I find out that the game doesn't check for ink ribbons when you save.

Since I picked up the chemicals from the east safe room I can use them on this plant thing in the fountain on the room at the far end of the central western hall on the first floor. Which works wonderfully, except that items seem to be missing here. There are two red herbs, but aren't there more here? Wasn't there an item here? After the game crashes and I have to do this entire corridor again, I find the Armor Key.

I double back to the room in the same corridor as the western safe room, because why not? I pick up a clip for no reason and then try the desk...which is locked...and Jill isn't just opening it. I grab the key from the item box, confirming the worst. Jill isn't quite working like she should. This nets me some shells, useful in case the shotgun suddenly runs dry.

I'm going to leave here, a lot of strange and unusual things are happening in this version and this is not quite what I was expecting. It's not just what I've said so far. Remember the red herbs? I tried to combine them with a green herb I had left over, doesn't do anything. Instead it functions as a flat full heal. Things are going to become very odd as things move along.

This Session: 1 hour 50 minutes

Electro Man (1992)

Name:Electro Man AKA Electro Body
Number:256
Year:1992
Publisher:Epic MegaGames
Developer:xLand
Genre:Side-Scroller
Difficulty:5/5
Time:5 hours 40 minutes
Won:Yes (115W/83L)

Electro Man is another of those strange shareware games that I remember playing as a kid before not really getting far and deciding something else was worth my time. At the time, it felt like one of Epic's worse entries. Of course, this was in the days when I didn't quite understand that these companies weren't just doing it all in-house outside of ID. No, Epic was publishing games they got from people all across the world. In this case, a Polish game.

Polish video games are weird to me. Not necessarily because of anything to do with them but how I see them. I didn't think of CD Projekt Red and I didn't even realize Blooper Team was Polish. Instead I just thought of very late Atari 8-bit computer games and assumed there was some game from the '00s I had forgotten which was vaguely of an eastern European flavor. I mean, there probably is, but that's not important.

It makes sense to me that a shareware game could hide it's origins like this. It also doesn't surprise me that it was beloved in its native country. This doesn't change how I'm a bit reluctant to play this game. In ye olden times, I didn't make it very far and thought it wasn't very good. It didn't help that because it had two names it tended to show up twice on some shareware disks. 

After we get a rocking tune on the title, the game begins. An echoy Christopher Lee-type says "We have to be careful, this is an emergency area". Not sure why, but that's probably something I should be doing anywhere. Not sure why the PC is such a blatant rip-off of Robocop, but that's a bit of a theme. Controls are simple, left and right arrows move, up jumps and down uses teleporters. The numpad is appreciated, because home and page up jump to left and right. You don't need these, but they are helpful. There is no air control.

The gun is weird. You shoot it with space, there's no aiming beyond left/right. It needs battery power, but it's closer to a weapon which overheats. As you get more batteries, it does more damage, before eventually starting to cut through everything on-screen. Oddly, some settings are less useful than others. The one that cuts through everything is the second highest power. The highest is just a wave that stops when it hits something. 

Screens are all flip-screen, much like an 8-bit computer game. There are three important things on-screen, assuming the flashing object didn't screw me. The battery is for your gun, activated with space, more batteries means more power to your gun. There's no ammo, fire too much and it overheats. The thing with the arrow over it is a teleporter. The phonebox is...something you have to shoot, as far as I can tell.

You can shoot some scenery objects. Some, like what appear to be videophones, which attract the eye. Others seem to be bits of the background. No matter what they are, there seems to be little point to doing so, outside of wasting ammo. Some of them will tell you in which direction you need to go...or they may tell you where another battery is.

What makes Electro Man hard is that your guy dies in one hit. Just if he touches most enemies or gets shot. He can fall for a thousand feet and be fine, touch a little guy who looks like the mech from Robocop, and dead. You respawn at the nearest respawn point and all your progress since last touching it is gone. Really, the only thing that truly carries over is general location and what key cards you've picked up. If you save your game, F2, and then reload after quitting, F3 at the start screen, only this is saved. 

There might be another name for them, but these are keycards. You need to get three of them to win the level. Otherwise, when you reach the end of the level, you're going to be stuck. There's no real going back once you've reached a certain point, so don't go downwards without making sure you've got nothing of value left on that floor. Because of the save system, you can very easily screw yourself, so this should not be considered an idle point.

The first level, once you read the manual, does a good job of introducing all the factors in the game. Once you've read the manual, without understanding the save system, it's pointless. Mechanics are done simply, here's how to get used to the teleporters, how to jump around, and here's something safe to shoot. 

The first level has two types of enemies to start with. Two-legged mechs which walk across the screen with variable speeds and occasionally shoot a shot. Not at you, just a shot randomly. They die in one hit or you could just jump over them if the fancy takes you. The others are turrets, they too, randomly shoot, which is unfortunate, because these tend to be ones that you can't always shoot back. That said, you do get some leeway once they've made a shot.

There's a third enemy near the end. Moving turrets. They go across rails...and actually they're not much worse than the regular turrets despite the change. I went across a screen full of them and wasn't in danger.

Despite being 1992, on DOS, this feels very much like an '80s microcomputer game. It's not really a game of skill as much as memorization. Remember where this is, jump over this, do these things in this order. Skill is involved to a certain degree, but mostly, you just do things as you remember them.

You're not doing every level from scratch, these are checkpoints. The problem then lies in how these checkpoints eat up all your batteries. That means that every time you pass a checkpoint, every battery you have just disappears. The game thus encourages you to take out enemies, even if they seem irrelevant. Because you might just have to go back across an area you've already been through, now without any weapons.

It should also be pointed out that these are big levels. You don't really move around swiftly, so it's probably "only" something like 50 screens a level. Individual screens might not be that tough, but combined they can get quite tense.
 

Level 2, when I finally got there, starts getting annoying. Starting off is a significant chunk of level where you just avoid things like mines and slowly appearing and disappearing barriers. The latter are very annoying because you have just enough time to get through. There's a lot of just hoping you get enough right to make it on through here, very tense, but also very annoying.

Let me tell you, the game gets absolutely every single variation they can out of these two components, combined with the mechs from the last level and sometimes a new, horizontal turret. Though the latter two are nothing compared to the variations the first two can get up to. Having to time a jump up is easy compared to timing your jump past a barrier and a landmine next to each other. In both configurations.

Then, the game sees fit to put a teleporter maze in front of you. You've never been able to tell where a teleporter goes before, but this section makes sure to make you suffer for not knowing it. The last bit is especially annoying, because after making a leap of faith jump into what might be nothing, you are forced between two choices. One leads back to the start, the other leads forward...to another teleporter maze. I have not seen a single card yet and I'm starting to get worried I've screwed myself along the line.

The final section at least, does have all three keycards, but there's a worrying trend here. The screen right of the checkpoint needs to be jumped into, or you step on a landmine, and there's already weird multiple screen jumps going on. This is the second level, if it's this bad now, what's next?

Level 3 is an office. Gotta say, very nice visual design here. Doesn't distract me from how odd the level design is. If you go down, there's nowhere you can go. It's even worse because if you do go down there, it teases you with a battery that you can't get. Once you're in there you need to kill yourself by jumping on a barrel with a glowing top. I didn't realize any of this at first, I went the other way and found out after doing some risky stuff that the barrels were deadly. Some of these plants look dangerous, and I can walk past them.

And this is not necessarily a problem limited to optional ways to get screwed. Certain sections of the game have areas which are blocked off by glowing barrels at the top and at the bottom. Some of these are your only way out and I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to get past them. One of the keycards is before this area, and naturally there's checkpoint afterwards. Unfortunately, wherever I go, I'm going to have to come back. This is where the exit is. 

There is a map, at least, in the game world. If it's correct, I've gotten the one in section A and the other two are in section C and D. I just need to go over a lot of glowing barrels. And ceiling tiles that fall down. At least I'm getting an idea of how possible it should be to get past barrels on both the ground and the ceiling. Not at all, even with my character's generously small hitbox. I think it's as wide as his legs are, which considering how tedious this game is otherwise, is a nice touch.

Seriously, you don't want to know how many times it took me to make it through the one corridor from section A to section B. At least the teleporter maze that is the next section didn't kill me. The difficulty is less actually difficult bits and more tedium. Find out the right way through and hope you don't do what you've already figured out wrong. Now onto section C and the second keycard and...

Oh...no. I've been dreading this. Your character's jump arc is a U-shape, so in theory it should be possible to get past this. I try a few times, but keep hitting the ceiling barrel. But the last section had a ton of batteries, enough for the wide shot. That got me to thinking, is that the intended method of progression to get through here? I spent more time than I'd have liked getting all six, to find out that this is in fact the answer. You can shoot land mines with the wide shot. Designing your game around an inability to include a crouch button.

After a considerable amount of tries, I finally make it to level 4. This does not feel like level 4. You have not known suffering until you have reached this level. This introduces a few new components, barriers which kill you if they aren't green or yellow shifting to red, and crushers. The problem isn't these new components, it's that they're used in a section which has zero batteries, quite a few mechs, and if you mess up once, it's back to the start.

At this point, leaps of faith to someplace off-screen isn't even a dirty trick, it's just another way of getting through the level. You've just gotta do it. Better hope that it leads to somewhere else, as opposed to killing you. The number of times you can actually foresee this and avoid it is very small.

This is a very confusing level. To the point that even after a long and tedious series of jumps and crushers, I still didn't know if I was heading the right way or going for a red herring. Is this respawn point a genuine help or is it just going to put me in a situation where I'll have to deal with worse going back than I did going in?

One of the keycards on this level is behind a mess of green floating windows. And mess is the right word, you've got to shoot through dozens of them. It's odd, because while it isn't exactly fun, it does feel like a welcome reprieve after the mess I went through to get there. It might just be because after so much that tested my limits, something this easy feels a lot better than it would in a normal game.

Somehow, I'm only halfway through the game, and Level 5 continues the game. Somehow there is more to it, and it doesn't just feel tacked on. It's just an easier level, like someone throwing softballs at you after shooting a 50 cal machine gun at you for twelve minutes. There are just electrified floors and some barriers. The first keycard is just a few screens to the right. Which would be pretty bad if you didn't go that way first.

To a certain extent, this is a bit of playing dead. This level is a full-blown teleporter maze. There are about four different variations of the same screens, and each teleporter takes you to a different variation. The thing is, these variations keep the keycards in the same place. I think, there are more than three keycards around, because I had three when there were still some around. One is obviously in an unreachable location if you take the minimal amount of teleporters to go through the level.

The game also throws in enemies which are either invulnerable to your shots or just invulnerable to weaker shots. As per usual, it's easier to just walk around them rather than figure them out. I imagine later these will be trouble. For now, they're just a moving obstacle.

Level 6 is interesting. It follows on the same principles as Level 4, but on a more manageable level. I'm not dealing with quite as much difficulty, though the game does throw out blocks which appear and disappear. You'd think these were those disappearing and reappearing platforms, but they kill you instead. As per usual, I wander around, trying to figure out what's going on, until...

I fell to a place full of those barrels. This is a trap. A trap I fell for completely. The glowing red things are landmines. If I jump left I land on one, if I jump right I land on one, if I fall to the right I land on one. So...I can use cheats or restart the level. Which I didn't actually realize I could do until after figuring out the cheat codes. It does take considerable wind out of my sails though.

Remember how I said it was more manageable? I didn't yet look at a map. There hasn't really been one of these since level 3 or so, and yet here it is. In all its horrific glory. This just tells you where they are, even if there are usually teleports to the floors above a pathway up. It's how you get here to begin with.

The keycard on the lower left is the easiest. Getting it at least. You just need to make a careful jump from above it onto a platform one screen below the keycard. Oh, there's a respawn point left of here, I'll use it...and I've just screwed myself. Remember saving and respawn points are different. Now I have to go through a gauntlet of invulnerable enemies and barriers.

Only...the way out is through the lower left side of the screen. This is the only way up, the far right is a trap and there's no up from the keycard. If you accidentally save down here, it's going to be a while before you get back out.

The second keycard is easier, because it's "just" a matter of going past the very swiftly firing laser beam barriers to reach it. There's a bit of trickery once you reach the teleporters up, they take you farther than most others do, now that leaves the final one in the upper left.

The third one, thankfully, wasn't that difficult. Naturally, you have to go from farther to the right, then stay on top until you reach the upper left. The game fakes out a path on the left, but of course, it's a fake. Oddly, I had to use the level skip code, going through the exit just caused the level to repeat.

Level 7 turns into a far more normal level. That is, we're just getting more normal hazards, landmines, turrets you can destroy and regular mechs. No mazes, if you go the wrong way, you'll end up at somewhere with no exit and the option to jump on a landmine. It's still not easy, but at least it's difficult in reasonable ways rather than a confusing mess of stuff you're lucky to ever get out of.

That said, it exploits the hell out of parts of the screen you might assume are just part of the scenery, but actually lead to massive chunks of the level. Or in one extreme case, to the end of the level. At least by that time, I already had three of the four keycards.

Level 8 just outright flips off the player. A long line of jumps with these strange turrets, which shoot slow missiles. Though, by this time, you're probably used to this enough that you just sigh and go through it anyway. There's no finding keycards, they're just in your path. This is all the mercy you're getting. Because every new screen comes with it new and horrible challenges that it's entirely possible that you've already made too difficult by just standing around.

There are lots of little bits of crap throughout the level. My personal favorites were the times you had to jump up from the edge of a platform to reach the next platform because if you jump like you think you should, you fall down onto the bottom of the screen and die. Oh, and the game really isn't built for this kind of jump, so enjoy dying a lot. Too many screens involved this at some point. The absolute worst though, is this one. You're right on a respawn point, every should be fine, right? No, you have to time your jump so you land while the pillars just land, then jump again before they pop out to reach the exit. I died a lot despite using the invulnerability cheat half the time to prevent myself from tearing my hair out.

The final part of this level, the stretch to the level exit, is probably something I should have done without cheats, but at this point, I just wanted it to be over. It's a whole lot of just going through bits in the shots of turrets you can't destroy with the occasion hunt for a battery because now that's a precious resource. 

The game ends with the player being declared an invulnerable space hero. I know ending screens like this get some decent jokes about them, but I think it's fitting. Even if the game managed to fit all of Citizen Kane on a small floppy, it wouldn't be a worthwhile ending. No ending cinematic is worth that effort. Ending a game with a screen effectively saying that everyone who would try to fight you is now going to run away, screaming in terror? That's fitting, because only a madman would do so.

Weapons:
I enjoy the way the game makes it so that once you get two batteries, each improvement has its own advantage that you could use in some situations. Even if it would be better to just let them be their own options. 2

Enemies:
Basically props that you have to avoid and move around. 2

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Some levels are reasonable. Some are obtuse mazes no sane person would want to deal with. And the last one is...not fun. 3

Player Agency:
A lack of an use key hurts this game. You're basically a stiff block who jumps around in a strange arc. What's worse is that while this wouldn't be bad if the game were built around it, it isn't. It's built around you being able to stand precisely on some point at the edge of a block and jump over an otherwise impassable area. 4

Interactivity:
You can shoot a lot of random parts of the background. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. 1

Atmosphere:
This game seems to set itself up as a quite mundane experience, before sort of abandoning any pretense of being anything more than a collection of strange places and experience. 2

Graphics:
Nice-looking and nicely animated. Our protagonist almost has as many frames as a cinematic platformer hero, and enemies have a similar level of animation. That said, there's not as much variety in a single level's tileset, so a new level usually feels a lot better than it should on first glance. 4

Story:
What's going on in this strange game world? Why am I going through emergency areas with some Robocop-looking dude? Why are these levels done in the order they're done? Why is the last level on a random planet? 0

Sound/Music:
Everything, including your footsteps, is peppered with effective sounds. From your gun, to an enemy about to fire, everything has its own unique sound. While I wish there was in-level music, it does mean that you can more easily hear the sound of an enemy firing. 5

That's 23, which is quite fitting considering my initial reaction to the game so long ago. It's the kind of score I'd expect a shareware title that both Epic and Apogee rejected for being ass.

Curiously, reviews are pretty bad. And these are mostly Polish, with some German. Guess us Americans aren't made of stern enough stuff to play through this one. Considering that even the Poles aren't giving this above 7s, I suspect some of this good reputation came in retrospect rather than in truth.

I also note that so far, Epic is developing a bit of a theme as a publisher. That theme being DOS games which feel an awful lot like Amiga games. This one in particular feels like it could easily be one of the weirder Amiga games with the strange use of sound and the interesting music...when it shows up.

xLand, the team behind this, did two other games which Epic published, Heartlight and Robbo, which are Boulder Dash-clones. I think I've played Heartlight, but I may be confusing it with Hero's Hearts, which is also a sort of Boulder Dash-clone, but only in the puzzle game sense. The same general team would also form Chaos Works, who may show up here.

That said, while looking up the people behind this, I found something amusing. My point of reference for Polish games are those odd late-Atari 8-bit games and CD Projekt Red titles. So, the two primary developers, Janusz Pelc and Maciej Miąsik, worked on titles in those respective places. I feel like this is like me playing Skyroads, bringing up Disco Elysium because both games are Estonian, and then finding out that one of the people behind Skyroads worked on Disco Elysium. Sometimes, the world is a smaller place than you think it is.

Next time, the Gameboy Color version of Resident Evil.