Game 65: Buggy Blast

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

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

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

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

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