Gemstone Warrior (1984)

Name:Gemstone Warrior
Number:203
Year:1984
Publisher:SSI
Developer:Paradigm Creators
Genre:Top-Down Shooter
Difficulty:4/5
Time:3 hours
Won:Yes (82W/65L)

SSI was one of those early institutions of gaming that history has forgotten about. Known primarily as a publisher of wargames/strategy games back in the day, today more as a footnote in the history of Dungeons and Dragons, as the first proper adapters of the pen and paper RPG to gaming. The first official adapters.

As such a lot of the games they released aren't ones I talk about. I'm sure most of you have already read The CRPG Addict's coverage on their pre-D&D RPGs, some of which were interesting. Some of you haven't seen The Wargaming Scribe's coverage on their far more numerous and important games, like ones involving Hitler and Hirohito. Kidding, kidding, they released plenty of non-WWII strategy games, including a non-DnD fantasy wargame.

It was pure happenstance that SSI published Gemstone Warrior. The original company who were going to publish it, Sydney Developments, apparently had a relationship with SSI, and finding the contract with Paradigm Developments unsatisfactory, bought it out, at which point SSI scooped it up. Both actions very indicative of the early software era that Gemstone Warrior was made in, either on it's own would seem utterly bizarre today, both would practically be impossible.

Released on Apple II originally, then ported to Atari 800, Commodore 64, and Macintosh. Then sort of remade for Japanese audiences which I'll get to in it's own entry. Probably. It's probably janky in the usual way. The Atari 800 version is roughly similar to the Apple II, the C64 has some problems. I'm playing the hard to find Atari 800 version, but at one point I tried the other two basic options. Both were plagued by their own issues and this is the version I found the best.

The story is, in the beginning, the gods created the heavens, the earth and the underworld. The inhabitants of these places, including man and the evil demons; and the Gemstone, which intensified the Earth's natural magic, given to man. Things went well, but the demons were jealous. So they made a volcano from which they went out into the world to ruin everything for man. The powers of the Gemstone forced the demons back. So they gathered their forces and went after it, succeeding.

Chaos ensued, ills of every sort happened, magic became rare. Unfortunately for the demons, man's loss was not their gain, because the gods made it so only man can use the Gemstone. So they broke it up into 5 pieces and hid it in their lair. They went after the last sources of magic and now man was nearly gone.
Enter the player, you have to find your way into their lair, get the pieces of the Gemstone and return it to the temple. No pressure.

The controls are quite complex. More complex than I was expecting. This isn't some simple joystick game, this needs the keyboard. A double-edged sword, of course. Now, I'm doing a sort of weird hybrid, the movement is done via "joystick", while the rest is done via keyboard. It doesn't matter what you use for movement, it's simple tile-based stuff.

Moving is decent for such a system. Not great. You get some decent momentum buildup. If you really need to move quickly, you can press enter to switch to run mode, just move in a direction and that's where you move until you run into something or press another direction. To stop you press return again.

Then we have the items. You can find chests, dead enemies and various other objects in the game world. S searches, while space "search/take", but given that most items seem to be useful there's no point not to. I & O cycle through items, p places them, u uses them. I'll get to those in a moment.

Your basic weapons are a crossbow and a fireball/"bolt" attack. No melee. You get a weird selection of keys. F fires where you're facing. R & G fire along your front diagonals...but so do W & V. Why two buttons needed to do the same thing is beyond me. C switches between the two. The fireballs explode.

Each game starts with the player going past a temple, the same one they return the treasures to. Then you enter the main playing area in a safe section, allowing you to test out the game's controls to your heart's content. Once you leave, the timer starts. For the bonus.

Doors separate each individual area, you can go back at any time, not that you want to, and you walk into them. Waiting for them to open, then you make sure to push into the door, and you advance. There are a couple of annoying things about these doors. There are several designs, which open upwards, a passage between it. These are randomly placed, so you might be walking into the door one time, and walking between the doors the next. It's unnecessarily precise.

Getting into combat, the controls are playable, but unmistakeningly have that whiff of early '80s microcomputer jank. Movement is stiff. You switch between running and walking so you don't have to hold down the joystick for a minute, which an acceptable compromise for a game trying to be more than it can be. You can turn with a short push of the joystick in one direction, too short and nothing happens, too long and you move in that direction. Not great when you're trying to kill a blob of something evil.

Fighting back is interesting. While I played on beginner, the amount of time I spent in normal was much the same. Attacking is only done through some special items and your crossbow/fireball attack. Fireballs are rarer and destroy corpses, not something you really want to be using against a random skeleton or even a blob of something evil.

I have no complaints, well, beyond how nice it would have been to shoot in all four directions at once. Diagonal is tricky, since it's more of a front diagonal than a true diagonal, slightly offset in front of you. Aiming might be a problem, but when it comes to shooting things, it is quite simple. Firing rate quite cleverly gets around its jankiness. The action stops for your arrow, but the effect is so subtle I didn't notice it for a while.

Enemies are very diverse in their looks but mostly function the same. Big enemies, about the player's size, walk towards you. Some poison you, some pop out of coffins. Smaller enemies sometimes go towards the player, sometimes wander around. You get variations which explode and some which steal your items. Thankfully the latter have said items on their corpse. Enemies take a variable amount of crossbow bolts to kill, 1-4.

Now, this would be your typical high end selection of enemies from the era if it weren't for one thing. Sound. It's your typical blips and boops, except for one factor. Enemy movement sounds occur depending on where they are and how many there are. I want to call this environmental sound, but I think the actual term is dynamic. And it's just beautifully balanced too, even when a horde is around me it doesn't get too loud.

While in practice enemies are basically the same on beginner, at least in the beginning, in other difficulties this isn't true. Ghosts resurrect themselves, skeletons pop out of coffins, blobs of something evil poison you. As you go through the game, or perhaps just as time wears on, their special abilities activate more and more.

As I go through the maze, I realize something. These levels are pre-determined. Enemy placement and treasures aren't, but that doesn't matter too much. There's not a lot to the opening sections. They're boring.

There are three treasure items, which you look through with S/space. Crates, coffins and enemy corpses. They drop everything from treasure, points, to random items and then ammo. Coffins, as mentioned, spawn one skeleton after a brief period of time, so don't go rushing towards it straight away. Generally speaking, in terms of stuff, the aforementioned order is how much you're going to get.

Items are tricky, in the beginner game, their effects are always the same. In normal and kamikaze, they are not. This makes normal being the intended difficulty somewhat weird. Because otherwise normal is...well, normal. They have the kind of effects you'd expect them to have. Invulnerability, healing, kill everything on-screen. Then some weird ones, like ones that damage your health, one that changes your character into a skeleton for some reason. Then ones that serve as fodder for the higher difficulties. Like an "ancient black thing", which is cheap humor...not modern cheap humor, it's a floppy disk.

I note that health regenerates slightly on its own, not enough to be useful if you're getting killed, but useful enough if you can fight off some monsters before the next big fight.

After a long while of what can only be described as a series of looping tunnels with one way forward, you come to a great gate. You might not notice this at first, since there was a door that wouldn't open. Inside is a series of square rooms linked to each other straightforwardly. This is suspicious. It turns out to be an attempt to screw with the player, because rooms don't link to each other as they should and eventually it teleports me back to somewhere I was before but could somehow advance from?

The reason why it's screwing with the player is because this is it, the area where the gemstone fragments are. I'm of two minds. Yeah, it makes sense that the later section is more difficult, but at the same time, but consistent level design put it far above a lot of its competition. Find all five pieces. Oh, and monsters respawn now, so you have that to look forward to.

Now the demons start showing up. They randomly spawn on a level, but thankfully not too aggressively. Ugh. Hope you've been collecting those fireballs, because otherwise you're screwed. You can run away, but they're not easy to deal with if you get trapped.

Somehow I manage to escape the maze again, to the way out. This way back is very tricky, some enemies respawn practically after you kill them and coffins are more like clown cars. I actually like how some of these levels are set up, wonders beyond the usual generic caves and dungeons I've been through. Sadly, I can't appreciate it under the gun like this.

Eventually, I make it back. The absolutely final section is just the opening section again, only this time you've already killed the monsters. You walk back through the temple and place the gemstone back in it's place. All is well again.

Weapons:
Just enough to feel like you have a choice in dangerous situations, though I would have liked a melee weapon. 3/10

Enemies:
Despite some issues, clever enough. Each enemy is unique enough to require a minor change in strategy. I am grateful that the author never tried a ranged enemy with this system. 4/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Functional, at first. Insanity, later. Then the final stretch is interesting, but you don't get much of a chance to appreciate this. 3/10

Player Agency:
The controls work around the game's limitations quite cleverly. Still, the number of keys you have to press, especially for how each keypress is your action for one in-game second, makes doing some things annoying in the heat of battle. 4/10

Interactivity:
I guess? You basically just get a button dedicated to grabbing stuff, opening doors is an awkward process. 0/10

Atmosphere:
A nice intensity at the end, marred by early utter boredom. 2/10

Graphics:
Simple, samey, with poor animation. 1/10

Story:
Despite mostly just being a short story talking about the backstory in the manual, it does have a minor effect in-game. 1/10

Sound/Music:
I haven't heard anyone try this kind of dynamic sound before at this point in time. 3/10

That's 21. A point above the previous best of the year, F-15 Strike Eagle.

While the game is well-thought out, especially by 1984 standards, and has all the ingredients of a great game; it's kind of boring. As I take out monsters and walk through levels there's the sense that it's fine. The negative sense, where there's enough here that it's a playable game, but not enough that it's actually enjoyable. When it gets good I can hardly appreciate that.

You could make anyone with any amount of ability at action games play this. They might not necessarily enjoy it, but they'll be able to understand it and possibly even beat it.