Strontium Dog and the Death Gauntlet (1984)

Nothing screams Strontium Dog like whatever this is.

Name:Strontium Dog and the Death Gauntlet
Number:242
Year:1984
Publisher:Quicksilva
Developer:Argus Press Software
Genre:Shoot 'em Up
Difficulty:2/5
Time:40 minutes
Won:Yes (107W/77L)

The last Strontium Dog game was interesting, but absurdly difficult. Undoubtedly suffering for being an action game on the ZX Spectrum. So, what does the broadly superior C64 game do? It's a shoot 'em up. Only, it kind of isn't. It's an endless runner, sort of.

The story, as told by a pirate intro, is that our hero, Johnny Alpha, crash landed on a planet full of renegades (bad guys, presumably) while being pursued by the Stix Brothers. Run until Johnny gets to the ship where his partners are waiting. The death gauntlet of the title is him just walking across the desert to survive.

This, in contrast to the last game, is not based on any story, but just uses characters. The Stix Brothers, which is actually an entire family, are a group of mutants who all look and dress the same way. Very convenient for a video game adaptation.

The controls are weird if you don't play them on an emulator. Basically, space shoots and the joystick moves. What makes this really weird is that because I'm generally emulating my joystick, space is the joystick button. A whole lot of effort just to get back where it all started. Function keys deploy a timebomb, which sends you forward. I never really had need of it.

At first, the game is insanely confusing, bordering on insane. Randomly running into things, not understanding why you've suddenly died, and things just happening. There's very little visual clarity, the most detailed objects on-screen are Johnny and random rocks. Everything else is somewhat detailed but one bit. It's odd, visually.

Very quickly, things become clear. The first part is that the game runs weirdly. Up and down move up and down, but left and right control your speed. This is different from plain old moving left and right. No, going faster depletes your strength, while going slowly allows it to slowly restore. Oddly, when you move very slowly, it's basically impossible for any significant amount of damage to happen.

When Johnny inevitably crashes into something or gets shot, he loses a life and starts flailing around on the ground like he's screaming about life not being fair. The other game didn't exactly put a big mental image of the guy in my mind, but at least I can attribute that one down to forced choices. This just feels like it's mocking the guy while he's down.

The inevitability of getting knocked down and how low amount of damage and quick regeneration actually creates a weird effect. It's not quite an endless loop, but it comes off as something where you have to put in very little effort to play. It's almost like the player is useless in the equation. There are powerups scattered around which increase strength, but why break what's a winning strategy?

This creates a weird loop. Playing it as slowly as possible is fairly simple to play, but it isn't very fun. Speeding it up kind of makes it interesting, but adds in danger. The thing is, I never quite figured out why one form of injury resulted in Johnny's death and another just resulted in him flailing around for a bit.

While it is difficult to fully avoid getting knocked down, individual pieces of scenery are easy to dodge. Johnny's hitbox is just his feet and all the scenery is surprisingly small. It's very generous, the game just throws a lot at you. That, along with the enemies is what gives the challenge, such as it is.

Enemies too, have a hitbox that seems to just be their feet. While this makings dodging most a cinch, it also makes hitting them trick. You only get one shot on-screen and most duck and weave enough that hitting them is rare. The ones you're most likely to hit are the ones that are most likely to cause you trouble if you don't, ones that slowly move to where Johnny is.

After a while, they start shooting back. It's not difficult to avoid. I never got shot once and I wasn't exactly putting 100% in at that point. All of the shooting in this game felt superficial. It's there because it's supposed to be there. I think the cracked version I played had an issue with the infinite ammo cheat, because I suspect ammo was supposed to drop down at one point and it never did. It didn't really matter that much, but it might have affected things a little bit.

As you gradually move through the area, scenery begins to change. This is the only obvious indication that you're moving. Yes, there's a bar at the bottom that shows how much progress you're making, but it uses white to show where you are. In case you haven't noticed, there are parts of the bar that are white. Which means you can't see precisely where you are.

That said, visually, most of the later screens are uglier than the earlier ones. The rocks looked nice, the trees less so, and then it seems like it degenerates into random pixels. I guess it's a ruined city, but it sure seems like it's a lot more ruined than the worst bombs designed by man could ever do.

At the end, the game stops, two figures pop up. Is this a boss fight? No, I've won. The game ends with two figures popping up and then the game just loops. If I'm charitable, my winning playthrough took a half an hour. Which is kind of embarassing, even in this era, since there's basically no point to replaying it since it wasn't fun the first time. To the rating.

Weapons:
Your basic blaster, the time bomb isn't really a weapon. 1/10

Enemies:
A mass of vaguely humanoid and robotic creatures with some variation in behavior. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Rocks and tress slowly move towards you. 1/10

Player Agency:
Very smooth and easy to understand as far as movement goes.  5/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
Nothing positive. 0/10

Graphics:
Detailed, but as a whole, feels unfocused. Johnny has considerable animation, but feels oddly smooth for the action around him. 2/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
Blips and bloops. 1/10

Just going to subtract 2 points before finalizing for a total of 10.

There's no going around it, this game is bad. I try to see the good in creative matters, but no, this game is just bad. The kind of bad where you question why the developers chose to pick a creative field and charge money for the end result. Which usually is something we all ignore, but tends to hit harder in licensed media, because this is a character people like getting turned into a joke.

Next time I'll pull out something a bit off beat in Obitus, a game which is of many genres and nobody can quite agree on which one it truly is.

Secret Agent (1992)

Name:Secret Agent
Number:241
Year:1992
Publisher:Apogee
Developer:Apogee
Genre:Side-Scroller
Difficulty:4/5
Time:5 hours 30 minutes
Won:Yes (106W/77L)

Apogee's gone through some rather unusual places so far. We've been on Mars, dealt with a bootleg Indiana Jones, stopped a mad dictator, mined crystals and helped a child who got lost for a considerable length of time. If nothing else, Apogee has been content to go through a wide spectrum of thematic genres. Which brings us to Secret Agent, a game where you play as a spy.

Using the Crystal Caves engine, you play as Agent 006 1/2 (Which is inconsistently used, sometimes it's just 006), who has to stop the Diabolical Villain Society after they stole the blueprints to a defense satellite. Take them out and retrieve the blueprints before they can destroy the world. Some defense satellite. Oh, and the villain of the opening episode? Dr. No Body. It's so lame I'm not surprised they didn't get sued.

Being Crystal Caves 2 in essence, it plays out much the same way. Arrows to move, a jump and shoot button. Up and down do not look up and down, sadly. Once again there's ammo. There are improvements. You have to push a lot of blocks around, but if you push it into the wall, it gets pushed away just enough so you can push it from the other side. On platforms, if you approach at certain angles which shouldn't allow you to reach the top, it places you on top. 006 can take three hits before dying and you have unlimited lives. You get bonus points for going through a level without getting hit.

Doors require you to find the usual colored keys, with the door out requiring you to find dynamite. But before you can leave a level, you need to destroy a security radar. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that it looks like a satellite dish. You need to clear out every radar in order to reach the final level, where the blueprints are.

Various power-ups include the usual point items, mostly themed around spy fiction, the usual letters, which if gotten in the right order give a bonus, this time spelling SPY, glasses which reveal hidden platforms, gun power and a speed boost. Gun power is a misnomer, it really gives you more bullets on-screen. Otherwise you and everyone else has just one.

Everyone has one shot on-screen. At least, until you get a gun powerup. Enemies and traps are limited as well. At first, it's fair. As a result, it's fairly easy to exploit things if you're careful. Most enemy shots are not faster than you, so assuming you can outrun it, you can exploit this.

The help function doesn't mention it, but there are also power-downs. Confusion, which reverses your movement keys for a time. Slowdown, which slows 006 down for a while. Basically, just wait them out.

One of the final components that makes itself known are floppy disks, computers and lasers. Find the floppy disk, bring it to the computer, then deactivate the force field. It takes a few levels for this to show up, but when it does, levels tend to center around it.

The primary enemies are No Body's security force. Five different humans who, as you shoot them, turn into a human of a weaker rank. At the top you get a thug, which is a reskinned version of your blond hero with the ability to shoot, to a ninja master, who can also shoot, then three varieties of enemies which can't shoot. Finally, you get a tombstone which you can collect for extra points or shoot for less points. Ammo isn't at too much of a premium after the first few levels, but I seem to recall shooting the tombstones having a chance of creating a ghost.

The robots are more varied. You get sliding ceiling and floor guns, which you can take out with three shots, in contrast to side guns, which are just traps. Then there's a robot dog, which just requires a few shots. Every other robot has something odd about it. A giant cyborg where you need to wait for it to stop so you can shoot it in the face. A big robot you have to shoot in the stomach. A seemingly ordinary robot which goes back and forth which shoots out ghosts horizontally when it dies. A big robot which extends its head out when it stops and has to be shot in that head then.

Basically, a lot of enemies are about jumping up or being one block above the floor they're on. Despite how this sounds like it could be annoying, I felt like the constant focus on positioning 006 and shooting the enemies with various special conditions gave the game a lot of variety. Whenever you had to deal with an enemy was never the problem.

Traps are mostly typical, spikes, wall guns, water. Then there are odder ones, moving robots which float one tile above and shoot electricity into the ground. Slowly moving fire, which you can jump over, but are generally placed where this is inconvenient. Ceiling fans, basically permanent ceiling spikes, but I must admit I thought it was clever for a jumping man to hit his head on a ceiling fan.

Each episode has a small overworld, more tilebased than the freeform of Keen's worlds. There's a final level you need to solve the other levels before you can reach it, and several blocking off other levels. A lot of the time, it's not entirely clear where you can walk, because sometimes tiles imply gaps you just can't go through.

For the first episode, most levels are of the fun, short, but unmemorable category. A level where you're going back and forth across a series of jump-thru floors with blocks on either edge is fun in the moment, but not exactly mind-blowing design.

There are a few levels where you have to go back and forth through large swaths of the level. At this point, it's becoming the big Apogee issue. Need to pad out a game some? Just add a level where you have to climb to the top, go over to the other side, then fall down and repeat three times.

But the truly awful levels are those that require you to guess or go through them multiple times just to win. In a sense, there's no level that technically can't be won on the first try, but a lot rely on the luck of knowing that a sudden drop isn't going to place you on a landmine or down a pit you can't escape from.

Once you get all the rest of the levels, the final level is one of those where you have a bunch of hills you just keep jumping up on. Despite the odd enemy in an inconvenient position, it's not that hard or special. Just get the usual three keys and dynamite, then the blueprints are right next to the door out. Really? The blueprints couldn't be somewhere else? Lame.

Episode 2's closest level, thus the one you're likely to start with, starts the episode off on the wrong foot. In that the most obvious route the player will take will likely result in them being in an unwinnable situation. There are two pathways at the start, one behind a blue door you get the key for right off, and a jump to a floor below. You don't know these lead into each other or that that key you got could be used to allow you to open all the doors you need to in a moment, with the third blue key being at the end of a long walk.

Continuing to not endear me to the episode, the map is setup in such a way that continuing is not obvious, kind of an issue for what should be a straightforward map with no secrets. Some levels are getting to Arctic Adventure levels of annoyance. Gotta jump over one-tile pieces, some of which have spikes, and everything is over an acid pit!

Now, I don't want to imply that this is nothing but heartache. It's easier than most previous Apogee titles, especially the smaller tile-based ones. I picked up a lot of full health bonuses on these levels. The game gets a lot of mileage out of its enemies and forcing you to jump around them or jump in time to shoot them. It's just easier to complain about constantly having to reach the limits of your jump yet again.

The final level of Episode 2 is disappointing. It's very mundane. There is nothing special about it, no challenge, you could replace it with about half the levels from before and there would be no change. It just exists.

Episode 3's intended first level takes advantage of the lower starting bullets to put you in situations where you really have to decide if shooting some enemies are worth it. It's nice having to make every shot count for once. Unfortunately, the starting section is very difficult to get out of without getting hurt, and the dynamite is located on spikes, not the kind that come out of the floor, the kind that kill you when you land on them.

This continues for a while. It's actually cool. For the first two episodes having practically unlimited ammo encouraged you to not worry too much about successfully jumping and hitting something, because you could always get it on the second attempt. It's a bit disappointing when you get enough ammo to render it all once again a non-issue.

It feels fitting for a third episode, like every piece that's gone into the game until now has been building up to it. A level here or there with a trick that now that you've been doing everything for a while, feels like a natural end result. One particular level requires you to hold off on pushing a barrel until you find the invisible platform seeing glasses.

One fun level near the end was one where you're jumping across clouds. You have to find two sets of keys to open the door at the bottom, at which point you may discover that getting a key of one color when you already have one causes one to disappear. It might just be a series of long jumps, but it's the way the long jumps are set up that make them more interesting. Having to figure out where you need to go to get up is more interesting than the dozens of flat jumps over water in previous levels.

The final level, once again, is quite mundane. Long, but nothing about it feels special other than it being the last level of the game. It does sort of go over everything previous levels did, but that isn't special by this point.

The ending text is quite mundane, just an expanded you won screen, but the pictures. Oh, boy, the pictures. At first we get a surprisingly mean-spirited image of our hero blowing up Dr. No Body, who is a brain on top of a robot. I mean, blowing him up is fine, but chaining him up and then setting off explosives in front of him? Are we sure we're playing the good guys here? I guess it's supposed to be a reversal of the typical Bond villain trope, but man, that's a mean-spirited way to do it.

Then we see an island explode. Which seems to have a suspicious resemblance to Australia. Congratulations, you won, basically. Onto the rating.

Weapons:
Despite the rare extra shot power-up feeling very nice, it's still ultimately just your basic gun. 1/10

Enemies:
An interesting variety of enemies, each of which require different tactics to deal with. That said, I do wish there was a final boss. 5/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
For once, the game doesn't feel frontloaded. Instead, we get cool and interesting levels as we go through the episodes. 8/10

Player Agency:
Simple, straightforward, smooth. 6/10

Interactivity:
Basically just limited to pushable blocks. 1/10

Atmosphere:
The humor in this felt kind of flat, like it was just there because if they did a serious spy game they'd get sued for some reason. That said, the spy theme itself did feel unique, if underutilized in a standard platformer. 5/10

Graphics:
Despite being small and goofy, there is some decent detail in it. In retrospect, this is also one of those games I'm impressed is EGA and not VGA. Not quite as much as ID's games, but it doesn't bring to mind the usual EGA problems. 5/10

Story:
Go to three islands to pick up three sets of blueprints and oh, I can't be bothered. 1/10

Sound/Music:
Basic blips and bloops. 1/10

That's 33, Apogee's current best in-house game.

To a certain extent it could be nostalgia, but this does play a lot more competently than previous Apogee titles. The tedious focus on throwing as much crap at the player as they can handle is gradually going away and making challenges that have to be worked around. There were only one or two levels that made me question the game's design, for the most part even the hard levels just felt hard rather than annoying.

There is an expansion/remake that turns the game into VGA and adds a boss fight against Dr. No Body in addition to another episode. Looking at it, the visuals seem to place it into that category of VGA game where the graphics don't quite feel like an upgrade and instead feel like the colors you're using because you can use VGA. It's...odd.

Next time, the other Strontium Dog game from 1984.

The Catacomb Abyss (1992)

It's weird to think that once upon a time, games could have telephone numbers on their title screens.

Name:The Catacomb Abyss
Number:12
Year:1992
Publisher:SoftDisk
Developer:Gamer's Edge
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:3/5
Time:3 hours 00 minutes
Won:Yes (9W/2L at time of original playthrough)

Of the many games that ID Software made that SoftDisk had the rights to, it was a stroke of luck that they had Catacomb 3D. While the 2D Catacomb games are nice, they're not necessarily special in design. Dangerous Dave is clever, but appeals to a specific niche and isn't special technology-wise. But Catacomb 3D had everything it needed to be special, it was just lacking polish. Hovertank 3D, meanwhile, would be too barebones to fully flesh out.

When you capitalize it like that, I start to suspect that your secret knowledge isn't that useful.

Taking place after Catacomb 3D, the story is that the minions of Nemesis, previously known as Grelminar, have built a mausoleum next to Towne Cemetery. Emboldening them, they perform vile acts of violence to the nearby townsfolk. Naturally, they hire you, Petton Everhail, to find out what's going on and stop it.

Abyss comes firmly in the era of Softdisk games where they give you a ton of options for info at the start and an in-game help file, but there's a focus on slowly getting you up to speed in-game. There's no in-game description of your keys, but the basics are the usual. Arrow keys for movement, ctrl fires and alt sidesteps. Additional points are V/TAB for quick turning, which is vital in some situations.

It isn't perfect, but I can't say I've ever felt that this should play a different way. Turning is slow and even with quick turning an enemy is going to get the jump on you if they're behind you, but the game early on encourages cautiousness in approaching a room. The first enemy type you fight, zombies, pop out of the ground and it's easy to get blindsided by him. But it's just one at first and even if you die, you can just restart. Enemies that don't pop out like that don't become alert if you aren't looking at them. Goofy in theory, but encourages clever movement in practice.

Your attacks are not terribly changed from Catacomb 3D. There's no holding the fire button down for a nuke attack, you're just spamming magick missiles now. Enemies have a pain state which makes spamming them effective. Z fires a rapid stream of missiles if you have a zapper orb, X fires in a circular pattern if you have an xterminator orb. Xterminators do more damage than regular missiles for some reason. C causes you to heal yourself if you have a cure potion. You can carry up to 99 of each. In addition to individual pickups, there are chests which drop various amounts.

Some of the later descriptions get spicy.

The cleverest part of Catacomb Abyss, which is for once actually used in comparison to Catacomb 3D, is that the GUI constantly has a bit of text on-top related to where you are on the map. As odd as it sounds, it helps avoid the problem a lot of Wolf-clones have where the entire level is a confusing maze, because you have something distinct to place it. In a sense its cheating, but when the choice is cheating or nothing at all, I'll take it. The level design usually isn't so bad as for that to happen, but it does cinch it.

Most of the time this information comes off as telling you things you could find out by wandering around.

Rounding out the GUI are scrolls, which you read as you come across them and you can reread by pressing a number from 1-8. The requisite keys, which come in four colors and every time you open a door that key disappears. In all situations, you enter one by walking in, either one that blocks off part of the level or one that leads to the next level. Finally a radar, which if you have the gem which reads a particular enemy type, will show that enemy on the radar. Gems come on or before most levels with the enemies of those types.

The game opens with a set of graveyard levels function well as opening levels. Enemies in the first two are zombies, shades and bats, so the kind which suggest slowly checking the areas of a room to ensure you don't get backstabbed or enemies who die upon attacking you. And if you come from a game where you can open doors, the game encourages you to shoot walls by giving them descriptions such as "weakened walls" and different graphics. Along with the occasional enemy pop-up next to an item, so if you're trigger happy you find out that stray shots destroy items real quick.

That said, there are two gems in these three levels, and the game makes it incredibly obvious that they're there. Depending on how you go about it, they might just be easier to find than the keys which lead to the way out. Level 3, outside the mausoleum, also adds skeletons to the list of enemies, which are tougher than zombies, but also just stand around until you activate them.

The graveyard leads to a mausoleum/crypt, where we get our first ranged enemy, a squishy flying wizard. They're not special, your usual slow ranged attacks, but the game decides that this is the time to start putting you in close quarters where you can't easily dodge. Though, this doesn't entirely work against you since the wizards shoot infrequently and deal low damage on this level.

This section illustrates what I think the game does really well in design, wall block usage. A lot of games tend to have random choices, where it seems like they're just randomly breaking up a wall. Here, there's one used primarily for all walls, with others being used as accents or as indications that you can shoot a wall. For most of the game it works well, though once you've cleaned out an area it can feel unusually empty. Here, it helps that we get what is probably the first example of an occult area in a FPS, look at all the pentagrams and sarcifical altars!

Den of Zombies follows the crypt up, which comes off more as a cave. This one has the closest to real doors, wall pieces that when you touch them disappear. There's no new enemies, but skeletons come out of the walls in this level, which, combined with the zombies, makes the level feel like something out of a horror game. I think I was scared of this level as a kid, but in retrospect, that makes sense. How many games have you played where enemies are coming out of the floor and the walls?

Ancient Aqueduct continues with the monsters coming out of the floor, only this time it's less literal since you're standing in water. More like they come in and out of the floor. This is the most boring level, since you're simply waiting for the trolls to come out of the water, then moving through a place with basically no variation in wall texture. Which just illustrates why the rest of the game works so well, a few accents make all the difference.

The Orc Mines brings the game back to enemies which just stand around. Orcs, reusing the orc sprites from 3D, feel like a downgrade from the trolls, since they don't take a million missiles to kill. Them constantly stopping for me to shoot them is a bit distracting. I guess its intended for me to recover my zappers, as if I don't need excuses to use them when I've been hovering near the 99 mark for a while.

Lair of the Trolls is a bit of a breather, despite the trolls being fairly beefy enemies. Probably because it also introduces hourglasses which stop time for 99 "seconds". Which I suspect are tied to clock speed. Your missiles hang in the air during this and there are only so many you can fire at a time. I've never actually been in a position where this felt helpful. It just felt like something I had to wait out.

The Demon's Inferno follows. Bright red walls, nearly all of which look the same, demons, which just absorb a ton of magick missiles and you get what is not the best level. The game does break it up considerably with skeletons popping up in alcoves. You're spamming your attacks while staring at a bright red screen, which is just not good. I think this might have something to do with certain issues in these kinds of games, the developers don't realize you shouldn't be using bright colors like this.

Battleground of the Titans is two large rooms and a hallway. Do you enjoy killing dozens of big meat shields to get to a key? Do you enjoy potentially destroying a key because you were to careless with high powered attacks because you now have 99 of everything? Even when it's crap, I'll give Abyss credit for making different crap each time.

Coven of Mages adds in teleports. The game offers you five locations to go through to, but you only need to go to three. Enemies are the mages again along with giant eyes that shoot electricity. Even the later are too weak at this stage to do much to you. I wish they were just a little bit stronger.

Then we go to another area full of bright walls, but at least this time there are some accents. Still wandering around, shooting demons, because killing enemies which take a thousand hits is fun. Even the skeletons make a reappearance because demons and skeletons make sense together.

Finally, Nemesis himself. Or at least, Nemesis after fighting through a horde of demons. Nemesis is just sort of hanging out, behind one of two nearly identical corridors. You can't quite stunlock him into submission, and his shots take out 25% of your health, but by this point that's not really a problem.

The game ends with a nice, relaxing stroll to the surface, in which you can see statues of all the enemies you killed, along with being given the cheat codes to the game. Which is kind of nice, more games should have done that. Let's get to the rating.

Weapons:
I appreciate the variety, but it basically boils down to, regular attack, autofire attack, highly situational attack and healing. Because of the way enemy alertness works, the situational one is one you have to work to use properly. 2/10

Enemies:
While some enemies are too easy or too tedious, there's enough that there's a decent variety of more interesting ones. Even if the number of enemies on a level is limited and too often every enemy has the same behavior. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Something new is always being thrown at you, albeit, at the cost that what is new might not necessarily be good, just different. 5/10

Player Agency:
Your basic setup, except different weapons are special buttons rather than switching attacks. That said, the fast turn function doesn't come off very well in the heat of combat. 6/10

Interactivity:
Destructible walls and that's it. 1/10

Atmosphere:
At first, we get some decent dark/gothic fantasy elements going on. A mysterious mausoleum being built in honor of a dead lich. Wander through spooky graveyards waiting for monsters to pop out of the floor or the wall. Then we get random mines, aquaducts and then what appears to be hell. It gets a bit goofy. 6/10

Graphics:
Most artwork here is nice, but as time goes on, it feels like the game is running out of visual steam. Enemy designs are nice, but have limited animation and only face one direction. 5/10

Story:
Your basic go kill the bad guy affair. 1/10

Sound/Music:
Detailed PC Speaker, but no music. Everything has a nice sound to it, but far too often it's just silence. 2/10

That's 31, down from 34 last time. Broadly the same as last time, but a few of the more bloated categories got cut down to reasonable levels, with a few other categories picking up more points. The most significant change is that level design no longer gets an eight.

In the past, I've generally considered this one of the best 1992 FPS, despite the issues with the level design. It generally came off as doing something that ID would eventually succeed at with Doom, making a world which is not just randomly placed blocks. I still think that, but now it's tempered by how it's pretty clear that most levels were thought out with random ideas and that more worked than not was down to luck.

Next time, we return to Apogee with Secret Agent.

Raid on Bungeling Bay (1984)

There's a very nice animation proceeding the title.

Name:Raid on Bungeling Bay
Number:240
Year:1984
Publisher:Broderbund
Developer:Will Wright
Genre:Top-Down Shooter
Difficulty:4/5
Time:1 hour
Won:Yes (105W/77L)

When we think of a predecessor to SimCity, one would naturally think of a strategy gather rather than...this. As we've often found, important game ideas come from the unlikeliest sources. One particular element of a game is more interesting than the rest, so let's turn it into something more. Welcome to Raid on Bungeling Bay, the game SimCity was originally a level editor for.

The concept is simple. The Bungeling Empire has built six factories, destroy them, and don't get shot down by the enemy. To aid in this task, you have five helicopters, and an aicraft carrier to act as a base.

Keyboard controls consist of the IJKL cluster, with I being forward. Space shoots and Z drops a bomb. Turning is generally smooth, but you can't turn and shoot at the same time. Instead, you lock into place. Forward movement is increased by gradually holding down I or decreased with K, but you only go backwards as long as you hold down K. Which occasionally creates some problems, like when you have to land on the carrier.

You don't die in one hit and you get nine bombs. Landing on the carrier restores your health and bombs, which you do by getting to a low enough speed above the carrier and shooting. Unlike the rest of the time you shoot, this stops it. Because of the nature of how it works, it's easy to accidentally press space before an action finishes and then have to take off again. What's weird is if you get shot while on the carrier, you get knocked off.

A bomber going after the carrier.

The carrier is not a static object, it constantly moves slowly upwards. To prevent you from forgetting where it is, the game includes an arrow which points back to it. At later stages, it gets annoying when you might have to worry about enemies attacking you over it, but it's manageable. It can also be attacked by black planes, which the carrier either regenerates from when not under attack or takes so long to destroy that you have plenty of time to deal with it.

And here's a fighter...doing something as I try to bomb a factory.

Your primary target is the six factories. You might think, having nine bombs on your helicopter, that this would be easy. You can hover over the factory and just unload. Thing is, factories have weak points where you can destroy them with less than nine bombs and points where you need more than nine. Which means a trip back to the ship and hoping you get back before the factory repairs itself. It can and does get very annoying at times.

There's a secondary target of a battleship the Bungelings are building. If it gets completed, it goes after your carrier. The thing is, it's broadcasted to you when it's nearing completion. So I never actually had to worry about it moving around, I could always send its progress back to zero.

It's fairly easy to figure out where everything is, simply because there are three factories on islands to the left of the carrier, and three to the right of the carrier. The battleship is on the left island off the start. Everything loops, but generally you don't need to loop around horizontally outside of extraordinary options.

There are three enemies who pose a threat to you. Turrets, which have difficulty actually hitting you, to the point that you could stand still and they'd miss you. Hits they get feel like bad luck rather than bad movement. The planes, meanwhile, are harder to deal with. The don't exactly have perfect aim, but sometimes they can get a shot on you despite it feeling like the result of random luck. It's hard to take them out sometimes owing to the whole turn and shoot things. The radar helps, but because everything hostile is yellow, isn't foolproof.

Then there are missiles. They appear and chase after you. Hitting them is hard, because they're usually so close to you that dodging them is the only thing you can do. You basically have to just outrun them until they mysteriously disappear. Which is a thing that happens with all enemies, sometimes they just mysteriously stop chasing you when you cross off/on an island or approach the carrier.

As you take out factories, or as time goes on, more enemies and defensive measures pop up. The manual says it's as time goes on, but it seemed more tied into how many factories have been destroyed. This is a hard thing to measure, as there's no reason to take out the defenses of a factory without taking out the factory and things which don't shoot back are unimportant.

The game starts off quite easy, but by the time you're taking out the last factory the sky tends to fill with planes and the ground with turrets. You actually do get to see these things being built and try to take off, with the option to destroy them before they become a problem. It's a nice touch.

Sadly, winning the game results in you just getting a text scroll along the bottom saying that the enemy has surrendered. Then again, this was relatively easy for the year, so I shouldn't be counting on too much.

Weapons:
Basic weaponry. 1/10

Enemies:
Fairly simple variety, some turrets, a few chasers, cannon fodder, static targets and something that goes after your base. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None as such.

Levels:
The area is described as over 100 screens long. Not sure how true that it, but it's certainly a big place. I don't feel it's that special though. 3/10

Player Agency:
Very smooth, if still janky in a few places. 5/10

Interactivity:
None, as such.

Atmosphere:
Feels like a lot of classic top-down shooters, but doesn't necessarily distinguish itself. 3/10

Graphics:
Nice, clean, simple. Pretty nice animation too, even if it's just machines going around. 3/10

Story:
Basically none.

Sound/Music:
Simple sound effects. 1/10

That's 18.

Raid on Bungeling Bay is a fine game, but it doesn't really feel all that exciting. It's competent, but it doesn't really have much going for it beyond that. I sort of struggled to find the time to play this one despite starting off really well and still struggle to find interesting things to say about it.

Next week, we'll see Catacomb Abyss again as we get through the very last of 1992.