Quest of the Space Beagle (1984)

Name:Quest of the Space Beagle
Number:263
Year:1984
Publisher:Avalon Hill
Developer:Scott Lamb
Genre:Space Simulation
Systems:Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64
Country of Origin:USA
Difficulty:5/5
Time:1 hour 50 minutes
Won:No (116W/89L)

The Continuing Adventures of Jupiter Mission 1999, Part II is a subtitle that really should have been looked at by an editor. The title is a pain to screenshot, it's flashing. Good thing I don't have epilepsy. In case you don't feel like going back, Jupiter Mission 1999 was about the player being randomly selected to go on a mission to Jupiter, where there was a mysterious signal. All the competent people die in an asteroid shower, and the player is forced to do the work because the sentient AI in control of the ship got damaged. I left as the game crashed after trying to figure out how to move my ship.

Explaining what happened is now a text crawl with moody music in the background. Also flashing, lovely. So the part I didn't get to was stopping an alien invasion, which I did by activating a self-destruct switch on the alien's teleport station. It exploded and teleported us to a far galaxy. Where all the aliens were that wanted to conquer the Earth...only for one that approached me to be friendly. Uh, I think we might have made a boo-boo. These are the Faunians, descendants of a great civilization from eons past. They were heading for our system not because they were conquering the universe, but because hostiles, The Gentuza, were heading after their homeworld. Now I have to help. Because the Faunians, being gentle herbivores, are unable to fight. They're not descended from hippos, I guess.

The first section is a epic space battle between these forces, with you on the Faunians and the Gentuza being your target. This is their homeworld, incidentally, so we're starting out small. You have to take out their fleet and then capture the planet. Like an on the ground view of your typical Master of Orion or Galactic Civilizations game. All you have to do is individually take out every ship yourself. Have fun! Given how the last game went, I'm sure you're about to ask how bad this gets. 

Pretty bad. Simply put, enemy ships can move faster than you, and you can do nothing about that. Their shots only hit you when they're on-screen, and sometimes you can get them off-screen, other times they stick like they're already attached to you. Even in my first attempt it wasn't completely unreasonable to take one out, but it was very frustrating to do so. Still, sometimes I get lucky. Even worse, any time you get hit, you can't fire for a few seconds.

So, one time after I died, I counted how many ships were left. 32, out of what I believe is 39. (It's actually 40) Considering these guys are only inferior to the player in that they die after one shot, this is quite unbalanced against the player. Fighting against a superior number of enemies equal to your strength is not something I've encountered in any space sim I've played before. Yes, there could be a number of hostiles superior to you, but not to this degree. More grinding. There are probably a whole bunch of complicated rules to this I could possibly learn the entirety of, but I understand enough to get away from all the shots except the ones the game decides I can't.

After savescumming my way through that mess...nothing happens. Right, well, there is a strange thing on my M-scan. Which if it isn't showing up on my screenshots, is an orb on the lower right, compared to the V-scan on the lower left which shows the enemy. Clearly, I need to head to it, despite no visual on-screen. So I finally check the manual. It does explain the combat system slightly better than I previously understood, but doesn't actually explain how I'm supposed to go forward beyond heading for 000,000. Which I have no way of figuring out because the part of the GUI which has that pops up when I'm damaged, not when I'm perfectly okay. Oh, and I love this line from the manual:

IMPORTANT: Save your game frequently to prevent an undue amount of repetitive play.

The game is actually telling me to savescum. That's hilarious. Eventually, I figure out how to summon the GUI, F5, and head for the planet. It's when the blue dot is in the center of the scanner. Now I have to...wait, I guess. First time I've played a game that requires the manual to understand but it also forgets to mention half the important information. After I go off for a bit and then return...it still hasn't advanced, but after jiggling the nose a bit it works. 

I'm not writing all that down, but hopefully you get the message. Since I crushed their space navy, they consider me the strongest, but before they'll do something for me, they want me to prove myself in their labyrinth. After some trouble getting it to load, I reach the next part.

Hope you weren't reading something to pass the time, because you're on a timer. Oxygen's running out, you're going to die! Gotta say, I can't imagine having spent money and all that time on this only to end up in a slow section where you slowly walk around. Hope you read the part where the fire button moves your camera around, otherwise you'll be slowly crawling into whatever hazards are about to kill you.
 

Oh, I'm sorry, that isn't working in this port, guess I'll just watch as this thing slowly creeps up on me and drains my energy. Or it might be, it just takes me a long time to figure out how the heck it works. It only works if you hold it down as you move, which I guess makes sense. It sounds like I'm angry, but this is just annoying and tedious. You move slowly left and right, but go up or down, or dare I say it, diagonally, and you take one step at a time. The complete animation for one step. Nothing screams fun afternoon like having to navigate some annoying hellmaze. None of this layout is fun or intuitive to navigate.

There are oxygen and food pick-ups, but the actual objectives are the computers. That big thing in the first screenshot. There are three of them. One was easy to find, but the way to it involved going over a pit. As I don't have a jetpack and there's no other way, I pressed on. After a considerable amount of searching, I found the second, which just resulted in me messing with some levers. Cool, cool. Going further in the section this was found just resulted in dead ends. So...did that spawn a bridge earlier? No. Well, I tried, but between the slow movement speed and how it feels like everything I'm doing is pointless, this is where I'm stopping in this game. After this, there's supposed to be a section where you find a path to Earth via star charts. Yeah, that's going to be fun.

Weapons:
A basic laser, even if there were quirks to how it worked. 1

Enemies:
The two different mini-games I played each had their own opponents, but both were quite basic, even if their AI was fine-tuned to annoy the player. 1

Non-Enemies:
None, really.

Levels:
Take down 40 enemy fighters and endless confusing labyrinth are not my ideas of a good time. 1

Player Agency:
Everything is oddly slow, though with exception to the whole "hold down the fire button to move the camera" thing, it works as intended. 3

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
This is such a strange and alien feeling game, probably why I stuck with it despite essentially being a modern action-adventure game which forced all the different sections into one big chunk of each rather than naturally flowing over the course of a longer game. 3

Graphics:
Simple, with decent enough animation whenever a human character is on-screen. 2

Story:
The evil aliens are going to fold because you shot down their defense fleet, but first you need to traverse their labyrinth is not interesting, but at least the writing quality is tolerable. 2

Sound/Music:
Simple intro theme, then...uh...I was actually listening to other music for a lot of the gameplay, but I believe it was mostly blips and bloops. 1

That's 14, exactly the same score as Jupiter Mission 1999. Makes as much sense as anything.

In a sense, this reminds me of later action/adventure hybrids like Inca. There's a world here that because of the nature of how it's made, we're not going to see much of it, so we're just left gazing at what is mostly a mediocre action game in an attempt to see the real meat. Everything else that's going on. As I said, in a sense, Inca's a lot better even if that's a game you don't care for and this is far more grounded in reality.

Next time, you know how a lot of people were doing touching and tasteful tributes to Bobby Prince last week? Talking about his contributions to amazing games like Commander Keen in Goodbye Galaxy, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein 3D and I personally hope, Bio Menace. Well, I'm going to talk about Pickle Wars, a game I remember being a male cowpie. Hopefully his contribution to that game is much better than I remember the game being.

Jupiter Mission 1999 (1983)

Name:Jupiter Mission 1999
Number:261
Year:1984
Publisher:Avalon Hill
Developer:Scott Lamb
Genre:Space Simulation
Systems:Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64
Country of Origin:USA
Difficulty:5/5
Time:1 hour
Won:No (115W/88L)

Avalon Hill is one of the stranger publishers I've covered games from. It's been a million years ago since Voyager I as one of the first FPS games, and most of their oveure have been very strange. Especially since Avalon Hill is the computer arm of a board game publisher. That they keep coming up is just so odd to me. Here we have a space simulation, multi-game adventure. At least, this is how it's been described to me.

The game was released on the Atari 8-bit range and Commodore 64. Both are very unwieldy to play. I'm not good enough at Atari BASIC to figure out the former and the C64 version has a lot of loading. A lot. I hope I'm getting the authentic experience and not the sped up version, because otherwise, I really wonder how this sold anything at all back in the day. 

Shockingly, unlike most games from this era, not only is the story in-game, it's more than you get in the freaking manual. Not quite a wall of text, but dozens of pages of four lines of text. It isn't an improvement. It's a small story detailing how I was awakened one cold night to more or less shanghaied by government agents to a space port. I've been selected to go on a manned space mission to Jupiter. As in, the moment we arrive, they're injecting me with stuff and handing me manuals for space flight. Which is at odds with the cheery tone the game's prose takes, because this seems less triumphant rando gets the chance of a lifetime and more random schmuck gets used as a guinea pig.

The ship the game will be on, the Space Beagle, has an artificial intelligence of some fancy, schmancy classification which I'm sure I'll remember two minutes after I stop typing. The important thing is, it's a true AI, which I would think would be the bigger step forward compared to going to Jupiter. There are two other people on the ship, the commander, along with the navigator/engineer.

Now, the game doesn't start yet, because the trip to Jupiter takes place in the prose. Instead, we get the backstory of why this trip is happening. A strange signal was received back in '97, one that was obviously sent by intelligent life. Not from some faraway star, but from Jupiter. Two of the best astronauts would be sent along with some rando, which feeds back into game feeling at odds with what's actually happening. Because I'm being told this by the AI, who could either be told a lie to keep it docile, or it could be lying to me because it doesn't want to spook me. Considering that I'm supposed to be a wildcard and the success of the mission might hinge based on my reactions, it feels like someone isn't being completely honest. 

Finally, we get some gameplay. The ship is rocked by explosions, because we're in an asteroid shower. The initial attack was so damaging that it killed the two astronauts and destroyed the Beagle's command circuits. I have to do manual control. Manually control the ship's defenses to prevent further asteroid hits. I'm reasonably certain there's nothing in the solar system like this, except if the ship is deliberately trying to kill us. You could have altered our course a million miles back so we don't get smashed to pieces. Fuel is at a premium, but dying isn't going to help our mission.

This works like most Missile Command style games, except there's only one missile spawning in at a time. Oh, and you sort of shoot missiles back. It's a giant asterisk, so it might be a plasma blast. Lead your target, and shoot them down. Survive long enough for the ship to get out. Sounds easy, right? Right? Right? Right!?

I hope you went to the rest room before playing this section, because when I completed the section, there were 91 meteors. The second time I played this as a test, I was wondering what the hell was going on by the 30th. How long do you plan on sitting in the middle of a meteor shower, Beagle? You said command circuits were disabled, not that the ship was lying dead in space. Are you trying to kill me Beagle?

I hope you went to the rest room before playing this section, because when I completed the section, there were 91 meteors. The second time I played this as a test, I was wondering what the hell was going on by the 30th. How long do you plan on sitting in the middle of a meteor shower, Beagle? You said command circuits were disabled, not that the ship was lying dead in space. Are you trying to kill me Beagle?

Because merely being tedious and long wouldn't be enough, the whole experience is difficult too. Aiming the cursor is as fun as any joystick aiming exercise. Which is to say, it isn't. Whatever, some games can make it work. Except that the cursor is inaccurate and the way your blasts arc is...well, you see that dot at the bottom? That's your gun. Shots come from that and there are multiple places where shots don't work the way they should work. Worst of all, the hitboxes of your shots and the asteroids are confusing and difficult to understand. I've seen multiple shots just fly past an asteroid.

After abusing save states and finally making it through, the Beagle congratulates me for somehow managing to survive. I took two meteors, less because I wanted to and more because I just couldn't kill them/suspected I needed some damage for the next section. (No one is getting through this without getting hit, no one) Because his command circuits are damaged, I now need to manually select which sections the robots will repair.

This is slow work, but at least at this point, you can save. Slowly move your cursor to the right, repairing any systems that were damaged. At first this seems simple, but no, it's a very bizarre mini-game where you have to match colors. You selection one color to match to the primary flashing color which...doesn't actually make sense since the colors aren't flashing, they're changing. Which one's the primary color. The keys in this section are not quite registering, so I really don't know what it is I'm doing here.

To help, the game issues a series of tones, which tell you roughly how long you have before you either win or lose at this particular mini-game. It's very annoying. Very, very annoying. It's not the worst thing I've heard or the worst thing I've played, but it is aggravating. As I tried to figure the game out, the only thing that seemed to happen was the sound slowly getting higher and higher. The sounds seem to be roughly tied into the colors, but after every action you need to relearn which sound goes to which color, so this isn't any help. Nothing I do seems to work, so I eventually just take the opportunity the game provides me to just ignore this and go onto the next section. Sure as heck not doing the first one again.

Section three is all about navigation. That is, the computer's down, so you have to do everything. To say I wasn't expecting to manually do this particular task or that I'd get so much data that I genuinely wonder if it's useful or not, is an understatement. That said, in order to advance to the next section, you need to scan the system, so Jupiter shows up, simulate your trajectory, then, using eyeballing it, change your course in the burn menu, hoping you get it right in one whole action. Assuming you don't save in-game, this will take about ten seconds each menu change. Which is every button you press.

The intended method of doing this, therefore is to slowly and methodically burn through your fuel hoping to find the right course to Jupiter. You could, of course, also just abuse this, then reload when you find the right path. Or get lucky like I did and get it in one. The game doesn't automatically advance when you do this, you also have to select the next section you play.

I picked science lab, because why not? I'm now told I need to send a probe to Jupiter in advance of my arrival. You get some scanning and programming functions, but all of them are useless before you fire off the probe. Even setting the course, which I would think would be the most important. You fire it off, then place it near one of the many orbs that pop up and have it scan. At which point, what I do next is not easy to understand. Because the data doesn't transmit back automatically, which is realistic, but not very fun.

At this point, when switching to another "program" so to speak, the game asks me to switch to side B. Unfortunately for me, because I'm playing this in Denise through WINE, this is not actually possible. Every time I enter the menus, when I exit, the game just doesn't reload. (Previously, Linux emulators for the system haven't worked and VICE has...issues with a lot of games) I can edit the settings so that the other side appears in another drive, but since this is a one floppy game, this isn't going to work. Since I really wasn't doing much shooting or really playing a game at this point, I'll leave it here.

Weapons:
A basic gun. 1

Enemies:
Uh, rocks and the interface, I guess. 1

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Treating each little minigame, or program as the manual calls it, as a level. I appreciate what the game is trying to do, but each one felt like I was fighting against it in new and unexciting ways. It says something that the only one I was able to understand was a badly designed asteroid defense mission. 2

Player Agency:
It's rare for a game's menus to be so unusable as to be tedious to sort through, but somehow, Jupiter Mission 1999 manages. Nothing ever worked right, and I think even in 1983 this would have been unpleasant to work with. At least the game always tells you what you're supposed to be doing. 2

Interactivity:
I guess some of the stuff in the menus is nice for flavor. 1

Atmosphere:
There's certainly a dark mood to the game, starting from the off as a dark and moody game, something aided by how little information the game actually gives you. (despite the game telling you the contrary) 2

Graphics:
Crude and brutish. I at least understand what I'm looking at, but often times it fails to properly give the scope of what I'm looking at or generally just provides a laughable image. 1

Story:
Despite the game not being very good, it's neat that the game tries to deliver a cohesive story and set it up with individual sections. I do wish that the story didn't come off quite as creepy as it does though. 3

Sound/Music:
Loud brutish and noisy, for the most part. There's a moody intro tune, but it doesn't last long enough for the extreme length of of the opening text crawl. Otherwise, the game just uses the C64's SID chip like something off an Atari 2600 game. 1

That's 14. Not bad for a game which seemed quite lax on the actual shooting.

I don't know yet if I'll be covering the sequel, since I didn't exactly know what I was doing here and that promises to be no easier. I have gotten an actual working Linux C64 emulator now, which should mean that all future titles will work. Should, but I know there'll be a problem sooner or later. Next time, the first Spear of Destiny expansion pack, because at least there I won't have any issues figuring it out.

Maxwell Manor: Skull of Doom (1984)

Name:Maxwell Manor
Number:206
Year:1984
Publisher:Avalon Hill
Developer:William Maxwell
Genre:Top-Down Shooter/Survival Horror
Difficulty:5/5
Time:2 hours 10 minutes
Won:No (83W/66L)

If there's one thing that hasn't changed over the years in solo development, it's the habit for developers to include themselves in a game, usually as a fountain of wisdom or merely as some god figure. The habit seems inescapable for most, though it is better than obvious author stand-ins stating their opinions on the tax rate and the link between gum disease and heart disease. Maxwell Mansion does something unusual, a dungeon named after the author. But rather than being Maxwell's dungeons of the unforgiven, the unnamed figure who owned the mansion is dead, and it's up to you to ensure further deaths don't happen by finding the skull of doom.

No, no car travels down the road to my knowledge.

You are allowed to pick from 100 game situations and 10 difficulty settings for a total of 999 options. I picked game 000, because why not? Starting off, you're in the middle of a road. Near me are a gun and a shield. The joystick moves and the button does various things. A quick press uses the object in your hand. Holding the button and pressing left/right switches between items, the same with up looks and down drops. Screen movement changes between scrolling and "flip" scrolling.

At the start you get two options. South to the graveyard and north to the manor. The front gate of the manor is locked, naturally and there's no other way in. I looked all the way around. There's a vase containing bullets on the side for some reason. Vases tie into the time mechanic you see, every hour they respawn, not that you'll be playing in one session long enough for that to happen. It's a nice-looking game though, that dirt texture is top notch, and believe me, I know how hard it is to make a dirt texture. So, since that petered out, the graveyard.

When you die, you're brought to a place called limbo. Objects that you can't interact with appear as you reach a higher score. The first time you're here, you can walk in any direction and you return to life. Afterwards, one direction holds life, and the others result in the end of your game. Assuming you didn't know that S saves and L loads. Saving only seems to be good for the currently active game, as soon as you quit the emulator your save disappears. Possibly, it's just a weird emulator issue since this is a tape game.

I figure out the way in...eventually. If you go left or right while in front of the mansion, after a certain point you're sent down, back towards the opening area. If you go further left or right and then up, the door opens, and a path in through the back appears. I went in through the front door.

Three vases were here, each containing 6 bullets, and a hand popping up out of the wall shooting at you. I advance but a wall appears around it, so I assume that the hand is blocking the way out. The shield blocks bullets if its in the path, and you can shoot back, but not both at once. Shooting is tricky because bullets hit each other, and even if you do shoot it, it comes back. I noticed I shot one of the walls, and making a conclusion from that, shot the wall north. You can only shoot side to side, which is unfortunate, but you can destroy the wall. Or you can only take two of the vases and the wall never appears at all. Sometimes.

This isn't actually inside the mansion, no, it's a hedge maze or a path maze. I'm not 100% clear. Enemies occasionally pop up. This is annoying, because you have to be at the edge of the screen to scroll. No time to react, and you better believe this was designed with that in mind. You even lose a space of what little visibility you get while moving.

The first area I find through this maze is a mine. Inside the game changes into a sort of side-scrolling section. With jumping. Yeah. It's very awkward. The thing in the middle is a platform with two chains, climb up, then jump over to the other side and grab the key. Don't grab the treasure, because then a dart will pop out. I die this time, and after reloading I notice the key is gone. Uh-oh. So in-game saving isn't reliable either. Which is a shame, because this was really nice for 1984.

After eventually making my way out, I go through to the front door. Huh. I walk onto the mat and fall down. Oh, that old gag. Straight into a spike pit. Believe me when I say this is a game that needs to be played with save states. It's a good game, but it needs to move along quicker.

Inside are is a proper building. You can't go through the doors. So I go to the right, since I'd like to stick to this floor for now. Later, when I came back, I discovered that this is the only exit on this floor I can go through.

East changes the view again, to a room with a fireplace. Don't stand in front of the mask for too long or you'll get hit by an arrow, but do go in the fireplace. It has a cross, just be careful to dodge another pit, which technically isn't instant death, but more of a slow death. If I go right from here there's a dark room, which really just has a darker palette. I can't go far in there, or I die. Time to go upstairs.

Upstairs, actually downstairs, is more mazes, with more enemies. East of the staircase is this room, shoots some walls to get what I thought was an important item, but is just treasure. All while under threat from one of those wall creatures. This is pretty much what you get upstairs, each room has it's own gimmick. It's less survival horror and more one of those platformers with short but hundreds of levels, each a bizarre new challenge.

There's a creature that consistently pops up here, a spider. According to the game's hint book, a vampire spider. By the time I figured this out I didn't have the cross, opting to go from the front door directly to the basement again. Here after going up, then left then down, I find a candle, needed to enter that dark room. My way out is a tedious maze, finally leading out through the mansion's backdoor.

The dark room just has some vases containing ammo, seemingly all vases contain ammo. But the room next contains this vital hint. From reading the hintbook, the surprisingly unhelpful hint book, I knew I needed the skull to reach the graveyard. Rather than further explore the basement, I figure out that I have to use the key to open doors.

Northwest of the lobby is this. Yeah, this game isn't trying to annoy the player or anything. If you missed the platform, tough luck, you get shot when it reaches the end. There's a room after this where you just jump over a robot thingy, unless you want a treasure, requiring you to make precision jumping in this engine.

The skull. Uh-oh, I don't know how I can get this. The flashing stuff isn't something you can climb. I assume at one point that the object there needs to be shot. It can be, but that does nothing. So I try going down, this leads to a ledge, with an opening to the right, and to the left a series of platforms which end in a wall. Right eventually leads to a room with more of that particular object, which pushes the player up here, and a rope which is being eaten by something. I can't get up that rope, so at this point I have no option forward and the game is effectively over.

I suspected at this point that the correct answer out of the room would be to arrive from the top onto the little object and reach the skull that way, but the hint book says that you have to jump up to reach there. So I have no idea how you're supposed to win. Neither does anyone else seem to be able to, judging by what videos seem to exist on this game.

Weapons:
There's supposed to be a sword in addition to the gun, somewhere. Never found it, and frankly there's enough ammo for the gun that it isn't a problem. What is a problem is how the gun only allows you to shoot left and right. 1/10

Enemies:
A couple of gimmick enemies and then your usual allotment of melee enemies, all in the slow department. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
The concepts for individual levels is well-thought out, albeit hampered in some respects, but between the important bits you get mazes. Mazes, mazes, mazes. With this screen-scrolling and the PC dying in one hit, this isn't very nice. 4/10

Player Agency:
The top-down controls are fine, but the platforming is truly dreadful. Selecting items isn't so easy either, especially since the game likes throwing arrows at you if you stand still for too long. 3/10

Interactivity:
Depending on the room you can shoot walls, but mostly you just bump into things and hope that works, in addition to the occasional puzzle room. 3/10

Atmosphere:
Perhaps not truly scary anymore, but the game has enough surprises up its sleeves to unnerve the player in some scenes. 3/10

Graphics:
Some very nice tiles, but most character sprites have a really low number of frames or just don't look like much. 3/10

Story:
Your basic intro text scrawl. 0/10

Sound/Music:
Simple blips and bloops, but mostly non-intrusive and contributing somewhat to the atmosphere. 2/10

I feel generous, so I'll give it an additional point. That's 22.

A very apt comparison is to modern indie darling Faith, a kind of top-down survival horror game which does that whole retro-styled, but clearly taking advantage of modern features kind of game. It kind of looks like a C64 game, but it has way too much animation and sound, including the use of a voice synth for the C64. Both games involve arriving from somewhere else to deal with a tragedy that's already happened, the use of full-screen text to state something important to the narration, and not quite survival horror but perhaps it actually is gameplay.

I would have given a stronger chance towards reaching the end of this one if I could, but unfortunately time and an inability to make a proper save hampered my enjoyment of this one. This is basically the spiritual ancestor of those horror games you play once, enjoy then, then forget about.

I note that 1984 is shaping up to be a better year than previous ones. Not just on average or because I've been ignoring games I don't have anything interesting to say, but because with this game, 1984 has hit 3 titles over 20 points, which is more than any previous year. I've actually had enough to say about some games that it hits my usual goal for the bar minimum to say about a game, not just my early game target. 1984 is proceeding well, though I suspect progress will come to a halt once I get back onto 1992 FPS titles.

The Alien (1982)

An entirely original creature, since its a centipede centaur

Welcome back to a surprising return, to Avalon Hill's The Alien. A game I certainly didn't expect to see again, but here we are. So the difference between then and now, is that the manual exists, a modified version rendering some of the controls easier to use, and most importantly, a challenge to finish this. Like I was going go enter here again without a challenge. Being easier to control for this game is akin to saying a new Japanese pistol is less lethal to the user, yes, I believe that's true, but I don't believe that its now good.
Anyway, I doubt I'm going to say anything The Wargaming Scribe hasn't said ten times more intelligently than I. I only came across this game in comparison to early survival horror game Nostromo, which was hardly anything related to survival horror, and offered this as a slightly better point of comparison. I believe one of his commentators, Porkbelly, got the manual and then fixed up the game.

The actual story of The Alien, as opposed to something else you might be thinking of, is that among the alien creatures picked up on a routine creature gathering expedition, is a very deadly, mutating creature, which, naturally, breaks out of its cage, freeing the rest of critters, and begins wrecking havoc on a spaceship. To paraphrase The Gauntlet (1977) "a nothing creature from a nothing expedition". Now, the objective is to recapture or kill the creature. Scratch that, we're killing it. Not even metagaming here, if it broke out once, it'll break out again, shoot to kill.

Not even pretending to be any different in-game

Unfortunately, there are a few things preventing me from doing this. My crew starts the game disordered, scattered among the rooms of my ship, and the man, that is space regulations, tell me I can't kill this thing until its no longer "relatively harmless". Also, there might be a robot on the crew who is ordered to bring it back alive and will refuse to attack it. Its a testament to something that this actually fits the series so well, considering the first official Alien game was a Pac-man clone!

Ah, the garish Apple II color scheme, how I missed you so

Starting off, the game sends you to various screens where your crew are, and a list of whatever objects are in the room with them. Don't be fooled, you can't actually do anything the first time this happens. Its on this screen you can attack The Alien, put something in a cage, and interact with various static objects. You can attempt to do these things, but unfortunately the check to see if that's a valid action happens AFTER you select it. It doesn't affect anything, and that character can still do something else.
The crew is a varied bunch. There are the two command staff, who can allow entrance to certain areas of the ship, work the computer and activate the self-destruct. Then there are two scientists, who can also work the computer, but are the only ones who can do anything with the cages. Finally, three engineers who can build things. Like a flamethrower and possibly other things.

Yes, aliens, plural, because he can clone himself

The first time you can actually do something is on the map, where you can move around, take and drop objects, and construct things. Yeah, I'm just constructing flamethrowers. My plan is to have everyone as equipped as can be, possibly put all the escaped critters back in a cage, and if possible put The Alien in the cold storage room. If I can't do that or kill him...uh...I don't think using the ship's self-destruct mechanism and escaping on a shuttle or something is going to work.
For now all this means is everyone except two of the engineers walk towards the armory, while those two stick in maintenance to build themselves a flamethrower. The problem with this is that the game makes this just so tedious to accomplish. What should take a minute at most now takes a few. You have to press the right arrow to cycle through every possible action or destination. At least for the later it takes out places you can't go. Remember, this is the improved version where the controls actually work.

You can only construct something if you've done nothing else that turn, luckily the other two engineers built the flamers

Unfortunately, there are only two lasers, so I'm going to have to dole out two dart guns. And I can only build 2 flamethrowers, so one person is going to have to use a cattle prod or something. It was nice knowing him. Since The Alien is unlikely to come to us, I decide to do something really stupid and split up. I have one of the scientists begin locking up the creatures, while the captain and the other scientist work on the computer. Apparently the computer has info on this creature and its on a need to know basis. We don't need to know, but one can break the computer.

That was easier than I expected

After building the flamethrowers, one of the fresh wildlife makes his way into maintenence, so I have someone capture it...and it works. I think it might be weird, but no, its completely normal. What is a problem, is trying to lock up a creature when someone is all alone, with two items in their inventory. Like a gun and a cage, which you'd think was necessary. No, the person who grabs the animal is just stuck there until someone brings a cage to lock in it. Or they drop it.
Since doing anything with the computer isn't going well, I have the commander help out with the wildlife...and he's met The Alien. Time to shoot this thing with the dart gun...and he's dead. Looks like its time to stop playing around and start shooting this thing?

"Should we deal with The Alien?" "No, let's talk about how this makes us feel."

OH, I'M SORRY, I DIDN'T REALIZE MULLING OVER HIS DEATH WAS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SHOOTING THE ALIEN! And they dropped all their items! Okay, new plan, the second-in-command is going to stay on the bridge, along with one of the engineers with a flamethrower, while everyone else is going to explore the ship and deal with the creatures. As only the command staff can cause the ship to self-destruct, and neutralizing The Alien is my only objective, whether he lives or dies is irrelevant to me.

I don't think it adapts to attacks I make, but I doubt it'll be vulnerable for too long

One of my squads captures some wildlife, but unfortunately The Alien walks onto the bridge. Good thing that flamethrower still works, but knowing my luck it won't next time. I gather my men back onto the bridge, and The Alien takes out the engineer with the flamethrower. Worse, the lasers don't work on it. Without any other option, I have the second-in-command activate the self-destruct sequence.
The escape out to the shuttles is mostly uneventful, save for a close call one of the engineers have. The laser might not have done any good attacking, but it'll drive it off. Once inside the escape shuttles. Then the long wait, while every turn the Apple II's horrendous speaker makes a beeping sound. I really can't do anything except wait for every single movement sequence the game forces me through, while the ship slowly prepares to destroy itself. The Alien isn't on either shuttle while this is happening. So did I win...? Technically?

  

 A brilliant light show occurs...

I wonder if someone ever said yes on this screen

And I won! Yes, I think this went well enough to call a victory. The crew's superiors are probably going to be immensely butthurt about all this, but I think that's a small price to pay for victory. Never did figure out who the robot was, probably the captain or one of the scientists. Although, I have to admit, this was the first time I went through the game in its entirety, I didn't exactly know what I was doing or how long it took The Alien to mutate and I still won. I suspect this is entirely because The Alien never managed to make its way to either shuttle, so I'll attribute this to luck.
It does seem like there's very little skill in the game. You're basically just hoping you can reach The Alien before it turns invulnerable. Its incredibly easy for the game to end with the PCs all dead. I was thinking about how you could improve the game so it'd be fun, you know, beyond improving the interface. Expanding the early game time for one, since it seems like you barely have any time at all in this game. Not having the game stop because a crew member got killed for another. Might as well strip naked and slather yourself in bacon grease if we're going to do that. I was thinking you could have 8 people play the game together, so that at the correct time the robot could start killing the humans while The Alien tries to survive, but crap, getting 8 people together for this kind of gameplay sounds horrific.
I'm not going to give this a rating and a number, simply because this is crap. Its ugly, its slow and tedious, and any fun to be had is buried so far beneath its awful presentation its not worth finding. Frankly, everything I've played from publisher Avalon Hill has been a waste of a good board game brand. And that includes a few titles that I decided not to cover. Talk about an annoyance. Still, because I don't really want to return to this again, let's also talk about the Japanese version, released a year later, by porter Kiya (who basically just did Avalon Hill titles) and publisher CRK Research Institute. You've heard of the later, under the name of CRI, yes, those people. The ones credited in nearly every game over the past two decades.

Usually the Japanese title screen is more impressive, not so here

Its very slow to load, only coming on a tape file. This version is actually quite easy to control, press a button to select your character, then press a letter to perform an action. I'm going to go over the relevant information, in case you too are foolish enough to play this. Because you should at least play the nicest version.

I haven't translated everything, because not everything is important

ダレデスカ？
Who do you pick?

@ナニモシタイ (Do nothing, in the FM-7 version, you have to press the key right of P, whatever that is on your keyboard)
A:ケージ　ニ　イレル (insert in cage)
B:ドウブシ　ヲ　ツカマエル  (capture animal)
C:エアロック　ヲ　アケル (open airlock)
D:エイリアン　ヲ　コウゲキ (attack alien)
E:エイリアン　ヲ　コウトロール (capture alien)
F:コンピューター　ヲ　ソウサ (operate computer)
G:ケンキュウヨウケジ　ヲ　カクニン (laboratory confirm, probably inventorize)
H:フネ　ヲ　ハナレル (leave the boat)
I:ケンキュウヨウケージ　ニ　ウツス (describe the captured animals)
J:ジバクソウモ　ヨ　ソウサ　(operate self-destruct)
カノジヨ　ハ　ナニヨシマスカ？ (Pick one)
 

This ship looks like a failed Star Trek prototype

The ship is more simply put together than the last one. You can correspond the locations to the ones used in the Apple II version.

Items, in the right box:
レーザー (Laser)
マスイジュウ (Dart Gun)
ドクガス (
カエンホウシャリ (flamethrower)
ホウデソバリ
ケージ　(cage)

1:オパーリン　センチョウ
Captain Oparin (That is the actual name, A Russian composer)
2:ピアジェ　コウカイシ
Navigation officer Piajie (Piaget, apparently)
3:ソンダク　コウカイシ
Navigation officer Sondaku
4:イェイツ　イシ
Doctor Ieitsu　（Yates or Yeats)
5:ルルス　ケンキュウイン
Researcher Rurusu (Lois or Luis)
6:ブラウン　キカンシ
Engineer Buraun (Brown? Braun?)
7:ウィナー　ギシ
Engineer Uinaa
(0 skips to the next possible scene)

The interesting bit here seems to be that the game doesn't quite match up with what the original version had as its crew. Couple of things to note, I have no idea what the cast's names are. I guessed on some and looked up others on the Japanese Wikipedia. I literally have no idea what some of these names could possibly be. I thought that Oparin might have been O'Brian, but I realized I just misread the word. Then looking at some of the translations, I realized two things. These were all decidedly not Japanese names, and secondly, they all had taken names from poets, scientists and composers.
Oparin is a Russian composer, fairly obscure. (EDIT, I misremembered back when I first wrote this, he's actually a Soviet biochemist)
Yeats is an English poet, who you probably actually know.
Piaget is a Swiss psychologist.

What the heck? There's another Japanese-made game, whose name escapes me, which had as its NPC portraits images taken from a book on Nazi Germany and the Golden Age of Hollywood.

0:ナニモシナイ (Do nothing)
1:イドウ (move)
2:モツ (take)
3:オク (drop)
4:ツクル (construct)

Anyway, I'll do what I did last time and have my officers grab lasers and hopefully then track down The Alien before it becomes too powerful to deal with. Just move to the armory, which is L, with Oparin.

Oh...I can't. At least I think I can't. Arujaanon is a bit above my pay grade, but mausu is something very obvious. Mouse. Except...huh? Does this mean that there's a mouse in there or that its poisonous? Surely the captain can enter the armory! Well, I try Piaget...and that O corridor is poisonous. Okay. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. The other officer can't move either. Maybe I need to reset the game?
No, I can't move. At all. All 3 officers refuse to move anywhere, giving various statements, about the alien, about cages, its all so strange. I suspect one of three things is happening, the emulator I'm running this on, xm7dash3452a130423, which I got from the Neo Kobe emulator collection on the Internet Archive, is glitching with this game. The other two involve the game, firstly that it got damaged in the preservation process, or that its copy protection acted up in the preservation process. Either way, I've done all I could. Looks like The Alien part 3 might just be in my future after all.

I think another strategy game is going to be in this blog's future. Based on a different 1970s film that has been ripped off so many times. You might be able to figure out the movie, but you'll never figure out what it is I'm going to be playing come October. Next up, Gravitar and the conclusion to 1982.

Game 37: Voyager I: Sabotage of the Robot Ship

Name:Voyager I: Sabotage of the Robot Ship
Number:37
Year:1981
Publisher:Avalon Hill
Developer:William D. Volk
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:4/5
Time:Under 1 Hour

This was a surprisingly painful game to get running. I couldn't find any versions for a non-DOS platform and the DOS versions were all Basic files, and ergo, not something you can just fire up in DOSbox. Even the Internet Archive's version was Basic. How that got past people, I'll never know. Even this version was difficult to play, but I could play it, so that's something to be said. Part of the problem is I'm a person who didn't bother looking for old versions of DOSBasic, another is there wasn't anything for the emulators I have and I'm not bothering to do that for one single game. Can you guess who was proven right? Me.

Look at me, I'm so tough, destroying laser rifles

Voyager I is a game that technically falls into the category of FPS, if only because there's nothing else to call it. You walk around in an interface more at home with a top-down RPG than a shooter and hope you don't die. This is very difficult. I'm sure its possible, just as sure as I am that I don't care. Numbers on the right go down, and pressing C increases one of them. This is recharging my laser rifle. Taking a laser rifle off the ground increases the same bar to max. Shooting is pressing f for fire. If it isn't an elevator, it'll be destroyed. Combat is bull. It seems like you have a limited amount of time to shoot an enemy. This isn't for one enemy. This is for all enemies. Is it any surprise I flaked out after so little time?

Weapons:
A single laser rifle that seems to constantly drain. Firing was satisfactory though. 1/10

Enemies:
Robots...maybe the generators. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
They don't exist. 0/10

Levels:
Randomized wireframe levels. 0/10

Player Agency:
Walk around and hope you don't die. RPG-like interface. 1/10

Interactivity:
Up and down on an elevator doesn't count. 0/10

Atmosphere:
None. 0/10

Graphics:
Looks ugly. Shocking for 1981, isn't it? 0/10

Story:
Robots invade or something. 0/10

Sound/Music:
PC speaker. Standard stuff. 1/10

That's 4. Not bad for a game that's basically unplayable by today's standards. Scratch that, 1986 standards.