Galactic Empire: Won!

How did I get past the roadblock I alone found impossible to breech? Well, I got a different thought than I previously had. What if I need to have an animal shoot the robot? That mural looks more like an animal shooting a robot to me. I can't help but feel like I tried it before though.

Now, the fun thing about this is that the shooty animals are a pain to lead into anywhere. Their pathfinding is slightly better, since they're chasing after you in a zig-zag pattern, but that's the only good thing. They shoot quite rapidly and its easy for two or three shots to kill you. You need to dodge this while successfully getting the AI to go around a corner that looks like this: --| |--
I'm not sure that's coming off in the screenshots, but it is an infuriating thing. Not only does it seem like the game is set up so that this isn't possible, its set up so that if you think you've done it THE GAME SCREWS YOU OVER ANYWAY! If this is the right way to do it, no wonder nobody online has beaten the game. Right, screw it, back to cheating. If I try to do any of this legit I'm just going to be frustrated.

This turns out to have been the wise choice, because otherwise I never would have gotten anything here done. In the sense that there was something for me to get done. Because neither the animal nor the robot ever decide to attack each other, I start positioning it so that their attacks will hit each other. At some point it surely must have happened, so we can exclude this as a possibility. As insane as Coktel Vision could be, I refuse to believe they expect their playerbase to perform feats of such precision while your resources are not just slowly being drained, but very quickly.

Right, so its time to cheat again. Its actually something I have to go the extra mile to deal with, since I have to use Game Conqueror, that is, a Linux version of Cheat Engine, to find out what numbers my ammo, health, power and oxygen are. Yeah, this is that kind of experience. I should also note that I've found a landmine out in the jungle, so there might just be something else out here.

Cheating doesn't actually do anything for me, at least in terms of advancing. It does seem to reveal how much of a fool's errand dealing with the animals and the logimech is. Either I have to figure out a single animal or find something out in the jungle. Let me make it clear if it isn't, but my god finding and bringing a specific animal WITH cheats feels like work, without it, I'd be surprised if anyone won it. Spending more than a few minutes trying to do something results in a mess of tangled animals, running fruitlessly against a wall, and a huge pile of meat. All the animals here are carnivores, see.
I almost think I've gotten it when I try using the badge that just opened up doors back on the space station causes a sound when I use it on the logimech, but this is just a red herring. Nothing spawns, nothing happens.

That looks like a robot expressing terror at being shot

Rather than using more brute force techniques, I decide to figure out which animal matches the head on the mural by having a screenshot of it out at all times. Its success straight away, as outside the building are two animals, one who always chases after me and one who has been beneath my notice. Now, I just need to figure out how to get it into the pen. Its kind of running away, even if it attacks me sometimes. Fortunately I can gather enough meat to drag it into the enclosure, or not, since it got stuck on the wall. Hey, never tried using meat on the animals, rather than dropping it.
Well, that seems like it works, but because it won't stop following me afterwards, it dies to the logimech. Worse still, it seems like a fluke, because it doesn't happen again. But at least I know that if I'm ever getting past this, this is the animal to get into the enclosure. For the first time in quite a while, it feels like I actually have a chance at getting past this. That, was what I wrote in September.

November arrives, and the tone is much more somber. Like clockwork, cheating to give myself infinite health and ammo has failed. Now I have to do the task of setting it up again, and hoping that I can save it for a later time. I can't help but feel on my combined playthroughs of this game I've spent more time trying to cheat than I have playing most games. All for another fruitless evening of trying to move around this damn animal into a coral so it'll hopefully shoot the thing I want it to shoot. Then I realize I've been small-minded about this whole cheating thing. All I can think about is making myself invulnerable, and yet I have the ability to do anything that could be measured in-game. Like, say, moving characters around?
Frankly, this seems to be too complex to successfully do, and worse yet, I end up with a character who looks like he should attack, but doesn't. Still, I figure I should attempt it on another day, especially if my luck with cheating ends up holding.

All that trouble for a tiny badge...

I manage to get the correct animal in, through dumb luck. Okay, I think, guess I should try to move myself around cleverly...and its shooting at something. Wait. I slowly approach. There's no logimech. There's an item on the ground. OH MY GOD! YES! This is the happiest moment I've ever had on this blog. The culmination of what seems like years of failure finally resulting in victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. You just absolutely need to focus on one single animal and get it in here. Its doable, even if it seems impossible.

Aren't I working for the government?

Finally, Tiph-Ether, the capital. Though checking the manual after, it seems like this should be Dsehe, the other city. Guess the spaceport was Tiph-Ether? This is honestly a very interesting image, because it tells me that the whole land cruiser thing was intended to be a substitute for what they really wanted to do, but couldn't. Really, they should have just gone with making a graphic adventure like they usually did. Also, I turned off my cheats at this point, but let's just say that didn't stick.

Tiph-Ether starts out with me inside some random merchant's house. I am quite possibly the only person on the planet to be excited to see a new variation on NPC design in this game. He doesn't really want to associate himself with foreign journalists. I'm not going to screw with him yet. Ah, let's see what a wonderful world I've been placed in!

Ah...smell that smog...

Why a police officer! That's interesting, everyone else was soldiers back on the space station or space port. I give him my usual spiel, Ted Fost, journalist from Cosmopolis. "I am of course, neutral in this war", at which point he relieves me of my weapons. Good thing I saved, I think to myself as he opens fire and kills me in one shot. His gun makes a real mean sound whenever it hits me. I like it, I want one. I reload and take out both the officer and the merchant, the officer drops nothing, but the merchant has an access card. Interesting, but it seems like when I try to negotiate for it at all, he refuses to have anything to do with me. A puzzle I have to return to? Optional side content? Or is shooting him the correct solution?
I decide to come back to this, only to be stopped by a locked gate. Well, that's disappointing, it looked like the game was opening up some, but I guess we can't have that. Right, what's the correct way of dealing with this merchant? I try everything, even intimidation...and nothing. That's not true, he shoots me, which also kills me in one hit. I see where this is going, and I don't like it. If you're going to play dirty, I'm going to play dirty. This is probably the best choice, because after I went through the locked gate I noted the sound of someone shooting at me, who wasn't the cop from earlier, and a few moments later I find a soldier who upon spotting me just starts blasting. Then I try talking to a merchant, who responds by refusing to sell me anything and starts shooting me.

It makes me wonder if the game is intelligent enough to tell what I did on previous stages. Of course, testing that intelligence would involve beating that stage a second time. That's something that's really not going to happen. So I guess I'm just going to operate under the principle of shooting everything that isn't friendly. Which, you know, is sort of a problem when friendlies are of questionable friendliness. Guess it is a war zone after all, and nobody's going to care if a few merchants get shot. This gets me some interesting stuff, like a logimech detecting radar that seems to just detect everyone, and a needle gun, which just seems like another stun weapon. I also discover there's an inventory limit, which is a good sign.

Then I discover this. I can't make gifs in DOSbox, so what you should be seeing is these things crawling back and forth. Earlier, the game told me to look out for traps. Its tricky getting past these, and I'm not sure its possible without walking over them at least once. They go off like you're being shot with a machine gun, and for once damage isn't lethal. I mean, its a small advantage considering that right past this is an area where you can end up fighting two soldiers at once, and die incredibly fast. You can fight them one at a time if you're clever, but you have to fight both, since one is guarding a key. I've actually gone back to cheating this game has given me one oxygen and one refill since I've arrived here, hardly sufficient to advance.
To be honest, I'm not sure how you'd get past this without cheating either. Assuming neutrals didn't attack you I see no reason why the enemy wouldn't, and there are just so many of them. Further, you need at least two items from NPCs to pass, that combined with the tight handle on supplies makes this feel like a sequel or a expansion for the players who are good with hard games.

There's also this thing, a turret you can't seem to shoot. Like the floor traps, its more of a machine gun with a damage to match rather than everything else's execution weapons. Every new thing like this feels less like a challenge to overcome and more like an attempt to prolong suffering. Remember, health recovers, while ammo and oxygen doesn't, and there's a limited supply of that here. I find another stunning weapon, spherogel, along with a thermal regulator which is a more mysterious item.

Yes, the room is on fire

Its actually getting to the point where I have far more items than I know what the hell I should even be doing with. This game is outright brutal because I have no idea if the needle gun or the spherogel is going to be useful later, and obviously I can't toss away any keys or oxygen. I wonder how the hell that guy managed to win this so long ago. The game is constantly throwing curveballs at you, like hiding defensive items and keys inside buildings that those defensive items just so happen to protect against. I actually thought that the game was putting you in an unwinnable situation with a room that goes on fire when you enter it, but that's what the thermal regulator is for. Maybe this pass thing I had was supposed to help with me NPCs, as it seems more likely that they don't care for off-world journalists.
I have no idea what this "psycho" thing I got is supposed to be good for, though the manual tells me it manipulates humans somehow. Not good against soldiers, that much is clear.

It also seems that merchants are just difficult to deal with, something I frankly don't really care about at this point, as some merchants are easy to deal with in a different way. It seems like the cool aspect of the game that felt appealing has just sort of gone away for what might as well be any other early FPS.

I eventually find myself facing down a rather annoying task, a crushing ceiling, except in this case its just some random pillar going up and down. Just walk past it right? That's harder than you'd think. It seems like you have just a bit less than enough time to successfully cross it and there's seemingly no way to disable it. As I don't particularly want to deal with this for an even longer time, I cheat my way past it.

That's actually it for the level, there's a little more walking, and then the level exit. This teleport takes me to the surface of Ether again. Guess they're reusing an image, I think to myself. I start off in a room, guess that's also how entering areas starts. Outside is much the same as the last Ether section. That's not true, its exactly the same as the last Ether, except the starting room is empty. There's even a logimech in a secluded area. There's just nothing out there. Except for a spaceship passing by. I would have ended it here, but I wisely decided to continue onward. Because believe it or not, this seems to be the ending area. And it gets WEIRD.
I know, shocking that Coktel Vision gets weird. Shocking that this game gets weird.

I guessed that I needed to do the whole course of what I previously did, put the right animal in the enclosure along with finding the exit out. Fair enough. I get what I think is the right animal, no dice. I figure since the psycho item, which seems to be a mind control item, didn't work previously I could try it with the animals. They start talking to me. WHAT? For the second time this entry things have gone off the rails. There's one that says "YOU HAVE FOUND ME-US", and the first time through I accidentally clicked through the ending.

I took a video of the ending. If you can't or won't see the video, the ending is a wall of text displayed the same way as the introduction, consisting of a dialog between Fost and the spokesanimal of Etherian animals. This is the Melkout we have been so warned of. It seems as though the animals of the planet consist of a grand unified intelligence, of which has been manipulating the population of the planet into this civil war. Fost says that they didn't know, and that they have protections for intelligent species. The spokesanimal agrees to a peace talk with one of our "chiefs" and the game ends, without any indication of how those will go.
That...was interesting. Granted, the plot twist of "tree chops back" is overdone, but the way it was executed here was beautifully done. The previous agent mentioned the Melkouts, we find out who the Melkouts were and its something we've seen the whole game, no curveball whatsoever. Then, the final level. I don't know if they intended this to be as cleverly executed as it seems to me, but if they did, well done. Thinking I have to find the exit and then do the same puzzle I did earlier was a stroke of genius, although I will say they should have given the illusion you can teleport out. Then you start talking to the animals. Its rare for a game to throw a curveball at a player, but this game did so spectacularly.

(also, I should note you can see how bad collision is in this game simply because of how much trouble I have at the beginning)

After this I checked through the dialog files with a hex editor to see what I missed. I'm guessing my ballistic discount strategy in the first area really did screw me over. For the second area, its mostly warnings about things I figured out, however, there were a few helpful things I didn't know ahead of time. Firstly, I could have destroyed the laser turrets with grenades, which I didn't do since I assumed I should save the grenades for later. Secondly, the green lasers activated some traps, whereas I didn't quite know what they did. That must be what activated the blocks I couldn't run past. Some of the territory were the greens, although I guess for palette limitations they had a different color, some kind of tan. Not sure if I could have avoided violence there.
Finally, the game actually tells you how to reach the ending, as someone explains who the Melkouts are, the animals, and that you can use the psycho to talk to them. Not quite sure how the stated purpose, controlling people, relates to the actual purpose of talking to animals or how those animals control people. I do believe that explains how they were able to control everyone though.

This Session: 5 hours 10 minutes

Total Time: 6 hour 20 minutes

Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back (1982)

Name:Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back
Number:153
Year:1982
Publisher:Parker Bros
Developer:Parker Bros
Genre:Side-Scroller
Difficulty:4/5
Time:15 minutes
Won:Not possible

For some reason I had this game under 1983. Did I make a mistake? Did Mobygames throw something weird at me? I'll never know.
Star Wars. Its been said that Star Wars inspired the direction of the early years of gaming, what with all the titles set in space. Thus, its surprising that I haven't had much cause to play Star Wars. I played the arcade game based on the iconic Death Star sequence from the original, but didn't feel like I had much to say about it. There have been some misc games I don't really play like on dedicated handhelds, or various unlicensed games I don't care about, but today is the first real game. What's interesting is that this is directly comparable to a different game released a year later, Advance of the Mega Camels.

The Empire Strikes Back is based off the AT-AT scenes from Episode V, the ones that got taken down with the landspeeders. Just think about the big walker things from that movie if you don't know what I'm talking about. As we saw with The Dreadnought Factor last time, we're starting to see games that are like isolated versions of particular aspects of games from the future. In this case, the AT-AT scenes would be done in basically every Star Wars game they could fit it in in the '00s.

Right away the game starts with a bad sign. The Intellivision rendition of the Star Wars theme is quite possibly the worst I've ever heard, and that theme has been covered everywhere. Its either too high for the sound chip or the dumbass who programmed it here put the volume up way too high.

The game begins and it isn't much better. You can't tie the legs of these things together like in the movie, so you just shoot at them. Its not a very good experience for one thing, because movement is awkward. It feels a bit delayed and at lower speeds it doesn't feel like you're moving much at all, which isn't the worst of it. At high speeds you're uncomfortably close to the edge of the screen. While you do get some safe hits, this is the kind of game where dodging is paramount to you surviving the game. Not off to a good start.

Fighting an AT-AT is of course, bad for those reasons, but it gets worse and slightly better. You can dodge shots easily, but they also shoot homing missiles. You have no way of telling which is which. You have to shoot these things something like 20+ times, more because my shots didn't always register. If you're lucky you can shoot a special spot, which instantly kills them, but owing to the shots not properly registering, I feel like I got robbed on some occasions.

At this point, I would have normally quit, deleted what I wrote and then started looking at another game. But I didn't since there's another game like this. So, I got to thinking, since there's another version. What if the Intellivision version is being emulated poorly, possible or they sabotaged that release...for some reason. This isn't Atari, so they don't necessarily have a reason to do this. More realistically, they screwed up porting the game to the Intellivision and nobody really cared.

And you know what? The Atari version was better. I'm not just saying that because when I first started I had collision turned on, and accidentally flew straight into an AT-AT, damaging it and destroying myself. That was the most fun I had all game, that realization. No, it genuinely controls and plays better. It feels smooth in a way the Intellivision version didn't. I still wonder what I'm doing playing this, because its not fun.
To save myself some trouble and to avoid repeating myself, let's also talk about Jeff Minter's unofficial port Attack of the Mutant Camels, AKA Assault of the Mutant Camels, on the C64 and other systems. Keep dodging that guy, but I guess he had to sneak in eventually. His games are basically the same as your usual shoot 'em ups at the time, except they're on home computers and control well. And they all involve weird animals like the llama.

Now I say that, and that's all there really is to this. Shoot a giant camel 100 times while dodging their shots. Unlike the actual game I'm supposed to be playing, you don't get any shortcuts, you just shoot this thing 100 times. Minter knows how much distance you should have, because at worse when you're accelerating, you're halfway through the screen, and when you aren't, you're on the exact opposite end of the screen. I had absolutely no problems dodging the enemy's shots. Its good for the kind of game it is, as in tedious as hell and something I want to stop playing right now.

Weapons:
Generic lasers. 1/10

Enemies:
I guess it was mildly clever in how you had to avoid their attacks, but they feel really disappointing. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Endless enemies walking towards a single point. 0/10

Player Agency:
While you do outrun the screen, it controls well enough that otherwise its okay. 3/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
It doesn't really feel like Star Wars. 1/10

Graphics:
Crude imitations of iconic vehicles. 1/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
Simple sounds that I have no strong feelings about. 1/10

That's 9. I would say for Attack of the Mutant Camels instead give 1 for enemies and 4 for player agency.

Interestingly, the infamous Harlan Ellison was one of the reviewers at the time, whose criticisms included that the game had no win state. Calling it a dreadful life lesson for children and an analogue for the myth of Sisyphus. That is the Greek mythological figure who was cursed to push a boulder up a mountain for all eternity. Yeah, that feels about right. I should use that one quite often. Feels like a somewhat apt metaphor for blogs about these old games sometimes. I'd hate to have been the poor kid who asked for this back in the day.

Apologies for the incredibly boring title, but I wanted to focus on Galactic Empire. Speaking of which, the next entry on that game is going to be very interesting. Very, very interesting.

The Dreadnought Factor (1983)

Speaking as someone who has fond memories of the system, I can't get over how drab these title screens are

Name:The Dreadnaught Factor
Number:152
Year:1983
Publisher:Activision
Developer:Cheshire Engineering
Genre:Shoot 'em up
Difficulty:4/5
Time:2 hours
Won:Yes (52W/52L)

A fleet of the most powerful ships in the galaxy are coming after your home planet, and you need to shoot them all down before they oblierate it. From this simple premise comes one of the more interesting Atari-era titles, and one that actually comes across on-screen rather than just in a text. When I say shoot down those ships, I don't mean like your average game, gunning down individual ships. No, I mean capital ships. You take down a series of capital ships.

The very beginning of the first difficult, those blue things are how many other ships I have, you better believe you can run out

At the start of every game, one of your ships sets out from your planet to initiate an attack run on the enemy dreadnought. The game is incredibly generous with the number of ships you start with on most difficulties. Each one functions as a life and you start the game with ten of them. On difficulties up to 4, you gain 2 per dreadnought destroyed, with difficulty 4+ having 5 dreadnoughts. On the higher difficulties, you get 4 per destroyed dreadnought. You're more likely to run out of time rather than ships, but you'll still need all those lives.

An empty space. There's a surprising lot of this

An attack run consists of your ship flying across open space before finally reaching the enemy ship. This game plays something akin to a shoot 'em up rather than the kind of thing I usually like, as you can't fly backwards, just in a loop over and over again. Instead you can move up and down, along with controlling your horizontal speed. Rounding these out are a laser attack and a bomb. The lasers shoot straight ahead while the bomb drops directly on your current position. You can only have two attacks on-screen at a time between both weapons.

A dreadnought with a good mix of destroyed and not destroyed equipment

The dreadnought, meanwhile, has a multitude of equipment on it. You have laser turrets, in small variety, which usually shoots straight ahead, but later gains the ability to turn. Large laser turrets, which don't fire straight away, but when they do, you notice. Missile launchers, which try to follow your position but can be shaken off if you're lucky, later missiles seem to home in on your better. Rounding out offensive capacity are bridges, which can be taken out to slow down enemy fire, and on higher difficulties seem to shoot out missiles themselves.

Your targets, or at least the equipment on the ship that doesn't actually shoot at you consist of vents, take out all 16 and you destroy the ship. The planet destroying missile silos, take out all five and you can pass by the ship to your heart's content. The engines, all four, take them out to give yourself time. This stuff is what you take out with bombs, all black and red. You can't shoot things you're supposed to bomb or vice versa.

Once you've made your first pass, the enemy dreadnought gets closer, supposedly for a set distance, but it always seemed to me to be faster than that. If you survived, you quickly start another attack run, otherwise a new ship starts its attack run. I'm not entirely clear on how the countdown mechanics work in this game. The way the manual describes it is a very straightforward "no matter how much time you spend fighting, this time is all that happens" while the game itself seems to be shorter than that. Either way, runs continue until you take out the dreadnought or it reaches your planet.

Meanwhile, if you take out all the vents, that dreadnought explodes. Past the second difficulty, this is when the second dreadnought shows up. The layouts on these ships change as you pass through them. The first ship is always some kind of imitation Star Destroyer, then we get to ships whose influence is less obvious. There's a narrow one, a round one with a hole in the middle, and a wide one. There are more, but those are likely to be the ones you'll see for one's playing time. The game goes as far as to include a variation you'll only see if you play impossible for more than 12 dreadnoughts, but that could just be a rumor, I couldn't make it that far.

Eventually, should you manage to take them all out, victory.

The hole in center configuration

I say this, but on harder difficulties this is not easy. That's fairly obvious, its 1983, you can't save and difficulty leans towards "pulling teeth" more than "fair challenge". That said, this game has a better curve than most titles. The easiest difficulty is a practice one, so you're not thrown in the fire without a chance when you start out. Which is a good thing because the game seems to double in difficulty every time you go up a difficulty, at least until the last, Impossible, which appropriately enough puts you in a situation most, if not everyone will find impossible.

A different shot of the hole in center configuration

There are some issues with the game. For instance, the approach to the dreadnought can get tedious, and what's worse, you are frequently put in a situation where if you don't speed there you're waiting for minutes just to reach the ship. While you do get the ability to slowly hear the ship as it approaches, this in of itself can feel slightly deceptive. While the dreadnought gets closer, this is hardly an advantage. Because of the way the game is set up, its very easy for a player to get in an infinite loop of flying straight into the dreadnought only to get shot if things are going poorly.

The narrow ship configuration

I ultimately feel it controls well for what it is, but there are some issues. You have to deal with momentum and you can never fully slow down. Fair enough, but you also have to deal with momentum vertically, meaning you need to train yourself to not end up stopping right in the path of a laser. There's also an interesting issue in that the game might shoot a laser at you, that you have no chance at avoiding.
Difficulty 4, or Advanced was as far as I could reasonably play. Medium, as far as there is a medium, is difficulty 3. I went as far as using save states to keep my progress, and to slightly lower the difficulty. Even with this later difficulties come off as a bit tedious to actually finish.

Playing this was considerably more interesting than I'm used to from games of this era. Rather than vague shapes fighting against other vague shapes, this had very defined concepts that actually worked. It feels like we're getting to the kind of games that show the formation of ideas that would be expanded upon years later. This in my mind plays like a very rough first draft of the space combat in Star Wars: Battlefront 2. While I did like it, its hard to ignore that it was incredibly frustrating to play on anything higher than 4, even with save states.

Weapons:
The low amount of attacks you can have at once makes the consideration of what you should do in that moment very interesting. Take out a vent or shoot another turret? 2/10

Enemies:
I liked them, its a rare case of doing enemies gradually improving well. You start off fighting a ship that doesn't do much before eventually becoming a potent foe. Really, they did about as well as they could have done considering the era. 4/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
An interesting variety of ships, each of which require a different strategy to take down. Yes, they definitely got some mileage out of their limitations here. 3/10

Player Agency:
While there is a learning curve, once I got the hang of things the ship controlled beautifully. I just don't care for the weird way I had to move up and down, which carried momentum to a degree I didn't care for. 4/10

Interactivity:
Its kind of hard to say there's much, since everything is an enemy, but the game does allow you to destroy everything in sight. 1/10

Atmosphere:
A pretty good attempt at putting forth the feeling of taking out hordes of capital ships, and the panic of preventing your home planet from being destroyed. 5/10

Graphics:
I'm impressed they got this much stuff on-screen, moving smoothly at the time. Its all easily distinguishable too. 2/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
Your typical Intellivision sounds, nothing special. 1/10

That's 22. I feel a bit generous, so one more point and 23. That makes it the highest rate game chronologically, even without the boost.

Most reviews, which are in retrospect like my own, are similarly positive. Even IGN. Jesus Christ, I agree with IGN. Curiously, the only negative review, for the Atari 5200 version I didn't play, describes the game as tedious and a pain to control. This seems to be an issue exclusively with the Atari 5200 version, as the same reviewer talked about the Intellivision version much more positively some twenty years later. Something it seems the reviewer didn't even notice...

It remains to be seen if this title will get dethroned from status as best game of 1983. I know of a few contenders, but its hard to tell if they'll live up to the hype, especially at this stage where promising games frequently end up being disappointing.

Elevator Action (1983)

Name:Elevator Action
Number:151
Year:1983
Publisher:Taito
Developer:Taito
Genre:Side-Scroller
Difficulty:5/5
Time:50 minutes
Won:Not possible

I'm surprised I haven't talked about Taito before, as I am wont to think whenever a big company like this shows up. Doesn't help that sometimes I get as far as beginning writing about some game, only to realize I don't care for it or its incredibly boring. Taito was the company responsible for Space Invaders, one of the big classic space shooters that these days has been so talked to death about that I don't have anything worthwhile to say. What you probably don't know is that apparently Taito started as a Russian's venture of importing goods into Japan, headquartered in Shanghai. Its interesting how many Japanese game companies didn't start out as either Japanese or game companies, usually being importers.

Elevator Action was Taito's big hit of 1983, and according to reviews, its easy to see why as the game is surprisingly fair for an arcade title of the time. You play as a spy traveling through a large tower searching for documents while dodging and shooting guards. The big gimmick is that the game revolves around the use of elevators. A note because of minor issues with MAME, I'll be playing the NES version instead. It seems close enough.

Each game starts with a cutscene the player arriving at the top of a building, and then descending inside. The ominous seeming intro quickly gives way to a jaunty little tune characteristic of the era, yet feeling completely wrong. Less NES and more Intellivision in my mind. Once you gain control, you have to gradually move down the building, looking for red doors. You enter these by standing on a mark and then wait. At the bottom is your getaway car.

Obviously, this isn't as simple as just walking down. There are various bad guys, all in black coats like a cartoon villain, shooting at you. In your defense you have two primary methods of dealing with them. You have a gun, which can have three bullets on-screen at a time. Everyone dies in one hit, but it feels very fair about it, probably because unlike in other games, touching an enemy doesn't result in your death, and if you're jumping, results in theirs. Shooting them is generally the right choice and feels pretty satisfying.
That's something that could be used to describe the control scheme in general. Despite the oddness of the game, somewhere been grim realism and animeland, it kind of works. If you jump to a lower floor, you die, but you also somehow have a pretty good leap. You can crouch, which allows you to dodge some bullets, but your enemies can crouch too. Tripped me up the first couple of times.
Enemies pop out of every door except the ones containing documents, and only three seem to appear at a time. Because of a weird quirk, enemies can sometimes pop out of a door you've just left, since taking the documents out of a red door turns it blue. Enemies can also start shooting the second they leave a door...which is fun.

Crushing someone against a ceiling, how wacky and anime!

The elevators themselves are interesting. You can walk across them and go up and down, of course. As a consequence, you can't crouch while using it. You can also walk across the top, and but you can't control it or walk out the other side thanks to the cable. Your foes also use the elevator. Some elevators come in weird pairs, so you can't go up and down all the way in one of them. Finally, and the best part, you can use the elevator as a weapon in of itself. Just push it down their head and crush them. Or in later levels, push them against the ceiling.

You can also shoot lights down, which briefly causes a the building to become dark and take out an enemy...if you're lucky. There's also an alarm which causes enemies to pop out faster, but in practice I didn't notice too much of a change.

Now, there are some issues with the game's basic ideas. You are entirely at the mercy of the game whenever you enter a room to obtain documents, should a bullet cross your path while inside it, tough. The game also sort of stops while your character does this. You also have to wait for elevators a lot of the time. Just like in real life, this isn't fun.
Still, all is mostly well for the game's first level. It works. You go across many different sections and areas before finally escaping. It feels right. Finally, an arcade game that works. Then level 2 happens and my optimism is gone. The only real change is now enemies move faster and tend to crouch before shooting, which is something you generally can't dodge. Jumping works if you time it right, but its very tricky. Its even the same layout as the first level, except a few doors and elevators change a bit.
They also bunch up a lot more outside the rooms you enter, which generally puts this into the category of impossible for me. I'm sure there's a right way to deal with it, but alas, it is beyond me. I actually can get as far as the third level, but that's it.

Despite the multitude of factors that bring it down, I think that this is a solid title for the time. It has a nice intensity to it that works in spite of it being your usual arcade coin-muncher. Its just that lacking any real variation there's no real point in reaching later levels beyond bragging rights.

Weapons:
A pretty effective feeling gun. 2/10

Enemies:
Despite being your usual fodder, they've got some interesting abilities, and can do most things the player can. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
An interesting tower block, but just one. 2/10

Player Agency:
Jumping feels a bit too heavy for the aesthetic, but otherwise is solid. 4/10

Interactivity:
I'm impressed by both the elevators and the falling lights. 2/10

Atmosphere:
For a moment, it felt like a proper spy game. Then it came off like any other NES title. It does have its moments in the intensity department though. 2/10

Graphics:
It looks okay. I had no issues determining what was going on. 2/10

Story:
The barest of bare. 0/10

Sound/Music:
Standard NES sound effects along with an out of place background tune. 2/10

That's 18, the highest for the year so far. That's...a surprisingly good rating. I usually don't get this kind of luck. Either the bottom is about to fall out or things are getting tolerable on this blog. I'm still on the arcades for 1983, which has had a weird rating curve.

This brings us down to 31 games left in 1983. No, that's not a typo. I decided to do some spring cleaning and actually apply my "no games under 10 points" rule more harshly. So we're down to half of what I said 1983 would be already. As such most of the remaining games are supposedly tolerable, and most should be playable in the sense I can get them running. I'm also done with the arcades, meaning now I'm going to focus on console titles.

Ecstatica (1994)

Name:Ecstatica
Number:150
Year:1994
Publisher:Psygnosis
Developer:Andrew Spencer Studios
Genre:Survival Horror
Difficulty:4/5
Time:4 hours
Won:Yes (51W/52L)

150 numbered games! Its not a very impressive title for that number, but then again, 150 has always been the black sheep of anniversaries, as whereas 50 and 100 feel like grand celebrations, 200 feels important somehow and 250 is very important, 150 just feels like another notch.

Ecstatica is one of the few games developed by the surprisingly well-educated Andrew Spencer, a Brit as could be expected, who before this was mostly known for random sports games. Its from this education I presume resulted in the game's unusual appearance, the spherical models rather than the standard polygon models. Remember, this was at a time when having true 3D models of humans was very awkward. While I'm unsure of the specifics, this was the longest developed title in Pysgnosis's history, apparently taking 6 years. Meaning this is another idea that was probably brewing for a long time, but unlike The Colony, we don't have the story of how it came to be.
The in-game story is that it is the 10th century. You are a wanderer, either a man or a woman, who arrives at a small town only to discover that its full of demons and the most foul creatures, having their way with the townsfolk. Stop them...somehow.
I knew I was going to have issues with this game going in. This unorthodox looking game has a very special feature in it that drives me nuts. Oh, I hadn't played it before, make no mistake, but I knew its reputation. This is the game with the werewolf that follows you across most of the game. Forget Nemesis, this guy's the real nightmare.
I should note that I went against what I usually do and played this in DOSbox Staging, as this has Gravis Ultrasound as a music option and I have never been able to get it working in regular DOSbox.

You don't notice it while playing, but blue text on a blue background isn't a great idea

The intro is just some nice shots of the player approaching the village. It looks nice for 1994. Its all 3D, well the backgrounds are pre-generated of course. The animations are nice and the models are...better than everything else at the time. Interestingly, and I didn't notice this at first, the game takes place in Northern Europe circa 928 AD. Something I assumed was another of the game's historical inaccuracies, as Christianity factors in somewhat in the game, but it seems like its not impossible if the country in question is Denmark. Its still impossible with the setting the game seems to depict, but this is the least of the game's historical problems.

As per the manual, the controls are the numpad and F1 through F12. The function keys control your speed, from sneaking to running, while the numpad is everything else. EVERYTHING. Wanna pick up an item? 1 or 3, that is, your left or right hand. Using it? 7 or 9, which also functions as attack if you don't have a weapon. 5 is dodge and we don't get any side-stepping...or moving and turning. The game does not give you any chance at learning this, because straight away something tries to attack me. It takes a while. I think the guy you start off facing is intended as a sort of tutorial.

This moment works no matter what you think of the game

After taking care of him, and not finding the mace he dropped, I enter the first building...where there's the werewolf. Uh-oh. I run away, before deciding to fight, and get slaughtered.

The game makes mild fun of me for failing at this. It ain't easy. There's a lot more overt humor in this title compared to its contemporaries. I suspect the author wasn't too big a fan of horror and this all was just a coincidence. So I instead walk towards a building, where I saw a little girl run to.

This scene looks really uncomfortable if you play as a lady

No dice, the werewolf jumps on top of me, even looking directly into the camera as a mocking gesture.

He likes his meat aged...

Then I am dragged into a building, where the werewolf slaps me around some more before leaving. This is basically the game just telling me I have no choice in dealing with this guy. My guy escapes and in something that's sort of under my control, I walk over to the barrels and hide.

This is quite amusing the first time it happens, which makes up for how later you just sort of wait around for him to leave

Then the werewolf returns and starts running around the area looking for me. Yeah, this isn't a straight horror game, the werewolf looks directly at me and then just walks past. Combined with the setting technically being night but feeling very bright it feels like there's an intentional disconnect in the game. Also, this it takes FOREVER for him to leave. Even then I end up alerting him, killing me again.
This is basically the enemy of Ecstatica, as most of the game involves dealing with him in some way. He seeks you out whenever he can, but it seems like the developers intentionally made him stupider than he should be for the sake of making the game playable. Not just hiding places being safe spots, but he has a limited ability to see the player, it seems. I ran into a building once and then hit F1 thinking that me sneaking would make finding a hiding place easier, and he just took his sweet time coming in. He can see me hide and he still doesn't know where I am. This, as much as it might seem, isn't a bad thing. Later he for some reason charged towards my hiding spot and just started hammering it, with no benefit to him, and effectively screwing me over.

Yeah, now that I look at it through the comfort of not playing the game, its a key

Let's talk about the other part of survival horror, the items. The game doesn't tell you what they are, so the only way to figure it out is through trial and error. I picked up something from a dude the werewolf had killed. At first I thought it was a potion, but using it results in me attacking. So its a knife? Oh...no. This is going to be one of those rare games where figuring out what you even have is a challenge in of itself. It doesn't help that all the obvious weapons that either an enemy or a corpse has the game doesn't let me take. (its actually a key that opens the nearby door)
With all that said the game is interesting, but the controls take getting used to. You can't do two things at once, even walking and turning or walking and changing speed. Thus you have to completely stop for a moment to do something else. Something that hurts hard in a game centered around running away from one very nasty enemy. After a while you get used to it, but either way the entire game opens up with the player running around, not knowing what he should be doing, not knowing what it is the player can interact with or what it is, and it controlling poorly too.

Still, I should show this in action. I made considerable progress during this video, including finding a sword. I also find out how I'm going to kill the werewolf, which is just through hitting him for minutes on end. A better player than I would do so through legit fighting, but considering it took me something like 15 minutes to do so, its something you do more as a show of skill than for any practical purpose. I don't believe it is necessary, and in fact it might actually make the game worse despite obviously making it easier, but it is something I felt I had to do.
And what I mean by worse is that killing rather than dodging the werewolf takes away part of the game's charm. There's a Looney Tunes feel to the game despite its violent and very adult nature. The werewolf constantly appears and reappears as a constant, darkly comedic reminder that you're nothing compared to him. Killing him feels as wrong as the Road Runner killing the Coyote.

Each time you walk through this area, the dead woman raises her head and groans before flopping back down

Which brings me to why I like this game, and why despite its flaws this is a great game, even about an hour in. Ecstatica seems like it aged like milk, with its controls, graphics and period hostility, a perfect three strikes. But it hasn't. Its cheese that has become blue cheese. What seems to be bad is actually now part of its appeal, and even then we have the constant threat of the werewolf...assuming you don't cheese the game. Ecstatica delights in dark comedy and the absurd. What was once a nice-looking game with a comedic bent amid its horror is now a comedy game with a sadistic streak.

This goes on for what would be 2-3 pages of text

On the second floor of one of the houses you can find a book detailing the backstory of the game. The wizard's maid stole a book of magic from him and began to dabble in the dark arts. She summons a devil, incorrectly, and gradually becomes a victim of its influences. This is delivered quite clumsily through subtitles over the course of a few minutes, and then later sporadically. Say what you will about finding notes, its by far a better choice for this than waiting around for someone else to read through the book.

This is by far the game's most bizarre sequence, simply because this little girl seems more sadistic than even the werewolf

Also, the game gets a bit weird after this. You find a teddy bear for a little girl...who I assumed was hiding in terror. Giving her the teddy results in her attacking it, before a semi-scripted sequence in which she leads you to a dungeon area that the player, at the end, runs away from. Its kind of interesting since she's just completely unfazed by all the death and destruction around you, even fighting one of the little goblin things before becoming disinterested. I'm also a bit uncomfortable with her character model.

These downward climbs can't kill you, a factor I think adds to my appreciation of the game. We know its crap, but we have to do it and we won't penalize you. Its another bit of weird mercy the game doles out, when it could very well be frustratingly hard. As such the game is actually a bit easier than you'd think. Of course there are interaction triggers that can trigger a loop if you don't know how to get out of them, as somehow turning will activate them.

Yes, I'm fighting a table

Combat, outside of the werewolf, is sort of a non-entity. Enemies are only ever a threat because of the number of them, which in itself is only an issue if you don't have a weapon. One weapon attack hits all enemies in an arc which was basically the only attack I ever used owing to the more narrower one being a bit too narrow. Because your health automatically regenerates the only time you're ever in danger is when the werewolf is chasing after you or the game decides to pull a gotcha moment. Because you can dodge you can't ever be put into a truly unwinnable situation unlike Alone in the Dark. Not that it doesn't try.

What about puzzles? Well, you have two hands, and can carry two items. A weapon counts as an item, so that basically means you have one item slot for the most part. An illustration of this point, in order to create a potion you need to win the game, you need to find three items, which means even at besting walking back and forth twice once you know where they all are. All while dodging a werewolf. Now, I say this, but honestly, the game felt fairly clever. I'd go as far as to say this had the best designed puzzles of any survival horror I've played so far and the best I can remember. Nevertheless, there is unfortunately some item hunting.

Outside of the obvious horror and comedy angles, the game is set during the middle ages, and achieves the usual theme park theme of that nature. Monks are all religious cowards who like to burn witches. There's a suit of plate armor, that if you wear, will slow you down while offering no protection. Alchemy, witch burnings, the Crusades and Arthurian-style knights factor heavily in the game, despite none of these things really existing in 928, where the game was set. I would have preferred it being more accurate, but it does work in the game's favor irregardless.
Sound-wise this is fairly nice. Its DOS, so it has a low-bit rate, but attacks have a nice meaty sound to them, and everything you expect to have a sound effect, outside of foot steps, has a sound effect. As to music, its interesting. I was checking a soundtrack online and there's a difference between the Gravis and the uploaded one, which I presume is Soundblaster. The Gravis is more of a very ambience soundtrack akin to the kind of thing you'd see starting in the PSX-era rather than the more straightforward earlier years. The Soundblaster one is instead a weird mix. I don't think either is bad, but the melodies of the Soundblaster aren't really that interesting, go for Gravis if you can.

A sequence of spears shooting up into the air, at least it doesn't kill you

Its at around this point that the game loses steam, because you enter an underground area akin to Tomb Raider. Not a good thing either, as this feels very arbitrarily done on the game's part. Go the wrong way? Get instantly killed. Go the right way? Now you get to run past some unkillable enemy. Now make you go down the path the right way and fast enough, or you'll get killed again. Out of place death traps, coffins containing enemies, and a doppelganger for some reason.

Nevertheless, the ending section feels quite satisfactory. There wasn't a good recording of just the good ending on Youtube, so here's one now. There are two options in the end, a bad ending where you don't fight the final boss and become a servant of his, or one where you kill him. Its not that hard, but the confrontation was built-up quite nicely. Although I'm not sure why I'm riding off into the sunset with the woman who caused this mess.

An interesting thing about the game. Going in I expected a much more difficult game than I got, even discounting that I killed the werewolf. Escaping from the werewolf feels almost like an inevitability, and if you've shaken him, you have a good shot at getting free reign on some areas of the game. The game likewise offers a considerable number of areas in which you're safe from him, even if sometimes these areas contain other threats. Its another case of games that seem difficult aren't nearly as difficult as they seem at first glance sometimes. It also had the right length for what it set out to do.
While I didn't talk about it a lot, simply because I'm used to it, the game's camera angles weren't great. Quite a few times I found myself in situations where the camera wasn't showing my enemy. Or places where it wasn't clear where I could walk. It wasn't too bad, but I suspect some areas were close to not being visible if I wasn't careful.

Weapons:
While there are technically four weapons in-game, along with punches, there's only one practical weapon for most of the game. Its satisfying, but feels slightly broken and its all melee. 2/10

Enemies:
Focusing on a handful of enemies who provide you with a consistent threat throughout the game works in the game's favor. The game is still at a time when creating a game with large numbers of more generic enmies wasn't entirely feasible and every effort is made to make it work. 6/10

Non-Enemies:
For the most part, non-combatants, and those that do fight all do so in scripted sequences. While some are a bit too annoying, each works nicely enough in context. 3/10

Levels:
Despite getting a bit worse in the final third or so, the open-ended beginning is incredible. Despite a few minor issues with camera angles hiding what areas you can reach, the world and even the underworld of the game are incredibly interesting to explore. 7/10

Player Agency:
Despite the hiccups I have and dislike about the game, I don't actually find the controls all that objectionable. I would have liked to be able to change speed while moving or move and turn, but its something I got used to quite quickly. 5/10

Interactivity:
While what you could do was incredibly limiting, and had issues with activating it, the puzzles were pretty good. Its sort of the right level of giving the player information, just enough so they should be able to figure things out, but not enough that its just spoonfeeding it to them. Well, outside of the parts where the game designs to screw you over to increase the playtime by a few minutes. 5/10

Atmosphere:
Despite the age of the game, there's still some creep factor to be had. The werewolf is an intense foe, as are the minotaurs to a lesser extent. The goofiness of the game works weirdly well as even at the time the game was comedic. 6/10

Graphics:
The characters now all look like balloon animals, and the environments look like weird lego sets, so it has aged here. That said, animations are nice, and certain details of the game like stone walls look incredible. 5/10

Story:
Clumsily delivered exposition detailing some know-it-all getting her entire village killed, and then I save her...for some reason. 2/10

Sound/Music:
Low-bit but effective sound effects along with effectively creepy background music. 6/10

That's 47, making it the fifth best game I've played, and second best survival horror.

Nevertheless this only something I feel like people who really like survival horror games should play. There are elements of the game that make it obnoxious to play if you can't get used to them, especially that darn werewolf.

Period reviews tended to treat this game as a technical marvel and thus gave the game high scores. Interestingly, most continental European magazines gave the game scores in the '80s, a high mark in those days. Modern reviews tend to focus on treating this like some kind of fever dream, but like it.

That was this Halloween. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to be doing November. I know that I said I was going to consider Galactic Empire finished this month whether I won it or not, but I was just in a mad rush this month. I think I might just have it now, but we'll see. I might just have more excuses to make next month and the month after that. Otherwise I think I'm just going to play some 1983 games until that's done with.

As an aside, me and a friend created an interactive fiction game for a contest called Nowheresville, a title in which you try to escape a bizarre town that might just be in hell. I hope its as fun to play as it was to create.