Pathways into Darkness - Introduction

The last great Macintosh exclusive. Many other great titles originated on this computer, but one by one they all seem to have been ported to other OSes. Only Pathways remains. At least in theory, I'll touch on that at the summary. Bungie, as you probably know, developed Halo, but before they created that monster of a franchise, they were making DOS and Windows gamers jealous with Marathon, a game which will sound very impressive when I get to it in 1994.

But in 1993 Budgie was nowhere near the beast it would become, it was a small outfit out of Chicago, making games for the very business focused Macintosh. Their previous two games were successes for a small company, 2.5k copies sold. The first game was Operation: Desert Storm, a fairly orthodox top-down shooter; The second was Minotaur: The Labyrinth of Crete, a multi-player RPG. Keep in mind for the latter that it could very well be that only 2.5k people were interested in a MP RPG back then, its not like now where those are what's left of the big budget RPG world.

The story is more interesting than the usual fair. In 1994, an alien diplomat has told the US president and his senior military staff of an ancient sleeping being (or a god, basically) trapped deep inside the Yucatan Peninsula, which is that point of the south-eastern, eastern side of Mexico. A temple is there, neither Mayan or Aztec, and around this temple are strange creatures. The god is awakening, and there are eight days to save the planet.

I play as a special forces operative, sent to detonate a low-yield nuclear device near the dead god's body, in order to keep it dreaming. The aliens are on their way to do more effective measures, but they're going to arrive in two and a half years. Unfortunately for me, the air drop doesn't go as planned and my equipment is mostly damaged or missing. I have to find the rest of my team, find the bomb, then place it at the lowest part of the temple I can descend to, and then maybe escape with my life. I have until 2:00 PM on Friday to detonate the bomb. No pressure.

The game runs in several small windows, like most Mac software of the time

Starting the game up, my character moves very slowly. A bit of the manual is telling the player to get used to dodging in this game, a wonderful prospect if my character remains as swift as this. There's no run button or anything like that. I start with only a knife, which I'm sure I've seen before, but I cannot remember where right now.

Doors function on Quake logic, walk up to them and they open. Which means if something looks like a door and doesn't open, it either isn't a door or you need to find a switch somewhere. There's no use key persay, instead you get a bunch of context stuff. There are chains mentioned in the manual, and I get the option to pull them after every move.

There are text boxes like these for everything important, assuming you decided against reading the fairly thin manual

Moving over a dead body allows me to search it, and if I had a certain crystal (which are very special items I understand) I could talk to him. This fellow is a nazi, with a Walther P4, some ammo and a copy of Mein Kampf. I wasn't expecting that. Double-clicking uses an item, otherwise you just have drop and examine. Its poor reading material because of the gravity of the situation and my lack of German language skills. I'm amused game, don't screw with me. For weapons you can do the usual number key for each weapon.

That rune there allows me to save

Items not attached to a corpse are picked up automatically. It flashes the screen. The whole corpse thing is a bit distracting, because I'm not used to having to deal with that. The only way I notice that is when I'm looking at the messages, which I'm not, because I'm watching out for enemies. Further, searching puts the focus outside the main window, so I have to click on the main window before moving again. Which is annoying for an action game. This is also the pause function, which is also annoying.

Glad we're starting off right on the enemy design

Soon enough I find a ladder up and the first enemies of the game. I'll give these guys something, the enemies are unnerving. It took me a bit, but I realized they're using some kind of seagull sound. Fighting as of yet is fairly simple. Shoot, dodge, try not to die. The Walther P4 I have is hitscan, but their attack is a projectile. One thing that's interesting is that the weapons use a magazine system. Fire enough shots and you reload. Automatically, of course, but I suspect you can do so manually by swapping out magazines in the inventory.

The game shares more than a little with survival horror games. The short draw distance and the low speed makes everything slightly creepy to walk around, not to mention all the bones just lying around. Ammo is just scarce enough and fighting enemies is just dangerous enough to be in danger of losing health. You can rest to restore health, but it takes about an hour to restore it all. (I have 6, but they have decimal points) Its more survival horror than Alone in the Dark, which doesn't have much surviving and its a bit too B-movie to be scary.

Check out all the ammo I don't have!

Never Stop Firing, the level in which I've been for a while, has three paths, and by the second path I figured out the gimmick. There are two chains, and in the center is a path you're supposed to go. You have to activate both chains. This gets me the yellow crystal, the one I can use to talk to the dead. Kind of figures they wouldn't let you go too long without access to that ability.

What a charming man

Back to the starting area, I talk to that German soldier. The dialog system is comparable to Ultima, type in a keyword and if its one they're supposed to know, they'll answer. The game tells you two to get started, name and dead. He doesn't remember his name, but apparently he got shot in the back by their captain, Muller. Asking him about the door tells me he had a musical instrument to open the door. I guess I need to find that? Must be another door leading there then. Other than that, he doesn't tell me much besides that.

The abominations are very considerate, marching single file

There was one other path forward, another ladder. This leads to another room, except this time, there are many, many more enemies. Before there were one, or multiple were spread out through a large room. Here they come marching after each other, in single file. I have to use the knife a lot here. Its a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

The book doesn't count as a treasure for some reason, I would think people with a morbid interest in Nazi Germany would want a first edition

Its at this point that I get more health. This game has RPG-elements. In addition to the dialog system, the more points you get, the more health you have. Two points of health for every 4 points. Points are gotten by getting items, some key, some random treasure. I get better in weapons just by using them, no idea if that connects to the crystals yet.
Not long after I leveled up, I see another corpse. He doesn't tell me anything, because he's cold and he can't remember. But he does have ammo. And man, do I need it. The amount of enemies here are getting to be too much. So much that I realize I should have saved more ammo earlier. I guess I'm restarting. Oh, well, its not that much of a replay yet.
Fighting with the knife requires a deal of finesse. You need to get one of the headless, or zombies in a corner, then stab them enough times that they don't strike back. This is tricky, because you have to get them at the right time to not just get shot by their attack. These rounded corners, which I haven't mentioned yet, seem to be there purely for decoration, because enemies can't shoot past them. This nets me enough ammo to last a long time. Enough to get past all those pesky guys I was having trouble with. Funny, the big encounter I was having trouble with, one with multiple zombies, were guarding a few clips of ammo.

Note the "zombies" on the left, with the blue headdress

That group with the zombies is actually a trap, since the door closes behind you. That's not something I expected because before this, there were two rooms that looked like they were traps. An area on the north side and a more obvious one with a save rune in the west. Each having two doors on the opposite side. Just the way its developed, really. It really seems like it when I first breach a room and get nothing but enemies. Yet, in the opposite side (guarded) is another dead German. This one is in better shape than his friends, actually telling me what's going on and complimenting my skills with the P4. There were four or five of them down here, he bought it helping one of their wounded escape. I have the names Jochaim, Hans and Behrens. Jochaim was wounded, Hans has the ammo and Behrens is quiet.

Some ammo on the ground, a good chunk of it is more well-hidden than this

Going back to that cold soldier tells me nothing with the names. I guess he really can't remember. Otherwise, there's a ladder up, but nothing much else of note here. Its curious, for a game where I'm trying to go down I sure am going up a lot. I'm liking it so far, but there are some issues. The level design isn't really exciting. While there are some shortcuts, once the enemies are all dead its mostly just slowing walking throughout a cleaned-out place. Any novelty from the unusual comic book style graphics is quickly removed once you've been in the game a while.

Some other points:
*This doesn't really feel like any other game I've played chronologically yet. Partially due to the Macintosh's design, partially because the game has a bunch of features that are sight unseen at this point.
*There is no music and the actual combat sounds are very limited, there's no sound for the knife. I do get a sound if I try to search where there's nothing to search.
*Sound keeps cutting out after some time of play. I have already had a horrible crash. The joys of Macintosh emulation.
*Dying gives you a fancy death message, which might be the first game to have that, depending on if you count Faceball 2000/Midimaze's "Have a nice day" message.
*Enemies show up where I've already killed everything. I have no idea if this is intentionally happening because I triggered a trap or if they just respawn. If its the latter its not as bad as it could be, but still annoying.
*I didn't have a good place to stick it in, but this game uses a save point system, like the later Marathon games. All of them.
*The dead bodies of enemies don't have anything on them, but the game still tells me when I walk over them. I'm curious if this will actually mean anything later.

This Session: 1 hour 20 minutes

Necromancer

Name:Necromancer
Number:99
Year:1982
Publisher:Synapse Software
Developer:Bill Williams
Genre:Top-Down
Difficulty:5/5
Time:50 minutes

An evil necromancer has brought darkness to the land, with his foul magicks and legions of sprites and spiders. Only you can stop him from completing his domination of the realm of light. So promises the back of the box for Necromancer, an unusual shooter that not only promises action, but growing...trees?

This was developer Bill Williams second game, after a game called Salmon Run, which looks like a lot of games from around that time. If you know of him, you've probably heard of him because he finished Alley Cat. There are three stages of gameplay, one growing trees, one having the trees kill your enemies and one in which he take out the evil necromancer himself.

The game starts with a creepy tune. It isn't bad for the era, considering its competition could be charitably called a jingle. It doesn't quite fit the game that follows. The game begins and madness reigns. Things run across the screen and trying to move just causes a cursor to move. Pressing the fire button creates a tree. The object is in fact to kill enemies by moving the cursor over them, which is only the objective by way of trying not to get killed and to save the trees you're trying to grow. The majority of the enemies try to steal those trees.

You can't see it too well, but there's a forcefield of a six-point star around the player

While I got past this screen pretty readily, that's because its basically impossible to die on this screen. The only real threat are the spiders, which either hurt you or hurt the trees. You have these things with sacks, I guess the sprites, that seem to steal everything they touch. If they touch a growing tree, they set its progress back. The final element to this screen are the hopping things, which drop seeds, which you need to create a tree.

Note the green thing on the left, that's what drops seeds

Creating trees is more difficult than it sounds, because not only is this game frantic, it controls badly. This isn't a keyboard joystick issue, because I plugged in my bootleg N64 controller and it handled worse. That's the closest I have to a proper old-school controller and if that's handling things badly, I don't think its going to be much better even with period controls. The cursor/crosshair moves as quickly as everything else, and as a result its very hard to properly aim the thing vertically. You're just hoping to make enough trees to properly deal with the next level.

Nothing I do can say will explain anything here

Stage two is where things get really confusing. You're supposed to take the trees you grew and allow them to eat the eggs of the spiders, otherwise they'll hatch and kill you. Except that's not really what the objective is. No, what you're supposed to do is get a symbol that spawns ladders down, go down, and repeat about 10 times. The issue with this is in the controls. Moving still just moves a cursor/attack, but holding down the joystick button moves your character. Which is awkward to say the least, especially since there's the same issues from stage 1. Now if you position yourself wrong, you can acidentally take control of a tree when you're trying to do something else.

Stage two is where things get really confusing. You're supposed to take the trees you grew and allow them to eat the eggs of the spiders, otherwise they'll hatch and kill you. Except that's not really what the objective is. No, what you're supposed to do is get a symbol that spawns ladders down, go down, and repeat about 10 times. The issue with this is in the controls. Moving still just moves a cursor/attack, but holding down the joystick button moves your character. Which is awkward to say the least, especially since there's the same issues from stage 1. Now if you position yourself wrong, you can accidentally take control of a tree when you're trying to do something else.

About all you'll see on this level

Stage three is madness and I was not able to do much here. There are tombstones here, I can get one once, but attacking further tombstones doesn't seem to work. I can take out the wizard, but he comes back, and the hordes of enemies quickly kill me. It doesn't seem to me this section is possible to complete without abusing save states or spending thousands of hours mastering the game.

Ultimately, this game is just too weird and too frenzied to be anything more than that. Its chaos is too unfocused to ever really be fun. Its clear there are many things going on in the game that are more complex than they seem, but actually figuring out those systems isn't worth the effort. Its the sort of thing that would be ripe for a remake, perhaps Cinemaware-style.

Weapons:
A sort of weird wisp that doesn't really feel like much of anything. 0/10

Enemies:
Things that seem to just randomly wander around until they decide to kill you. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Its interesting for 1982, but ultimately, while they change up the gameplay, they're too different. By the time you've reach the latter ones you don't really know what it is you're supposed to do before you get killed. 2/10

Player Agency:
Its interesting in theory, but in practice its very heavily limited by its decision to use the joystick with its 1 button. Having to hold the button down in later levels to move is just maddening. 2/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
The title music does a very good job of setting a tone, but the thing is, I don't think this followed up on that. What follows feels as random as any other title I've touched upon from the era. 3/10

Graphics:
It gets the job done. More impressive in motion than in pictures. 1/10

Story:
None, really.

Sound/Music:
Outside of the title theme, generic sounds for the era. 2/10

That's 11 points. So far above average for 1982, but I find myself hard-pressed to say its good for the period.

Mr. Williams has several more titles over the years, although I'm not sure how many are ones I'll be covering. If you don't know who that is, I suggest reading up about him elsewhere, as he lived an interesting life. Seems a shame to knock on such a title so hard, but there's not much else I feel about it.

Zone Raiders

Name:Zone Raiders
Number:98
Year:1995
Publisher:Virgin
Developer:Image Space
Genre:Vehicle Sim
Difficulty:3/5
Time:10 hours

Zone Raiders is a budget title developed by Image Space and published by Virgin Interactive, under the Expert Software label. This would have been just another title on the shelf in 1995, as neither of these things meant very much in those days. This is in fact Image Space's debut, they would go on to making racing sims, starting with a target of personal hatred, Sports Car GT, and eventually hit on making actual Formula 1 simulation software. This is the company's sole violent outing, one act of aggression before making mundane games in mundane settings. As mundane as being a race car driver can be, anyway.

This was a pain to get started. It doesn't work in DOSbox, or at least it doesn't work in DOSbox, in Linux. it works fine in DOSbox-X through WINE.

This is one of the few times you'll see something this good in this game

Set in a vaguely post-apocalyptic Earth, where various groups go into sections of the old world called "zones" to retrieve stuff. The player has just joined a group looking to get to the Free Zone, and they need to find a bunch of crap in order to get some old jet working to get there. The player shall be using one of five hover cars, based off classic car designs, to destroy anyone in their way of the parts they need.

A typical Zone Raiders scene

Starting up the game, it was very good. The opening level is a simple one, but that's understandable. Its a good level for getting used to the controls. My first thought was, this is perfect, this is how a hover car should feel. Its hard to fully explain without playing it yourself, but it feels right. The momentum, the way it feels at full speed, turning around to blast someone following you. Even the annoying bobbing the car does feels like its something that should be here. The game has autoaim, which you can turn off, but you shouldn't do that since manually aiming usually ends badly.

What else you'll be looking at for the duration of the game

There are 15 "explosive tracks", divided into three distinct sections. The first five levels, including the tutorial, take place in some kind of industrial area in the sky. These are effectively a series of highways that lead into small arenas. It feels like a cross between a racing game and your standard FPS from the era. To complete a level you need to find somewhere between 1-4 items and then the exit. To do this you have a VLocator, which tells you how close you are and in what direction the next item is. It doesn't tell you if there's a path to the item the way you're headed or if there's an item nearer to you.

Different cars have different interiors

Enemies are either other hovercars, of various sizes or stationary turrets. The interesting thing about them is they all use the same weapons and targeting system as you do. This means you can figure out how to counter most enemies fairly early on. I'll explain all these later, but there are two types of enemies that get very annoying, ones using grenades, and ones using homing missiles. These are the second and third best weapons, respectively, and are deadly even in the hands of the AI. The only real method of dealing with these guys is to never let them fire to begin with, which makes me wonder if there's something I missed or I'm supposed to be cheap.

Falling happens a lot in this game

For the most part, the enemies aren't much of a problem. The game is generous enough with shield pick-ups that you never need to worry about dying from health loss. The real threat is from falling down into the void. The game has a not insignificant number of areas where you have to jump, pits you have to fall down and areas with secrets. While the AI is incredibly stupid, basically just charging at you and shooting blindly, a good number of them just fell down just like I did. There's a time limit which says its only 15:00 minutes, but it seems like its constantly stopping and I never once lost thanks to it.

What a quality...sprite...?

After a few missions, I had to break out some guy from a jail. I wasn't paying too much attention to the story at this point, but it turns out that the game has a more important one than I thought. A group of people called ECO had persuaded the guy to take off without us, and crashed the jet out in the wasteland. The game makes a point to telling me he was headed for a teleporter pad, but I'm not sure how different it is from the exit pads I've been using.

Imagine one of those levels with a cyberdemon in a hallway, in the base game, constantly

The second set of missions are in a mix of tunnels and valleys. Same principles as before, long highways that sometimes lead to arenas. Here, thankfully, there are not any pits you can kill yourself in. So I actually died to enemies here. This feels like the most normal of all the level sets. Most of the roads actually have room to move around in, so it doesn't feel like a hacked in race track in a mundane shooting game. The time limit is also completely removed in these (and only these) levels.

This isn't even the most complex map and it doesn't show any secrets

Don't get me wrong, they screw it up. Grenade launching enemies start appearing here. Worse still, there are very narrow roads, of which there are usually a few enemies hiding in, usually with grenades. How do you hide in one? Well, if you go along one at speed, you're bound to get some air. That's where they hide. The developers try to be very good at hiding them, but because they reuse the same tricks constantly, it becomes tiresome.

Firing a grenade at someone I can't see, with undoubtedly mixed results

I should point out there are secrets in this game. Shoot the right wall and you'll get some goodies and possibly a new route. The other sections have secrets, but not to the degree that this section does. The others lack the secret paths. Sometimes you get spit out on another section of the map others you can reach an objective much quicker. Thing is, the high ground, and its always the high ground, doesn't give you an advantage in attacking enemies. You actually want the low ground, because the targeting system can aim higher but not lower. Grenades aren't guaranteed yet, and always have an awkward arc when you're trying to hit something close.

Considering they accomplished nothing so far in this game, that seems unlikely

This game isn't that hard, even when I played through the game without mid-level saves. You respawn at the start when enemies die, and the game tries to penalize you by reseting your score for this level and taking away all your weapons. Thing is, enemies remain dead, objectives remain achieved, so the only real loss is that you have less weapons in the level. You get better cars if you have a higher score, and eventually for the customizable car you get more power to put into it, but the game was never hard enough to necessitate me having to do that.

One of the more unique scenes, still happens quite a bit

Weapons in the game can be divided along 4 lines, the hitscan machine gun, the infinite laser cannon, the projectile cannon which pushes away enemies, aimed explosive weapons and arc explosive weapons. The arc explosives, the grenades and mortars have special use in certain situations, but mostly you're just going to be blasting away at enemies with whatever. Some enemies are better killed with better weapons, but you can survive most encounters with just the laser cannon.

ECO is incredibly unimaginative at naming things

There are five cars. They're more or less all focused on one specific task, the first is a jack-of-all-trades, then you have two that are tougher and one that is faster. The final car is customizable, and is found on level 6. If you find it, all other cars are unlocked, that or I got the final car along with it. Not that it matters much, since there's seemingly little reason to use the other cars. You're best off with either the custom car or the humvee, since its very easy to take damage in this game and they have the most health.

I'm a hero!

The third set of missions are set inside Central City, where ECO and I guess what remains of actual civilization. Now the player is out to destroy their defenses so the rest of those who live in the wastes can get in. I'm sure the intention is that the evil ECO is screwing over everyone in the wasteland, but considering that in-story, the people I'm working for will apparently kill me if I don't kill enough people, feels hollow.

Can you spot the gap in the road in this screenshot?

What follows is the worst set of missions by far. Its back to sky roads, only this time, platforming is involved. Its not really complex platforming, but I'm playing a game advertised as a racing game, and I have to platform. Be it through actual platforming or going over gaps. Almost all my deaths outside of the wasteland levels were from falling. Don't go fast enough? Fall into the void. Go too fast? Overshoot the track or fall off the sides. Trying to find the track in one of the side areas? Whoops, accidentally fell off. Go too fast and hit a railing? Whoops, you bounced over the railing. It sounds like I'm clumsy, but just so much goes wrong in this game.

Because they've been so trustworthy so far

What's interesting is that the developed tried to include multiple levels to the area, and areas that really sold the verticality of the game. But as I keep mentioning, flying over steep road is dangerous. Trusting the developers to allow me to safely drop down a hole is insanity. And it doesn't help that before now, the game had this power up that speeds you up that usually acts as something that gets you killed.

The big problem with this game is that falling, going over the railings, and other issues always seems to happen against me. These levels get very long, and because sometimes they cut back on themselves, it'd be nice to cut big parts of the level I've already cleared and poses nothing but time lost away. The thing is even in these cases I'm still clearing the level with plenty of time left. Its just busywork.

This practically feels like a secret level with how different it is compared to the rest of the levels

The final level is a pentagon full of big tanks, with five walkways you have to reach, each guarded by homing missile turrets. Do this, and where you're supposed to go next is a hole in the ground. It gets better, because the final boss is this thing. Its a puzzle boss, because you come down here, after having finally finished everything off, clearing out the series of homing missile turrets...and you have to figure out this thing. I'll tell you, you shoot a grenade above the flaming thing. Then you win, you get your ending cutscene, and wonder what the hell is going on.

At first I didn't care for the music. In the settings, the actual game sounds are set so low while the music is high, and yet it still sounds like practically nothing. If it weren't for the game slowing down whenever I played my own music, I never would have given it another chance. Its appropriate for a game where I'm looking through the ruins of an abandoned world. Which really feels at odds with the rest of the game, a fast racing slash car combat game. Such music is wasted when I'm blasting dozens if not hundreds of robots in the wasteland.

There are two curious things about this game. Firstly, the 3D engine. While I'm fuzzy on how budget flight sims did it in this era, being completely in 3D, with textures, feels very impressive for a budget title in 1995. Some major commercial games were still in 2D at this point. Secondly, this doesn't feel like it has any obvious inspirations. I've seen it compared to Wipeout and Quarantine, but neither of those compare very well to the bizarre blend of gameplay this has.

Ultimately, Zone Raiders is a game that just doesn't work. As a racing game, the combat aspect is too involved to work with it and the result of making a jump should be "Oh, yeah", not "Oh, god!" As a combat game, its just too simplistic to hold one's attention for long. Its not surprising the developers focused on one aspect of the game in their follow-up efforts, though whether or not any of them are any good remains to be seen.

Weapons:
While I don't really care for some of the weapons, they all have situations they're good for, in some cases very good for. 4/10

Enemies:
Generic, stupid vehicles. Some are tough, some are weak. What's interesting is that they all use the same weapons as you do. 2/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Endless highways connecting to small arenas where the real combat happens. Not very impressive. 1/10

Player Agency:
Even when the rest of the game got gradually crap, this was still a highlight. Controls are bindable, and more or less cover anything you could want with what's allegedly a racing game. The cars themselves control very well. I had some issues with my vehicle bouncing in awkward ways, but I suspect this may be because I set up the custom car in a way that caused this. 9/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
When I was shooting enemies, it was a generic shooter. When I was just driving through the endless highways, there was a sort of strange melancholy about it. I wish there was more of the later. 3/10

Graphics:
This feels a lot like the early 3D games I usually cover, except this time most of the objects are covered. Very impressive that what amounts to a budget title has this going on, but it just feels bland. 2/10

Story:
More involved than I was expecting, but not very interesting. 1/10

Sound/Music:
Out of place music and sound effects that are definitely from a Dark Forces game. It never really felt like it had its own proper identity. 3/10

That's 25. Which puts it somewhere between the games with massive issues and the games that are actually good. If the controls weren't as good as they are, this would fall squarely in the bad department, and I'm not sure this is something I'd suggest even in that category.

Next up, a short Atari game before the big 100.

Crossed Swords

Name:Crossed Swords
Number:97
Year:1991
Publisher:SNK
Developer:Alpha Denshi
Genre:TPS
Difficulty:5/5
Time:4 hours

1991 was a weird time for FPS games. The technology we've come to expect from those early FPS titles did exist, it just wasn't very popular for actual FPS titles. We were just beginning to see it used in FPS games, as opposed to the maze games and racing games as I've recently covered. There are a few more titles I've yet to cover, even in Japan, that use it, but I don't think they had much of an effect on Japanese design philosophies. Crossed Swords sort of takes the Death Duel approach, by having all the action take place in well-drawn 2D, with the focus being more on maneuvering around a small group of enemies.

Developed by Alpha Denshi (shortened to ADK) for arcade systems, then the Neo-Geo CD. The Neo-Geo CD is possibly the most annoying system I've had to emulate, and I don't know yet if it was of much value. Its certainly very slow to load the game, which just completes the whole package. Alpha Denshi mostly did arcade games, and by this time was effectively a second party developer for SNK consoles. I don't really know how many titles of theirs are of interest, but at the very least they also did a sequel to this.

So, the game itself. Its a fantasy game. The story is a lot of fancy words for; A demon lord has been unleashed, stop him and save the kingdom. You know, maybe its not the most cliche plot in western fantasy, but I swear that nearly every Japanese fantasy title I've seen has some form of that plot. Even if the main plot is actually about something else, killing the demon lord is somewhere. Even though they're usually cliche in different ways, its usually not a demon lord that needs killing in a western game. I wonder why.

That character sprite starts out filled in, but turns into an outline when combat starts

Starting up, I get a tutorial. Left and right moves/dodges, up and down blocks high/low, the A button attacks and the B button does a magic attack. Sort of like a beat 'em up, except with an unusual perspective. The magic attack depends on which weapon I have. This is mostly smooth, however, later on I discover that A & B together does a special attack. Which is annoying since all the systems this was on have 4 buttons. I understand these limitations in systems where the developers have maxed out the use of buttons, but this is annoying.

A typical combat scene

The game starts off fairly simply in order to get one used to this control scheme. Its not terribly complex, but you do need to get used to it. Actually moving around is relatively unimportant. With exception to boss enemies, most dodges I did were just lucky. A few enemies dodge your attacks, but you can usually anticipate this. The real meat of combat is successfully blocking and then properly attacking back. Enemies do seem to have shifting if reliably shifting attack patterns, but mostly its a reflex game. Its always you reacting to one single enemy at a time, repeat until the end credits or you lose the desire to continue playing.

You'll be seeing this guy a lot

Which is the big issue. Starting out the enemies have a pretty clear way of fighting. But you can't have a short game like this be a cakewalk, at least not in 1991. The first outright change in gameplay is the introduction of enemies with ranged attacks. These are fair in the sense that you can blindside them with ranged attacks too. Its not that you can't block ranged attacks, its that's considerably difficult to do so. The breath attacks are especially brutal, since its a continuous stream, get hit once, no blocking, and if the enemy is on top of you, you're getting hit. Though I say this, and I generally did better against ranged attacks than I did against melee attacks.

You'll be seeing a lot of this too

But there's one kind of fight I really dreaded. The ones with armored sword wielders. I say like they're some single entity, but they come in everything from regular looking knights, to armored goatmen. These guys had one element that made them really annoying to fight, how they dealt damage to you. See, with most enemies, they attack you, you either block or don't, and then you can possibly counterattack and unleash a combo. The armored swordsmen broke that in two ways. So you're defending yourself successfully, but wait, he isn't open to counterattack. Counterattacking just results in getting hit. And once you get hit, you don't have an easy way to defend yourself afterward. They use multiple little attacks against you, which seemingly disables defense. You're sort of stuck here until the game decides to let you go, which can be a while.

You won't see this much, because most of the later crabs are blue

The bosses were a mixed bag. Most showed up after their boss encounter as generic enemies, not even weaker than their original counterparts. I'm going to pick on one of these exclusively, the giant crabs. As you may know, this is historically inaccurate, giant crabs only existed in Japan during the middle ages. The problem is that these giant crabs are just incredibly annoying to fight. Successfully block, then return attack, only to get blocked by the crab then hit multiple times. There's just this persistent feeling that some of the later bosses just ignore the previously established rules. The final boss has several attacks that are unblockable, but at least he's the final boss.

You'll be seeing a lot of the fishmen, but not so much the guy in the back

As a result, its fairly obvious this isn't a hidden gem. Its very hard to shake off that whiff of arcade-style, "You've had your fun, now feed me some quarters". Pretty sure if I was spending actual quarters I would have spent a dollar or two on the final boss alone. There's so much cheap stuff in the game that it never really felt like I had a fair shot at it. And I've been playing on the normal setting.

You'll be having a lot of desperate fights

Despite these issues, I played through most of the game twice. It feels too long for what it is. The game is about 7 stages long, with each stage being divided into several smaller areas. Even when you're fighting the easiest enemies, and a small number of them, it feels slow. Everything takes much longer than it needs to take, which is funny considering that its also very intense. While there are some interludes between the combat, those are over very quickly.

You'll only see this twice, and once it really doesn't matter

Some of these levels have different paths, but honestly, they're mostly pointless. Outside of one path, that gets you what nearly amounts to a cheat sword. You might think I'm joking, but no, there's a weapon you in one path that turns most non-boss enemies into scarecrows. Its almost cheating, except you still have a spell limit, it doesn't work on everything, and it drains the amount of XP you get.

You can chose whether or not you see this a lot

A not really interesting aspect of the game is the RPG elements. You get XP and different weapons. I say different weapons, well, they're really just straight upgrades with different special attacks. The two I found most useful were the scarecrow spell, and a shield spell that automatically blocks all attacks for a few seconds. Levelling up is really bland, get a certain amount of points, you get a half bar more life. Repeat until you have 10 bars of health. Because of this everyone now slaps action RPG on the game, making a somewhat meaningless label even more meaningless.

You get new shields semi-frequently

I want to point out that I'm primarily playing the Neo-Geo CD release, which despite being a x1 speed CDROM drive, should at least have better music? No, its generic fantasy game music. Even the original is generic fantasy music. It doesn't really sound any better than the original's soundtrack and this is where most of the CD's space went towards. I can't actually tell you why this game needed to be on CD, because it doesn't look like there's any changes beyond minor palette ones.

Can you spot which of these don't belong?

Of course, the aspect of the game that's unarguably nice is the graphics. There are a few things worth criticizing, namely, certain characters, of which I'm sure one right now springs to mind. Then there's the reuse. Obviously, all games reuse character models, but it feels obvious in these fighting style games where you have to kill a dude who looks the same twenty times. They're in armor here, and everyone who isn't is a skeleton or an orc, so its not that bad. Then there's the expected reuse in the parts of the background that don't matter, like walls and metal reinforcement in doors.

Compared to most games I've covered, this is the farthest I've gotten from a shooting game. This is a beat 'em up game, not a third-person shooter. While I'm not exactly a fan of the genre, I don't mind it. This seems less-than-stellar even in that category.

Weapons:
I have mixed feelings, because while the weapons get better the more you spend on them, I actually prefer the special attacks of the weaker weapons than the ultimate weapon, which is a really crap firewall spell. 2/10

Enemies:
Its a really weird situation, because you have a good variety of enemies, who require different (if annoying approaches). Even excluding color variants there are plenty. It just feels like there are too few of them. Perhaps its just the way its set-up makes the whole thing more obvious. 3/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Basically just a series of fancy backgrounds and a series of enemies you fight in sequence. 0/10

Player Agency:
It doesn't really feel like you've moved whenever you've moved, if that makes sense. For the most part, it works, though I have that issue with pressing two buttons together when I have two other buttons that aren't used at all. 4/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
In addition to feeling very obviously like a game, I also felt the joy being sucked out of me every time I actually had joy. 0/10

Graphics:
Very stunning and well-animated. 8/10

Story:
Shows up throughout the game, even if its the simplest plot imaginable. 1/10

Sound/Music:
The sound effects are about average. Feels more low-impact than it should. The music, outside of a few special stings, is completely generic. 3/10

And subtracting 2 points for the difficulty issue, we get 19. Which is starting to feel like the score range I put all the really hard games, the ones that are distractingly bad in.

I do not know if I'm going to play the sequel to this. While I do account for games like Witchaven, where its clearly a FPS focused on melee combat, this isn't really the third-person equivalent of that. It is as I said, a beat 'em up game with a fancy perspective.

SeeNa

 

Name:SeeNa
Number:96
Year:1986
Publisher:SystemSoft
Developer:SystemSoft
Genre:Racing
Difficulty:5/5
Time:8 hours

The history of Japanese computer games is a perplexing thing. Sometimes they pointlessly tread the same ground the west has done for years and years, and other times they innovate. SeeNa is one of those innovations. A first-person racing game is nothing unusual, this is far from the first title to do it. However, once you see some screenshots, you'll realize why this is an impressive title.

Behold, a racing game

This is because SeeNa hits upon almost exactly the same notes as Hovertank, Catacomb and all the rest of the untextured FPS titles would do. Now, admittedly, the game is somewhere between a maze game and a racing game, but to see it done much earlier is shocking. Midi Maze, was one year after this, I admit, but SeeNa feels so much more modern. Levels, in the sense I expect them, secrets, secret levels. This doesn't really feel like a commercial game because those usually aren't this impressive technologically.

When the game starts off you have two modes, one called Mode A, and one called Mode B. You can think of this as Adventure Mode and Race Mode. Adventure is effectively the actual game, and Race Mode is what you expect from a racing game. A series of tracks you try to get the fastest time around. I'll start with that mode first.

Note the sections where the track goes back in on itself, this is achieved via teleporters

There are several unusual things about the game even in this mode. The most obvious is the damage meter and the gasoline tanks. Take enough damage, or run out of gas, game over. There's a pit stop so you can repair and refuel. I say gas is obvious, but I didn't figure out that it was a thing until considerable time spent in the game. Mode B was something I didn't play right away. Then you have break and slip zones. Break zones slow you down, slip removes your traction, I.E., turning, speeding up, speeding down, the time between you pressing it and it happening is very slow. But not too dissimilar to slow down zones and ice in other games.

Just your average racetrack

Some of the tracks in Race Mode are weird, and there's no rhyme or reason to where they're placed. One moment you have a normal track, the next your map isn't showing everything there, and then you're in something that wouldn't be out of place in Catacomb Armageddon. Then it finishes with something normal. If you played it after the finishing the other mode, you'd probably be disappointed, because its just a simple time trial, and one that you can't lose; Unless you're a complete beginner at the game.

Behold, a racing game...?

Mode A is where things change from being a racing game with unusual tech, to something interesting. You start off in a room, you turn around, there's nothing here. The only thing unusual is a flashing wall, so you drive through it. Its a map tool and this isn't just some race track. No, this is an actual level, with enemies and things you pick up. Its very unusual to play a racing game like this, and its other features are also unusual. You have limited gas and you need to find pick-ups that restore it. Later on there's a powerup that allows you to recharge it in certain zones, but this is of limited utility.

On top of an enemy, taking damage

But what's striking about this is how you deal with powerups, switches, enemies and the level exit. A lot of this stuff is in the form of flashing walls. You can destroy everything (except level exits) if you pass over it at a certain speed, which is good for enemies and I think switches, but not so good for everything else. Naturally, the game is designed around making this concept as annoying as possible for you, including putting enemies you wish to kill right next to solid walls, which hurt you.

For the early part of the game, level design is interesting. Its unsurprisingly not too dissimilar to the typical FPS, released 5-8 years later. Altered, of course, to accommodate the speed aspect of the game, and no saves. The game doesn't allow you to save, at all, and it isn't all that much worse for the wear for it, at least starting out. The game encourages you to play it in the best way possible, finding items in the correct order, using as much gas as you need, and ignoring places you don't need to travel through.

Every bit of the map is like that, even the parts I haven't uncovered

The level where the game really starts screwing with the player is Saka. Or at least that's one of its names. The level is a series of corridors that resemble train tracks. The sort of turns they put in so they don't tip over. Its a very large, very complex level. There is some fuel, but it is limited in nature. This area has a city, or I guess super computer, you destroy in order to win. It continues the cruelty by hiding the level exit, and possibly causing it to be lost forever if you hit the wrong switch. Destroying the super computer starts a timer, of which you have sixty...something to get out of the level. I eventually manage to win this level...but the game continues. I wasn't expecting that.

One of the secret levels I couldn't beat

But, no, it keeps going. Not just for one level, but for two more, at least. There's even a secret level here. This had me perplexed on many levels, because Saka felt like a proper end to the game, and two, because of the game not having any saves, we're starting to get really long. This isn't annoying for me, because I have save states, but for someone playing on actual hardware or legit? Nuts. You have to get everything right. There are even more super computers to destroy too.

This would be annoying in any game

Unfortunately, I'm forced to put a loss column here for this game, despite almost winning it. Almost. I think. I don't really need to cite anything other than this screenshot, but I'm going to explain. In all of this, I need to find a level exit. I may also need to find a switch to open that door. Which adds the total number of things I need to find, with limited fuel, to 2. In all of this. I remember thinking this would be a fun game to see people speedrun, and while that's still something I'd like to see, I'm not sure if that person is even human anymore. 

Winning levels show you these pictures, sometimes complete, sometimes mixed in with ones from other levels

The secret levels, at least those I could find, were pretty good as secret levels. I only finished one of them thanks to it being a 1-in-3 chance of automatically winning the level, but I gave the others a valiant effort. Thanks to some incompetence on my part, I'm not sure if that's because I screwed it up or if the game was intentionally designed so that these levels would be unbeatable if I didn't find the right powerups beforehand. I still felt like I had succeeded in doing something when reaching them, which is the important bit.

Mahjong tiles feature heavily in this level, for some reason

Let's talk about the real problem with the game, the audio-visual package. You've seen the pictures. Its very cool seeing this in 1986. However, it is very hard on the eyes in motion. And because of the limited color palette, sometimes the movement looks awkward. Further, the music sounds pretty sweet the first time you play the game, but this game is at least 8 hours long and there's not even 20 minutes of it. There's no way to turn off the sound without changing settings.

Weapons:
None.

Enemies:
Incredibly basic and practically non-existent. 0/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
There's a wide gap in the quality of the best levels and the worst levels. Not necessarily because the best levels are the greatest thing ever, but because the worst levels are about as bad as you can possibly get. There is just no point in time where the last level in this game is acceptable. 5/10

Player Agency:
You move smoothly when the game wants you to move smoothly. You don't when they don't. There's a really awkward period at low speeds where you have a really slow turn arc, but not at minimum speed, which is annoying. Otherwise no complaints. 5/10

Interactivity:
Its basically Quake rules, if you were a car. 0/10

Atmosphere:
There aren't many in-door racing games, be they sci-fi or otherwise. It feels like a journey through a futuristic world, even if the story could be about something else entirely. 2/10

Graphics:
Simple, but very interesting for the time. Unfortunately, thanks to the way the game is set-up, it quickly becomes very tedious to look at. The HUD is incredibly busy too, took me a while to figure out what area had my fuel. 2/10

Story:
None in-game, though there could be something in the manual.

Sound/Music:
The sounds are very simple, and the music, while interesting at first, quickly became annoying. 1/10

That's 15. Its an interesting game, but it has several severe flaws. Its an area ripe for new material. Not like some actual racing games some have made in the Doom engine, but something like this, solo, alone in an alien world.

I don't really know how many more titles the lead programmer of this game, Tinyan, has, nor how many SystemSoft have. SystemSoft seems to be the Japanese Microprose, developing original simulations and publishing similar games from other regions.