The Misty Mountains of Simala, once a tourist trap, now just a trap. Home to some of the wildest creatures of Tessera, these now haunt the abandoned wastes. Only the wierd sisters remain as possibly friendly inhabitants. I'd take this a lot more seriously if Simala didn't feel like such an obvious take off of Himalayas. Anyway, starting off, I can't tell that much, but I do see the mist...and I see some mysterious grieves. Then the mist clears.
It was about now that I realized the DOS version really screwed the player, are you really saying you can't have a white ground here?
At first this area is basically the same as the last one, towards the end. Sea demons, or I guess snow demons, roam the land, not dropping anything. What's new is that every so often I get damaged, because its too cold.
There's a molehill here, which means I get something useful. Boots, which as long as I'm in this area, make me immune to the cold. Elsewhere I'm very much in danger. Unfortunately, there's nothing here except endless demons, so I have to advance.
Its really too hard to make the ground white, guys
A curious trick of this area is that each area is linked by a pass, which has a few demons, and no ammo. At least, that's what I think at first. I first get a heavy crossbow, which can fire pebbles, then I get the bolts to go with it. Its very slow weapon, but unfortunately, the demons here feel stronger than they have in the past. Using the bow against them takes forever, but it seems like the crossbow is doing slightly better. Either way its not great.
Why do all the mean nasty monsters look so...cute?
There's a worm here for some reason. Its just your typical guarding boss, doesn't seem like there's a trick to getting past him beyond killing him though. I'm not quite clear as to the events that follow, because this kingdom is very confusing. You get passes, which contain a lot of demons. The thing about these guys, is that they barely drop ammo, are very good at dodging, run faster than you, and take a ton of damage. The bolts take them out in 2-3 hits, which compared to the pebbles is much better. I was in trouble here. Then you have the regular areas, which means chasing demons across the entire map. I took a video just to show how tedious this is getting.
Is this supposed to be an implication that he doesn't care that much about it?
At some point, I find myself fighting a brother of the first bandit leader, guarding a cave. He drops a pair of gloves. Oh, what, you thought because he was unique he would be tough? No, he's a joke. Inside the cave is the hermit from the beginning, who gives me a tinderbox. This is more useful than it seems. Its here that I can rest for the first time since the dwarven caves. This isn't really related to the damage I take from the cold, just staying outside is enough to stop me.
I find a third brother guarding another cave. He's a joke too. There's nothing inside the cave, but he drops a cloak, which is very useful, because this actually mitigates the cold damage somewhat.
Two events lead to me escaping this kingdom. The first is that I find wood. The second is that I find the wierd sisters. They tell me your standard bizarre prophecy which I'm sure someone thought was profound, but in practice I didn't even realize was important until after I hit the required objectives. That is, I started a fire.
I don't believe the Archmage's troops are going to believe all I wanted was to keep warm...
This causes mysterious smoke to fill my lungs, and then I'm teleported to...
"Guys, do you want me to try something new, or do you want me to draw three people standing around a fire again?"
The Urban Capital of Morav. Where a quarter of the human population resists, inter-city travel is barred off, and the only way out is so locked off only a magician could hope to get out. Am I a magician? I'm apparently the preserver of the land. Reminds me of the Stephen R Donaldson series The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but I couldn't tell you if that was anything more than a surface comparison. There's a group of people here to remind you of most of these facts if you lost the manual.
This place is much easier than the last place, the town guards, some of which aren't chasing after me with their bows, are fairly easy. They drop bows, arrows and sometimes fire arrows. A magician quickly appears to accuse me of traveling without a license and attacks me. He's not tough either. I get a clue from a molehill that I should enter the church before the castle. As these are the only two places I can go to, I enter the church.
A figure disappears, but not before telling another magician to attack me. He drops a robe. AHA! I get it, stealth! The hallmark of all great RPGs. You actually can't enter the castle without doing this, which must be annoying if you assumed that, like the rest of the game, there's nothing special about the enemies. Inside there are a lot of guards. A lot. I wonder if this is the game guarding me from getting killed quickly. Admittedly, that'd be slightly higher quality work than they've been throwing at me, but we'll see. There are a bunch of side rooms here.
The first is a storage room...where guards attack me upon entering. The guards out in the corridor aren't hostile yet, either. This is a room with musical instruments. Nice ones...and I can only carry one. I find this out by grabbing a mandolin and then a trumpet. This feels like a proper puzzle, pick one of three items in the hopes that one is the correct solution. I just have to figure out why.
The castle has four corridors, the storage room and the portrait room are on the south. I'll get to that one in a moment. East and west link to a dining hall, where I get some chain mail off a guard I kill, and a cup and plate. I do wonder if I'm not slightly glitching the game out this way, because it doesn't look like I should have this many items. I also get a quiver of renewal at some point. I also figured out what that does, it regenerates ammo for me. I thought it was funny that I got regeneration after getting the sling staff, despite the game not including regeneration as a part of that.
You can tell some of the graphical loss is because they just didn't care, because no one who did would have let these portraits by
North is the throne room, and in the corridor leading here, I end up opening it by accident. Because the trumpet opens this door. Considering that my usual method of collecting items is to go from one end, I wonder if this would always happen? Nevertheless, I explore the rest of the castle. The portrait room shows the answer to the puzzle I already solved by accident. A man approaching the throne with a trumpet. And some portraits of what I assume are gods. You know, despite how much time the game devoted to that, that has come up approximately zero times. I'm still on month one. I take this moment to rest. Firstly because I took a little damage, and secondly because I want to see if my magic power will ever reach its full strength. See, I got what seems to be full health at around 1897 XP, but it does look like it also increases my magic power. The thing is, beyond the nebulous thing the manual says, I still haven't a clue why. Maybe its an indication of my sleep status? No, I spend like half a in-game day resting and I'm still at 25% of full, or less than half of what I currently have. Its so bizarre.
All that's left here is to clear out the throne room. Feels pretty cool being powerful enough to take out all these guards, I think there were like 8 of them. Naturally, this is the teleporter out.
The Deserts of Sunderabad, where the current Archmage is. Does this mean we'll have our confrontation here? You know, for a desert, an over-exploited place as the manual says, this sure feels like every other place I've been to. I shouldn't worry about that now, I have a woman to save.
From a distance I see two figures running in one direction. Aha, I think, the person ahead of the other one must be the woman, while the chaser is my foe. I approach, since I want to be safe. Its the archmage leading, as apparently he cast a magic spell on the woman. Can't kill him here, obviously.
The woman, thankful for it, reveals that she's a princess and gives me something. What? I don't know, and trying to talk to her further does nothing. This is the beginning of my troubles. This area is incredibly large, confusing and tedious. It seems to be like the mountains were, hurting me gradually, except the pain trigger isn't happening.
There's a cave in the area I start out at, guarded by a weird creature. Inside is a pair of shades. A pair of ultimate cool shades...I just realized that's a stupid pun. Anyway, it blocks the sun, meaning I don't get hurt anymore.
I explore the area quite a bit, and despite going around the whole place, I don't find anything that seems to advance the game. I get a dagger, which can't be used for combat, and a rod of flame off the regular enemies in this area, a kind of zombie pharaoh. Surprising range, they seem to detect me much farther away than any previous enemy. They deal about 33% of my health in damage, but they're easy to deal with otherwise.
Especially with the rod of flame. This is by far the best weapon yet. I shoot it, the game stops, a beam of red pops out, and its basically hit scan. Up until a certain distance, then it seems to just stop existing. It kills them in one hit, and the best thing is, it regenerates ammo, and if I pick up another rod of flame, it gives me its full ammo, 5.
Wandering around this area surprisingly doesn't reveal anything. I find a strange beetle wandering around, which does nothing. Can't kill it either.
I also find a pyramid that looks like it should be an exit. All the other pyramids around are supposedly mini-pyramids. Scale in this game is completely bonkers. I do find a breastplate in there, but that just decreases the damage I take. So, I guess I better look up how to advance...and it turns out, I was supposed to be able to do something with that beetle, and that pyramid should be an exit.
With that, I think its best to just cut my losses and quit. From one review that managed to rough it out, the game gets easily broken towards the end anyway, and I'm not really missing an ending. The archmage gets defeated, the sleeping god comes back, and then you get a generic "YOU WON" screen.
Name:Mad Planets Number:144 Year:1983 Publisher:D. Gottlieb & Co Developer:D. Gottlieb & Co Genre:Top-Down Shooter Difficulty:5/5 Time:30 minutes Won:Not possible
Mad Planets is an obscure game from an obscure company, best known for Q*Bert, with an insane premise. Instead of your typical space shooters where you fight some evil force or another, you're taking one to those uppity planets. Seems like those evil planets and those evil planetoids inhabiting those evil planets have escaped their rightful justice for too long, and now its time to put a stop to that.
This is a single screen game. Most objects bounce off the walls. Planets come in from the center of the screen, where they start off as little things, and grow into planets that throw asteroids/moons at you. If you shoot all of them before they grow, you get points. They also don't hurt you at in the growing state. I should note that if you die, the planets on-screen approach again, you don't get the points this way. Shoot all the moons of a planet, then shoot the planet.
Every 3 waves you get a stage where you collect astronauts and dodge comets. Die on this stage and it automatically advances. After this, both become a regular staple in the normal waves. Comets sort of chase after you, and as its the only threat here, its advisable to take them out. After a certain number of times spent swinging around, the astronauts and comets leave.
Planets, being the only real enemy here, have curious behavior. They wander around, sometimes throwing a moon at you. The moon just takes a straight shot, and if it misses, it misses, and the planet regrows the moon. Shooting a moon, no matter where it is, always causes it to stop being attached to that planet. If you take out all the moons a planet has, it itself turns into a projectile and chases after you. Like a low-rent Sinistar.
Control-wise the game has a twist on the usual format. You have the expected directions you can move in, along with a fire button. Where it gets twisty is that you also a turn dial...well in my case turn buttons. Its your expected 8 directions. It feels smooth moving, but actually aiming is a bit awkward.
I found the shooting part of the game a bit annoying. You have a range of about a third of the screen and you don't move very fast, meanwhile, the planets move incredibly fast and you have to shoot a small moving target connected to it. I felt like there was an impassable barrier sometime in because of how fast the game got.
From a points perspective, I found that the astronauts were a bit pointless, the real score to be gotten is in clearing out the waves. Funny, maybe Blaster spoiled me, but the way points are dealt out in this game feels so stingy. Outside of getting a perfect wave everything feels so small that you'll practically never get another life.
This reminded me a bit of those boss rush games, where the entire game is centered around fighting bosses. Because the method of destroying the planets is something you would see in a PS2-era bossfight or one of the annoying enemies everyone hated at that time. As such, I don't believe this game ever really had a fair shot at this concept with 1983 technology.
Weapons: A generic, short-ranged blaster. 1/10
Enemies: Planets vary in how many moons they have, and then there are comets. 1/10
Non-Enemies: I feel like a broken record, saying that picking up astronauts doesn't count. 0/10
Levels: I'm not impressed by gradually increasing the number of planets and their speed. 0/10
Player Agency: I found it smooth in theory, but in practice felt incredibly poor. 2/10
Interactivity: None.
Atmosphere: Two things went well for it here, the somewhat mad feeling sci-fi setting, and I liked the general setup. Admittedly, in both cases it was just reminding me of better games... 1/10
Graphics: I liked the look of things. Its not impressive or anything, but it felt pretty well made. 2/10
Story: Is there an actual reason why I'm destroying all these planets? 0/10
Sound/Music: Surprisingly high end. Something about the sound here felt like it wouldn't be out of place on a SNES or the Amiga. Not amazing sound, but better than usual. 2/10
That's 9.
Wholly unremarkable, except for the bizarre gimmick.
One of the things I figured I'd be doing back when 1983 rolled around was play Blaster, the sequel to Robotron 2084...but that would be near the end. In these early years, arcade titles have been the highest quality ones, while home computers and especially consoles tend to be on the lower end. I like to look forward to something. Obviously, Black Widow happened and now all of a sudden there's the constant specter of MAME refusing to play, bumping up all the arcade titles from near the end to near the beginning. So I started going through the arcade titles and hit upon this one. But now I have a problem, this really looks like a rail shooter. That Star Fox-style, fly through a pre-determined path kind of imitation flight/space sim. At first I put this in the trash pile and just moved on...but I figured I might as well play it.
While the game probably loops, that there's a proper end-goal seems pretty cool
Humanity is dead, well, except for you. Naturally the guy from Robotron 2084 couldn't save the last family from the relentless hordes of robots, so you've decided to fly off, hoping to escape. To some hopeful planet, far, far away. Feels a lot like Sinistar...and also the Idle Hands song Cosmic Overdrive. Not a bad first impression to make.
The game allows you to pick one of four stages to start with, fly-thru, asteroids, vampires and then robot section.
The fly-thru seems to be the most obvious aspect, you fly around a planet. This is quasi-landlike. You go through arches to get points, dodging robots and bombers, along with various environmental obstacles. A simple obstacle course. Remember, you can hit the arches. This strangely enough, was the hardest of the wave styles for me, rarely did I escape without getting hit several times.
Then the asteroids is where you can pick up astronauts for points, and if you're lucky find an energy pickup. Enemies are rare here, and you're mostly dodging/shooting asteroids. Fun fact, astronauts can't be hurt by you. I found it easy to survive, but hard to get a high score here.
Vampires is a series of ship waves where you more or less shoot a set pattern of ships. Your basic rail shooter setup.
Robots is also a set of waves, but if you shoot the head robot at the start of the wave, you take out all the wave. If you shoot it at the end, you get more points. There are other waves, but they're mostly variations on these themes. There's chase sections, where in addition to rushing past asteroids you are told to chase after some enemies, and a time tunnel section, just dedicated to picking up astronauts.
I started off with the vampires section, and right away problems emerge. The game gives you a small health bar, about three hits by my estimation, and you move around very slowly. It feels like I'm trying to move around underwater. You can shoot down shots. But even if you can shoot shots or enemies in time before they fly past, it feels like you shouldn't be able to.
Something I noted is that the gun actually fires in a quasi shotgun pattern. You wouldn't notice it if you move around all the time. The first shot is a bit to the left, then goes slightly to the left, then right and a bit right, before repeating. This makes shooting in general quite tricky.
This is not a very graphically appealing game. That much you've probably already guessed, but that's in screenshot form. In motion, this game really needs a warning, because even my eyes hurt whenever you pick up the energy pickup from the asteroid stage. Everything just feels too vibrant, like some kind of weird acid trip. I'm sure with its fancy scaling graphics it had some appeal at the time, but now that its technical brilliance has faded only a vomit-inducing rainbow remains. This is quite possibly the ugliest game I've played on this blog. Not the ugliest game ever, but I shudder to bring your eyes towards that.
Unlike other games in the arcades at this time, something about this felt beatable. I felt like I could do this. Which is curious, since I pretty much already decided that this wasn't that good. Mobygames mentions that there are 20 waves, and that felt like an achievable goal. And I did slightly alter the game so I had one more life and needed less points for another.
I actually had a pretty good strategy for the game. The first part is knowing how to game the score system for lives. You get points for things you do in succession, especially the wave's big objective. You don't get points for shooting asteroids or shooting part of a group of enemies in some stages. With this method of doing things I usually rack up enough points for an extra life by the 4th stage.
The second is that quite paradoxically, the game rewards aggression on your part. Not blind aggression, of course, but you can quite easily deal with a lot of situations by just moving over to where the enemies are. Its rare for a shot to break through your own, and because you're over them anyway, you're dealing with both problems. Don't do this blindly, of course, if you can't shoot it in time, don't bother.
Finally, enemies lead their shots, very aggressively too. You can take advantage of this quite easily. And its at those times when you're clear of enemies that you can accelerate, which I found otherwise not very helpful. There's a third button which seems to just be the same.
During my push to win the game I started noticing something during the later stages. While there are the expected enemies who now shoot more and take more damage, in some cases, these new enemies seemed like they were designed to deal with my strategy.
I took a video of my final two attempts, but since MAME decided that by default, the file size of a 16 minute video made from a game who's screenshots are 5 kbs, should have a filesize of 16 gbs, I did not bother uploading this. Suffice to say I got as far as the 19th wave, and found that later sections were a bit cleverer than I thought the game was up until that point. Not immensely impressive, but still better than I thought it was.
Weapons: A weird blaster with an organ like firing pattern. 1/10
Enemies: Your usual motley, some enemies shoot, some don't. The few trick enemies make it a little bit interesting. 3/10
Non-Enemies: Various astronauts that function more like pick-ups than anything else. 0/10
Levels: Curiously, they did put a lot of thought into these waves, even if owing to the game's randomized nature it doesn't quite work. 3/10
Player Agency: Discounting my distaste for rail shooters, this seems very awkward. It doesn't feel right and playing it with keyboard controls mostly works better than using a controller or a stick. 2/10
Interactivity: I can't say I feel like the asteroids count for much of anything. 0/10
Atmosphere: The concept is cool, but the bright primary color graphics ruin any vibe the game was going for. 0/10
Graphics: This is an eyesore and abomination against anyone with eyesight. 0/10
Story: None.
Sound/Music: Simple bloops and blips. 1/10
That's 10.
This did not change my opinion on rail shooters. I get what they were trying for, and they made a valiant effort, but it doesn't quite work.
Back when I was thinking up what I wanted to cover here besides FPS, there were about 5 titles I had in mind for what else I wanted to cover. Abuse, Catacomb, Heretic II, Postal and Star Wars: Battlefront. This reasoning all being that these are games that play like FPS games, but in a different perspective. Catacomb I have a very good reason for playing, its the start of the Catacomb series, which I already covered the FPS titles of. I plan on replaying those, so let's see the series before it went into the most famous FPS progenitor. Now, the issue with this is that the Catacomb series is weird. REALLY WEIRD. The iD FPS, then the trilogy from the Blake Stone guys. These are the simple titles. The series starts with Catacomb on DOS, at least by year, then we have Catacomb II/The Catacomb. Sounds simple enough? Catacomb, Catacomb II, then Catacomb 3D. Only, the Apple II and II GS versions of the game are supposedly different to the original version. It gets worse, while SoftDisk was publishing the FPS titles as shareware games, they were also publishing Apple II & IIGS sequels to Catacomb with unusual names like Sylvan Idyll and Ether Quest. I applaud the effort, if it wasn't a pain in my ass. I'm going to slowly work my way through these, but these are surprisingly obscure games. Sand Trap, the final game in the series period, is a colossal pain to track down. It was supposed to be released in SoftDisk G-S #72, but alas, that is not available to my knowledge. Supposedly it exists, someone has actually played it, but where is a mystery to me. Versions on the Apple II exist for all of these titles, so hopefully I can find them one way or another.
The story is, master wizard Petton Everhail is hired by Terexin, High Wizard of the Kieralon, to find all his treasure in the ruins of the Kieralon Empire. How all that treasure has remained there for 200 years? Because it is quite naturally held hostage by goblins, ogres, skeletons and gargoyles. All mainstays of the series, except for the gargoyles. Its been a while, but I don't remember any of those. There might even be a dragon!
When I said Catacomb plays like a FPS title, I meant it. It has the same general control scheme as the FPS titles iD would make over the years, not surprising considering this is one of Carmack's first action titles. Instead of turning with the left and right arrows, pressing a direction moves you in that way. Ctrl shoots, while alt holds you in the direction you're in, while you still look in the same direction. Find keys (generic, not specific color) to open doors. Its okay, a bit loose, but it mostly works. Compared to twin stick shooters I find this control scheme slightly lacking, however, this had to work with joysticks and mouses of the day, alone. With that handicap in mind, its fine.
You have four methods of attack, plus a healing potion. Pressing the attack key unleashes a single fireball, which can be spammed for a rapid fire attack. This takes out the smaller enemies in one hit. Something to note is that shots alternate each of the two tiles Petton is on, as if he's alternating hands. You can hold it down to create a more powerful shot. This takes out everything weaker in a direct line of where you're at, equaling Petton's 2-square wide frame. This takes out bigger enemies in one hit. Its also very useful for destroying secret walls.
The other two attacks require various scrolls. The first is a bolt, which fires a series of fireballs at a much faster rate than you could possibly do without resorting to a rapid-fire button on a joystick. This is useful when there are large numbers of the bigger enemies.
The final attack is a nuke, which throws a bunch of fireballs around you. This is less useful than in the 3D entries since you can generally see where enemies are ahead of time and force them into a choke point.
Defending the treasure chests are the aforementioned creatures. Goblins are the simplest, they're the red enemies, they walk towards you, usually to a cardinal direction, and damage you if they touch you.
Skeletons are a pain in the butt. Unlike the goblins, they are aware that you alternate hands, and go in your corner areas. They also damage on touch and are incredibly annoying, but if you hug a wall they tend to just walk towards you.
Ogres are just oversized goblins. They hurt more, and you can't kill them with a single fireball. Instead you need many small ones, or a bigger fireball, which will go through as many ogres as it can within its range.
Gargoyles are giant oversized enemies, and the only regular enemy that shoots you. Its not very intelligent, but more often than not its not placed so that they can't deal a good attack at you. Despite this they aren't any stronger than ogres in the defense department.
Dragons appear only on the final level, where there are two. Guess someone really enjoys having twin bosses at the end of a game. Its huge, and it shoots massive fireballs. Curiously, unlike other enemies, it harms each enemy too. Its not too hard, but because you're likely to be out of the attacks by the time you reach here its a better choice to just dodge him and reach the level exit that way.
One big element of this game's relation to FPS titles is the number of secret walls it has. I say secret, but the game requires you to find them to win. You can detect them from non-secret walls by a single pixel on each wall, and it is as tedious as that sounds. That's partially a lie, sometimes its not there at all! Even then its not a very fun experience.
And worse still, the game frequently puts the player in situations where if he does the wrong thing, he's just ended his game. Used a key in the wrong place, whoops, you're stuck like the kind of adventure game people whine about years later. Oh, but it gets better, not only do you have to deal with this, but sometimes the proper path is just the longest possible one you could take through the level, and keys are right next to the door you shouldn't enter at that moment. Meaning if you walk one square too far you're screwed. This is the kind of game where the controls don't have that precision. It just turns into a slog as time goes on. There are a ton of strange references to the quality of disks. The version I'm playing was modified by an Australian floppy disk maker, so I guess they wanted to make fun of all their competitors. I can't say I've ever used a floppy that didn't come with a game already, so this is lost on me. Seems like typical advergame silliness anyway. This game doesn't allow you to save to my knowledge, and if you die, that's it. This isn't something I care for, but the length of this game isn't long enough for that to be a terrible problem. I must admit though, I used the level select cheat a few times, simply because I got tired of the opening levels. Which is of course, the real reason why I hate not having save games.
The final couple of levels are just exhausting to deal with. Level 9 seems simple, just find one key...in a labyrinth of endless, samey looking areas. At least the endless skeletons here are less obnoxious. Truely, this is the Catacomb. I got lucky when I played it, and found the key on the lower right side. Then the final level is mostly a maze of destructible walls, which you can't detect ahead of time. I'm really grateful that someone made the worst aspect of this game the focal point of a level. What's curious about this game is that fighting enemies in wide open spaces is actually the worst thing that could happen. With basically unlimited firepower, all that really matters is your rate of fire, so having to deal with even two fronts divides up your firepower too much. If you're in a tight corridor, unless you're fighting against enemies with ranged attacks, your victory is assured.
Fun fact, that level select can be used to screw with the demo. Before the rating, here's some footage of the game in action. I make no pretenses of being great at this game, but I did try to get a full run of the game. Died on level 7 due to my own hubris.
Weapons: The charge up basic fireball attack is neat, as are the two attacks that need ammo, but the game rarely gives one good chance to use them. 2/10
Enemies: The variety and simple nature of the enemies is appreciated, but they move a mit bit too fast. 3/10
Non-Enemies: None.
Levels: Its very clear that this is someone's first time making these kinds of levels, and it feels very...bleh. It starts off decently enough, but it feels the need to pad its meager length to obscene levels with the difficulty and lack of a save system. 3/10
Player Agency: Controls are a little loose, anything requiring precision takes longer than it should. Its also a bit tricky aiming at enemies who hit you at an angle. 4/10
Interactivity: You can shoot walls I guess. 1/10
Atmosphere: This feels like an ugly version of Deadly Rooms of Death, somehow. 1/10
Graphics: Somehow, this eye-searing pain is the EGA mode. Trust me, the CGA mode is worse. At least everything is distinct. Almost everything, anyway. 1/10
Story: Take some treasure from an ancient forgotten empire or something. Nothing matters the second you open up the game. 0/10
Sound/Music: Simple PC Speaker. 1/10
That's 16, the same score I originally gave Hovertank 3D.
I've seen this described as a Gauntlet clone, and that doesn't seem like an unreasonable comparison to me. The only reason why this is special is because this was one of the earliest titles from the boys at iD, and that exciting titles would result from their work. Its quite neat seeing the seeds of what would be their mark on the industry begin to form.
