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Atari reviews: Demon Attack, Pitfall, Swordquest, Star Raiders [message #10406] Wed, 08 August 2012 00:37
Anonymous
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Originally posted by: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!npois!cbosgd!mark

<pre>Article-I.D.: cbosgd.2926
Posted: Sun Jan 2 23:15:42 1983
Received: Mon Jan 3 03:54:08 1983
Reply-To: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)

When you have an 11 year old brother (when watching a TV commercial:
"It's a new Atari cartridge! I want it! I want it! What is it?")
you get to see a lot of the new games. Here are reviews based on
limited experience with each.

Demon Attack. This is a clear ripoff of Space Invaders, but it's
different enough that it feels like a totally different game.
Instead of having several rows of marching soldiers, you have three
fluttering bird-like creatures overhead. They wiggle and flutter
in such a way as to make them very hard to hit. When you hit one,
another one appears (half from the left, half from the right - it's
kind of neat) to take its place. Each wave has 8 creatures - no
more appear after that until the next wave. The bottom one of
the three shoots at you, but they are pretty easy to dodge.
The appearance of the creatures changes from wave to wave.
After several waves, hitting a creature causes it to split into
two smaller birds, one of which shoots at you and the other
eventually dive bombs you. Thus it takes three hits to kill one
creature, for a total of 24 hits per wave. The waves get increasingly
difficult. The game is fun and challenging, but it's not going to
keep anyone interested for more than 1/2 hour at a time, and it's
likely to get put on the bottom of the heap more rapidly than a
Defender or Donkey Kong. On a 1 to 10 I'd rate it a 4.

Pitfall. You control Patfall Harry as he tries to run through the
jungle collecting treasure and avoid various traps. The game is
very much like our familiar Unix "Adventure" program - the layout
is fixed, making a map is worthwhile, and after a while the object
becomes "how fast can you get all the way through". I suspect that
"a while" is pretty long, however. There are 255 rooms, arranged
linearly. Each room has an aboveground area and a below ground
area, and some combination of properties. There might be a ladder
between up and down; there might be holes to fall down into, there
might be a lake or tarpit in the middle, the lake/tarpit might
disappear and reappear regularly, there might be a vine to swing
over the lake/tarpit with, there might be 3 alligators in the lake
to jump/swing over, there might be some treasure to the right of
center, and there are a few other hazards (a fire, a "cobra rattler",
and below there is often a scorpion). Many of the rooms have rolling
logs you have to avoid or jump over, some have still logs. Scoring is
interesting - you start with 2000 points and lose points for making
mistakes (being hit by a log, falling down a hole into the below ground).
You gain points for finding treasure. You can get killed (this does
not cost any points but the third time you get killed the game is
over) by falling into a tarpit or lake, the jaws of a gator, a fire,
a snake, or a scorpion. Don't ask me why buring your leg in a fire
or touching the edge of a lake is fatal, but falling into a 30 foot
hole or being run over by a log is only a minor setback. There is
a time limit of 20 minutes, which the instructions imply is not enough
unless you get tricky. (You can't always go underground because there
are brick walls, but when you are underground you skip 2 out of every
3 rooms, this can avoid some brick walls and makes things go faster,
but you need a map to know where to do it.) A perfect game is 114000,
a score of 10000 qualifies the owner for the Activision club membership
(they send you a patch or something if you send in a photo of your TV
screen), Ivan got 20000 the first day and was beating 50000 within a
week without a map. The graphics are good by Atari standards (the
scorpion walks with 2 phases, Harry visibly runs and gets knocked on
his butt by logs, but the gators have 2 phases - mouth open and mouth
shut). It is difficult to control Harry until you get lots of
practice - jumping up and grabbing the vine is easy, but it's hard not
to fall in the lake when you let go. Hopping over 3 gators by jumping
on their heads is very hard - you stand on the 2nd ones head through
a "mouth open" phase to do it. The logs are not hard to jump, but
the scorpion is. Overall I'd give it a "good" - comparable to Asteroids
or Pinball. Not as good as Defender or Donkey Kong. Probably a 7.

Swordquest. This is another Adventure style game. There are some
impressive but simple graphics in the intro - a glittering sword,
and a strange effect when you go from one room to another. There
are several (12?) rooms, each with a different color and 4 doors.
You can go from one room to another without actually going "in"
the room - you hit the button to jump between the room and what
must be an entryway. (We had a borrowed cartridge and no instructions.)
Inside the room is a menu driven system where you can point at any
object on the floor (using the joystick) and hit the button, causing
it to go into your pack. Pointing at something in your pack drops
it on the floor. Pointing at the door (an icon) gets you out.
Each room is also labelled with a sign of the Zodiac. Various other
things are useful - shoes make you silent, a key gives you more
choices of rooms to go to, a shield allows you to avoid spears, etc.
Some rooms have "tests" to get into them - usually you must cross
the screen without being hit by things moving back and forth; spears
or invisible dots (which the candle helps you see). One test requires
you to ride logs up a step at a time to reach the top, another one
makes you go through holes in several waterfalls (nice sound effect
and pretty falls) without getting wet. In each case, if you mess
up you just go back to the beginning of the test. You never get killed.
One room provides a clue, which is "16 4" followed by "8 4". Not
having the instructions, I have no idea what this means or what
the ultimate object of the game is. Overall rating: like Adventure
but the graphics are better. Perhaps a 4.

Star Raiders. Easily the most complex of the Atari space games.
This is a ripoff of your favorite matrix style Star Trek program,
in a 4x4 galaxy, with all the names changed to avoid copyright
problems. Some things are simplified - it starts with 10, 20,
30, or 40 bad guy ships, and they travel in a pack (always in the
same sector). The map shows you where you are, they are, and your
base is. Docking to refuel just involves warping to the sector
(the galaxy is 4x4 sectors - there are no quadrants) with the base,
waiting for a few seconds, and warping back to wherever you were.
The game is more expensive than most ($35 at Penneys) because it
comes with a 12 button keyboard and an overlay. 5 of the buttons
are used, to switch between the normal display and the galaxy map,
turn on/off the computer, on/off the shields, and warp. The impressive
part of the game is the graphics. "normal view" is a cross between
2D and 3D perspective - not unlike what Kirk saw out his viewscreen.
Stars (dots) go by from the center to the edges, and actually accelerate
as they near the edges. If you spin your ship (with the joystick)
you see the effect in the stars positions. Enemy ships are 2D shapes
whose size varies according to the distance and whose position appears
to be in 3D perspective. You can see your photon torpedos fire from
the lower left and right corners of the screen and get smaller and
higher as they approach the target in the center of the screen.
(I assume a hit is determined in 2D.) Yet, with all this, the
alphanumerics are in the standard ugly Atari 3x7 font. The object
of the game is to kill all the enemy ships before they kill you
and destroy your starbase. If they hit you it takes away energy,
you get killed when your energy hits zero or if you get hit with
your shields down. Did I like the game? Not really. Aside from
the fact that 3D games are much harder to learn, the real problem
was that the ship is very hard to control, the photon torpedos are
hard to aim, and you can't really tell if you hit something except
to watch the number of targets remaining. (There are lots of sound
effects and flashing indications, but nothing for an enemy hit.)
The instructions ("survival information") don't help in this regard,
although what you seem to do is rotate the ship with the joystick,
until you see an enemy in the sites, then push the button to fire,
and by the time the photon torpedos get there, he's long gone.
It seemed that while I eventually hit the ships, I have no idea
what I did to hit them - apparently the "computer" locks onto up
to 2 ships at once and beeps when it's got one, but this wasn't
a whole lot of help. I might feel differently with lots of
practice, or with decent instructions. But right now my feeling
is that if you are frustrated by Peter Langston's "stardreck",
you may have trouble with Star Raiders too. And at least stardreck
has comprehensive instructions. I'd say a 3.

Demons to Diamonds. I just remembered this one and it isn't
fresh in my mind. You point in 1D with a paddle and fire straight
up into the screen, where little demons dance across the screen.
If you hit one that's your own color, a diamond appears, zips
across the screen to the edge, sits there for a few seconds and
disappears. You get a few points for the demon, and a lot of
points for the diamond, which is considered your "bonus". But if
you hit a demon of the wrong color, (there are two colors) it turns
into a skull, which sits there and fires vertically at you. Eventually
skulls disappear, but often they appear spontaneously, especially
at the edges. In the 2 player version, one player gets each color
and one goes to the top of the screen. Each can only hit his color
without creating skulls, but all the diamonds created are the first
players color and are fair game for either player. Overall rating:
3 - the game seemed kind of pointless.

(For reference, I'd rate Donkey Kong an 8, Defender a 9, Space
Invaders a 6, Pinball a 6.)
</pre>
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