#0046 Time Pilot

Alright! I think we have a new record holder for hardest game so far! Today I played Time Pilot, a multi-directional scrolling shooter designed by Yoshiki Okamoto (you might remember him as the creator of Street Fighter II) of Konami in 1982.

At first glance, the game seems pretty tame, it asks you to “please” insert a quarter to play. Well! Since you were so polite, I suppose I just might! After I inserted said immaterial quarter though, is where the polite nice guy front ended. Soon I was bombarded by enemy bi-planes from 1918 all trying to gun me down. I tried to out fly them in my futuristic fighter jet, but my 22,000 horse power jet engine was apparently no match against 97 year old propeller engines and they got behind me, I couldn’t turn around, they had me at every turn, until I was shot out of the sky by a bi plane coming in to my left that I didn’t even see. I had lasted ten seconds.

In Time Pilot, you play as some futuristic fighter jet. Your job is to travel through time to rescue pilots from 1918 bi-planes and zeppelins, 1948 mono-planes and B-25 bombers, 1970 heat seeking missile launching helicopters and Boing Vertol CH-46 Sea Knights, 1982 Jets who fire even more homing missiles that travel faster than you do and Boeing B-52 Stratofortress’s, and then finally all the way into 2001 where you fight the UFO’s from Asteroids who fire homing laser orbs that travel twice as fast as you and are near impossible to hit. Did I mention this game doesn’t allow continues?

The controls are simple, but are what threw me off at first. The game is obviously inspired by Asteroids and it definitely shows in the last level with the UFO’s. After playing Asteroids and Gravitar, I was expecting my plane to behave in a similar manner, i.e. the left and right arrows rotate your ship while pressing up thrusts you forward. I was wrong. Instead, the game actually behaves like modern games where pressing a directional arrow takes you in that direction. No Resident Evil controls here folks! After figuring that out, the game was an incredible amount of fun, constant threats coming at you from all sides, intelligent enemies keeping right behind you, it almost feels like a real dog fight. The gimmick of traveling through time is a very fun idea, I really love the idea of going through these different time periods trying to kill planes from that era, and I would love for a game to do that today, kind of makes you appreciate how aerial combat has advanced. The Graphics are nice and crisp with surprisingly smooth animation, overall, the game is a joy to play and one of the most entertaining of ’82 so far.

I do have one or two issues with it but I assure you they’re minimal, like Xevious, I wish this game had a better soundtrack. I don’t actually remember background music at all. I think that would really add to the fun, especially if the music changed with the era. Also, 16 directions is just not enough for a game as crazy as this. I often tried to shoot down planes who were just 15 degrees off from where I was directioned, meaning I had to do some weird maneuvering to make sure I could hit it accurately.

Overall, while the game is stupid hard, it’s at least fair, and a lot of fun to play. Unless you’re a big fan of classic multi-directional shooters, chances are you haven’t heard of this game, but it’s one I suggest. Give it a shot, I think you might be surprised.

Up next: Utopia (ooo an Intelivision game! A multiplayer only intelivision game, not sure how I'm gonna pull this one off.)

#0045 Tron

So today on 1K1VGYMPBYD (I need a shorter title) we look at Tron! A 1982 arcade game based on the hit Disney movie by the same name.

Okay, I gotta be honest here, I've never seen Tron. One of the first movies based on video games and I've never seen it or it's sequel. I heard that it was slow and not that great when I was a kid so I just was never really interested. So to be honest, I couldn't tell you how accurate it really is to the movie, I just know that the game was based on an early script of the film.

So this review is gonna work a little differently as this isn't so much one game as four separate games in one. A neat idea if they can pull it off. You start each game session by being able to choose which “color” you want to play, each color represents a different game, and you don't know what game that is until you play it. So what I'm going to do is do little mini reviews for each of the four games and then an overall review of the game as a whole.

Okay, so the first game in Tron is the I/O Tower. Basically, in this game you play as some dude in a tron costume and you have to make your way to a circle in the middle of the screen while avoiding little spider like creatures that come and attack you. You throw these little disks in order to defend yourself. The closest thing I can compare it to is Venture where you cross a SHMUP with a maze game into something more resembling a top-down adventure game. This one’s okay. You use the joystick to walk around and the dial to aim your disks, it’s a little awkward at first, but after you get used to the controls, it’s really not that bad.

The next game is MCP Clone. In this game you use your disks again to destroy a multicolored wall that slowly moves down the screen. Your goal is to make your way past the wall into a cone at the top while the wall is constantly spinning. Kinda like a mix between Space Invaders and the boss from Phoenix. This one’s okay as well, I found it a tad easy on the first round as all you have to do is fire at an angle in the opposite direction that it’s spinning an you’ll open up a small passage for you to slip by in no time.

The Third game is Battle Tanks. In this game you play as a red tank. Your goal is to kill the other tank on the screen using the joystick to move the tank and the dial to aim the cannon. This one is a lot like Combat for the Atari 2600 except with a computer controlled tank that is far more powerful than you. This one I found frustrating. Remember Combat? Where both tanks were equally powerful? Yeah, I miss that game. In this one the enemy tank takes three or so shots to kill, it’s attack is slower, but that doesn’t make me feel any better when it can kill me in one hit every time.

The last game is by far the best, and most famous. Light Cycles. This is what everyone thinks of when they think of a Tron game. Basically, it’s like a fast paced, competitive version of snake. You drive a motor cycle that trails a wall of light behind it. That wall of light never disappears, and if you run into anything, you lose. Your goal is to get your opponent to crash into a wall while staying alive yourself.

I gotta say, this game was kinda fun. I enjoyed riding side by side with my opponent only to take a sharp right turn at the last minute and then another and finally pulling away at the last second to box it in and just watching that yellow bike scamper around the edges of the walls until he's got nowhere to go. Awesome.

Overall, with the exception of the light cycles, I thought the game was rather underwhelming. I beat every game at least once and when I did that, I really had no motivation to play past that, which a really bad thing for arcade games because they’re entire point is to draw you in and keep you standing at that machine spending quarters as long as they can. If you don’t feel like continuing after a few levels, then you’re going to leave that game to play Donkey Kong again at your next game over. It was okay, I can’t say it was bad, but I just really wished all the games were as fun as the light cycles level.

Up next: Time Pilot