Resurrection: Super Monkey Ball

Resurrection is Resolution’s weekly retrospective feature. Jon Beach climbs down a branch of the tree of gaming evolution and reminisces about SUPER MONKEY BALL.

Resurrection: Castle of Illusion

Resurrection is a regular feature in which we reminisce about a game from way back when. This week In light of Epic Mickey’s release and to celebrate the game’s 20th Anniversary, Jon Beach looks back at Castle of Illusion.

IT’S EASY to overlook Mickey Mouse’s influence on the platform genre. After all, the high pitched squeaky clean icon of cartooning has such a ubiquitous global appeal; it’s hard to remember the fact that he used to appear in challenging and intelligently made videogames. That’s right – before Sonic was screwing up into a royal blue buzzsaw and pissing 2D brilliance into our faces, before Cool Spot crudely bungled his obnoxious way through a lemonade advert, and even before Mario’s name was inked onto the Nintendo V Sega fight card – Disney’s faithful mascot was silently preparing to enter the Castle of Illusion.

The fact that Castle of Illusion made it onto shelves before Sonic the Hedgehog did can be bewildering to those who were first suckered in by the game’s charms twenty years ago. After all, Mickey’s first 16-Bit outing was a key selling point for the console – there wasn’t a blue hedgehog in sight before the game’s release at the end of 1990, and this colourful, well animated, challenging title performed well in Sonic’s absence. It would be outshone by Sega’s future mascot in 1991, as well as out-coloured, out-sped, and out-reviewed – but Castle of Illusion maintains its worthy place in the 16-Bit platformer hall of fame.

Pure platforming

How so? Much like other acclaimed titles of the generation, the key to the title’s charm was in its simplicity. Minnie Mouse was captured by wizened old witch ratbag Mizrabel (miserable, geddit?) and whisked off to the titular medieval labyrinth. Mickey must enter the castle and reclaim eight coloured gems, each representing a colour of the rainbow – red, yellow, orange and so on. Each gem can be found behind one of several ominous wooden doors, and guarded ruthlessly by the game’s fantastic bosses and expertly designed levels. It’s platforming at its most delightfully pure. The A and C buttons are used to jump, and the B button is saved for throwing projectiles – an essential means of ridding platforms and enclosed spaces of peskily placed critters. There’s a slow, determined feel to the whole experience, through which the player is given a miserly but adequate two continues to help rescue Minnie. The scene is set for a unique and quintessential Mega Drive platformer; one that oozes colour, exerts the fingers, and forces smiles through its playful, twee overtones and juxtaposition of its themed interiors.

We’re whisked through the woods and watch day turn to night, delving into dank caverns, teeming with bats, larvae, ghosts and worse; surrounded by bold greens and earthly browns. Shortly after bum-bouncing our way past a tree with a mind of its own, we travel to Toytown; our ears pricking up at the delightful circus drums and funfair melodies, our eyes melting at the dazzling array of colours. It’s a place where soldiers march with relentless star-sucking intent, jack-in-the-boxes spring out from platforms and levels spin in on themselves – unicycling clowns and awkwardly placed planes doing their darnedest to thwart our hero. Having ducked under spring loaded boxing gloves bursting from a creepy clockwork clown, Mickey struts off to the Aztec, an interesting precursor to Sonic’s own Labyrinth zone. Here, Sega push us over impossibly tiny granite platforms, slippery with the wet of waterfalls and dark with the shadow of vicious bats and hungry piranhas. Later, the player traverses a flooded passageway through which deadly water passes at regular intervals, and swims his way through a flooded underground maze.

Jelly bean dolphins

There’s danger at every turn, and we quickly learn to tread through these environments with care – such is the dastardly nature of the enemy placement and sprawling level design. There’s imagination, too. Mickey is prodded through a door where teacups can be entered and milk bottles present a new challenge, where jelly bean dolphins leap up through sickly sweet liquids and the hero makes haste across platforms made of wafer. It’s only in the final stages of the game that the designs dare to become generic – but it’s testament to the quality of the vivid wonderland that precedes it that this late coming lack of imagination goes unnoticed. After the last door of the Castle, a beautifully scored and animated boss fight is preceded by a casual walk over a rainbow of gems and Mickey comes face to face with Mizrabel; Minnie looking on through a bubble enclosed prison. A few short bottom bounces later and she’s back in her lover’s arms, and the psychedelic adventure comes to a close.

It’s quite a magical portrait, but not one without its share of problems – Mickey often pushes too far to the right of the screen meaning some enemy ambushes can feel cheap, the more annoying enemies are recycled in later stages and it feels altogether a bit too short. But as a tantalising taster of what was to come, Castle of Illusion did a great job. It teased at what the Mega Drive might have been capable of towards the end of its shelf life, and bettered the gameplay and soundtrack of ten dozen Sonic imitators to come. No one knew it yet, but we’d all be keen to wander the halls of the Castle of Illusion in our later years. Now all we need is an Xbox Live Arcade/Virtual Console/PSN release to help us do that.

Resurrection: Marble Madness

Resurrection is a regular feature in which we reminisce about a game from way back when. This week Peter Willington shares his unique thoughts on classic puzzler MARBLE MADNESS.

THE ATARI produced Marble Madness is a quaint little title at first glance. This isometric 1984 racer/ puzzler/platformer hybrid wowed players of the time with its faux 3D environment and impressive early stereo sound, being ported to several home consoles and inspiring design for an – ultimately canned – sequel.

All in the name

And yet… that title. Atari went with the at-the-time-popular alliteration route for the game. A snappy, two word, easily remembered name that would easily sum up to players what to expect. Marble Maze, Marble Mission, Marble Masters… no. No Mark Cerny’s first design outing was to be known as Marble Madness.

I’ve previously noted that games are often titled very precisely, very particularly and Marble Madness is no exception and alludes to the ‘to lose one’s marbles’ saying, which of course means to lose the plot, to go insane.

It’s a state of mind that the mechanics of the title lend themselves to perfectly. Balanced to within an inch of its life, Marble Madness’ difficulty comes with beating the ever decreasing timer to the finish line in order to progress to the next area, add time to the clock and start again. Experts of the game go for high scores and quickest times but for the vast majority of players the finish line is more often than not just inches away when the timer hits zero. The first time this happens is frustrating, the second, third, fourth, fifth… maddening.

As the perfect kinetic shape – a sphere – represented off screen by a trackball – or a DPAD for the home ports – coaxing your marble through the isometric 3D maps is your only task, albeit one hampered by exaggerated geometry, enemies and traps. These three components, in addition to difficulty increasing game play functions, are also visual metaphors of mental illness, in the guise of oddball obstacles common place in the earliest of arcade games.

Descent into madness

Those elements blocking your path are neurosis, fears that must be overcome in order to make progress. The marble disintegrating Hoovers are Mysophobic in nature – an object of cleanliness that consumes the player, the acidic slime blocking your way forces you to confront Blennophobic fears and the leaping worms that hungrily swallow you whole are clearly born of Phagophobia. Aerial Race is Acrophobia, the birds are Ornithophobia and the waves – Hydrophobia, but perhaps the most interesting of these is the dreaded Black Steelie. A colourless opposite of the bright blue and red hues of players one and two, the Black Steelie is a recurring nightmare of an enemy, single mindedly concerned with stopping your progress on the way to a metaphorical recovery. This jet black demon is a personal one, a shadow that follows the player from area to area, cropping up at inopportune moments to remind you of your own mortality and is, in many ways, a shadowy incarnation of bi-polar disorder.

But your greatest enemy is, without doubt, the world around you. When creating the game Cerny was clearly inspired by the reason breaking works of M.C. Escher, creating landscapes that the mind has to wrap itself round to comprehend in terms of height and angle. The Dutch artist, whose work relished in confusing the viewer, is especially evident in perhaps the most warped level of Marble Madness, the ‘Silly Race’. In this, up is down, enemies are no threat and the player’s goal is set up-screen for the first and only time in the entirety of the game. Mental disorders often become worse before they are better and the Silly Race’s position at the tail end of the game is by no means accidental.

For those people prepared to go deeper down the rabbit hole of Marble Madness and really play with the set of game world rules, there are mind bending tricks of gravity defiance to speed run the game and access areas previously thought impossible. Obsession with the pursuit of perfection is the only way to break free from Marble Madness’ otherwise strictly defined paths, rewarding only those that are prepared to think laterally and with the greatest freedom, training you to see the world in a completely different light. Walls become paths, pit falls are ignored and death is cheated to these players positioned outside of the social norm.

The clue then, once again, is in the title; this classic comprises of exactly two things, marbles and madness. Now you’ve read this, go back to the game and see for yourself, because regarding Marble Madness, “everything you know is wrong”.

Resurrection: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Resurrection is a regular feature in which we reminisce about a game from way back when. This week Jennifer Allen combines childhood memories with her love of THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME

THE LEGEND of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the greatest game that I’ve never completed. Before I’m lynched for such an admission – I have actually seen the vast majority of the game’s content. It’s just that I have never completed it. Instead I watched my friend play it to completion.

My friend was lucky enough to have a Nintendo 64. While I loved my PlayStation One, it didn’t have Goldeneye and I was envious. I was even more envious when he received Ocarina of Time for Christmas. He knew it was coming and was ridiculously excited. So was I admittedly. Only the year before we’d spent the winter months watching me play through Final Fantasy VII – a game that resides in both our memories as a fantastic experience. Finally we had an experience to rival that.

Horsey Adventures

We were right to be that excited. During those cold winter months, we’d meet at every possible opportunity, huddled in his living room playing OoT until it turned dark and I had to go home. I’m not sure how long it took for us to complete but it felt never-ending in the good way. That moment when we first saw the wonders of Hyrule Field was as exciting as if we were actually there. Not long after that came the acquisition of Epona – beautiful, lovely, horsey Epona. My friend wasn’t actually very good at racing with Epona so any such tasks were handed over to me. I didn’t mind though. I loved it. When I first started riding around in Red Dead Redemption, I fondly remembered those innocent days with Epona. Despite being intimidated by real horses, I think I’m destined to be a successful virtual horse rider.

From behind my friend’s shoulder, I saw every inch of every dungeon in Ocarina of Time. When he was stuck on a puzzle, we’d brain storm and figure out how to get past it. There were no walkthroughs to consult, no YouTube videos to glean information from, it was all down to me and my friend. My friend later went onto collect every gold skulltula in a second playthrough but he always did have more patience than me. It was the little things that fascinated me, mostly the fishing and horse riding. They seemed mundane to my friend, especially the fishing, but I loved the simplicity of it all. And of course the Ocarina playing – I’m pretty sure I can still clearly remember how to play the Epona song. Much like Final Fantasy VII, it was the little things that made it stand out the most. Acquiring Biggoron’s Sword and Big Poe catching. The more I reminisce the more I wonder just how come I’ve never got round to finishing it myself.

Then again it’s a testament to what a fantastic game it is considering it’s one of my all time favourites despite not actually completing it. Of course I’ve played a fair chunk of it by myself. I’ve got my own N64 now along with a copy of Ocarina of Time, and I’m frequently tempted to buy it for the Virtual Console. When it’s released for the 3DS I’ll be at the front of the line to buy it, but will I actually complete it this time? Who knows. Maybe it doesn’t really matter. I know how sublime and wondrous Ocarina of Time is even if it is by proxy.

Resurrection: Dungeon Keeper

Resurrection is a regular feature in which we reminisce about a game from way back when. This week Greg Giddens embraces his evil side in DUNGEON KEEPER.

‘THE BLOODY axes of war and famine have so far bypassed this quiet backwater, leaving the inhabitants totally unaware of the purpose of real agony and loss. Unbearably, most die of old age.’

The above quote tells you with no uncertainty what you are; evil. You are not misunderstood or misguided; you are the embodiment of dread, death and decay. You are the Dungeon Keeper, and being evil is seldom so much fun.

Bad to the bone

Indeed that’s Dungeon Keeper’s primary source of charm and allure, being able to play the bad guy and not fighting a losing battle. The black and white fantasy good and evil may be tried and tested but playing the bad guy is a path less trodden, and is the unique factor that defines Dungeon Keeper’s experience.

The quote is one of many delivered by the narrator as an introduction to a level. Your task is to build a dungeon on this land, fill it with wondrously evil creatures and fiendish traps, and decimate the heroes and fellow dungeon keepers, who dare halt your inevitable advance. With the evil agenda and a combination of god game, RTS, and RPG elements, Dungeon Keeper stood out as a unique and engaging title back in 1997, and represented yet another success for the seemingly unstoppable developer Bullfrog.

However, despite the sprinkling of multi-genre magic, the main experience remained – as with previous Bullfrog titles – in the area of micro management. You plan out the tunnels and caverns of your dungeon, before your lowly imps carve them out. You find veins of gold and ensure timely collection so to pay your greedy creatures of war. Finally, you actively place traps and pickup and drop creatures onto enemies to engage them in battle. Without your hand your dungeon would fall.

It plays into the realm of management games, safely situated within Bullfrog’s fan base. In some ways it was a missed opportunity not to add more than a dab of RTS elements, perhaps the frustration of creature control and the depth of strategy would have benefited from a more RTS based control system. For the Bullfrog fans, however, Dungeon Keeper represented more than just a great game with minor frustrations, it represented hope for the future of other Bullfrog titles. The hope was that Bullfrog could further develop the Theme and Populous series’ with innovative elements such as those found in Dungeon Keeper, and although some success was found in new titles of both series’ – as well as with the Dungeon Keeper sequel – in many ways Dungeon Keeper marked the end of Bullfrog.

Mwahaha

Dungeon Keeper’s quality, however, is obvious. The refreshing setting and character of the title is as wonderful today as it was 13 years ago. Engaging the micro-management experience as well as designing and maintaining a dungeon is remarkably fun. The enjoyment is further enhanced by a dark humour you simply can’t get enough of.

‘The streets run with the blood of the slain. Screams of pain and the howls of anguish rip the night air like a vengeful siren song. This really is somewhere you can take the kids for a weekend.’

The narrator continues to share amusing messages of corruption and death as you approach and conquer each level, and in-game the laughter – or more appropriately, cackling – continues.

The design of many of the creatures is grotesque and inherently amusing. The Bile Demon’s girth as well as their offensive attacks with gas and middle finger retaliation after a slap makes them both hilarious and vile in good balance. Imps grunt when slapped and squeal with joy when picked up and dropped. Mistresses would be happy for you to slap them all day if it wasn’t such a drain on their health. There’s no denying the comedic charm – something Bullfrog was famous for – is present even in the shadows of your sinister dungeon.

Dungeon Keeper is a great game and a sorely missed series. Here’s hoping license holders EA revive it one day with a third game that fans, and indeed the series, deserve.

Resurrection: Halo

Resurrection is a regular feature in which we reminisce about a game from way back when. This week Peter Willington takes a deep, spiritual look at HALO:COMBAT EVOLVED.

HALO. THINK about what that word instantly brings to mind for you, just for a second… Halo. Halo…

If you immediately thought of the revolutionary – or should that be evolutionary – FPS Halo: Combat Evolved, first launched on the original Xbox back in 2002, then congratulations, you’re a gamer and proven my point that ‘Halo’ has become an idiom, a word that is now associated with ’sticking’ Covenant, online multiplayer, and tea bagging rather than its original meaning in terms of religious iconography.

Yet on many levels Halo truly is an entirely religious experience. From a sheerly critical perspective, the amount of praise from games reviewers and the levels of dedication from fans, borders on the zealous. It’s almost impossible to criticise the series without facing the wrath of the all seeing, all knowing, omnipotent being that is the internet and thousands upon thousands of people every day log into the Xbox 360 multiplayer servers to put time into – what has become for many – a way of life.

The Halo spirit

But let’s move away from that and focus on the narrative and themes present within this first entry in the Halo series. The eponymous world on which the vast majority of the title is set is worshipped by the Covenant – a term itself with significant religious meaning – who refer to them as Sacred Rings, entire planets essentially that have been in place for many years, installed by the Forerunners. Yet the human outsiders see these mega structures as a threat to their existence and, more importantly, as potential weapons. As they indeed are in some respects, with the power to wipe out all nearby inhabitants to stop the ever present threat of The Flood from corrupting whatever life forms may be in the vicinity. We could say then that these structures are present to enable a similar situation to the spate of ritualistic cult suicides committed by real world groups such as Heaven’s Gate or the People’s Temple; an object worshipped by a group that will literally give their lives to it in pursuit of a noble cause.

The central protagonist – Master Chief – is essentially resurrected at the beginning of the title, again with obvious spiritual ramifications for several of the world’s religions. As the main character flows through the corridors of the great, temple-like buildings that are found within Halo: Combat Evolved, the player is treated to many sights and sounds common place in the holy buildings of our past and indeed of our present. Complex symbols line the walls of this soon-to-be tomb, a not too far cry from the Pyramids of ancient Egypt, blood and bodies litter the battlefield and remind us subconsciously of a more brutal religious past, of blood-shed in the name of this – in the eyes of the Covenant at least – holy war.

Particularly resonant is one moment within the Silent Cartographer act, whereby a dead marine can be found lying within a pool of his own blood on what arguably looks to be a sacrificial altar. All of this of course is accompanied by a mix of rock /electronica or – more fittingly – classical pieces with a choral lilt and indeed the loading screens themselves are accompanied by angelic vocals as data is pulled from the disc into the Xbox.

Of course Halo: Combat Evolved is more than this too, it’s a great shooter that changed games design from the corridor focused blasting of genre predecessors to a more free form of gun fight, with battles pitched across massive distances, with multiple opponents and allies in a variety of vehicles. In addition, it owes as much to spirituality as it does schlocky science fiction movies from the early 90’s, as much to cults and sects and denominations as it does to the modern US army, the Larry Niven’s Ringworld novel and Akira. But the next time you fire up this near-decade old classic, keep an eye out for the presence of religion and you’ll be surprised at just how much faith Microsoft and Bungie put into Halo…

Resurrection: Metal Gear Solid

Resurrection is a regular feature in which we reminisce about a game from way back when. This week Greg Giddens takes a look at the cinematic marvel METAL GEAR SOLID.

IN 1998 gamers were gifted with a revived genre and two games to spearhead it, Thief: The Dark Project for the PC crowd and – a few months earlier for the console crowd – Metal Gear Solid, a title more akin to a Hollywood movie than a game. With its incredible in game FMVs, superb voice acting, an engrossing – if a little confusing – story, and a revived iconic character, Metal Gear Solid hit the shelves and captured the imagination of millions.

Initially released on PlayStation, Metal Gear Solid was – and still is – one of the best selling games of all time, and for obvious reasons. The first thing to note is that Metal Gear Solid revived the stealth genre, shying away from the more popular action adventure setup and instead concentrated on the mechanics of not being seen and avoiding combat. This seemingly new concept of stealth as well as Metal Gear Solid’s terrific cinematic quality became the catalyst for a change in both developer and player perception of mechanics implementation and narrative scope and delivery; Metal Gear Solid changed gaming.

Once upon a time…

In many respects Metal Gear Solid was less game and more cinematic spectacle, but despite this obvious support of narrative over interaction there is no denying the excellence of the whole package.

Metal Gear Solid’s deep narrative is one of its strongest assets. It consists of an intriguing backstory – only touched on in the previous Metal Gear games on the NES and MSX – and this exciting and perplexing narrative is delivered with exceptional pace. It features a cast of comic book-esque characters that achieve an impressive balance between superhuman and normality. it’s all too easy to become fully immersed in its charm due to this widespread appeal.

Playing as Solid Snake – now retired from a Special Forces unit called Foxhound – you’ve been called in to infiltrate a nuclear disposal facility which is now in the hands of terrorists. Snake has three objectives – rescue the president of ArmsTech Kenneth Baker, rescue the DARPA chief Donald Anderson, and lastly to find out if the terrorists have to ability to launch a nuclear missile – as they claim – and stop them if they do. Throughout the story you will fight against the ex-special forces unit Foxhound members, including their leader, Liquid Snake, who shares a remarkable similarity to Solid.

Indeed it’s an excellent story but it’s unfortunately quite short. Replayability, however, is encouraged through unlockable items such as the stealth suit and infinite ammo bandana. Changing the difficulty setting affected your radar’s capabilities – taking it away completely on higher settings – often forcing a more careful and perceptive style of play in subsequent playthroughs.

The experience it offers is what makes Metal Gear Solid such a great game. The gripping story, the interesting and new or revived concepts, and the truly brilliant voice acting – delivered by an experienced and professional cast – create a believable and immersive world that oozes character and charm. Regardless of how relatively short the game is, Metal Gear Solid is still one of the greatest examples of video game art, cinematic storytelling, and absolute unquestionable fun.

With that I end by saying Metal Gear Solid is a true classic, and although receives constant praise – even after 10 years – it still deserves it. Buy it, play it, then move on to the sequels; this series comes highly recommended.

Resurrection: Phantasy Star

Resurrection is Resolution’s weekly retrospective feature. This time, Lee Bradley tells us the tale of PHANTASY STAR and how important it was to him as a wee sprog.

THERE’S A reason why nostalgia and videogames are so inextricably linked. For those of us of a certain age, playing video games is in part an attempt to reconnect with our youths. As we grow older, we search to replicate the endorphin rush of discovery brought about by our formative game experiences. But they can never be recreated.

Our brains are now too developed, we’re too cynical, too analytical. We know too much. Where once games were things of mysterious beauty arriving from exotic lands, they are now the product of mere mortals in California and, er, Guildford. We know how they were made and what market they are aimed at. We know the individuals that create them and the sordid legal squabbles that surround them. We know everything about them, before they even reach our homes. Child-like wonderment and veneration are not made of these things.

So we remember those days when it was different. When a new game wasn’t gained as the result of endeavor and played at the expense of responsibility. For us as children, a new game was acquired through the sheer weight of our desire, a desire fed by a glimpse of beautiful box art on a shop shelf, an appealing title or a fuzzy screenshot in a cherished magazine.

This is why we love the games of our youth. This is why I love Phantasy Star.

Fantasy Start

The first time I saw Phantasy Star, it wasn’t even a cartridge. It was just a circuit board, a collection of transistors on green plastic. My friend’sfather was an exec at Sega Europe, so carrier-bags of games would intermittently arrive in this naked state. Before pushing it into his Master System and flicking that switch, I didn’t even know what game it was. When the gorgeous title screen appeared featuring a sword-wielding Alis Lansdale, I was still none the wiser.

I understand now that Alis was one of the first female videogame leads, a pioneer. But it didn’t even register then, something else had caught my attention. Because there beneath the ubiquitous ’start game’ was something I had never seen on a console title before: ‘Continue.’

Phantasy Star was the first console title to offer a save game, something it achieved though a small in-built battery cell. It was more than a mere technological gimmick, it was a neccesity. This was a experience of such magnitude and scope that it could not be conquered in one sitting. It’s breath and depth could spill out into days and weeks of playtime. Not because it was ridiculously hard (though it is tough) or because it had 5000 levels, but because it contained entire worlds. And what’s more, those worlds were filled with cities and seas, countryside and people. People driven by politics and money and desire and revenge. Real people, in a universe entirely of their own.

Phantasy Star was the first JRPG to reach the West, weeks before Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest stormed our shores. A roleplaying game. Though I didn’t know what that meant at the time.

The JRPG tropes that cling to life in this new millenium were jaw-dropping innovations in 1988. The virtual cities teemed with inhabitants ready to converse with you at the click of a button. Shops overflowed with items to purchase. Beyond the city walls roamed lethal, fantastical creatures ready to ambush you from nowhere, without warning. Labyrynthine dungeons – rendered in beautifully smooth first-person 3D  - twisted and turned, a treasure chest or a gruesome enemy around every corner.

Continues…

LoveCraft

Resurrection is a regular feature in which we reminisce about a game from way back when. This week Greg Giddens takes a look at RTS legend StarCraft.

StarCraft is a remarkable game, and its most remarkable feature is just how remarkable it is. StarCraft is a standard RTS game, with obvious traits from the WarCraft series and Command & Conquer series. What makes it stand out, however, is its personality, consisting of its interesting races and the serious narrative with a downright hilarious undertone.

StoryCraft

The narrative involves a vast backstory for each race; The Terrans’ (Humans) internal conflicts, and the Protoss’ and Zerg’s rising and vicious war. The game’s specific narrative, however, only touches on this backstory. Instead it concentrates on the meeting of the three races and the mutual understanding between elements of the Protoss leadership and the Terrans regarding the threat that the Zerg represent. Taking you through the perspective of each race, you witness the narrative as a commander in each respective military. Through excellent voice acting in briefings and in-game – as well as cut scenes that pull off an impressive balance between serious story progression and humour – you discover the drive behind each race and glimpse the vastness of the universe Blizzard has created.

StarCraft remained very true to the setup of other RTS titles of the late 1990s, with its resource gathering, base building and unit production feeling identical to other titles. The originality was found in the distinctiveness of each race. Whilst it was common in other RTS titles of the time to have each race using similar units to counter each other, StarCraft had unique units for each race which required different tactics to use successfully. As a result StarCraft was inherently tactical.

The Terrans were highly adaptable; units could deal with multiple situations – close range or long through artillery and nukes – and buildings could be placed freely, with major buildings being able to take off and fly away if things looked hairy. This adaptability made the Terrans ideal for learning the ropes, and the campaign reflected that by having the Terrans as the starting race.

The Zerg had some fairly weak units but they were cheap and quick to build, allowing you to raise a large force very quickly to overwhelm your enemies. This made popular the rush tactic of the same name. Zerg buildings were organic and required being built on land rich in organic mass, limiting their building locations significantly. With the weak but cheap units in mind, the Zerg required a more aggressive set of tactics then the Terrans.

The Protoss were the most difficult race to use thanks to being initially difficult to understand. The reliance on power restricted building placement, and the units were more expensive with more specific roles in battle. As a result tactics – once again – needed to change, with the Protoss requiring more careful flanking and hit and run strategies to be victorious.

MultiCraft

The distinctiveness of each race made StarCraft unique compared to every other RTS out at the time and this originality and strategic quality translated well into multiplayer.

Impressively, despite the unique qualities of each race – they remained balanced. Whilst there wasn’t a counter unit on each side for every unit, through the use of tactics no race could claim an advantage over the others. This impressive quality made StarCraft’s multiplayer highly competitive as well as dynamic, which is why – even today – StarCraft is so popular online and via LAN.

With such strong unique qualities behind it – and such excellent implementation of the standard ones – StarCraft became a huge hit that to this day remains a benchmark RTS title. The strong narrative has spawned several novels and in just a couple of weeks time we’ll see the next chapter in this epic story in the form of the long awaited sequel StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. If the sequel has a fraction of the magic the original had then we are all in for a treat, and I for one am hugely excited.

Cleaning up the galaxy…

Resurrection is a regular feature in which we reminisce about a game from way back when. This week, Steve K Peacock boldly goes where… he’s been before… in SPACE QUEST V.

LIKE A sports team, your loyalty will only ever lie with either Star Trek or Star Wars. You can appreciate the other side, praise them on their successes even, but your heart will only ever belong to one. For me, Star Trek wins out over Star Wars, specifically The Next Generation. If that was what the final frontier was like, sign me up.

It was with this in mind that I first came to Space Quest V, the penultimate episode of Sierra’s hilarious – if somewhat punishing – adventure game series. The previous four games had been written and designed by a couple of gents called “The Two Guys From Andromeda” but, after years of collaboration the gents went their separate ways. Mark Crowe stayed on to design the sequel and – like Red Dwarf would do under similar circumstances – this led to a slight shift in the tone of the game.

The previous Space Quest games had been about a reluctant but consistently fortunate hero, Roger Wilco, SpaceJanitor. Despite his fame as a saviour of mankind, foiling any number of schemes against them, he was still the lowliest of the low. Space Quest V changes this by giving him aspirations.

Star Con

The game starts with Roger enrolled in the obligatory training academy for your Space Federation du jour. Your first task if to get Roger to pass his final exam, which is an interesting conundrum in that it puts you in the same position as chronically lazy student Wilco himself: neither of you have any ideas what the answers are. Get through the exam and – after falling afoul of arrogant Shatner-double Admiral Quirk – you are gifted your own ship, the SCS Eureka.

Space quest had been a series well known for its comedy. Space Quest V takes a different approach, devoting all the laughs to making a working parody of Star Trek. Once you acquire the Eureka (in interstellar garbage scow) the game almost becomes episodic. Like the official Star Trek games, 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites, each mission feels like a self-contained story, and each is very much channelling Star Trek in its design.

There are two specifically that have always stuck with me. First of all, the mission with the gynoid. Fans of the series will be aware of the Arnoid, a bounty hunting most-definitely-not-a-terminator-honest android sent to track down and obliterate Roger for a bit of postal fraud he committed in a prior game. Roger saw him off by crushing him inside a giant automated statue. The company – not to be dissuaded – dispatched a second bounty hunter to collect, the gynoid.

During one of your rounds – hoovering up space refuse from the rear end of nowhere – a ship that looks remarkably like the love-child of a Romulan Warbird and a Klingon Bird of Prey de-cloaks and opens fire. Brave captain Roger quickly surrenders, and the gynoid demands he beam to the surface for imminent murdering.

So begins a mission somewhat similar to Kirk vs the Gorn from the original Star Trek Series. Roger has to fashion weapons from a the raw materials available in a forest, and use them to defeat a laser toting, jetpack wearing piece of future-tech. Naturally, he wins, and the gnarled engineer reprograms the gynoid to be an upstanding member of team Eureka.

The second mission has you investigating a ghost colony, getting jumped by a mutant, and avoiding his deadly deadly spit until one of your crew members turns up to save you.

Continues…