Achievement Unlocked 2

Achievement Unlocked 2 is a 2010 platformer by Armor Games.

Much like its predecessor, Achievement Unlocked 2 is a commentary on metagaming. The player controls once again a small, blue elephant, and has no other goals than to unlock all of the achievements. Here, Achievement Unlocked 2 tops the original, featuring 250 absurd achievements, more than double Achievement Unlocked‘s 100.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a worthy sequel if you couldn’t unlock achievements just by starting the game, and this once again sets the tone for the whole game. There are plenty of achievements for things like clicking on interface elements, as well as the more ‘traditional’ sort for standing on certain squares or collecting all the coins in the game.

The main thing that sets Achievement Unlocked 2 apart from its predecessor is that it features multiple rooms. In a parody of the current DLC craze, though, you’ve got to buy the DLC to unlock the extra rooms, using the coins you collect in the game. In addition to the initial room, ‘Floor 1′, you have access to the elephant’s home, as well as four more floors and the roof of the building you’re in.

If you unlock all 250 achievements, you can see the ending… but is it really worth it?

One of the title screen’s messages is “Why risk it when you can just create a sequel?”, and the fake review quote in the shop for the second floor reads “If you like the first floor you’ll probably like the second.” These are certainly intended as parody, but they sum it all up pretty well. The second game in the Achievement Unlocked series is more of the same. If you’ve played the original, there’s probably no reason to bother with this one. If you’ve never played the first, you can take your pick; either game will do.

Kangaroo

Kangaroo is a platformer by Sun Electronics, released in June 1982.

The player controls a kangaroo whose child has been kidnapped by mischievous monkeys. Gameplay is pretty standard for arcade platformers: walk on platforms, climb ladders, avoid pitfalls and enemies while collecting bonus items; pretty much the same as Donkey Kong.

The kangaroo, of course, can jump, and is also equipped with a boxing glove, so that she can punch the monkeys that harass her on her way to rescue her child. The monkeys throw apples at her, which can be punched to return to sender.

Rescuing the child ends the level and begins the next. There are four variations before the levels replay at higher difficulty.

Kangaroo has simple graphics, music, and sound effects, on about the level one expects from a game from 1982. Its quality is comparable to Donkey Kong: decent for an old game, but nothing special these days.

Ponpoko

Ponpoko is a platformer by Sigma Enterprises, Inc., released in 1982.

Ponpoko is a very standard ladder-and-platform collect-em-up, in which you play the titular Ponpoko, a tanuki.

It is required on each level to collect the food while avoiding the pins (bizarrely called ‘apple cores’ in a flyer for the Venture Line release) and enemies (which look rather like mice but are apparently hairy caterpillars). The pots with question marks on them may contain bonus points (good!) or snakes (bad!). When you complete a level, you gain a bonus depending on how much time you used, and move on to the next level, with a different layout and a different kind of food to collect.

Ponpoko features fairly nice animation, but uninspired sound effects and no background music. It’s a decent game for its time, but it doesn’t stand out from the crowd.

I’ve recorded a sample of the gameplay:

Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong is a platformer, released by Nintendo on 9 July 1981.

With the proto-platformer Space Panic and its clone Apple Panic out of the way, we can look at something a little more familiar. Though Donkey Kong clearly owes certain design elements to Space Panic, it adds the ability to jump. Without this ability, Space Panic plays more like a maze game than a modern platformer. Donkey Kong‘s kinship to modern platformers is clear.

Donkey Kong consists of four stages, which are presented differently depending on the port. To quote from Arcade-History:

The original Japanese version had all four stages displayed in their original, logical order 1-2-3-4.
For this US version, they changed it to match the ‘How High Can You Try/Get?’ theme, with the stage order as follows :
L-01 : 1-4
L-02 : 1-3-4
L-03 : 1-2-3-4 (as in all levels of the Japanese version)
L-04 : 1-2-1-3-4
L-05 : 1-2-1-3-1-4
L-06 through L-21 all remain the same as L-05
L-22 : 1 (Kill screen).

There are further differences on console and home computer ports of the game–and Donkey Kong has been ported many, many times.

Each stage has its own goal. In the first, it is necessary only to reach the top of the screen, where Pauline stands, dodging barrels and fireballs along the way. Other stages are more complicated.

Donkey Kong is quite good, for its age. The visuals and sound are simple, but attractive, and Jumpman’s movements are smooth and responsive.

It’s a fine game in its own right, but its influence on later games cannot be overstated. Donkey Kong certainly had some direct influence on later platformers, generally, but it also gave us two characters–Donkey Kong himself and Mario, initially called Jumpman–who would go on to greater glory. There were two more arcade games in the Donkey Kong series, Donkey Kong Junior and Donkey Kong 3, and Donkey Kong would go on to star in the Donkey Kong Country series of platformers, and make appearances in many other Nintendo games. Mario, of course, is the star of a massive and ever-growing series of his own, beginning with an arcade game, Mario Bros., and continuing in scores of games on every Nintendo console and handheld since.

Personally, I don’t care for this style of platformer much, but I feel indebted to Donkey Kong for the great games that came after. I’m planning to work my way through as many platformers as possible, so there’ll be plenty of both kinds, coming up.

Apple Panic

Apple Panic is a 1981 clone of Space Panic for the Apple II, created by Ben Serki and published by Brøderbund.

Since Apple Panic is a clone, the gameplay is nearly identical to the original: you climb ladders, dodging the apples and digging holes in the platforms. If an apple falls into a hole, you can beat it over the head to make the apple drop down and die.

One difference I noted is that in Space Panic, when an alien climbs out of a hole, it ‘levels up’ to the next type of alien, and must fall an extra floor to be killed. In Apple Panic, there doesn’t seem to be any negative consequence to allowing apples to free themselves.

Apple Panic is inferior to Space Panic in several ways. First, it’s not nearly as pretty–a minor detail, I admit. More importantly, it’s very difficult to dig a hole in Apple Panic. As the instructions indicate, if the player character’s feet aren’t in the right position, he won’t dig. Unfortunately, it’s relatively rare for his feet to be in the correct position, making it very hard to dig exactly where you want. This can be fatal, if an apple is coming at you and you hope to dig a hole before it arrives.

If you want to play this kind of game, you should play Space Panic, instead.

Space Panic

Space Panic is an arcade platform game, released by Universal in November 1980.

Space Panic isn’t just any platform game. Space Panic is the first platform game. Ever. Take a moment to appreciate that.

The gameplay of Space Panic is fairly simple. The player character is an astronaut with a shovel and a horde of hostile aliens. Naturally, you use one to deal with the other. The game screen consists of five levels of platforms (not counting the bottom floor), connected by ladders. Both the player and the aliens can move about these platforms and climb the ladders. The player is killed by contact with any alien, but his weakness is offset by an additional power: he can dig a hole in any of the upper five platforms. Should an alien fall into the hole, he can fill the hole in, causing the alien to drop down and die. A new level begins when all aliens have been killed.

As an additional complication, some aliens must fall more than one floor to be killed. For these, it’s necessary to dig aligned holes through two or more levels of platforms, so that an alien falling from the higher platforms will continue through the holes in the lower platforms, eventually falling far enough to die upon landing.

Space Panic supports one or two players in alternating play.

Port comparison

Space Panic was ported to the ColecoVision in 1982, and to the Casio PV-1000 in 1983.

The Casio PV-1000 is quite a rare console, but the Video Game Console Library has a screenshot of Space Panic running on that system. It appears to be substantially similar to the arcade version, if much less attractive.

The ColecoVision port has one major difference from the arcade version: it has one fewer level of platforms, since the screen is wider than it is tall. Other than this, the game is essentially the same.

Conclusion

Space Panic was a highly influential game. Its platforms-and-ladders structure would be emulated by many later games, including Nintendo’s Donkey Kong. In addition to the official ColecoVision and PV-1000 ports, the game inspired a number of clones, including Brøderbund’s Apple Panic and Eaglesoft’s Panique. The digging mechanic (which, Wikipedia informs me, was likely inspired by Heiankyo Alien) was also used in Brøderbund’s Lode Runner. Ultimately, Space Panic inspired future platform games like Super Mario Bros. and its ilk.

For being the first platform game, Space Panic is surprisingly playable. It’s simple, but fun. Fans of platformers interested in a bit of history should check it out.

Night Mission Pinball

Night Mission Pinball is a pinball game for the Commodore 64, published in 1982 by subLOGIC.

Night Mission Pinball supports up to four players, and can be controlled with either the keyboard or a joystick. The controls are responsive, and the movement of the ball is pretty decent, for an old game.

Old 2D pinball games often feel like the ball is just sliding around, influenced by the objects on the screen, but not really bouncing off them. There is a little of that feeling in Night Mission Pinball, but it’s not bad. If you think you could do better at balancing, you’re in luck, because this is one game that will let you tweak to your heart’s content.

You can adjust 38 variables here, to make the game play however you like. If you’re more artistically inclined, you can also adjust the colors, though your options there are a bit more limited.

Night Mission Pinball is a good game. For gameplay, it’s about on par with Pinball for the NES, which I reviewed previously, though its graphics aren’t as good. Pinball is a year or two newer, though, so that’s reasonable. The table layout is good, but it’s nothing special. If you’re a fan of old games, this one is competently done, but the state of the art in pinball games has advanced quite a bit, over the years, so a more modern game is likely to be more satisfying.

Edit: I’ve included a brief video to demonstrate the gameplay.

IFComp 2012: J’dal

J’dal by Ryan Kinsman is an entry in the 2012 ifcomp, in which the player is on a quest to retrieve an artifact from a mine.

(This post contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.)

J’dal, unlike most modern IF, recalls the appellation ‘text adventure’. The PC, J’dal, is, if I understand correctly, a drow in some fantasy world. She and her adoptive father, Wendal, together with two others, Stolas and Roderick, have been tasked with collecting a magical artifact from a nearby mine. After a meal and a good night’s sleep, the party sets off, led by J’dal, whose ability to see in the dark is very useful in the unlit mine.

The game is pretty much on rails. A couple of situations admit multiple solutions, but the possiblities are very limited, and I can only find two endings–either the PC dies, or she is successful, and either way the game ends quickly. The puzzles are pretty straightforward, although it did take me a few tries to work out exactly how to word my solutions.

The game could really benefit from a little more depth of implementation. There are missing objects, and some of the descriptions are rather lacking. The characters don’t have much to say, either, so we can’t really get a very good picture of their motivations, except in broad strokes. There are also some bugs–the dead beart’s body is inaccessible, for some reason, and the behavior when the PC is wearing her blindfold isn’t good, for two examples that caught my attention.

J’dal is pretty short and pretty sparse, but it’s not bad. If it were cleaned up, and fleshed out a bit, it could be a nice, if short, little fantasy adventure. I can imagine recommending something like this to new players of IF.

I struggled with what score to assign this one. It’s unpolished, short, and easy, but I did enjoy it, which is more important. I’m giving it 5/10, which is actually on the higher end of my ratings this year. I may be rating this year’s games a little harshly. Perhaps a revision of my scores will be in order, before the competition ends, but I’ll wait until I’ve played a few more to make that judgment.

Play time: 38 minutes.

IFComp 2012: Signos

Signos by Mauricio Diaz Garcia is an entry in the 2012 ifcomp in which the player seeks enlightenment.

(This post contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.)

I had a great deal of trouble with this one. The version I was initially playing didn’t function at all correctly–the pictures weren’t displayed and the sound didn’t play, among other problems. These problems were resolved by playing a more recently updated version.

The premise is that the PC has created the environment of the game within his imagination to search for answers to the big questions in life, such as “Why am I here?” and “What’s my purpose?”. Attempting to answer those questions in an IF game would be pretty ambitious! Signos is not that ambitious.

For a game with such a lofty premise, Signos is remarkably simple. If the game would provide better responses to guide the player as to what is useful and what is not, it could be beaten in ten minutes by anybody. There’s nothing to it: imitate a few NPCs and use some items in the obvious ways and the game is done.

But the game is a little bewildering. The PC begins the game wearing a mask, and carrying a bottle of essence and a book, which is initially blank. Performing certain actions, such as removing the mask, will add a page to this book, on which is written the name of some vice, like “PRIDE”. If you perform none of the actions, you can hand over the bottle of essence to the buda you encounter, and win the game with no points. If you do perform some such action, you must start a fire and burn the pages before the buda will accept your bottle of essence. What exactly is the meaning of all of this? I guess that the PC is letting go of his vices by burning them, but why can you win without experiencing and renouncing all six?

The actions you have to take to get all six pages are sometimes quite obscure, too. In order to get page 4, “GLUTTONY”, you must drink water twice while in the lake, but not at the lake bottom. And just drink won’t do. How are you meant to figure this out? To get page 3, “WRATH”, you must yell at the buda. Why would you do that? If there are clues in the game to do these things, I missed them. Even guessing that the missing vices should be wrath, gluttony, and envy (which actually isn’t featured in the game), it doesn’t make it any easier to figure out what you’re supposed to do. I even had tried to kill buda, which seemed the thing to do when I met him, to no avail. The walkthrough was necessary.

Besides the general obscurity of the game, it had some other problems. It was generally underimplemented, missing many objects mentioned in the scene descriptions, and really needs synonyms–wake should do the same as wake up, and drink should have worked for drink water when swimming in the lake, for example. Furthermore, the help command just gives generic how-to-play-an-IF information, the hint command was useless, and the walkthrough command isn’t mentioned anywhere–I just guessed that it existed. Games should really always implement about, too, in my opinion, but I suppose that one didn’t really impact the gameplay.

I hate to be so negative. I do think that the idea (as I interpeted it) of experiencing and then letting go of vices could have some potential, but it wasn’t realized in Signos. I enjoyed this one even less than Murphy’s Law, so I fear I must give it only 1/10.

Play time: about 45 minutes for two playthroughs, counting time with the broken original version.

IFComp 2012: Murphy’s Law

Murphy’s Law by Scott Hammack is an entry in the 2012 ifcomp. The player character has one last payment to make on his mortgage, but things keep going wrong.

(This post contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.)

As soon as I saw the title, I had a good idea what to expect, and the game didn’t let me down. You spend Murphy’s Law trying to send in your final mortgage payment, but problems keep cropping up that you have to deal with first. You get a papercut and have to bandage it, then you have to get a stamp, then your mailbox is destroyed so you have to drive to the bank to make the payment, but your car won’t start… and so forth.

On my first playthrough, I actually bled to death from my papercut before I managed to get the bandage on. That amused me, and I hoped that the rest of the game would be similarly over the top. Unfortunately, this hope was not realized. If I had to describe Murphy’s Law in a word, that word would be tedious. You must complete every boring step of every boring thing in order to complete the game. For example, when your car won’t start, you must use an emergency jump start kit to start it. To do this, you must pull hood lever and pull trunk lever, open trunk, get kit, open hood, put red cable on positive terminal, put black cable on negative terminal, and finally start car. Of course, you also have to remove kit and close hood before you can go anywhere. That’s just way too much work.

I suppose that the tedium was probably intentional. It shows that you have to go through so much, just to make a simple payment. But it was boring. There wasn’t nearly enough humor to make up for it. The game could have been much better, had it been funnier, or if it hadn’t insisted on making the player actually go through with all of the minute details, but, alas, it was not to be.

The game mostly worked as expected, but I did experience a bug when trying to start the car:

>start car
You’ll need to get inside first.

>enter car
But you’re already in your station wagon.

I got it to work, eventually, though.

This one gets only 2/10. I might have given it another point, because of the general competence of the implementation, but I only gave Escape From Summerland 3/10, and I liked it much better than this. Being boring is a bigger sin than being buggy, I fear.

Play time: 20 minutes for two playthroughs.