greg@bilbo (Greg Wageman) (08/30/89)
I received my recent order from Software Discounters of America
yesterday. In the package were Spectrum Holobyte's "Tetris", and
Taito's "Arkanoid", both of which have appeared previously in arcade
versions. Having played both very recently at the Santa Cruz
Boardwalk, I had very definite expectations for these games.
TETRIS
After the recent furor over Gilman Louie's (president of Spectrum
Holobyte) remarks regarding the Atari ST community, I expected to see
a top-notch professionally polished program.
I am sorry to say I was disappointed.
This is the authorized version of the now-famous Russian-invented game
of shape rotation and stacking. As the user progresses in game
levels, he is treated to a different background scene of some site or
activity in the Soviet Union. The graphics are colorful, but not of
exceptional quality. The game plays as expected. The brief Russian
dance animation that rewards a player for completing a level in the
arcade game is missing in this port.
The instruction manual is for the Macintosh version, with only a
single page of corrections for the Atari ST. It becomes quickly
obvious that while the ST version is copy-protected, the Mac version
of the game is not, and Mac users are actually invited to copy(!) the
game onto their hard disks. Given Mr. Louie's comments, the
copy-protection is hardly surprising, yet the inequity is disturbing
nonetheless.
As is typical for software in general, only the media is warranted for
90 days. However, the warranty registration card makes it quite clear
that no warranty will be honored without returning the registration.
Quite frankly, I was tempted to return the entire game and be done
with it.
When the game has loaded, the user is greeted with a harsh,
cacaphonous "music" score. The tunes, which are selected from Russian
folk and traditional music ("Song of the Volga Boatmen", "Dark Eyes",
etc.), are poorly scored, to the extent of playing wrong notes. The
speed of playback varies erratically as one moves the mouse about.
After I had played with the game for a short while, most of the
musical parts disappeared and were replaced by clicking and a single
melodic line. It's fortunate that the sound can be turned off.
The cursor, which originally appears as the Soviet hammer-and-sickle,
has a somewhat non-intuitive "hot-spot" (the point of the sickle).
Somewhere along the way it reverted to the customary arrow, for which
I was grateful. I don't think this was intended, however.
There are two alternative sets of control keys, one set on the numeric
pad, and the other on the qwerty keyboard, but both use the same T
configuration, which is too close together for my long fingers. I
would have preferred the ability to specify my own control keys, or
better yet, to use a joystick (as in the arcade version).
The game keeps track of the top ten high scores by writing them to the
second disk. I find writing to a copy-protected original disk very
disturbing, preferring to keep the write-protect window open.
However, since no cursor is displayed on the high-scores screen, it is
exceptionally difficult to hit the "Cancel" button that appears if the
write fails.
This is one of the poorest commercial renditions of a popular arcade
game that it has been my misfortune to purchase for the Atari ST.
ARKANOID
The contrast between Tetris and Arkanoid is incredible. As I said, I
played both these games in the arcade. ARKANOID is a "Breakout"-style
game, though with considerable variations. The Atari ST version looks
exactly like the arcade game, including the rather silly "plot
premise" animation at the beginning.
(The story I'm referring to is a rather strange concoction. The crew
of the Arkanoid (a space ship) escaped from their destroyed ship in a
module called the "Vaus". The Vaus has been transported into some
kind of "warped space" (the game). Eventually, when the player
reaches the highest game level, he gets to face the entity behind all
of this (The Grid Monster). It's a silly justification for an
excellent "Breakout"-style game.)
Control of the "Vaus" (the paddle) is achieved by moving the mouse
left and right, while the arcade game uses a rotary knob. I found the
mouse control to be natural and no more difficult (nor easier) than
the knob, except for the occasional tendency to run into my ST, but
that's due to my setup rather than any fault of the game's.
The game supports two players, who play in alternation when they miss
the ball. You are originally given three Vauses, but more can be
gained during play.
There is a high score screen displayed after the end of a game, but
the high scores aren't saved to the copy-protected disk (which, in my
opinion, is just as well).
I did find one surprising bug, however. I'm not sure exactly what
happened (there can be a *lot* going on at once), but somehow I missed
the ball yet the game failed to notice! Consequently, with no way to
launch another, I had to reset the machine and restart the game. This
only happened once during hours of playing; nevertheless, it's
something to look out for.
High marks to Taito for Arkanoid. Now if they'd just get Qix out the
door....
Greg Wageman DOMAIN: greg@sj.ate.slb.com
Schlumberger Technologies UUCP: {uunet,decwrl,amdahl}!sjsca4!greg
1601 Technology Drive BIX: gwage
San Jose, CA 95110-1397 CIS: 74016,352
(408) 437-5198 GEnie: G.WAGEMAN
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Opinions expressed herein are solely the responsibility of the author.