jellinghaus-robert@CS.Yale.EDU (Rob Jellinghaus) (03/03/88)
Well, Beyond Dark Castle arrived today, and all I can say is: WOW.
If you enjoyed Dark Castle, you will LOVE this!!! It is one of the most
(if not THE most) insanely great computer games I have ever seen.
The basic plotline is similar to Dark Castle: you are trying to defeat
the Black Knight. In the last game, you won by knocking him off his
throne, which took you to the next level. In the sequel, you actually
battle him one-on-one, and (presumably) get to kill him.
The basic game mechanics are the same; the movement keys, the action
key, the duck key, the jump key, and the aiming/firing mouse all work
the same way. In terms of control, there's nothing new.
But the game itself is MUCH richer and more complex than Dark Castle
was. Here's a partial list (not guaranteed to be complete) of the new
features:
Some of the levels scroll. Vertically and/or horizontally.
Very smoothly. Much more smoothly than I would have expected.
The status window at the bottom of the screen has been re-
designed. It now shows number of rocks, number of elixirs
(yes, a *number*, not a bunch of pictures), number of bombs & keys
(!), amount of gasoline (!!), a bar graph of your health (!!!),
number of lives, icons for the fireball, shield, and orb (!!!!),
and what screen and level you are currently playing at.
(I suppose I had better explain all of the above terms now...)
Your character has a certain amount of health. The health
of your character is expressed by a bar graph at the bottom
of the screen. It drops very slowly in the course of normal
play, and you lose a certain amount whenever you run into a wall
or jump a greater-than-safe distance or get hit by a shovel or
mace while fighting a guard (more about this later). You can
regain health by grabbing food (which looks like a little basket
full of fruit, about the same size as a rock bag). When you run
out of health, say good-bye to one life.
There are many more things to grab and carry now. There are
rock bags and elixirs, as in the last game. There are bombs,
which you can set by ducking and pressing the mouse button.
Then you run! There are cans of gasoline, which are used to
fuel the chopper (more on that in a bit). And there are shovels
and such hanging from the walls, which can be used to fight
henchmen. There are also more locked doors in the game, and
there are now keys hanging from the walls. You want a lot of keys.
Remember the mace used to kill the whip henchman in Dark Castle?
Well, that concept is enhanced in BDC. You can grab shovels
from the walls and duel henchmen with them. Mouse button swings
the weapon, action key blocks his swing, and you can duck below
his swings. Really quite a lot of fun, and a new dimension to
combat in the game. (You knock out guards with rocks, as before.)
The scenes are not limited to running/climbing/jumping anymore.
There are a couple of screens where you get to fly around! Yes,
there is a one-man chopper which you can put on with the action
key. You steer it with the movement keys, as you would expect,
and you go flying over swamp and forest. The horizontal
scrolling is wonderful; you have to avoid large trees and other
such obstacles to get to the end of the screen. Be sure you've
picked up enough gas cans, though, or else you will run out of
fuel and crash!
All the old enemies are back; there are still rats, bats,
regular arrow-shooting guards, rock-throwing guards,
vultures, mutants, and the Flaming Eye. Now, however, there
are also snakes (like rats, but deadlier), mosquitoes, birds,
and Big Birds (in the flying screens), and Brewery Henchmen.
I assume dragons show up somewhere, too. And of course there's
always the Black Knight....
Not only are there more creatures, but there are more types
of obstacles, too. I have seen conveyor belts (which move you
along if you stand on them), laser beams (which fry you),
swinging pendulum blades (right out of Poe!), chains which raise
and lower ropes (timing is everything), platforms which fold
into and out of the wall (timing is REALLY everything), and
I'm sure I've only seen the half of it. Awesome.
The game's structure itself has also been redesigned. You start
out in the Ante Room, which is analogous to the Door Room in Dark
Castle. Only here, instead of pressing a number 1 to 4, you move
as you do in any other room. There are five pedestals in
the room, each of which is designed to hold an Orb (a big thing
like a crystal ball). You must complete five different series
of screens, each with an Orb at the end, and bring all the Orbs
back to the central Ante room. When this is done, the Black
Knight comes out to make hamburger of you. (No, I haven't
gotten there yet!)
And Silicon Beach listens to its customers! Yes, Virginia,
you CAN SAVE GAMES in Beyond Dark Castle!! You can go into
the Computer Room, where there are five pairs of throw switches.
Go to the "save" switch for the position you want to save to,
and hit it. If you want to restore a particular position, go
to the matching "restore" switch. There are five save positions
for each level (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced) of the game,
making 15 save positions in all. Damned impressive.
And that ain't all! The second screen of the "Info" system
(which is just as nice as in DC) is a map of all the levels of
the castle, with a button for each. You can just click on a
particular level to go into "Practice" mode, in which you have
unlimited lives, and you can use command keys to give yourself
more bombs, keys, gas, health, etc., etc. You cannot, however,
exit the current level in Practice mode; you are simply sent
back to the beginning of the level. You have to command-Q to
get out of Practice mode. This feature is absolutely wonderful!
No more struggling to get to the Black Knight level and then
falling through a trapdoor you didn't know was there!
You still fall back into the dungeon whenever you fall off of
another screen. And the implementation of the save system
means that you have to get to the computer room in order to
save; you can't save at an arbitrary position in any room.
So you still have to work through a series of screens without
stopping. However, once you do, you don't have to repeat that
series; just save the game, and you don't have to get the
{fireball, shield, orb} again.
That about does it for changes in the game itself. No, I don't think
I'm going to describe any actual screens; this review is long as is,
and it's great to see them yourself for the first time.
The game runs on any Mac from the 512KE to the II. (It comes on two
800K disks.)
It's not copy-protected, and it runs beautifully off a hard drive.
I ran it on a II under Multifinder (!!!), and it worked! It didn't
let me switch into another application, and if there was another
aplication besides Finder running the initial screen would move jerkily,
but it worked great! (It even puts up a dialog box asking you to switch
to 2-bit color!)
This is what part of the documentation says about compatibility:
"Beyond Dark Castle can run only when the entire memory of the Macintosh
is available to it. It cannot run when software which permanently uses
some of the Macintosh's memory has been installed. This includes Multi-
finder, Appleshare, Macserve, Tempo, Switcher, Servant, RAM disks, many
print spoolers, some desk accessories, RAM-based HFS (Apple HD-20 or
800K external drive with old ROMs), many 'INITs' and debuggers." However,
my II has 2 meg, and beaucoup d'inits, and it ran jes' fine. Maybe
I'm walking on the edge, but I suppose that memory's less of a problem
with more than 1 meg.
All in all, this is the most impressive computer game I have EVER seen.
Silicon Beach has obviously pulled out all the stops on this one. They
listened to what people wanted, and put it in. This game pushes the
Macintosh to its limits. If you enjoyed playing Dark Castle, this game
is a MUST HAVE. Even if Dark Castle frustrated you to death, this game
is STILL a must have, because of the practice feature. If you enjoy any
type of arcade game, this is a must have. If you want to show off your
Mac, this is a must have. And even if none of the above applies to you,
you should still go out and buy it. It's that good. MacConnection has
it for $30 including shipping (next day shipping!).
DISCLAIMER: I am in no way affiliated with Silicon Beach or MacConnection.
This game simply makes me gaga.
Rob Jellinghaus | "They're cute, they're quick, and
jellinghaus@yale.edu | they're small! Ha ha ha!!"
ROBERTJ@{yalecs,yalevm}.BITNET |
!..!ihnp4!hsi!yale!jellinghaus | -- _Good Morning Vietnam_deragon@acf8.UUCP (John Paul Deragon) (03/05/88)
Well if you think the game itself has some nice everyday features,
try this:
On the control panel set the system date to december 25th
(Yes christmas) and then run Beyond Dark castle. Let the
short animations sequence run after you hit play.
Note the fire place and when the wall turns.
Silicon Beach is known to celebrate XMAS in their mac
programs. The alson has a neat thing for XMAS in Dark
Castle.
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| N.Y.U Robotics Laboratory | deragon@cadman.nyu.edu-arpa |
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