One of my favorite games growing up was Defender on the 2600. Defender was one of those games that completely owned me whenever I played it at the arcade, because the controls and difficulty were so different. The Atari version was simplified for their controller which made the gameplay a lot more natural and intuitive. Instead of thrusting and turning with additional buttons, it was mapped directly to the joystick, making the game really accessible (and easy) for 7 year-olds like myself.
Visually, the game barely resembled the arcade game but to be honest, I actually prefer the 2600 version. Despite the game blinking like crazy, having the city down at the bottom made you feel like you were actually defending something, as opposed to the arcade version’s endless jagged hills. Plus the score font is sci-fi awesome.
I’ve been thinking about Defender (and even playing it a bit lately, hence the screenshot) and trying to remember what made the game so fun for me when I was a kid. I think the main appeal was the game’s sense of speed and the ability to button mash. To be honest, I’m having trouble remembering another 2600 game I had that featured button mashing at all. I love the fact that it’s not a side-scrolling rail shooter, giving you the chance to alter your approach and speed heading into each setup. The difficulty ramps up in a nice way, letting you get your bearings a bit before turning into an all-out, frenetic shooter. Plus, the sense of urgency to intercept the ships abducting your humanoids and ultimately flying them down to safety added some real tension to the gameplay, tying back into the importance of visually having the city down at the bottom.
Nothing much to report, as I mentioned before I’m still trying to make up for lost time on other pressing matters right now. I’m hoping in about a week I’ll have something significant to report, as I’ve been tossing around a few ideas and working on some prototypes in my very limited spare time.
Over the weekend my daughter was kinda acting up and it was really hot outside, so I was looking for things to do to calm her down. I remembered in the past that she really dug watching me play the NES so I hooked it back up (not sure how it got unhooked…) and fired up a few games. She sat transfixed with Zelda but then she started rummaging through the carts (she plays with them like blocks) and picking stuff for me to play in increments of 1-5 minutes. I had to rush through some of my better titles until she finally settled on something she really liked: Karate Champ. If you’ve never had the distinct displeasure of playing this little gem, I wholeheartedly encourage you to continue down whatever path you’ve chosen in life that has kept you away from its existence. I don’t like to rail too much on games, knowing first hand how difficult they are to make. Especially with older titles, the hardware and technology restrictions were incredible and it’s a miracle that people were able to create some of the greatest games under such adverse conditions. However, very little of that applies to Karate Champ. There’s plenty of crappy games out there, but it’s torture being forced to settle on such a lackluster port when so many classic games are just within arm’s reach. However, The Taskmaster would have nothing of it, as my daughter made it clear that Karate Champ was the game to be played that afternoon.
Point.
I spent a few hours yesterday whipping up a prototype for a fun little retro game and am really happy with how far I was able to take it. I once again leveraged some of my older shooting code and was able to get the main level flow done in about an hour. It’s such a simple game concept, so the guts of it was relatively simple to establish. I spent a little time playing with lighting and level interstitials (ie. the fun stuff) so that was a nice break from constant AI coding. The brilliant thing about the game is, the title that inspired it is infamous for having brainless AI (if you know old games, this should be a dead giveaway…) so really there isn’t too much to do aside from setting up enemy shots. I’m hoping to knock out a majority of the art in a day or so as well.
My plan is to build a base game that is like 90% faithful to the original and then if I’m still motivated to work on it, I have a pretty good idea for how to take the gameplay in a bigger direction. I would probably have to create a level editor as well. But again, that’s a bridge I’m about 4 rivers away from crossing.