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I decided to do the reviews in the order I got the games. First up, SCSIcide
SCSIcide , by Joe Grand
4/5
In SCSIcide, you use your paddle to control the read head of a disk drive. Your task is to read the user's data back in the correct order. Quite an original concept, takes me back to the 70s and 80s when unique game ideas reigned.
At first glance, SCSIcide appears to be Kaboom! turned on it's side. Instead of catching bombs in buckets of water, you're "catching" bits of data with a hard drive's read head. However, once you've played it, you'll find it to be a bit more.
The big difference is that instead of catching everything, you must intentionally miss bits of data so the bits are read back in the correct order; after all, the computer user would be upset if the file they just opened was scrambled! Each bit of data is colored differently and the color of the drive head is used to denote which to read next. Herein lies the biggest problem with SCSIcide, the colors of some of the bits are too similar. This really becomes an issue on the later levels when the bits are moving so fast that their colors fade due to motion blur. The fading makes it even harder to match the color of the bit to the color of the read head.
To read a bit, just hold down your red button while the bit passes under the drive head. If you miss reading your bit then the latency buffer decreases. It's game over if the buffer becomes empty. The latency buffer also decreases when you hold down the red button, so you only want to hold it down when the data bit is going past the read head.
The difficulty switches control the options of the game. The left controls the size of the drive head , though I didn't notice any difference in play as it expands the wrong way - it's like getting taller buckets in Kaboom! instead of wider buckets. The right controls the way the head moves from track to track, either smoothly or jumping from track to track. I prefer the jumping as I'm less likely to read the wrong data bit.
The hexadecimal scoring is a nice touch, but I suspect it should be explained in the manual for those who aren't familiar with the notation. I also don't like having the first 2 digits of the score represent the level - it makes it more important to complete a level than to complete a level accurately.
Just like a real hard drive, SCSIcide comes in an anti-static bag. Likewise, it has been superseded by the next generation, Ultra SCSIcide. Ultra SCSIcide appears to have fixed my main issue - instead of 10 bits to read there's now 8 which allows the colors to be more distinct. I suspect I would give Ultra SCSIcide 5/5. As an aside, I especially like Nathan's 10th entry for the Ultra SCSIcide label contest.
That's it for this edition, stay tuned for the SpiceWare review of Thrust+ Platinum.
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