DoctorSpuds Reviews Things - Communist Mutants From Space (Starpath)

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Oh man, these guys are on a roll, only their second game and they’re redefining genres, with their first game Starpath took on the First-Person Space Shooter genre, and with their second they’ve taken on the ever classic Fly-Around-The-Bottom-Of-The-Screen-And-Shoot-At-Things genre, which contains juggernauts like Space Invaders, Galaxian, Galaga, Demon Attack, and GORF. Due to the restrictive hardware the Atari 2600 could only present most of these games in a restricted or cut back form, Galaga never came out for the system at all, but Communist Mutants from Space comes as close to Galaga as possible on the hardware provided. Despite the silly name C.M.F.S. manages to deliver all of the excitement that a game like Galaxian provides, whilst injecting a little originality of its own, this is a good ‘ol fashioned shoot out in space versus the cunning Mother Creature from the evil planet Rooskee, who transforms helpless captives from other worlds into bloodthirsty Communist Mutants with its irradiated vodka. Y’know its during times like this when I just sit here, blankly staring at my monitor, closed fist resting against my cheekbone, just thinking… What sort of drugged up person thought this up? I mean… Irradiated vodka?! I can’t even tell is this is a story for the kids or the adults, I’m just a wee bit confused, and I get the feeling I’m never going to find out why they thought this was a good idea, I know that U.S.-Russia relations were a bit tense what with the Cold War beginning to wrap up, but this… This is just stupid, and I must admit, I love it. Also I think we can all agree that this game has some of the best box-art ever drawn, I can only wish I had one of those posters.

As all of you who read yesterdays review will know, the words of the week are ‘smooth’ and ’smoothly’, because that is exactly what these games are… Smooth. Atari was rather notorious for having very choppy movement, and animation, but with the Supercharger at the helm all of those kinks are ironed out. This game looks very simple at the outset, but is incredibly advanced with how much it can do simultaneously, and with the graphical fidelity of what it does. Let’s start with the beginning, the title screen is hilarious, it is a giant red circle on a yellow background and it just says Commie Mutants, with the “C” in Commie being the hammer and sickle and the dot on the “I” is a star (yes I know it’s called tittle). You begin the game, and it looks like your basic Galaxian/ Space Invaders setup, you have a group of multicolored enemies moving around the top of the screen, but in this game’s case the enemies are just little rectangles, and just as you begin to feel cheated the Commie Mutants burst from their eggs and swoop down to attack you, the animation in the hatching progress is flawless, it’s as if they are birthed from the rainbow light of forced equality (no debates in the comment section), ITS SO DAMN SMOOTH!!! Then there is the great galoobing Mother Creature, it is one of the craziest looking ‘things’ I’ve ever seen on the Atari. The Mother Creature is a strange, multicolored centipede thing, that’s just spittin’ out eggs (you’ll understand later). Enemy designs are rather simple, as is the design of your shooty-shooty bang-bang device, all of them are monochrome, but your exploding cannon is well animated and the color and design of the Mutant corresponds to the color of the egg they hatched from, which is a nice touch. Let’s just say, compared to Condor Attack, the other game with this very similar style of gameplay which we shall get into in a moment, C.M.F.S. makes it look like a kindergartner's crayon scribblings compared to one of Da Vinci’s great works, there is NO comparison. Did I mention how smooth this game is?

This games sounds when compared to the rest of it, are decidedly the weakest factor, most of the game is dominated by one sound. The sound the Mutants make when they dive bomb you is your constant companion in this game, the sound itself is almost indescribable, bet let it be said that it isn’t the worst sound they could have chosen, I can think of a couple far worse sounds. Otherwise the rest of the sounds are nothing too special, your gunshot sound is fairly standard, as is the sound of you hitting the enemies. The sound you make when you collide with an enemy is a suitably satisfying explosion noise, which is nice and chunky, pity that isn’t the sound you hear when you shoot the enemies, but I’ll take what I can get. Apart from the one sound there really isn’t too much to talk about here, so let’s get on to the gameplay.

It seems the 2600 is king when it comes to that “one more time” mentality, and this game definitely falls into that category. Imagine for a moment that you were playing Galaxian but the enemies infinitely respawn unless you hit the mother ship that is constantly replenishing them, but the mother ship is hiding behind the wall of enemies that it’s constantly replenishing, so you have to shoot quickly and accurately to land the killing blow on it then mop up the leftovers, replace the alien bugs with Communist Mutants and the mother ship with the giant Mother Creature and you get C.M.F.S.. Yes the game is that simple, but unlike with many of the other games in this genre on the 2600, I feel C.M.F.S. is the only one to get it right, I say 'right' hesitantly because all of the others in this genre are playable and usually very fun, but C.M.F.S. takes all of the best parts of them and makes them into one game, and I get the feeling you will get it to when you play it. Do not take this game at face value though, because this game has customization. When you flick the game select switch you will get a little sub-menu that lets you select, the number of players, difficulty, Shield, Time Warp, Penetrating Missile, and Steerable Missile. Most of these options are fairly easy to figure out but there are two that may be a bit confusing to new players. When Shield is selected you can make the player invincible for a brief period once per round by pulling back on the controller, and when the Time Warp is selected you can briefly slow time when you push up on the joystick, but only once per round so use it sparingly. You can also change the speed at which your cannon can move by flicking the difficulty switches, each switch changes the speed of a different player, if you’re playing four player, the left switch will change the speed for players one and three and the right switch will change the speed for players two and four. I can always appreciate a built in handicap for more experienced players.

Believe it or not, I actually have this game in my possession, it came in today with the mail. I managed to snag it incredibly cheap on Ebay, 32$ for a factory sealed copy. I have opened it to test the tape and read the included promotional materials, but I have not removed the plastic because it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to have it on the game box. I would say go out and buy one of these, but some people are asking crazy high prices for opened copies, upwards of 85$ but the price is still hovering around the 40-50$ for one in the box and over 20$ for just the cassette with the plastic case. If you have the cash I'd say go for it, it seems they unearthed some new old stock so they're a bit cheap, but for the budget minded, just stick to emulating this one unless the prices start to rise as the well dries up, then I'd recommend you snag a copy just in case this game gets valuable. Also, don’t forget to shoot those Mutant Communist scum, because they deserve it for being fictional characters in a videogame from 1982 that almost nobody bought.

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