Chronogamer - UFO/Sea Monster/Break It Down/Rebuild/Shoot

RSS Bot · August 23, 2006

UFO/Sea Monster/Break It Down/Rebuild/Shoot (APF MP1000, 1978)

I'll say one thing about this cartridge: it has motion.

Getting decent screenshots of any of the games on this cart was impossible for me, due to the constant motion of one or more of the elements on any given screen.

Well, except the menu . . .

UFO and Sea Monster are reverse variations of Sea Wolf style gameplay, almost.

UFO-1 just has you blasting alien drones that move across the screen. The UFO that scores the most hits, wins. Yee-haw!

UFO-2 is the exact same thing, except you're blasting alien passenger saucers (or what I imagine to be saucers containing sentient beings.) hit the most saucers and you win. Yee-awn!

Sea Monster has you in ships a little more domestic and floaty. This time you're shooting at Sea Monsters that traverse the bottom of the Sea Screen. There's a catch to this one. Hit the Sea Monster, gain 5 points. Hit one of the cute friendly fish and you lose all your points. One strategy is to hit the Sea Monster once or twice and then don't fire at all, thus keeping you from inadvertantly detroying friendly sea life. This was a little fun.

I'll mention that the sounds for these games are all quite adequate. No complaints there.

Below are three links to .mov files that try to capture the essence of these games in about a megabyte. (I'll add them later.)

Break it Down and Rebuild are interesting. In the former, there are rotating square perimeters at the bottom of the screen. Player to clear theirs with the least amount of shots wins.

Rebuild is the exact opposite of Break it Down. You have to shoot "invisible" places at which a part of the rotating square perimeter appears when hit. Hopefully, the attached .mov's display the essence of the gameplay. (to be added later)

The last game is called Shoot with three variations. Shoot a Little, Shoot and Shoot a Lot.

The variations are only in the amount of ammunition with which one starts the game. You and your competitor each controll a laser-cannon-like device which fires a solid beam up the screen. You're trying to hit either of the square blocks that are going back and forth across the top. When you strike them, you gain points and they change color, speed, or both. When you run out of ammo, your game is over and the person who does the most with their starting ammo wins.

I'm astonished by my lack of anything even moderately amusing to say about these games. They might not be bad enough to activate my sense of humor, yet, they also don't come close to being good enough to activate my sense of fun. Maybe I'm just tired as I keep yawning as I type this.

We've got One. More. 1978. APF. Game. I was lucky to "win" (purchase) a working copy of Brickdown/Shooting Gallery and we'll look at that one next.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?a...;showentry=1880