01: 005
Playing rules: Difficulty: Factory Default. Continues: Not allowed
Dip switch bank A: 1-5=Unused [ALWAYS OFF]; 6=OFF; 7-8=ON.
Dip switch bank B: 1-2=ON; 3-4=OFF; 5-6=ON; 7-8=OFF.
Current Record holders:
1st: 1,500,000 - Dwayne Richard - 2002
....
9th: 24,080 - Gary A.Hatt - 2002
Ok, before i even play it – initial signs don’t look good. 1,500,000 looks like a mighty round number to me, and it would suggest that either the machine dies at that point with some crazy crash, or it actually finishes. Either way, 1st place doesn’t look remotely likely even if i find that i love the game. Interestingly though, 2nd place is half a million points less, at just over a million – so quite a leap.
9th place, and a spot on the leaderboard looks a lot nicer with an easier looking 24 thousand, so I think i’ll aim for that.
Ok, i’ve had three goes now.
What the fuck was going on? Keeping with the age old 80′s arcade tradition the game makes absolutely no attempt at explaining to you what to do at any stage – crazytown.
Ok, well first off, the MAME dipswitch settings and the like are set correctly by default so thats nice, no need to fanny around with the TAB menus. The game starts with you being helicoptered in to the game map (pictured above) and you have to quickly wander about before any of the copper type people get to you. They dont muck about, so i hurried into the nearest door, which just so happened to have an ice skate painted on the roof – for good reason, as it’s an ice rink. Two coppers stream in from the top of the screen and it looks like i need to avoid them and get to the helicopter hovering about at the top. Which i do, suprisingly easily actually.
So then another chap is helicoptered in and i need to choose another door, this time one with a forklift on the roof. Here you again have to get to the top of the screen in a room full of boxes, but now the coppers have torches that when pointed at you, make them go mental as they speed towards you. Again, I got past this suprisingly easy, which was nice.
And that was where my luck finished. I was now in a helicopter level where i was shooting bubbles either side while avoiding: missiles from above, the bubbles themselves (as they waxed and waned their way towards me) and small balloons rising from the ground ( the helicopter’s natural enemy obviously, your small balloon). Pretty bloody tricky, especially as i had absolutely no idea what my aim was. I tried to shoot my way a path past the bubbles to reach the edge of the screen, nowt happened. Ok, i’ll try and clear the screen of bubbles then thought I – bad idea, that just angered the helicopter at the top of the screen who chose to stop sending slow missiles downward at me and fly down itself and zap me directly – which he did very easily 3 times. DEAD. GAME OVER.
Score: 17,400
ballbags.
I tried again, with similar success until i got to that same level, same thing happened.
Score: 16,950
arse.
third time, i couldnt even get past the first forklift room level as the fuckers surrounded me, and because you start again where you died each time, i couldnt get away.
Score: a laughable 500
So. All in all, quite an odd game. My highest score wasn’t actually that far from the records however, and i reckon that a bit of reading up to discover the secret of the helicopter level and the 9th place will be in my reach at least.
Not a bad start really! potential certainly. Mind you, 1,500,000? sod that.