Volcano vs. The Vectornauts
Current Score: Old Games 10 New Games 11
VOLCANO
(Computer Magic, 1985)
This title is very much a one-hit wonder, except for the fact it wasn’t exactly a hit and isn’t that wonderful. It was Computer Magic’s only foray into publishing Spectrum games, and I don’t think even they knew who they were. A certain V.K. Hiam authored the game, but further details are distinctly absent. So it was quite a bold step to charge 8 quid for their debut offering, when most Spectrum software was selling for a few quid less on average. Was this confidence justified?
The start screen looks all very pleasant, a nice big yellow sun, with the rays coming off it just the way I drew them in primary school and still do now (I'm of the primitive art school). There’s a river, two areas of land and a man in a boat. And a sweet beepy little tune. Oh the humanity! Not a hint yet of the volcanic devastation about to be unleashed on everyone’s worthless little heads…
“Warning – this is not just another computer game!” Or so the blurb would have it. That volcano that you’ve been reassured would never come to anything, when you bought your house, has blown its top and now you need to escape before you become a lava statue. You have to scramble through the various areas of your unnamed city – the medieval, business, commercial and shopping zones, which sounds a little like The Crystal Maze. There’s a boat to freedom waiting for you at the end of your travails, though it apparently needs rigging which you have to go back to the shops for, the game's advert cunningly spoilers.
So you press enter and suddenly you’re transformed into a huge pair of feet! You waddle around the medieval quarter slowly, but oh so noisily, as an annoying jangly sound accompanies your every step as though you’re a court jester. You can buy dynamite from shops to blow up any small volcanic areas which might, and inevitably will, block your way. You can also buy food, as your big feet get unreasonably hungry and have to be fed every hour on the hour. There’s also a rope you can get though I’ve not been able to find out its use, unless it’s for your boat at the end.
The place is a big old maze, which is fine but it’s full of dead ends and the occasional instadeath as you fall into an inner city marsh or jungle, you know the sort. Often the only way to progress is to go underground, as there is the occasional cave entrance here and there. When you do go down, surprisingly your view suddenly goes all 3D. If you thought the maze above ground was taxing, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Naturally you have to find the exit and are armed with 3 matches, which allow you to see a map for around five seconds. This sounds harsh and is made harsher by the fact that the map is lacking a big “You Are Here” arrow. Which makes matters nigh on impossible. I took a screenshot of it and managed to escape quite easily that way, to be fair.
There are 40 screens above ground, including glass factories, car plants and jewellers, which sounds interesting, but they’re pretty much all completely empty disappointingly, as though everyone has already abandoned the city, fearing the worst, but not told you. At length I thought I was getting somewhere but eventually had to resort to going down another underground passageway, which to me seemed to have the same layout as the first one. The game claims to have 290 3D screens, but clearly this is fibbage. You really shouldn’t count every possible view in every part of a maze as one screen, it’s really more like 8 or 9, tops. Nice moodily lit wireframe graphics though.
Back in da day, Crash reviewed Volcano and gave it an understandable 45%, saying it was “a very large game, but generally below average, especially at the price”. C&VG thought similarly, but the prize for best comment surely goes to Personal Computer Games mag who described it as “lava” boring. Dude, you just won the non-existent internet.
I think with more detailed scenery this could have made for a fairly interesting “underground, overground, wombling free” affair, but on the whole it’s all a bit empty. There is a random element to the path of the volcano apparently, which is more annoying than anything. Sometimes you don’t seem able to muster enough dynamite to cope with all the red blobs, so you end up stuck, hot and dead.
So it’s a frustrating affair generally, and one which is priced way too high. With more polish and TLC it could have made a passable budget title, but as it is, if you’re really hankering for some volcanic action on your Speccy, maybe try Krakatoa instead? Rescuing and occasionally accidentally killing innocent bystanders sure beats the hell out of being one.
THE VECTORNAUTS
(DomReardon, 2018)
Once upon a time all games seemed to have only two colours, not black and white, but green on black. The BBC Micro was such, I think I’m right in saying, as I’m sure the Xmas tree of asterisks I managed to put together in computing class in school was highly green, but then again it would be I suppose. And serious business people had ‘green screens’ to do their business computing type things, which probably ended up giving them some sort of brain condition after a while.
This here game, The Vectornauts, is a bit of a throwback to such viridian times. And quite a welcome change it is too to your average colourful platformer. It has a retro-futuristic vibe to it which is a neat idea, and the clean, crisp lines are pleasing to the eye. It’s made by a certain DomReardon, who is so cool he doesn’t have a space between his names, made on A.G.D. like the only other game of his, Gherkin’s Christmas Carnage from 2020. I’ll probably have a bash at that in a minute and report back, since it can be difficult filling out reviews for platform games.
You get some nice concise instructions on load-up, which interestingly declares this to be ‘Episode 1’. You are a little blue man in a world of green-ness. You must infiltrate Voltek’s lair (who he? I dunno, sounds like a battery), find your red vectornaut pal, who is a similarly-minded misfit in the greeniverse, initiate the self-destruct sequence and get the heck out of there. Okay, smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast.
A nice surprise is a jaunty little AY tune. It only came as a surprise because my original version was very quiet, but I spotted a note on the menu screen for a music credit. So once I’d downloaded the noisy version, all was good. Your little blue man moves around nicely, and it seems his first job is to find 3 microchips to fix a computer. He has a gun which can only stun enemies at first, so timing is crucial. There are elevators which don’t work, but you can sort those out before long.
One fun thing is that later you can upgrade your gun like those ones in Star Trek, no more stunning, only killing! Then it’s quite amusing to backtrack a bit and mercilessly shoot all those enemies you had to tiptoe around earlier. Imagine if you’d been able to do that in Monty Mole or Jet Set Willy, the fun you could have had. “How’d ya like me now, beeches?” you might insanely spit.
Later on, you get Cybernoid flashbacks as lots of rockets fly out of the wall horizontally at you, but with luck you can shoot ‘em first. The action ramps up agreeably as the game progresses, and the only real disappointment is that it all ends just when you’re starting to get into it. There is a boss fight at the end though which is a larf. On the whole The Vectornauts is a fun time, which if made bigger and better could be a really good game. With any luck ‘Episode 1’ might be expanded upon and more green-on-black action might appear some time, happens quite a bit these days, DLC and all.
Oh yeah, Gherkin’s Christmas Carnage! Well it's a nice little bit of festive fun. Not a platformer as the screenshot might suggest, you have to fly around and stop nasties from destroying Christmas prezzies by shooting them out the sky. The action gets pretty frantic as the playing space isn't enormous, and on the last screen I got to, you have to aim your shots at a tennis ball, to try to hit the enemies, like a snooker trick-shot. 'Salright, so well done to DomReardon, who may or may not be related to snooker World Champion and ex-vampire Ray. If you get that reference, boy are you old ;)
LET'S GO TO THE VIDEPRINTER!
BEST GRAPHICS THE VECTORNAUTS
BEST COLOUR VOLCANO
BEST SOUND THE VECTORNAUTS
MOST ORIGINAL VOLCANO
MOST PLAYABLE THE VECTORNAUTS
MOST ADDICTIVE THE VECTORNAUTS
FINAL SCORE
VOLCANO 2 THE VECTORNAUTS 4
The Vectornauts wins!
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