SPACE MONSTERS MEET THE HARDY
(Mayhem, 2019)
This game was made by Mayhem and Conscience, who must be mates with Chase and Status. Really they’re two Russian chaps who seem to have made a few relatively low-key Speccy titles through the years, but this is their biggy. It claimed the silver medal at the 2019 Yandex Retro Games Battle, which sounds highly impressive given the level of competition at the time, beaten only by the outrageous Valley Of Rains. And it came 8th in Planeta Sinclair’s Game of the Year compo for 2019 too, which doesn’t win a medal unfortunately, but it’s nice to be mentioned in dispatches. Our hero, ‘The Hardy’ bears some similarity to a certain Mr. Dare who had 3 largely successful outings on the Spectrum, so how does he compare?
The inlay says you play as Hardy, not ‘The Hardy’ but I guess maybe that’s his nickname, like I sometimes insist on people calling me ‘The Al’, especially on Tuesdays. In other words he's high maintenance! It looks like the creators haven’t cooked up a convoluted plot for (The) Hardy, which is a shame as surely some ludicrous comedy space fiction would lend itself nicely here. It simply says “your task is to find and neutralise all the space monsters that lurk around a multi-level maze”. Bit boring really. On each level you must find the key to an elevator while avoiding the meanies, but the catch is you are given a remarkably skinny time limit to do this. So (The) Hardy experiences short, sharp, spasms of action at a time, which is probably not good for you.
Each level consists of a few screens to start with, but as you progress there might be as many as ten or so. So it’s basically a case of find the key, dodge or shoot the aliens, then high-tail it to the elevator, all in about 30 seconds or so. Quite stressful, but at least you can take a few hits from the aliens before falling over, so it could be worse. The most annoying aspect of the game is the many spikes that are placed strategically on the ground so that when you jump carelessly, they spike you, and if you don’t move pretty darn fast, they’ll keep spiking you until you cark. Compared to the spikes, the aliens aren’t that bothersome really, and you can shoot them too if you’re canny.
S.M.M.T.H. has some rather lovely multicolour graphics – they’re small but perfectly formed, which is all very pleasant. And there’s a great, if slightly grating, AY tune playing all the while, so overall presentation is top notchville. The idea of only having a very meagre time limit to complete each level is quite a novel one in the Spectrum world of games, so plus points for that also. The only thing this game falls down on is the frustration factor. After you’ve failed a level a few times, which you will, it just gets very irritating, and you tend to mess up your controls frequently in your haste to get to the finish in time, which again gets your goat. But despite the annoyances, this is still a smart game which is fun to play, albeit in short spurts only. Poor Dan Dare would have a coronary trying to do this $h1t.
VALLATION: ESCAPE THE PIRATE PLANET
(Psytronik, 2017)
Is it really okay to do a conversion of a Commodore 64 game? It’s a tricky moral dilemma. On the one hand, it’s nice to branch out and widen our world views somewhat, but on the other… it’s a Commodore 64 game! Do we really want those ’50 Shades of Brown’ graphics associated with our colourful wonder? I am only joking (a bit), but it’s all the funnier since it’s mostly God’s honest truth. Actually the C64 game was only made in 2013, not the ‘80s, so I suppose on that basis, it can be allowed. On this occasion only. No more, mind.
The plot can be summarised in 4 words – Escape the Pirate Planet! I’m not sure who you/we are but we’re in a spaceship and it’s vitally important that we escape the pirate planet! Various pirates (presumably) are trying to prevent you from escaping the pirate planet! They shoot you and fire missiles at you and are generally nasty to you, so you have to be bloomin’ careful with your lives, or else you’ll never escape the pirate planet! There are lots of levels with many screens on each, so it’ll take you quite some time to eventually… (“Oh shut up FFS”-Ed.)
It’s all very familiar territory to anyone who’s au fait with some of Rafaele Cecco’s fine work back in the day. Although to be fair it’s… more humane to play than either Cybernoid, but isn’t nearly up to that level of bells and whistles. It came with an updated 128k version which sadly I couldn’t get to work at all, with extra music and levels, and the artwork was by the legendary Oli Frey, with Simon Butler pitching in for some graphics, so quite a Crash-y affair there. A lot of work has gone into the presentation, which is commendable.
It plays quite nicely too, your ship moves around smoothly and it’s easy enough to get through quite a few screens and zap quite a few pirates, although most seem to need rather too many shots to dispatch on the whole. And as far as I got, things were threatening to get a tad repetitive if I’m honest, but this is worth a quick play in anyone’s book, especially those who deem it of the highest possible importance that they esc… (“I’m going to kill you now”-Ed.)
SPACE SCORES
SPACE MONSTERS MEET THE HARDY 87%
VALLATION: ESCAPE THE PIRATE PLANET 77%
