River Raid 1982/Activision ....Review by Polas - 1/7/02....

There are many Atari games where you shoot stuff. Pretty much all of them, when I think about it. Either that, or stuff is shooting at you. Either way, there's a shooting of stuff. Now that we've established that little double entendre, let's take it a step further. How many Atari games are there where you can actually make something resembling progress, other than moving from left to right occasionally? The list gets cut significantly. Now, how many games allow you to move forward, control your speed, add a side requirement, and do it all on a background that isn't always pitch black and has what one might venture to call scenery? We're talking a handful. And River Raid is one of those games.

See? I don't make this stuff up. Well, sometimes I do, but you'll still accept it, Doctor Gullible. The point of the game is to keep flying through the "River of No Return" (taken from the manual), which is actually right on, because it really doesn't end. However, everytime you cross a bridge without smashing into it (shoot it, dumbass), the difficulty increases. You amass points by, you guessed it, shooting stuff. Still, if they put a giant head or something in front of every bridge and tacked on a crappy ending, this would almost be NES-worthy. While you're flying around shooting stuff, your fuel will gradually decrease, and you'll need to fly over a Fuel Depot to replenish. To give you a better idea of what you're up against, have a look:

PLANE: I'm surprised the enemies don't completely barrel down on you, considering that whoever's flying the plane had the brilliant idea to paint the damn thing bright yellow. Anyway, holding down makes you slow down, and up makes you go faster. Makes sense. Do this when you're in a bad position to shoot anything that moves.

TANKER: 30 points each. These boats don't do anything except slowly move from side to side, and their wideness is a big old bullseye waiting to happen. Oddly enough, you die if you crash into one, which makes me wonder exactly how low that plane is flying.

HELICOPTER: 60 points each. The Copters move in much the same fashion as the Tankers, but are smaller and faster, which would explain why they're worth twice as many points. Later in the game, you'll come upon huge clumps of them, which either means instant death, or if you're me, lots of points.

FUEL DEPOT: 80 points each. Ah, decisions decisions: do you fly over these to refuel, or blast them for 80 points? If you're smart, you do both. As soon as you get close to one, just hold down to go as slow as possible, then blast when your fuel is high enough. You can refuel for awhile before you reach the end, and you get the points if you shoot any part of it. As the game progresses, you see less and less.

JET: 100 points each. When I was a tiny Polas, before I had read the manual, I always thought these were evil birds. It would make a lot more sense in the grand scheme of video gamedom, but within the confines of this game, I suppose it's better as a jet. These things are worth 100 points because they fly in straight lines extremely fast, and unlike the other two crappy obstacles, can move in from offscreen, taking you by surprise. If anything's gonna kill you, it's these things.

BRIDGE: 500 points each. Obviously, these are the things you want to shoot most, but it's not like you have a choice; if you crash into one, you're history. Each one is a gateway to the next level, although by "new level" I mean "more helicopters and tighter spaces", but you get the idea. Destruction is good.

One thing I haven't mentioned yet, a fact dripping in Atari logic, is that if you touch any part of the land, or anything that isn't water for that matter, you die. Again, how low is this plane flying? That's why things get a bit tougher as you progress and the paths get narrower.

Luckily, you get an extra plane for every 10,000 points you rack up. And so on you go to infinitum. I think something happens if you make it all the way to 1,000,000 points, all your points turn into exclamation points if I recall, but damned if I'm playing that long just for this review.

Along with games like Solaris and Xevious, River Raid helped pave the way for a lot of early NES games. It's always been one of my favorite Atari games to play, and it has great balance and control for its time. I just wish there was a way to fly higher than six feet off the ground.

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