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...1983/Ultimate Play The Game... Spectrum Review by Polas - 6/2/02 |
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...1983/Ultimate Play The Game... Spectrum Review by Polas - 6/2/02 |
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Every video game company has their humble beginnings. And the company that brought us such games as Banjo-Kazooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Perfect Dark, Killer Instinct, and their breakout Donkey Kong Country is no exception. Even before Rare was helping to bring us nutty ass NES games like Wizards & Warriors and Battletoads, even before the NES itself, they were developing games for the Sinclair Spectrum, a computer that was quite popular in Europe back in the day. However, their company name was quite a bit different than what it is today:
"Ultimate Play The Game"? I don't know what the Stampers were on when they came up with that gem, but it only lasted a couple of years before they formed Rare Ltd. The history of Rare is pretty interesting, but damned if I have enough time or will to go through it here, so go to Raretopia if you want more. I'm simply going to give you a look at Ultimate/Rare's very first game, a game you've probably never seen, unless you had the patience to grab enough repetitive items to fit up Chunky Kong's ass in Donkey Kong 64, but that's another story. For now, enjoy Jetpac!
Graphically, this game falls somewhere in between Atari and NES. However, once you get into gameplay, it's all Atari style. Atari physics are in place, as both you and your enemies appear at the left side ofthe screen once you scroll off the right, and vice versa. And of course, the object is to score as many points as possible.
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To do this, you'll have to reassemble your ship that was apparently cleanly severed into 3 pieces upon impact on this strange planet of bland terrain and evil koosh balls, then fuel it up and move on to the next screen, equipped only with the blue and purple death ray that shoots a thin line across half the screen. One hit is enough to finish all enemies, just as one hit puts you down. All deaths are accompanied by a puff of smoke matching the color of their sprite, as well as an amusing fart noise.
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But killing enemies and playing shipbuilder aren't the only ways to amass points, silly person. Oh no. There are of course a slew of boring and nonsensical items you can grab, which usually appear in incredibly inconvienient spots, but eh, that's life as Jetpac Guy.
So basically, we have colored diamonds, gold bars, space triangles, oversized green jellybeans, discarded biohazard signs. The only one of any importance are the fuel canisters, as 6 are needed to turn the rocket purple in order to fly up, up and away to new enemies. The ship doesn't break this time, so it's all fuel grabbing and happy fun.
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And now, let's MEET THE ENEMIES:
Flying Fireballs!
Evil Koosh Balls!
Malicious Marbles!
Boring Spaceships!
Either UFO's or Space Pies!
NES D-Pads of Death!
More Boring Spaceships!
I'm not even going to try!
After you get past every four sets of enemies, you'll have to assemble a new ship, and as you progress they look more and more like robotic dongs, which is why I stopped at 3. Plus, the enemies reset after those last ones that look like pudgy Intergalactic Frogs, so it gets kind of dull; they don't even change color or attack patterns like in Megamania, although granted, there's a bit more to do in this game.
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I hope you've learned something today, besides the fact that these early reviews take about 1/4 the time of an NES one to do, making my life easier. Every game company has its humble beginnings, and perhaps sometime in the future I'll focus on some other ones that had particularly humorous starts. Jetpac is just like any other game of its time; easy to learn, tough to master, get a high score. But damned if those Brits didn't take to it.