Part I: The Making of
Ms. Space Fury
This
years’
Classic Gaming
Expo and the 10th Anniversary of Digital Press happen to
coincide. Obviously, DP wanted to do something special to mark the
occasion. What better way than to release an original game for a classic
system? Several game developers were contacted, but the job went to Daniel
Bienvenu, who had written a few homebrews for ColecoVision (BUSTin Out,
Dac-Man). Joe Santulli came up with the title and concept and provided
support. A lot of people pitched in to help. Daniel brought in Sylvain (‘Sly
DC’) De Chantal to design most of the levels and assist with the
graphics. Marcel de Kogel wrote the emulator the game was compiled and
tested on. As the project neared completion, Dave Giarrusso designed the
artwork for the label and the instruction manual (as well as the full page
advertisement shown in the last issue of DP as well as the CGE2K1 show
program). Even veteran homebrew author John Dondzila lent his expertise on
coding and debugging the program. Most of the communication and
brainstorming was done via the Internet through email and instant
messenger—something the designers of old didn’t have at their
disposal.
Finally,
when the game was complete there were ten levels. After the game was
downloaded to a ROM, it was discovered that it wouldn’t load an the
actual console! After nearly giving coordinator Santulli a heart attack,
John Dondzila was consulted and solved the problem. During his testing
there were issues that had to be addressed such as heavy flickering and
fatal errors. These were eventually worked out, and Santulli survived from
near-coronary condition. Ironically when the bugs were fixed it freed up a
lot of storage, so an additional ten levels were eventually added. There
was not much time left but Santulli, with the aid of fellow CGE organizer
and DP guy John Hardie managed to do the soldering and construction of 40
cartridges in time for a Classic Gaming Expo release.
When the scheduled release time arrived at the show a long queue had
formed. The games sold out within ten minutes. Even the promotional
posters (with Dave G’s artwork) were taken. Most Expo-goers managed to
at least play the demo that was set up. Their comments were consistently
positive.
Part II: Ms. Space Fury Review
The
final result of all this activity is a very nicely done and highly
playable game with 20 challenging levels and decent graphics plus: title,
credits, completion, game selection and high score screens. Basically,
this game is a combination of Space Fury and Miner 2049er and has one or
two player modes with 4 difficulty levels each. The 1-player game is
against the clock. The 2-player simultaneous mode is for high score. The
two player version really shines because besides scrambling to pick up the
most coins, you can grab a power-up icon to freeze your opponent and scarf
up a bunch of coins before he snaps out of it. If one player loses all
their lives the remaining player is free to play out the game. This is a
platformer, but if you miss a landing you won’t plunge to your doom,
which makes the game a whole lot less frustrating than some of the genre.
Dropping through the bottom floor will transport you back to the top. This
can be used as a shortcut sometimes. The controls may take some getting
used to. You can make big jumps and even float to some degree. There are
UP and DOWN transports on most screens. Running interference are little
“humanoids” who race back and forth on the platforms. Also killer
satellites, which roam about the screen in various orbits. Both are fatal
to the touch, so their patterns need to be analyzed. It is sometimes
possible to grab coins from overhanging platforms, by jumping straight up
in the air. The bonus icons that surface from time to time provide
invincibility, which is a necessary strategy to completing the levels and
also for freezing your foe in the path of the humanoids or killer
satellites. As you might guess, there are strategy and puzzle solving
elements to this game.
Starting
on a specific level would have been nice. This is one thing I didn’t
like. It gets redundant if you have to keep starting from scratch. If time
runs out in the one-player version you’re screwed. It’s all over. This
is the second thing I didn’t like. It should only cost you a life. This
is referred to as the “Countdown To Armageddon” mode. This game is not
perfect, but overall it is definitely one of the best for the system.
Part III: Trivia
The alien head you see in this game and on most all Digital Press media
is from the ColecoVision game Space Fury (a port of the Sega coin-op) and
is the official DP mascot. The original arcade game has voice synthesis
with the Alien Commander saying such menacing things like “you are
starting to annoy me, creature”, “My scouts will destroy you!”, and
“You were an amusing opponent”. The ColecoVision version lost this in
the translation, providing instead marquee text challenging you to “prepare
for battle”. The manual doesn’t mention “Easter eggs”, but if you
hit the # key while on the options screen, you will get the “Today’s
High Score” screen which holds all eight game variations records until
you reset the game or turn off the console. Press the * key there and you
will see “n/a” on the bottom. At one point, each Ms. Space Fury cart
was going to be individually numbered, but that wasn’t executed in time
for the production run, thus the “not available” message. There was
also going to be a cheat for unlimited lives, but the storage was needed
elsewhere. If you reach the 20th level , you will see the
message “Happy 10th Anniversary” posted. If you finish this
final level, you get the message “You Win” and a little fanfare. At
this point hit the # to reset. The title screen will come up, then the
screen with the alien, then a new hidden screen will appear which contains
an ad for other games by Bienvenu and de Chantal. So far around 100 carts
have wound up in collector’s hands. There are lots of subtle things that
one may notice such as the initials ‘DP’ on some of the platforms. How
some of the power-ups resemble some of the original Space Invaders or TV’s
or masks. I have completed the game on the easy level. I still like
playing this game, so now I will attempt the harder levels. |