Intensity (Commodore 64)

Morpheus scraped its way to a ZZAP! Sizzler award... decent, but probably not what was hoped for. But depending on who had reviewed it, it might have not even garnered that... some would suggest a Sizzler was overly generous, and that maybe it was awarded out of a sense of duty, with the game having been subject of a Diary of a Game. I would counter that such a suggestion was harsh... Morpheus is an epic game that takes a long, long time to get into and appreciate, and ZZAP!'s review pointed out that it would not hold universal appeal.

It would be interesting to know how Andrew Braybrook felt about it when all was said and done. Perhaps it burnt him out on the space shooter genre, because his next (and ultimately his last) game on the Commodore 64 turned out to be nothing like that. It was, instead, a single-screen collect 'em up, and it was called Intensity.


Doesn't look all that intense...

There's still a spacey element to the game, as you might expect. Colonists are stranded on their, um, colonies, and with no course of action remaining other than evacuation, you're tasked with piloting the rescue mission. A drone ship is placed on the exterior of each space station. The colonists will emerge from doors and run towards this... hurray, safety beckons!

Once you have saved the requisite number, the exit portal will be activated. You must use your skimmer to guide the now-heaving-with-colonists drone to that exit. This task is simple enough... if you press the fire button, the drone will move to the point at which you summoned it. There's a bit of a problem, though. If the drone hits your skimmer, both will explode. So once you've pressed that button, you'd best leg it, sharpish.


The exit has been activated. Save them!

You don't have to go directly to the exit, and indeed, there are times when you can't, such is the layout of some of the colonies. Why they litter the exteriors of space stations with obstacles is beyond me. You'll also find yourself skimming backwards and forwards between points, picking up a colonist here then heading over to get one from there. It's reminiscent of Choplifter in a way, albeit from a different viewpoint.

Naturally there's a little more to it than that. The colonists are evacuating for a reason, and that reason manifests itself in the skies above each space station. Alien critters meander about, causing bother wherever they may roam. In a nod back to Gribbly's Day Out, the alien critters mutate into stronger, more dangerous forms, if left to their own devices. Luckily you can turn them into space roadkill by just flattening them with your skimmer.


Things are getting a little more complicated now...

That's the game, in a rather large nutshell. There are other bells and whistles... saving colonists releases resources which you can pick up and spend between levels, for instance. But after the sprawling epic that was Morpheus, it comes as a huge surprise to find such a small-scale, tight and focused game. There's no shooting (another surprise), and the single-screen action, whilst initially a little confusing, doesn't take long to click. Once it does, it's very enjoyable indeed, and it gets quite frantic just a few levels in. Considering I'd never played it before, I picked it up in no time, played it for ages and had loads of fun with it.


You're dying to fly a Manta over that and blast everything, aren't you?

Intensity proved to be the last game Andrew Braybrook would write on the Commodore 64. It's a bit of an underrated gem in my opinion, and as such it unfortunately provided something of a low-key swansong. He certainly deserved to leave the scene with a very large bang, having provided some of the greatest gaming moments of its history. Gribblets, Paradroids and Dreadnaughts will forever be remembered fondly by a public that bought in on gaming to a massive degree at the time, and Andrew Braybrook will be remembered as one of the brightest stars of the era.

That's not the end of my look back at Andrew Braybrook, though. I've got a few other things I want to get out there, and then I'm going to come back and round up his Special Editions, and there just might be a sneaky look at something on the Amiga...

Colony Wars (PS1)

The PS1 is yet another platform I pretty much missed out on. I owned one, but only very briefly indeed, and of the few games I owned for it, I only really got to play a couple at any length. So this is a system that's prime for blogging...

One of the games I can remember owning but not playing was Colony Wars: Red Sun. I only bought it a couple of days before I had to get rid of the PS1, so never really got to find out what it was like. I saw it in Cash Converters (where else) and it rang a bell, but before I bought it I looked it up online and discovered that Red Sun is actually the third in a trilogy. So I decided to buy and play all three for the blog... eventually. I've got the original and Red Sun - Vengeance will follow courtesy of eBay.


Your sights are locked, but I wouldn't go attacking something that size...

The first thing I spotted was that this game was produced by Psygnosis. I was a touch surprised... they're well-renowned for their 16-bit classics, but I'd thought they were defunct before the Playstation era. Shows what I know. Anyway, it gave me a little extra edge of anticipation prior to loading it.

Colony Wars starts with a sweeping narrative, which anyone would swear is by James Earl Jones, adding an amount of grandeur to proceedings. Research suggests that nobody is clear as to whether this is James Earl Jones or just a very good impostor. Let's pretend it is. It just feels better that way.


In space, everything except you is enormous.

The game is a massive space-opera, where you play a single lone starfighter pilot, battling against a gigantic evil Empire. Of course! Your ship, thankfully, is simple to control. You can accelerate and decelerate with the shoulder buttons, and switching between different weapons is easy. I can be put off from space games very easily if the controls are too convoluted, but this is nice and simple.

It's difficult to judge how good this game is from my time with it. It's absolutely epic, and huge, and I haven't even scratched the surface. What I can say is that the ship handles pretty well, blasting things feels satisfying, and there's a genuine sense that you're part of a grand quest of righteousness... in spaaaaaaaaace! I imagine this impressed the hell out of people when it was released... I don't know if I'll be able to play the trilogy enough to do the games justice, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Star Flight (Amiga)

I can't tell you how long I've been wanting to play Star Flight. After The Bard's Tale had ensnared me on the Commodore 64, I had been bitten by the complex games bug, and seeing this on the C64 really piqued my curiosity. But I didn't have a disk drive at the time, and when I did get one I'd either forgotten about this or just didn't bother hunting it down. In truth, I blame Wasteland for that.

So it was with some excitement that I saw this in my Amiga pile. I was immediately put off, though, when upon opening the box I was confronted with the deranged scribblings of a confined lunatic.


Gibber gibber, scribble. Make any sense to you? No, me neither.

Actually, it's quite understandable. My mate Stephen, who gave me his Amiga, always used to write notes when playing complex games, which makes sense as you'd need to refer to or remember this stuff maybe months later on in the game. Loads of his game boxes are littered with scraps of paper that look like something that would lead you to the Holy Grail, when really they just lead you to the planet with the best mining potential in a game.

In terms of the game, it was really difficult for me to get going. What with a huge manual and code wheel, there's a hell of a lot to get to grips with, something which seemed easier when we were teenagers. And probably was, come to think of it.


The latest Missile Command world record attempt wasn't going well...

Also, the disk is filled with saved games. And there doesn't appear to be a way to start a new game, at least, not without making a new backup of the original. And I couldn't be bothered with that, either. So I set out into the galaxy in the Starship Enterprise, with Kirk and crew at large. Cheers, Stephen.

Still, difficulties aside, the time I spent in the game showed much potential. I did manage to pick out a planet on the star map, made my way there without confrontation, landed safely, drove about on the planet, mined a bit, made my way back to the ship, and took off back into the planet's orbit. Not bad going. Next will come the job of finding somewhere to sell my stuff.

Star Flight is obviously a game that you could play for years. I don't know if I'll be committing to that, but I'm happy to have finally had the opportunity to play it, and to know that it's there if I feel like having another crack at it.