Futurewar and Brief BRIEFs: Adventure Creator (1984) and Jajamaru Gekimaden: Maboroshi no Kinmajō (1990)

I managed to make it to Position #3. The only two characters above me are creations of the game's author.

     

Between Wednesday and Friday, I had to watch about 8 hours of interesting but not engrossing video, and I knew I could do it alongside a game that required a little mapping but not much concentration. Futurewar seemed perfect for that. I was confident that with another 8 hours invested in the game, I'd be able to show you the winning screen, and we could all move on. Instead, the game managed to chew up and spit out about a dozen characters, ultimately leaving me not much further than when I originally reported on the game a few weeks ago.

    

The pattern was predictable: I'd roll up a character, march out of the base, and start mapping some section of the dungeon that I'd not yet explored. I'd get up to character Level 3 or 4, maybe find a couple of good pieces of equipment. Then an enemy would pop up--usually a "worleyman"--surprise me, and get four attacks before I could even respond. My attempts to shoot him would all miss, and my attempts to flee would all fail. My hit points would descend alarmingly, and inevitably I'd get the "you have died" message. 

     

      

I'd erupt out of my chair, fists ready to fly, and have to remind myself that the monitor is just a dumb device. I'd scream a few obscenities, shut down the game, and vow to spend the rest of my video-watching time mapping the corridors of Centauri Alliance instead. After 10 minutes, I'd calm down, launch the terminal emulator again, and roll a new character.

   

Compounding the difficulty of the game is that encounters are not random. Once a dungeon level is completely cleared, it is re-seeded with enemies and mines. This is the best time to launch a new character because there are plenty of encounters close to the home base, where you'll need to frequently retreat for healing and restocking of ammunition. But as you clear these enemies, you have to move farther from the home base. If your character then dies, a new Level 0 character has to start on a dungeon level in which the first encounter is a few minutes away. This isn't dangerous (as long as you've mapped) because once cleared, corridors are safe. But it does take a lot of extra time. 

    

My map of the "American" level.

      

Finally, just a few hours ago, I managed to get a character relatively stabilized. Finding a bullet-proof vest (and remembering to put it on) was a key part of it. I almost have all of the first five levels mapped and I'm ready to take on the War Zone again. Since I blogged about the game last time, author Erik Witz wrote to me and agreed that the man-beasts were far too hard, and he either removed or nerfed them.

      

The vest is a game-changer.

     

So I'm going to keep at it and hopefully have something to report in another week or so. In the meantime, here are a couple of brief BRIEFs.

   

Time so far: 13 hours

   

****

     

        

Adventure Creator

United States

Spinnaker Software Corp. (developer and publisher)

Released 1984 for Atari 800 and Commodore 64

Rejected for: No character development

      

Adventure Creator is an extremely basic game writer in which you can create a custom dungeon (theoretically, anyway; I couldn't get that feature to work) or play a randomly-generated maze. Your goal in either case is to collect a certain amount of treasure or a certain type of treasure. You do this by making your way through a maze of monsters, obstacles, and treasure chests, avoiding (as best as possible) the first two and opening the third before your energy runs out. Obstacles blink in and out of existence, and you take constant damage if you're touching them. Monsters wander in fixed patterns and either damage you or knock you back to the other side of the area.

      

Getting through the maze.

      

Your only help is an inventory of ferrets, hobbles, nippers, torches, and shields, all of which do different things to monsters or obstacles (e.g., shields make you invulnerable to both; hobbles freeze monsters), none of which involve killing anything. Despite the fact that the adventurer is shown with a sword, you don't slay the monsters you come across. Some of them will even trade with you for better items. You also don't get any better during the dungeon run, just worse. It thus isn't an RPG by my definitions. I won a game anyway, because it's relatively easy and quick. 

          

Lots of obstacles in this room. They flash on and off.

       

The interface drives me crazy. It's all joystick except the "T" key, which rotates you through the different items in your inventory. For the millionth time, I cannot get into the mind of a developer who requires a joystick and requires the player to sit within reach of the keyboard. If you have to use the keyboard anyway, why not just map the game's five items, all of which start with a different letter, to separate letters?

       

Won!

         

The game is noteworthy for its author, Dale Disharoon, a prolific designer, programmer, and executive who transitioned right about this time between educational games and adventure games. He also transitioned the spelling of his last name to "DeSharone," a name adventure gamers will recognize from Below the Root (1984), Alice in Wonderland (1985), and the Magic Tales series (1995-1996). His last credit is 2005's Chris Moneymaker's World Poker Championship, a few years before he died of leukemia.

 

You knew it wasn't going to be good anyway because of the Title Interchangeability Rule.

            

Cambridge-based Spinnaker Software Corporation, I should mention, is notable for taking out a full-page ad in the March 1990 Computer Gaming World to promote Star Tribes; Myth of the DragonLord, a "futuristic role-playing adventure of epic proportions" that was never released, meaning we will not encounter them again. Though simple, Adventure Creator was remembered fondly enough by one fan that he created a modern remake. You can find more about Dale DeSharone from a 2012 HardcoreGaming101 article.

*******

I'll take their word for it on the translation, but it doesn't feel like there are that many words in the Japanese version.

      

Jajamaru Gekimaden: Maboroshi no Kinmajō

Japan

Jaleco (developer and publisher)

Released 1990 for NES

Rejected for: No character development 

      

Jajamaru--sometimes stylized JaJaMaru--debuted unnamed in a 1983 arcade game called Ninja-kun ("Ninja Kid"; there was an earlier unrelated MSX game of the same name). As I understand from this HardcoreGaming101 article, Jaleco was hired to port the arcade version to the NES, and they decided to develop the kid into their own IP, naming him "Jajamaru" along the way. He showed up next in Ninja Jajamaru-kun (1985), Jajamaru no Daibōken (1986), and Rad Action (1987), all side-scrolling action platformers.

But with the success of Dragon Quest (1987), Jaleco apparently decided to thrust Jajamaru into the same arena. Jajamaru Ninpō Chō (1989), which most sites list as an RPG, has the kid run through a top-down landscape, talk to NPCs, and find gold, often with the kidnapped Princess Sakura in tow. I don't have a strong opinion as to whether it's an RPG, as I've only been able to look at Japanese language versions. I'm told it has experience and leveling, and combat takes place on a Dragon Quest-like turn-based screen. When Gekimaden came up on a random roll, I did try to look at Jajamaru Ninpō Chō first, but the only English patch I could find didn't work with NEStopia (something the patch site warned about), and there's a limit to how much effort I'm going to put in for a console game.

     

The interface shows hit points, gold, and spell points but doesn't say anything about experience points.

     

In any event, most sites also list the next game, Gekimaden, as an RPG, too. Having played admittedly not much of it, I disagree. Where Ninpō Chō (1989) cloned Dragon Quest, Gekimaden clones Zelda, losing most of the features that made it an RPG. I don't see any sign of experience and leveling, nor do I see any mention of them in descriptions of the game, just possible increases to maximum health and magic power. I require leveling in some kind of skill or attribute to call a game an RPG. Combat now takes place on the main game map and is all action-oriented, with Jajamaru wielding a variety of weapons against enemies that bob and weave around him, again just like Zelda. 

     

Fighting samurai-like enemies.

      

The plot has something to do with monsters invading a land and kidnapping (again!) Princess Sakura. There's talk about the return of a Great Demon. One of the princess's subjects manages to make his way to Jajamaru's monastery, carrying the Holy Mandala. He explains that the demon's return can be stopped by collecting the spirits of 8 mini-bosses in the region. Jajamaru's master gives the Mandala to him and charges him with rescuing the princess and stopping the Great Demon.

     

A villager visits the ninja clan.

      

I guess maybe Jajamaru gains new powers with every mini-boss he traps in the Mandala, but I still don't consider it an RPG if character development comes at defined intervals without player agency. Descriptions indicate that the world is nonlinear but the plot is linear; you need items from each area before you can successfully complete the next one. The land is populated with NPCs who give one-line hints when you crash into them, and you can buy weapon upgrades and usable items like bombs at stores.

  

I don't know. You know how I feel about playing squat, child-like protagonists in toy games with repetitive music. I admit I'm predisposed to see games like this as non-RPGs just because they don't satisfy anything that I'm looking for with RPGs, even if they could squeak by definition-wise.

   

The character continues to appear in entries right up to the present day, but most sites agree that later releases are just straight action games.

Game 514: Princess Maker 2 (1993)

 

         

Princess Maker 2

Japan
Gainax Co., Ltd. (developer and publisher), Adventions (English translation)

Released 1991 for PC-98, 1992 for MSX and DOS, 1995 for TurboGrafx CD; English DOS version from 1996
Date Started: 5 May 2024

         

Princess Maker 2 occupies a strange genre with which I have almost no experience: the "raising simulator" in which you take a person or creature from a young age to an old age, making choices and prioritizing resources along the way, hoping for a positive final outcome. My understanding is that raising simulators are a sub-genre of life simulators. The earliest example on MobyGames is something called Little Computer People (1985) from Activision. You build a house and see if anyone likes it enough to move in, then watch as his life progresses with the resources you've left for him. The Sims series would of course do this in much grander fashion.

   

The way the game works is that you "create" a little girl by specifying her name, date of birth, and blood type. She begins the game at age 10. You then raise her until age 18, specifying every month what she's going to do (work, take classes, rest, or go adventuring) and engaging in ancillary activities like taking her shopping, talking with her, buying her gifts, and sending her to the castle to hobnob with the elite. Every activity raises or lowers a variety of statistics and opens up new options for later months. After an excruciating 96 such cycles, your daughter turns 18 and you get to see how she turned out.

      

This was a tough one to explain to Irene.

      

The reason that such a game qualifies as an RPG is because of the curious choice to make "adventuring" one of the options for the girl's monthly activities. You can send her into one of four wilderness areas, armed and armored, and she can spend a few days as if she's in a traditional CRPG: fighting monsters, collecting gold, and finding hidden encounters. It's an odd addition, not even necessary to complete the game. There are RPG elements to other encounters, too, such as an annual tournament at the castle and occasional challenges to duels.

   

Princess Maker 2 is, of course, a sequel. The original game came in PC-98 form in 1991, followed by DOS and MSX releases in 1992. It was released only in Japan. An "English translation" that I found online is not a full one, and the part that is translated is done very badly. I had trouble interpreting some elements of the interface, so I moved on to the sequel.

     

The interface in the original. I could probably figure it out now that I've experienced the sequel.

      

The original game's backstory is that you're a war hero who has just saved the kingdom from a demonic invasion. The king offers you any reward you want. Tired of war, you decide to ask for an orphan girl to raise as your own.

      

A sense of the quality of English in the translation.

     

The sequel keeps this basic backstory while expanding it a bit. Again, you've just saved the kingdom from a demon lord and his army, but you don't get your daughter as a reward. Instead, at some later point, while you're trying to help the king rebuild the land, you get summoned in the middle of the night to a nearby hill. A 10-year-old girl appears in a beam of light, and an angelic creature says that she's been entrusted to you. 

         

A nice illustration from the backstory.

      

The quality of animation in these opening scenes is excellent, with only the mildest influence of the usual anime features. The princess herself, as we'll see, is another matter. 

     

The royal family expresses their gratitude.

     

Something about these early images, plus the title of the game, plus the fact that it's from Japan (yes, I know it's a stereotype, but don't pretend that you don't know what I'm talking about) concerned me that the game would be overly exploitative of the girl. I thought it might be a bit creepy, frankly. I'm glad to report that this is not the case. A slightly-flimsy summer dress is as provocative as it gets. In truth, the game is almost progressive. Despite the title, you can "make" her into anything you want, from a housemaid to a military general. I suppose feminists might have some complaints about a few things, though: 1) Her measurements are displayed on the screen at all times, even when she's 10; 2) Even when she weighs 95 pounds at 5'2", the game will insist she's too fat to fit into a fancy dress; 3) There's an artifact that increases her bust size; and 4) She has absolutely no agency at all in her destiny. But that's still loads better than I was expecting.

    

I had concerns at this point, but they were mostly unfounded.

      

I named the girl Villainy, as I've always thought that would be a good girl's name. I don't know if the date of birth or the blood type have any impact on gameplay except that her birthday is an annual event. You also specify your own age and birthday, and again I didn't notice these things playing a role in the game.

     

Naming my "daughter." Why are "Symbols" even an option?

     

The game begins in your daughter's bedroom on her 10th birthday. A butler, oddly named "Cube," gives you alerts as to anything happening that month, or if the princess is sick or whatever. A row of icons specifies a number of things you can do before setting the monthly schedule:

 

• Check her statistics. There are 26 of them. For all but "Sin" and "Stress," higher is better.  

• Talk to her: You can have a chat, scold her, or give her some pocket money. All of these options may reduce stress. You can only do this once per month.

     

Villainy's starting attributes.

     

• Set her diet: You've got to achieve a balance between weight and constitution. I honestly left it at "Normal" for most of the game.

• Check a different set of attributes: These include her birthday, sign, patron god, sickness level, delinquency level, popularity level, and health.

      

You can tell by the look on her face.

      

• Visit the town and its services:  These are an armorer, a tailor, a restaurant, a pawn shop, a church, and a hospital. Everything costs money.

    

I don't think I visited the restaurant once.

     

• Visit the palace: Here, if her "Decorum" is high enough, she can talk to a variety of people, including the king. Each person cares about a different attribute, and if that is high enough, the conversation goes well and she increases in popularity.

      

Why am I talking to you, then?

     

• Equip items: You can equip one weapon, one set of armor, and a dress. She starts with a plain dress, but you can buy a summer dress, a winter dress, and a silk dress at the tailor. You need to change her from summer to winter dress when the seasons roll around, or she might suffer a hit to "Constitution."

• Disk options: Save and load the game. Unfortunately, there's no option to turn the incessant music off, so I had to disable all sound.

   

Once you're done with those options, you set her schedule for the month. The month is divided into three periods of 10 days, and you can set a separate activity for each period. Your options are:

   

• Go to school: She can take a variety of classes (e.g., "Poetry," "Theology," "Fighting," "Dance"). Each class increases two or more of her attributes for up to 9 points per session. Classes are expensive, though. A couple of them decrease attributes.

       

Schooling is valuable but expensive.

      

• Work: You can make her work a variety of jobs for a daily wage. There are six of them to start (e.g. babysitter, farm, restaurant), but more get added as she gets older. By her 17th birthday, she can earn money doing everything from lumberjacking to dancing in a sleazy cabaret. Each job has a minimum set of attributes to be successful; if she's not successful, she doesn't get paid for that day. But each job also raises and lowers a set of attributes. 

       

It takes more strength than she has to succeed as a lumberjack.

     

• Adventure: This sends her out into the wilderness. More on that later.

• Time Off: School and work are stressful. If her "Stress" statistic exceeds her "Constitution" statistic, she can get sick and even die, ending the game prematurely. She can also become a rebellious delinquent. Time off, which comes in a variety of forms, can reduce that stress. You typically need to schedule a block of time off every other month at least.

     

The difficult variable in all of this planning is money. Despite being a war hero, you apparently don't get paid very much by the king. You start with 500 gold pieces and get another 500 every year. That doesn't go very far. 10 days of  novice "Dance" training costs 500 gold. A starting weapon and suit of armor costs maybe 350. Even giving your daughter "pocket money" costs 100 or more. You have to make it stretch for 12 months. So until later in the game, when means of earning greater rewards become available, you have to put the girl to work.

      

It's going to be a while before I can afford a katana and mithril armor.

     

The best-paying job at the beginning of the game is farm work, at 10 gold pieces per day. She won't be able to successfully complete every day at first, but once she does, she'll get a 50% bonus, earning her 150 per tenday. After a month of that, she might be able to take off a tenday for one training class.

   

Each job raises some statistics and lowers others. For instance, working on the farm raises "Constitution" and "Strength" but lowers "Refinement" very fast. After trying and failing to achieve any kind of balance in the gains and losses, I decided that the best strategy was to go all-in on one set of numbers--the ones that would be her primary career--and let the others drain all the way down to 0 if necessary. You've got 96 months. You can always try to develop them later.

   

I knew that if I was going to play this absurd game, I was going to experience the RPG part, so I decided to concentrate on developing her martial skills. I had her work the farm when she needed work and take classes in "Fighting," "Fencing," and "Strategy" when I had enough money to afford it. She rapidly built her muscles and stopped getting sick so much.

        

First attempts at combat didn't go so well.

      

Eventually, I bought her a dagger and suit of leather armor and sent her out into the wilderness. This was very premature. Until she has a "Combat" skill of at least 50 (halfway to the maximum) and "Strength" and "Constitution" topping 200, she can't fight even the easiest enemy without missing every attack. That takes until she's at least 12, closer to 13. I found that the tables turned quickly, though. By the time she had a "Combat" of 75 and the other two numbers above 250, it was hard for her to lose a battle. I went from not being able to beat one enemy in the eastern forest (the easiest area) to being able to fight dragons in the western wastes (the hardest) in little more than a year.

        

Thus ended my first few attempts at adventure.

       

Combat is very simple. You don't see enemies in the environment; you just get thrust into combat at regular periods. Your initial options are to fight, talk, flee, and hide. Monsters never talk, but there are some NPCs who occasionally do (to no benefit).

      

I guess it's a good thing you don't have to approve.

      

If you fight, you face off with your enemy. The game shows relative hit points, magic points, fighter reputation, magical reputation, and morale. A successful attack causes loss to both health and morale, and if either reaches 0, the battle is over. Combat actions boil down to just F)ight and M)agic. If you choose magic--another set of statistics that you can train or work for--you just cast a generic blast spell.

       

Eventually, I got better.

     

I don't believe you gain any attribute increases for successful monster combats, but you do gain gold, and the rest of the game becomes a lot easier at this point. A tenday spent in the wilderness can easily earn you 1,000 gold pieces, enough to take a couple of classes instead of working for pennies. The only downside is that combats increase your "Sin" meter, and I understand that can lead to bad endings if it gets too high. You have to ameliorate that by working in the church or tithing at the church in town. Some enemies don't drop gold, so you learn to just hide from them.

   

But adventuring also has other benefits. Each area has treasure chests that might give you heaps of gold or artifact items. Unfortunately, these are one-use only and do not respawn. Each area has one "boss" creature that gives you an artifact item. Artifact items raise your attributes; for instance a Black Scale adds 3 to "Defense," a Silver Pelt (from a silver wolf) adds 5 to "Magic Defense," and Venus Jewels not only add 20 to "Charisma" and "Refinement," but they give you a boost to these statistics every year on your birthday.

    

Opening a chest on an island.

     

The areas you can explore aren't epic--they're small enough to explore in a single outing--but they're fun. Little signs give you some context and history of the areas. The eastern area is forest; the northern is ice and snow; the southern is ocean (with rock pathways and bridges); and the western is desert. They're supposed to get more challenging in that order. I'm not sure I solved all the quests in these areas. For instance, the eastern forest has some huge obelisk I could never make any sense of. Several areas have houses that never seemed to have anyone home.

    

No idea what this is about.

And I never found a dragon in this area.

        

The northern area has some stairs that lead up to an encounter with the War God. He tells you that humans have to turn back from this point, but you can attack him. Even towards the end of the game, when I had epic combat skills, I couldn't even hit him in combat, let alone defeat him. But there was more development I could have done.

        

Good idea.

       

The western wastes have some ruins guarded by a young dragon. If you defeat him and drive him off, you can enter the lair of an ancient dragon, who pointedly tells you that he's too old for this @$*% and lets you loot his Dragon's Fang (+20 "Fighter Reputation") from a nearby chest without even getting up.

     

Anyway, with the money afforded by these outdoor adventures, I could afford better weapons and armor, which helped with the duels and contests back in the palace. There are other special encounters I need to tell you about. I've already finished the game, but this entry is getting pretty long, so I'll relate the rest in my next entry.

     

Villainy got a little cocky.

     

A quick note on the provenance of this game: My understanding is that this version of Princess Maker 2 was prepared for public release in the United States by having Adventions produce an English translation, but for whatever reason, it never hit the shelves. The Florida-based publisher IntraCorp was supposed to be the distributor for the translated game. The version I'm playing was prepared for "exclusive use" of an IntraCorp employee; naturally, it somehow got leaked. My further understanding is that an official English translation from Korean publisher CFK was published on Steam in 2016. It's called Princess Maker 2 Refine. I love that no one in the development, publishing, distribution, or marketing chain bothered to tell anyone to put a "d" on the end of it.

      

Total time: 6 hours

Playing out of: duty, mostly, but with a slight amount of curiosity 

Game 513: Centauri Alliance (1990)

 

      

Centauri Alliance

United States

Brøderbund Software, Inc. (developer and publisher)

Released 1990 for Apple II and Commodore 64

Date Started: 2 May 2024 

        

Most sites describe Centauri Alliance as "The Bard's Tale in space," but if you told me nothing about the two games and when they were released, I would assume that Centauri Alliance was first, and thus that The Bard's Tale was a "medieval Centauri Alliance." Alliance had releases only for the Commodore 64 and Apple II--dying platforms by 1990. The graphics somehow look worse than they were in 1985. There is no music, and sound is so rare that it might as well not have had any. Even the combat system, which someone plausibly saw as an advancement from The Bard's Tale, could equally plausibly be something that someone tried and then dismissed as too cumbersome.

Alliance was written by Michael Cranford, author of the first two Bard's Tale games. After he fell out with Interplay owner Brian Fargo, he took his services to Brøderbund. But where Interplay continued to advance throughout the 1980s, producing the excellent Wasteland in 1988 and Dragon Wars in 1990, Cranford seems to have had just one way of designing a game in mind.

    

Navigating the corridors of a dungeon spacestation.

      

None of this means that I won't like the game. By now, readers know that modest improvements in graphics and sound don't impress me much, and that I don't really care about music at all. But there are other things about the game that put me in a bad mood from the outset. First, while I can enjoy sci-fi when it's done imaginatively, I am less forgiving of half-assed sci-fi than I am half-assed fantasy. As much as I don't really want to play the same old game with humans, elves, and dwarves occupying roles as fighters, mages, and thieves, I much less want to play a game with obvious stand-ins for humans, elves, and dwarves occupying obvious stand-ins for roles of fighters, mages, and thieves.

    

It's too soon to say for sure, but so far Alliance seems to lean towards the "half-assed" side of the continuum. In addition to humans, we get the obligatory bird aliens (Valkyryn), reptile aliens (Manstrak), insect aliens (Acrturian), as well as stronger humans (Donsai) and an admittedly fairly original race of shapeshifters called the Praktor. There are four "disciplines": combat (fighter), tech (thief), psionics (mage), and metamorph (again, slightly original). Only Praktors can be metamorphs.

       

The Alliance gives us our first quest.

      

Each of these focuses has a handful of skills. For instance, combat breaks down into melee, thrown, sidearm, and master. Psionics can specialize in mind, body, matter, or energy. You should be able to fill the obvious spellcasting classes. Many of the spells are even identical to those in The Bard's Tale, although they have different codes. This isn't The Bard's Tale in space so much as The Bard's Tale with a space-themed substitution of nouns.

 

The Commodore 64 version of Alliance supports the import of characters from The Bard's Tale I, II, III, and Ultima III. I understand the Apple II version adds Wizardry I, II, and III and Might and Magic to that list. The idea is absurd. Not only are they all-fantasy games, but they're full of races, classes, items, and abilities that are incompatible with Alliance. I tried it with my winning Bard's Tale party (the only thing I had for the C64). Everyone came over as human except for my elf and gnome, who were translated as Valkyryn. Their experience points were capped at 8,000, but their attributes (which were almost all 18 by the end of The Bard's Tale) remained the same. Most of their equipment was stripped except for some odd choices; for instance, my half-orc hunter (now a human specializing in combat) kept his Shield Ring and Troll Ring. My hobbit bard (now also a human specializing in combat) kept two Fire Horns. A Magi Staff and the Specter Snare also came through on other characters. Anyway, I decided against continuing with an overpowered party and made my own.

       

My overpowered imported character.

          

The backstory sets the game in 2247, about 160 years after humans discovered near-light speed transportation and made their initial journey to Alpha Centauri and found a variety of sentient aliens. It turns out that the galaxy is teeming with races, most of them hostile to each other, and so humans joined with the other five playable races into the Centauri Alliance to protect their area of the galaxy.

       

But what did they call it?

    

The player characters are military veterans assigned to a special, off-the-books squad. Their first mission is to go to Omicron VII and assassinate a Donsai mercenary captain who has been selling Alliance secrets to the Daynab Confederation.

   

I created the following party:

    

• Meatshield, a male Donsai combat specialist with melee skills.

• Backup, a male human combat specialist with sidearm skills.

• Blobia, a female Praktor metamorph.

• Lugwrench a male Manstrak technician.

• Shock, a female Valkyryn psionics specialist in the "mind" school.

• Awe, a female Arcturian psionics specialist in the "body" school.

      

Creating my final character.

    

There are two additional slots for NPCs.

The party starts on Lunabase with a message to get to Omicron VII as soon as possible. Before then, they can buy weapons and armor at the nearby Alliance Armory and explore the base. Everyone started with around 1,000 credits. I favored armor over weapons and melee weapons over ranged weapons. After buying ranged weapons, you have to buy ammo separately, which is confusingly under the "Other" menu instead of "Weapons."

     

Sure. Makes perfect sense that you sell broadswords in space.

    

Lunabase is 16 x 16. In addition to the headquarters (inn) and armory, it has an academy (training review board), biotech facility (healer), and starport (exit). It also has a lot of random 1 x 1 and 2 x 1 buildings. A map of the base comes with the game, so I didn't bother to map it. There's also a crude in-game automap that erases the level once you've left.

   

The game's crude approach to mapping.

     

The manual warns that "like any port, there is a large element that feeds off the honesty and good work of others." Accordingly, you run into battles with enemies every once in a while (definitely less frequently than in Skara Brae). But for one exception, combat proceeds exactly like The Bard's Tale or its sequel; to wit:

   

The game tells you nothing about your foes except their names (e.g., Deathman, Skarvak, Vesta Marg, Metrak Scum, Minduran, Far Dractor). You have to figure out their strengths and weaknesses (including whether they have ranged weapons) from context.

     

Even the pre-combat messages are similar to The Bard's Tale.

    

• Enemies can start up to 60 feet away from the party.

• Enemies can attack in groups.

• Each round, the party decides whether to attack, move, or flee.

• If attacking, each character specifies an attack type each round, including melee attack, ranged attack, dodge, use an item, or use psionics, then specifies the enemy or enemy group on which to apply the attack.

• After specifying an action for every character, you start the round. Your actions are threaded with the enemies' based on initiative. The results scroll by and the next round begins.

   

Targeting an enemy group in combat.

       

The major difference is that in Alliance, instead of being told how far away an enemy group is, you see them visually on a hex layout. This is something that sounds like an improvement until you realize that it swaps the ease of selecting your target from a menu with the annoyance of either having to arrow to or joystick over the appropriate hex. Since nothing else interesting happens on this map and the party only ever occupies a single hex, all the map does is add length and annoyance to the combat process.

     

Combat actions scroll by.

      

I stayed on the station until everyone had enough experience to "level up," which translates here into adding additional skills, additional maximum health, and additional maximum psi power.

      

Specialize or be a generalist?

    

Oddly, you don't seem to get money from combat. Instead, you get paid for advancing. It seems to be 1,000 credits per level. After I advanced once, I returned to the store and bought everyone a ranged weapon, because occasionally you get weird configurations like the one below in which you cannot get your character into melee range. I won't be able to use the weapons until I give characters points in the skill, though.

       

An all-melee party is screwed here.

      

Psionic abilities are basically spells. They can be cast outside of combat. There are four classes--mind, body, matter, and energy--and each has 10 levels of spells with 4 spells per level. Each is called with a five-letter code, one more than The Bard's Tale and one more than necessary. I have Level 1 "Mind" spells: SPSEN (Spatial Sense), PSIAS (Psi Assault), MINDS (Mind Shield), and INVIS (Invisibility). My Level 1 "Body" spells are: INSHL (Insta-Heal), JOLT! (Jolt), EXOSK (Exo-Skeleton), and METFI (Meta-Fist). So far, everything is short-range and affects only one target.

Unfortunately, that's all I can tell you for now because every time I try to enter the spaceport, the game crashes. I get no message. Just nothing happens at all. I can't activate any of the controls, turn, open character sheets, and so forth. So I'll have to fiddle with different settings or perhaps try the Apple II version.

Some other miscellaneous notes:

   

• There is no way that I can find to pool or distribute cash. That's going to be annoying.

• The game came in a hexagonal box.

     

No one minds wasting 32% of the packing space in the future!

       

• I didn't explore metamorphing in this first session, but the character has 19 forms he can change into, including "Stonewalker," "Beta Wolf," and "Atomic Ant." Naturally, these have strengths and weaknesses I'll have to explore.

• Like The Bard's Tale II, the game makes a distinction between saving the party and saving the game.

• I guess some of the things that can fill the NPC slots are robots that you can buy at the armory for several thousand credits.

    

I somehow missed Centauri Alliance on my first and second passes through 1990, for reasons I find hard to explain. It's a fairly well-known game by a well-known author from a well-known publisher. There's no question that it's an RPG. I guess I should be surprised that my list doesn't have more such errors.

    

Time so far: 1 hour

Playing out of: duty*

 

*****

 

This is something new I decided to introduce. Valid options are "love," "duty," "desperation," and "rage." It might change from one entry to the next on the same game.