Robot
04-23-2010, 07:45 AM
Well folks, it’s been a fun two months, but with my 1UP contract finished and my supply of early handhelds running dry, this may very well be the end of the Micro Retro series. Let’s bring the feature to a close with Stargate, a late Entex handheld based on the Williams arcade title of the same name.
Before we get to the review, here’s a little background on Stargate’s arcade roots. The game was part of a trend among coin-op manufacturers to create viciously difficult sequels to the greatest arcade hits of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Gamers had mastered Asteroids, Pac-Man, and Defender, playing them for hours on a single quarter, and something had to be done to keep them challenged while keeping the turnaround time on the machines short. Most manufacturers went the “deluxe” route to keep those quarters flowing, taking the same games and adding unexpected surprises to stack the deck against cocky players. However, Williams went that extra mile with a legitimate sequel to Defender, complete with a half-dozen new enemies and a handy wormhole that sends the player straight to distressed humanoids (and later stages, if you know the trick!).
http://www.1up.com/media?id=3803959&type=lgAfter making a mint on its Defender tabletop, Entex was quick to snatch up the home rights to Stargate, and went right to work on a handheld conversion. Outward appearances suggest that the game is a huge improvement over Defender… instead of the flat, vaguely iPad-like case used in previous games, Entex went all out with a miniature arcade cabinet, complete with a massive wide screen display, a responsive metal joystick, and nearly every button from the arcade game. Yes, even the unnecessary ones like “inviso.” (Come on Jarvis, you were just reaching at that point!) Features like a volume dial on the front and a headphone jack on the back (!!!) make Stargate seem all the more luxurious for early 1980s handheld technology. Hell, even some models of the GameBoy Advance didn’t have headphone jacks!
Sadly, it all starts to fall apart when you switch on the system. Stargate was developed by Rick Dyer and the dogs of the AMS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MezDts-449Y). As you might expect from the co-creator of Dragon’s Lair, Rick let his ambition get the better of him, resulting in a game that’s more fun on paper than it is in practice. The gameplay of the Williams arcade game is largely preserved, down to the laser beams that stream from your ship’s cannons and the warp that activates when you take four humanoids through the star gate. However, you’re going to have a hell of a time rescuing one human from the grasp of the Landers, let alone the quartet you’ll need to skip ahead five stages. Enemies can’t move into any square on the screen that’s already filled with graphics, so it’s impossible to “lead” the Landers into your shots. Worse yet, your lasers have a disconcerting habit of vaporizing both humans and Landers at once. Even in the not-so-easy easy mode, it’ll only take a minute before the citizens you’re trying to protect are wiped out, and you’re besieged by angry swarms of Mutants and Baiters.
The other issue with Entex’s Stargate is that it completely abandoned the wonderfully weird enemies introduced in the arcade game. There are no Dynamos, no Phreds, and no Yallabian Space Guppies… just the Landers, Mutants, and Baiters from Defender, drawn with some very bizarre abstract graphics. Everything in the game either looks like a crown, a pair of diamond-shaped sunglasses, or a crown wearing the sunglasses. It all starts to look like an outtake from a Devo video after a couple of minutes. The mountainous planet surface helps offset some of Stargate’s ugliness, and the throaty explosions are a welcome surprise after the shrill chirps of most tabletops, but the audiovisuals in this game aren’t likely to have impressed anyone, past or present.
A portable conversion of Stargate was probably asking too much of the limited technology of the time. However, the problem with Entex’s game is that it strives for accuracy in the minor details while cutting corners in the places where it mattered most. The result is a pint-sized port of Stargate with all the obfuscation of the arcade version, but without the satisfying complexity.
Image courtesy of Electronic Plastic
More... (http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=9026864)
Before we get to the review, here’s a little background on Stargate’s arcade roots. The game was part of a trend among coin-op manufacturers to create viciously difficult sequels to the greatest arcade hits of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Gamers had mastered Asteroids, Pac-Man, and Defender, playing them for hours on a single quarter, and something had to be done to keep them challenged while keeping the turnaround time on the machines short. Most manufacturers went the “deluxe” route to keep those quarters flowing, taking the same games and adding unexpected surprises to stack the deck against cocky players. However, Williams went that extra mile with a legitimate sequel to Defender, complete with a half-dozen new enemies and a handy wormhole that sends the player straight to distressed humanoids (and later stages, if you know the trick!).
http://www.1up.com/media?id=3803959&type=lgAfter making a mint on its Defender tabletop, Entex was quick to snatch up the home rights to Stargate, and went right to work on a handheld conversion. Outward appearances suggest that the game is a huge improvement over Defender… instead of the flat, vaguely iPad-like case used in previous games, Entex went all out with a miniature arcade cabinet, complete with a massive wide screen display, a responsive metal joystick, and nearly every button from the arcade game. Yes, even the unnecessary ones like “inviso.” (Come on Jarvis, you were just reaching at that point!) Features like a volume dial on the front and a headphone jack on the back (!!!) make Stargate seem all the more luxurious for early 1980s handheld technology. Hell, even some models of the GameBoy Advance didn’t have headphone jacks!
Sadly, it all starts to fall apart when you switch on the system. Stargate was developed by Rick Dyer and the dogs of the AMS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MezDts-449Y). As you might expect from the co-creator of Dragon’s Lair, Rick let his ambition get the better of him, resulting in a game that’s more fun on paper than it is in practice. The gameplay of the Williams arcade game is largely preserved, down to the laser beams that stream from your ship’s cannons and the warp that activates when you take four humanoids through the star gate. However, you’re going to have a hell of a time rescuing one human from the grasp of the Landers, let alone the quartet you’ll need to skip ahead five stages. Enemies can’t move into any square on the screen that’s already filled with graphics, so it’s impossible to “lead” the Landers into your shots. Worse yet, your lasers have a disconcerting habit of vaporizing both humans and Landers at once. Even in the not-so-easy easy mode, it’ll only take a minute before the citizens you’re trying to protect are wiped out, and you’re besieged by angry swarms of Mutants and Baiters.
The other issue with Entex’s Stargate is that it completely abandoned the wonderfully weird enemies introduced in the arcade game. There are no Dynamos, no Phreds, and no Yallabian Space Guppies… just the Landers, Mutants, and Baiters from Defender, drawn with some very bizarre abstract graphics. Everything in the game either looks like a crown, a pair of diamond-shaped sunglasses, or a crown wearing the sunglasses. It all starts to look like an outtake from a Devo video after a couple of minutes. The mountainous planet surface helps offset some of Stargate’s ugliness, and the throaty explosions are a welcome surprise after the shrill chirps of most tabletops, but the audiovisuals in this game aren’t likely to have impressed anyone, past or present.
A portable conversion of Stargate was probably asking too much of the limited technology of the time. However, the problem with Entex’s game is that it strives for accuracy in the minor details while cutting corners in the places where it mattered most. The result is a pint-sized port of Stargate with all the obfuscation of the arcade version, but without the satisfying complexity.
Image courtesy of Electronic Plastic
More... (http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=9026864)