Roids v2.3 | - by Matt Ion |
The years since have begat many variations of this popular purveyor of mindless violence (what's so violent about blowing up a buncha rocks, anyway?) including this offering from Leonard Guy and Hungry Man Productions.
The movement of the game is also different. Rather than fly your ship around a static screen, the ship stays centered while space itself whizzes by. This adds the challenge of never knowing exactly what's coming along your flight path. Well, almost never--there is a useful little radar scope, showing the "universe" and its inhabitants. . . and your place in it.
As the levels of play increase, new bad guys join the fray. First come the Bulbs, little blue octagons that will intelligently track and envelope one's ship, rendering engines and shields inoperable. While that may not seem so bad, keep in mind that this leaves the ship virtually indefensible against speeding Roids and meandering Tetra. To quote again from the online help, "The only way to dislodge a Bulb is by A) dying or B) blasting your way out with your cannon. I recommend the latter."
Finally are the Snipes, insidious, hard-to-kill little fiends that will fire large bursts of projectiles without provocation (although provocation does little to help matters). To plagiarize one more bit from the online help: "Snipes are extremely trigger-happy and have been known to shoot at each other, setting up a crossfire usually seen only in L. A." It's times like this you really start to appreciate the guy who thought of shields for spaceships.
All the controls, the use of sound, the detail of the display, the level of play, and the overall speed of the game are fully user-customizable. There doesn't appear to be joystick support in this version, but again, it can be configured to use whatever keys are comfortable (I prefer the regular cursor keys for movement, the spacebar for a fire button).
My biggest gripe is probably the jerkiness of the sound, but that's more the fault of MMPM and lame sound-card drivers than of the game itself.
As for a wishlist (unlikely, as the author has informed me that 2.3 will be the final release for 'Roids, other than bugfix updates), some sort of rockin' Buck Rogers background music would be neat, but not necessary. Joystick support seems to be the only thing missing, although since I don't have a joystick, I can't say for sure.
It's been suggested to me that some form of 3-D graphics would be cool, but personally, I think it would add too much baggage and get a little too far away from the original. As it is, the game can be run fullscreen, or in a resizeable PM window.
Roids is "nagware"--a "Register me!" reminder pops up every time you start the program, but no features are disabled. Registration, which entitles you to all future updates, is US$10.
I'm told a registered version is also included with IBM's Family FunPak as well as Stardock's OS/2 Essentials, under the name Havoc, but as I don't have either myself, I'll have to take it on faith that it is indeed there.
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