Volcano! For the Commodore PET

Volcano!!!!  Where's Tommy Lee Jones when you need him?

Volcano for the Commodore PET.  I was actually rather surprised with how much enjoyed it!  The game starts by giving your the facts about the eruption of Mt. St Helens.  In case you don't know, on Sunday, May 18, 1980 at 8:32:17 am PDT (Pacific Daylight Time) Mt St Helens erupted.  An eruption column rose 18,000 feet in the air and spread ash across 11 different states.  Fifty seven people died.

Just a peaceful morning camping on Mt St Helens

This could be filed more under the "edutainment" banner, joining such games as Oregon Trail.  It is a text adventure of sorts, though the interface is much more simplistic, giving the player only multiple choice answers.

HOLY HELL!!!!  The pixilated mayhem!  Ohhh the digital madness!

You start as a camper on the side of Mt. St Helens.  The volcano erupts and then it's a mad dash for survival.  If you select a wrong answer, you die a horrible death.  The game does a pretty good job of explaining why it's a bad idea when you select a wrong answer.  Once you make it through the game (which lasts all of about 10 minutes.....5 if you're a fast reader) nothing ever changes....but it is kinda fun going back and purposely selecting wrong answers to see what would have happened to your character had you been foolish.  I only had to restart to game once as most of the multiple choices are fairly obvious.

Hhhhmmm....digging a hole with lava on the way sounds like a good idea!

It was a rather enjoyable 10 minutes spent with my Commodore PET emulator.  The game is well written and it hearkens back to a time when computer games were monochrome and quite basic.  Still, that doesn't make them bad!

If you have a Commodore PET or want to download and emulator (there are a bunch around...WinVice being my personal favorite) the game is fairly easy to track down.  If you are interested in the history of early personal computer games, there are worse things that you could do with 10 minutes!

Captain Fizz meets the Blaster-Trons!

I love video games.  Obviously.  I have a rarely updated blog about them.  I love all video games from Pong all the way up to the Triple A blockbusters that the big boys crank out these days.  I'll tell you what though.....for all the amazing set pieces in modern video games....for all their amazing graphics and voice acting.....sometimes I really miss the old school ingenuity and creativity of the 8 bit age.  Take Captain Fizz meets The Blaster-Trons for instance.  

CFmTB is essentially a Gauntlet clone.  It's a top down shoot 'em-up set in a maze on a space ship or on an alien planet in an alien base (not sure which)....but the point is that you could basically call this Space Gauntlet.  But you know what?  It still feels different.  Back in the day, even when ripping off or cloning another game, developers still put massive amounts of creativity into their products.  Just that title alone makes you want to play!  And don't even get me started on the amazing box art!  Much like the 80's VHS boxes of yesteryear, game boxes had fantastic pieces of artwork on them.  Even Mastertronic, famous for their 1.99 game series commissioned artists to design some killer artwork for their titles.  Take Bionic Granny for instance.  Is the artwork creepy?  Yep sure is!  It certainly ain't no Boris Vallejo.....but it's still pretty groovy!

I've only just started playing but so far I've been having a blast with it.  The music is SIDilicious (if you don't know what SID music is.....go find yourself a C64 emulator and play some games!) and the control is pretty tight.  Interestingly, this is a co-op game.  There weren't a lot of these back in the day and split screen co-op was definitely a novelty.  

As you may or may not have read in my other blog (www.midnightcinephile.com)  I've recently fallen in love with retro games again.   And after getting a little encouragement from a reader (hello Devlon!) I've decided to invest some more time into the ol' Space Dungeon here.  I hope that those who find my little corner of the web enjoy what they find!