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MoonCrap 99
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| First Impression |
Once upon a time there was a console called the Atari 2600. Its games were simple and addictive, but generally sucked. A few games stood out from the rest, though. One of those games was Galaga. In MoonCrap 99, DanielC brings you the same edge of your seat, increasingly difficult gameplay as you experienced playing Galaga, and best of all, this game was written in pure, 100% QB!
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| What It's Like |
As I just said, this game is pretty much a clone of all early-eighties space shooters like Galaga. Fun, sweet and simple. :) You pretty much move back and forth, shooting at the groups of aliens that fly in patterns in front of you. These patterns are really neat looking. When you shoot them, they either die or break up into two smaller aliens. Anyways, you fight through levels with pre-determined aliens and bosses at the end to save the human race from being destrooyed by aliens. This game is really kewl!
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| Other things you should know |
This zip file comes with two versions of the game. One of them is an older version with less features, but works faster than the other one. The other one is newer, and more complex, but a bit slower and flickery. It's a matter of preference, I guess. I didn't see any real new features in the actual gameplay of the actual game between versions, but I'm sure there was, because one is flickery, and the other one isn't. Another weird thing about this program is that the whole game is written with only GOSUB...RETURN subroutines. It is also written in .. get this .. PURE, UNADULTERED QB! This is a prime example of what QB can do without the aid of libraries.
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| The rating |
| Graphics |
These graphics are really, really simple. Nowhere in the game are more than 16 colors used, and most animations are only two frames. Despite major downfalls, these graphics work fine for this game. You have multiple ships with different numbers of guns onn them, and different designs. The ships are awesome. Your bullets are small yellow rectangles, the enemies shoot big, scary bombs at you, which you must avoid. All the graphics are animated, and all of them have the ability to be turned and morphed in 360 directions for their awesome flying routines. At any rate, these graphics are done well enough to get three stars, and the graphical features and flexibilty raise it's score a bit. :)
***1/2 |
| Sound |
There is a lot of sound in this game. The only problems that I can find is that they are all done with the PC Speaker! Ack! The sound quality is therefore not good. But on the other hand, for it's 'genre' of music, it is better than average. Most programmers that resort to PC Speaker music don't do it with much quality. This game's sound effects are average, and the little musical ditties before you start levels and stuff are cool (but not exactly "ear candy".) Anyways, I think that this game has sound effects and music on the better side of the internal speaker music scale. (Pun not intended.)
***1/2 |
| Flexibility/Features |
There are neat things in this game. Little add ons, special enemies, nasty pre-made enemy sequences, A STORY, phat bosses (heh), levels, high scores list, the whole scoring system, two versions, a nice title sequence, open source, different ships, the cool image turning routine, and other neatities. This game could use some improvement in this department, like power ups, different guns, a little AI (or random enemy sequences), or maybe even a little graphics upgrade. Anyways, this was done well.
**** |
| Gameplay/Control |
For pure QB, this is some of the best I've seen. You use the arrow keys to move (back and forth), and control to shoot. P pauses, S turns the sound off, Escape lets you quit, and you use F1/F2 on the menu for the second version of the game. Other than that, I haven't seen anything bad. The in game control is nice and tight and easy to control. You move at a nice, controllable speed, not too fast, not too slow. At any rate, this is very good. A game isn't any fun if it's hard to control, but this game does not fit in this category.
***** |
| Overall Impression |
This game has downfalls galore, but there is nothing wrong with the actual gameplay! It's fun, easy to control and challenging, but not so challenging that you will go insane trying to beat it. It's fast in it's older version, and has more features in the second version. Most importantly, however, MoonCrap 99 was written in pure, 100% QB! Excellent job, Daniel!
****1/2 |
| Total |
20.5/25 * 4 =
82% |
