Game 478: AutoDuel

"Chuckles" Bueche, long time friend and partner of Richard Garriott, may be best known to retrospective gamers as the real life ego of Garriott's recurring friend-insert avatar, but was also a programmer and electrical engineer who was responsible for converting the first four Ultimas to Atari and Commodore computers, co-founded Origin Systems, and took lead design on the company's first extra-Ultima success and whale Autoduel, a post-apocalyptic "car"-PG inspired by Steve Jackson Games' Car Wars. Imagine Mad Max meets Battletech and you've probably got the right idea.

Before starting on Autoduel, I sampled some of Bueche's early output, but found they just weren't all that interesting or particularly relevant as stepping stones. Bueche himself establishes a pre-Origin ludography which differs slightly from what their copyright notices state:

• Brainteaser Boulevard, published through California Pacific Computer (e.g. Ultima). The only brainteaser here is wondering why it's called that; this is a simple Frogger clone where you control a gang of junior do-gooders determined to escort senior citizens through highway traffic until everyone is safely across - or one of the two groups are all dead.
• Laf Pak, published by Sierra On-Line (e.g. Ultima II). This is mainly notable for canonically taking place in the Ultima universe as an amusement device designed by Chuckles himself. Otherwise, it's just a compilation of four unremarkable arcade-style games.
• Lunar Leeper, also published by Sierra On-Line. The nicest thing I can say about it is that the Leeper animation is remarkably fluid for a VIC-20, which I presume was the lead platform. Because this is a crummy Defender knock-off interspersed with alternating levels of a crummy Scramble knock-off.

 

 

Caverns of Callisto, a semi-open maze shooter, was his first game for Origin Systems, but it doesn't interest me. We'll go straight into Chuckles' first and only whale.

AutoDuel is rough starting out. You're no Mad Max - you're more like an extra that gets offed in the opening act for his gasoline. Starting off in New York City with no wheels and two grand, you can technically afford a clunker of a vehicle, but you'll attract motor gangs looking for some easy scrap metal, and they'll get it the moment you hit the interstate. You need more cash, and the only avenue is amateur night at the local AutoDuel Arena.

NYC got a lot smaller after the big one.

 

I can tell it's going to be rough for awhile too. This is a game with permadeath, and while you can buy a clone at the Gold Cross for $5,000, that won't be viable for some time. Even with a clone, death is going to be painful; it costs another $3,000 to back up your brain too - your clone forfeits whatever experience had been gained since the last one. Even then, death means you lose your vehicle and whatever cargo it was transporting.

The only thing that makes sense to do - after picking up some cheap personal armor (there's no reason to ever be without 100% body armor) - is duel at the Arena. They'll provide go-kart class cars armed with light machineguns, but you play for your life, and at 5:1 odds.

You'll probably want to use a joystick here; the game expects it, and supports analog controls, though in practice it behaves more like Midway's 49-way joystick than a true analog precision. You don't steer; you push the stick in the direction you want to move, and the car moves that way. It's a bit clumsy, and I lost a few of my early games here from inadvertently steering right into an obstacle while trying to encircle an enemy, but with practice and a bit of luck, this is winnable.

I do mean practice and a bit of luck. These cars can't sustain many direct hits, and there's a lot that can go wrong even if you know what you're doing. You can lose control and slam into an obstacle, leaving your hulk a sitting duck for a finishing stream of bullets. You can take a critical hit into your fusion reactors. You can get your weapon blown off its mount point. You can just plain run out of bullets; what you've got is barely enough to total all five opponents. With those last two, at least it's possible to escape the arena, but you'll take a reputation hit.

Eventually, after multiple failures, I succeeded in winning two amateur night events in a row, gaining $1,500 each for a total of about $4,700 in my bank, which I spent on a car of my own; a high powered subcompact with solid wheels and a single machinegun, but not much armor or cargo capacity. With this, I could enter a higher stakes event, but the next one was the $10,000 vehicle division. So instead I went to the courier's board and took a job running a case of wine to Pittsburgh and hit the New Jersey turnpike.

Where I got fatally ambushed by an R.C. car with a laser beam.

Game 477: Bomberman

 

Hudson Soft's first whale is, suitably, Bomberman for the Famicom, and now we're starting to actually see a game that resembles the series as we know it. We have powerups hidden in the walls. We have classic chain reaction physics. We have bombs that trap enemies inside their soon-to-be tombs. We have Bomberman's classic chubby robot man design. We have recognizable, albeit repetitive music. We have a crunchy "boom" sound on the PCM channel.

We just don't have multiplayer yet. And without that, Bomberman isn't very good.

 

There's not much strategy initially. Avoid the slow-moving balloon monsters, try to trap them with a bomb, and don't destroy too much terrain just yet. Once they're all dead, start bombing the terrain until you find the level's powerup and the exit. And don't leave until you've found the powerup (or accidentally bomb it or the exit).

Flame up. This extends your blast by one tile.

After that, repeat the process for a few more levels. There are several powerups available; bigger blasts, more bombs, more speed, ability to walk through bombs, even the ability to walk through walls, but the real reward is the remote detonator, first found on level 4. You'll need it to catch the quicker and more slippery monsters, some of whom can slip through walls themselves. And you'd better not die, because you'll lose it if you do, and the monsters won't relent just because you don't have it.

All isn't lost if you die; you lose the remote detonator, but not your extra bombs or blast powers, and you can find it again about every five levels. Did I mention the game has fifty levels, and very little to distinguish them? Bomberman is generous with extra lives, and effectively grants unlimited continues with a password system as long as you don't care about score (and you're insane if you do - more on that later). But you'll have a much easier time if you never lose it to begin with.

Find the fireproof vest on level 30 and you're basically unstoppable. Just don't let your nigh-invulnerability make you get reckless, because you lose it if you die.

 

With the remote detonator and firerpoof vest, the rest is trivial. Finish level 50 and Bomberman becomes just Man.

As for optimizing your score, there's a few things you can do beyond just finishing without continues. You have bonus rounds, in which enemies respawn indefinitely and can't hurt you. You can trigger additional enemy spawns by bombing the exit door, and this is repeatable until the clock runs down.

But this is insignificant compared to secret items, which are hidden on every level and can be worth millions.

Dezeniman makes a sweaty cameo if you're Nuts enough.

 

All you got to do, is complete a level-specific Tower of Druaga-style challenge with zero hints or indications that this is a thing.  

 

Might be that you need to clear the level perimeter once. Might be that you need to chain-detonate exactly 248 bombs. The biggest reward of all comes from destroying every wall and then bombing the exit three times, all without killing a single monster, and grants you 20 million points.

Anyway, 

GAB rating: Below average. It's better than the BASIC original, which proved barely tolerable, but this early version gets boring really fast. At least it's also easy.