AutoDuel: Delivery boy

Dead again, and now revived in New York but without my ride, all isn't lost. My mechanic skills are great, and I know I can make some good money salvaging. But for now, I can focus on my quest without a car; I've still got about $3000 post clone replacement, which can buy me some bus rides. Which are perfectly safe, oddly enough.

Unfortunately, with my last death, the quest line begun by my previous incarnation is stale. The Scranton weapon shop has nothing to say to me now, I wasted $200, and I've got to start over again. Back to the New York Arena with me. Thankfully, I've kept a good chunk of my experience, and though I'm not a newbie, the manager sees that I'm too broke to buy my own vehicle and lets me come in and slaughter waves of fresh autoduelists in a rented go-kart.

I climb my way up the divisions as before, only this time my in-game and real life experience makes it that much easier. Once I have enough for another armored truck, which I make sure to armor even more heavily than before, I take and complete another courier job, which is enough to reset the quest line.

This time, I go to Scranton by bus.

 

I'm shuttled around the mid-Atlantic to hit up Dover and Syracuse, picking up another password in each, and finally Harrisburg, where the complete password "SAN ANTONIO ROSE" entitles me to a secret job delivering decoy trophies, but I'll need to fetch a vehicle first.

Good time for an upgrade, I think. After selling scrap, spare weapons, and my old car, I have nearly $40,000 for a new one. For half that much, I can pretty much go all-out in every regard except weapons, and I do.

Think I have enough machine guns?

The job is a run to Manchester, which is quite a drive, requiring no fewer than five stops, but if I take a route of Scranton-New York-Albany-Boston-Manchester, there will be a mechanic in four stops, and a weapon shop in all five. I think I'll be okay.

The Mass Pike never has traffic this light. And the drivers are often more aggressive.

And I am. There's a higher amount of bandit activity on Route 64 between Scranton-NYC, but frankly I am hilariously overprepared for this trip.

Manchester, NH

My delivery complete, I soon learn from the locals that they're looking for me in Washington. Quickest way to get there is by bus, so I leave my truck here.

Map scan by MOCAGH

 

Washington sends me on another bus tour, to Buffalo, and Pittsburgh, to learn the password "GREAT WHITE WHALE" and that New York's Gold Cross has a heart transplant they need delivered.

Back to New York by bus. I just buy myself another truck here, pick up the heart, and transport it to Boston without much difficulty.

 

This loop continues for at least two more missions without much variation or difficulty escalation. The feds in Watertown, NY have a case against the Philadelphia mafia and need evidence delivered to the D.A. - it's either cute that they think a little thing like "evidence" can totally bring down the mob in post-apocarlypse America, or horrifying if they are correct. This one is a long haul since the pickup point in Watertown lacks a vehicle assembly, so I have to drive my own there from Boston where I left it. After that, feds in Washington want me to bring proof of fixed races to New York. Same formula, same series of bus trips to get the password first.

The combat is not, at any point, challenging, nor are the bandits ever all that numerous. The machine gun shreds through most of them, and when it doesn't, I can tank a few hits as I destroy them with sustained close-range fire.

There comes a point where driving past them is easier.

When I arrive at the FBI headquarters in New York, they immediately have an important assignment. No east coast runaround this time.

I think I might be near the end!

AutoDuel: Two kinds of bandits

I'm not yet sure what my ultimate goal is in AutoDuel, but I'm sure there's more to it than fighting battle royales in New York - unfortunately, in the months I've spent accumulating victories, cash prizes, and mechanic lessons, the regional brigand problem has gotten worse. So I figured it's time to try my luck on the roads; I have a backup clone, and enough spare cash for a better car.

One last duel in CHUD, division 10 this time, yields a particularly good haul, and after selling I have about $20,000 to spend on an interstate vehicle, and construct a high powered, decent capacity pickup dubbed RUM TUGGER with reinforced front armor and three types of guns, plus a rear-mounted machinegun. I figure that on the highways there won't be much room for fancy maneuvering.

The courier has a few jobs available. The best-paying of them available to me is a roulette table to be delivered to Atlantic City, NJ. All the others are out of my way, so I take it, and only it.

Next stop, Philadelphia, and then Atlantic City.

Turns out, the rocket launcher sucks, and the recoilless rifle isn't much better. Too slow, too little punch. The stock machine gun is just all around better, and way cheaper to reload.

The Atlantic City Expressway is a bit of a maze, and I get lost in a confusing detour of farmland, but eventually find it before my batteries or deadline expire.

 

The payoff from the delivery is not enough to cover the cost of repairs, and there isn't even a weapon shop for me to rearm, but the truck stop does give me a possibly important clue - that I should visit the weapons shop in Scranton. Which is three bandit-infested roads away.

I also visit the casino, which offers blackjack and poker. Blackjack is a sucker's game; a blackjack pays 3:1, but you lose on a tie, which, if you aren't familiar with standard rules and odds, massively shifts the odds in the house's favor. Do not play this game, not in AutoDuel or in real life.

Poker is fairer, but strange. Rules are draw poker with no other players, you wager before the draw, break even on a pair, collect at odds on anything better, and lose otherwise. You can in theory collect some fantastic ratios on fantastic hands, but it's probably best to completely forget about straights, and only go for flushes when you have four in a suit and no pairs. Napkin math estimates a huge player advantage; losing should be decidedly less common than winning, but my experience is mixed. Initially I bet modestly, found I was winning more often than losing, and then started getting bolder with my bets and continued to rake in cash, but eventually hit a losing streak and ultimately left the casino poorer than I went into it.

At the very least, the ride back to New York is easy, and the salvage collected from the kills I made in both directions earns me a handsome $19,400 - plenty for a new anti-tank gun, laser, and a third machinegun.

Surprise - the AT gun is also utter garbage! It's just a slower recoilless rifle. The laser, on the other hand, is pretty good, instant and highly damaging, but the fact that it draws from your engine power instead of ammo makes me worried about its viability on long trips.

Failure to guard my flank got me killed by a well-armed bandit in a wilderness between New York and Scranton. At least I have my clone. 

AutoDuel: Compact Heat-Unleashing Drifter

I decided that I am not ready to face the lawless interstates until I've saved up enough for a clone and a backup, which will take a good amount of scratch; $13,000 plus the cost of a vehicle and fuel/ammo/maintenance.

Until then, I'll earn my cash at the NYC Arena. Amateur nights earn $1,500 per victory, and I figure that after winning three of them, I'll be able to afford a $5,000 vehicle and enter the lowest semi-pro leagues. Unfortunately, amateur nights are only held on Fridays and some Saturdays, so I'm left with not a lot to do during the week but drink and listen to rumors. The world doesn't hold much for people who don't own their own cars.

And I don't really learn anything that isn't common sense or in the manual.

 

Eventually, I win my three victories without dying and am henceforth banned from amateur nights. Time to get some entry level wheels.

   

The car designer is pretty in-depth for a c1985 computer game, and reminds me a lot of MechWarrior, with a need to meet weight requirements, space requirements, and in this game, cost. Here, I've designed a heavily armored compact dubbed CHUD with strong suspension and wheels, two flamethrowers mounted on the side and rear, but weak engines, no underside armor, and no space for cargo. At just under $5,000, it can compete in Division 5, and hopefully outlast quicker but weaker opponents with drive-by and leading tactics.

And, well, it works, but the flamethrower is less damaging than you might hope for, and this setup is lousy for winning cash prizes. Division 5 pays $2,200 per victory, but you are responsible for your own ammo and repairs. Flamethrowers are cheap to buy but expensive to refuel, and heavy armor repairs can eat the entire payout. You can earn more from salvage, which isn't an option on Amateur Night, but the flamethrower tends not to leave much left of your victim's cars.

I very quickly found myself selling the flamethrowers to buy a single machinegun, and then once I picked up a second (and shed some armor to make room for it), found myself winning these matches much more easily, and much more profitably.

Salvage is the real prize, TBH.

After one particularly good haul, I invested in a series of mechanic lessons, and my hauls got better from there.

Before long, my mechanic skill is maxed out, and with two more victories, I make my $13,000 goal.

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.

Game 476: Nuts & Milk

It's fine. You can snicker at the title.

 

It was third party developers that made Nintendo into a home entertainment juggernaut, and Hudson Soft was the first of many notables, debuting in 1984 with Nuts & Milk and a licensed port of Lode Runner, the latter of which, being a straight port, is of no interest to me, except for one little familiar visual detail.

Screenshot from Mobygames

As for Nuts & Milk, let me start by saying that this title screen looks exactly like every other first generation Famicom game. Same menu layout, same font, same set of options, including an editor mode like a handful of others, which can be saved to cassette tape using the Japan-only Famicom Data Recorder accessory.

Unlike Lode Runner, this is no port. In fact, while the Famicom versions of both Bomberman and Binary Land have some similarities to Hudson Soft's original computer versions, this game has none except for the recurring characters and the presence of a level editor. It's a 2D puzzle platformer with aspects of both Donkey Kong and Lode Runner. Also unlike Lode Runner, this game never left Japan, except an obscure PAL region C64 port renamed "Hot Pop."

Regarding the game modes, I quickly came to the conclusion that Game B, which in typical first-generation Nintendo fashion is the more difficult mode, is also the intended gameplay experience, with Game A a modified easy mode with fewer hazards. 2 Player Game is, as you might expect, just an alternating play mode.

Your challenge - collect all of the fruit while avoiding Nuts. Often easier said than done - Nuts can go anywhere you do, but moves slightly slower, and is really, really stupid. Even on Game B.

Nuts is suicidal but respawns quickly.

One advantage you have is that you can wrap-around on the horizontal edges of the screen, and Nuts will never do that, but take care; blimps will spawn on the left edge without warning and kill you on contact. Helicopters, on the other hand, spawn on the right edge and award bonus points on contact. Nobody ever said Nintendo games made consistent logic a priority.

Collect the last fruit and a girl Milk welcomes you home.

 

Every few levels is a bonus round with no Nuts and no penalty for failure.

  

There are over 50 levels, and for the most part they're pretty well designed, but each one can be beaten in a few seconds. Maybe not on your first try. Maybe not on several tries, they get difficult rather quickly. Nuts, much like the guards in Lode Runner, is stupid and predictable, but relentless, and figuring out how to get him out of your way so you can grab that last piece of fruit and live can be a trial in pathfinding logic or just plain trial and error. Often times, beating or failing a level comes down to making a tricky jump, which can demand pixel precision even when the point you must leap from to make the landing is straightforward, and it sometimes isn't.

You'll die a lot, but unless you care about score, and I don't, lives are meaningless. You can start on any level you like, with one very annoying caveat; you don't choose a level as in Wrecking Crew. You skip the level you're currently on by pressing the select button, and repeat until you're on the level you want to play. Got a game over on level 45 and want to try it again? Gotta start a new game and skip the level 44 times.

Because of this, I used save states, not to cheat through any level, but so that I could restart failed levels quickly.

Sometimes you have to deal with multiple Nuts.

 

Sometimes you have to manipulate Nuts to get him out of your way.

  

Did I mention Nuts is really stupid?

Sometimes the jump physics are a bigger threat than Nuts.

One of the simplest levels is also one of the trickiest yet.

 

Big difficulty spike in the 40's. Damn center fruit gets me every time.

 

This must be it!

Beat the last level and there's no ending; it just loops back to level 1.

GAB rating: Above average. It's a bit primitive, and often frustrating, but then again, so were all of the Famicom launch games. The visuals are cute and humorously animated, and for what it occasionally lacks in polish, it makes up for in generosity with 50 levels, about 30 of them good levels. It's no Lode Runner, but overall, not a bad waste of a few hours.

Games 473-475: Early Hudson Soft

 

Hudson Soft, a now defunct telecommunications shop in Hokkaido, is undoubtedly best known today for the Bomberman series, their long-running partnership with Nintendo, and to a lesser extent in the U.S. but a greater extent in Japan, the PC Engine console. Appropriately, the Famicom version of Bomberman is their first whale, but in exploring Hudson's back catalog we can see bias in my selection methods; their early output had quite a bit on NEC and Sharp computers, including text adventures Dezeni Land and Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom which look absolutely insane and would interest me if I could read Japanese. They would also port Nintendo's early games to these computers, and some of these ports are downright strange, such as a version of Super Mario Bros. with page-flip scrolling and unique levels and enemies. However, my initial selection are all arcade-style computer games which would eventually be ported or remade on the Famicom.

Incidentally, Wikipedia says the earlier Sega-published Pengo was an influence on Bomberman, citing Zero magazine as a sole reference. Having played Pengo, I can say it's not half bad, but I can't say it's definitely a predecessor. And so we begin this Hudsonsoft retrospective with... Bomberman. The PC-8801 BASIC version.

 

Game 473: Bomber Man 

 

 

Created as a demo to show off Hudson Soft's own BASIC interpreter, this initial version is not great. I was expecting it would be barebones, with no powerups, no multiplayer, no music, only one enemy type, and fiddly movement controls in typical PC-8801 fashion. That last aspect can become a real pain point here; you move in half-step increments, but there is no input latching and instead the game just polls the keyboard a few times each second, leading to dropped inputs, Bomberman getting stuck mid-tile, and bombs put down in useless positions.

But I wasn't expecting a Bomberman game where the bombs themselves are not barriers to your enemies or yourself, and this completely changes the dynamic. There's no trapping enemies with bombs here; instead you need to lay arrays of bombs, often with an angry red balloon monster in close pursuit, and then dodge their line-of-sight and manipulate their movement patterns so that they move into your blast patterns.

My best attempt - and I can't say I had a whole lot of patience to try to do much better -  made it to stage 4 and scored 6730 points.

 

To score well means searching each level for the hidden treasure, which is found in one of the bricks along with a hidden exit. After that, the next-best thing for your score is killing all of the enemies as quickly as possible for a time-based bonus. The stairs themselves, which are also hidden in a brick somewhere, are to be avoided; you'll forfeit the bonus on the current level and advance to the next, more difficult one, and as far as I know, the game is endless.

Bomber Man does seem to have some room to improve performance with strategy. I expect that mastering enemy movement manipulation is key to clearing higher rounds. The balloon monsters cycle between four different colors, and each one has a corresponding degree of aggression, which I'm sure comes from Pac-Man. But there's an unavoidable element of luck, as sometimes the AI or the controls just don't cooperate, and on occasion, the level just begins with an enemy right on top of you, giving you no chance at all.

GAB rating: Below average. Borderline bad, really. Bomberman's classic formula was never great in singleplayer mode, and this clumsy first go at it is no exception.

 

Game 474: Binary Land 

Finding a copy of this game was hard! The Famicom and MSX ports are widely available, but they're not quite the same as the Japanese micro original. Thankfully I found a Sharp X1 copy in a dark corner of the Archive which seems to be more or less a first edition.

 

Binary Land is a world of mazes and spiders in which a boy and girl, Gurin and Malon, must navigate and arrive at the goal together, simultaneously. The twist is that you control both at the same time, and one's movement always mirrors the other horizontally. It's honestly not very difficult, even when the mazes are asymmetrical. Spiders are your only hazard, and their webs aren't fatal; it can be a valid strategy to trap one in a web on purpose while the other clears the rest of the nest with unlimited bug spray. Most of my deaths were due to unresponsive controls. Never presume you can change direction and immediately start spraying; the input poll will most likely skip the direction and you'll be stuck spraying the wrong way as a spider creeps up behind you.

Around level 30, the difficulty does spike a bit, but patience, and a little luck, will get you through. At level 32 you're rewarded with what I think is supposed to be a baby.

 

GAB rating: Below average. It's better than Bomber Man, but not very interesting, and doesn't do very much with its two-player simultaneous control gimmick.

 

Game 475: Nuts and Milk

 

Nuts & Milk is an objectively awful video game title. Unlike Bomberman and Binary Land, this one is almost completely unrelated to its Famicom remake the following year.

You control Milk, the white blobby thing, and have to collect a bunch of fruit in a maze while running away from Nuts, the cyan blobby things, who mainly just encircle the mazes in predictable patterns but can certainly catch you off guard if you don't plan ahead. Parts of each level are filled with diggable dirt tiles, but beware; dirt returns after a few seconds and will kill you and any Nuts trapped there when it does. Plan and time your fruit snatches accordingly.

 

There are 24 levels, plus, interestingly, a level editor, but I got stuck on round 6 and I suspect that in order to pass it I would need to attain a mastery over Nuts manipulation which I am not interested enough to pursue.

 

GAB rating: Average. I'm being a bit generous because I didn't really give this one as much of a chance as I gave Binary Land. I can say that this is certainly the best of the three games I played for this retrospective, but didn't feel very compelled to really explore it and find out how much better.