Paradroid: Won!

Profile view of the Paradroid, current deck (staterooms) highlighted

The stateroom deck map

 

My macro strategy for clearing Paradroid is simple - know where the strongest droid on the ship is, have a plan to kill it, and try not to waste too many stepping-stone bots along the way. Repeat until there's nothing left but you.

This isn't necessarily the most optimal strategy - it takes awhile, and loses out on the bonus points (and heightened security!) scored by killing enough droids in rapid succession to raise the alert level to red, but I feel it is the safest. Even so, my success rate is probably around 25% to 33% - getting ambushed or just fumbling the hacking minigame can end your run in an instant.

To aid myself, I put together a ship map to show the deck layouts and what robots might be encountered on each - numbers in brackets represent the best droid on the deck, which isn't always the highest class! Notably, the 500 series have weaker weaponry than (and decay twice as fast as) the 476 droid, and the 999 droid decays so fast that you really want to get rid of it for a 711 or even a 600 series as quickly as you can.

Some further gameplay notes I discovered:

• Your health is an invisible stat, but the game seems to track health and maxHealth separately.
• MaxHealth is always ticking down, and the higher the droid class, the more quickly it decays. Consequently, the longer you've had a droid, the less damage you can survive. The inverse does not hold; taking hits does not reduce the amount of time you have. 
• 999 lasts about 30 seconds, 500's-800's last about two minutes, and anything else (including your 001 at the game start) lasts about four minutes.
• You can get a rough sense of how much time is left by how fast the player sprite is oscillating. It gets noticeably slower at the 50% mark, and you start flashing at the 25% mark.
• A successful hack completely restores both your health and maxHealth.
• A failed hack restores your maxHealth but not your health, and reverts you to the 001.
• A fatal hit leaves you in a very bad state where you are reverted to the 001 and put into flashing critical mode. You have about 30 seconds to find some prey before your batteries run out.
• Droids with antigrav are the fastest, and often the best in their class in other ways. Droids with tracks or wheels are the slowest and can be a liability.
• I still have no idea what the various sensors do. 

I've cleared the ship a few times now, and made a video recording of my most recent success. It's not my best or quickest run - in fact, I get off to a pretty lousy start and nearly ruin it, but it is the one I recorded and will AAR.

The game allows for pausing at any time except the hacking minigame, and I use this regularly to check my maps. These pauses are edited out. 

 

Each game randomly picks a starting deck and it's either research, stores, or staterooms - this is the staterooms, and the most dangerous of the three, because there are armed 476 maintenance droids here.

My first goal is to pacify the 999 command droid, on the deck, and there's a lift, but going there would be suicidal. Most of the droids there have powerful weapons, and would be severely disadvantageous to try hacking. As a general rule, if you try to hack a droid more than two classes above you, you are taking a risk. More generally, avoid being even on a deck that has droids more than two classes above you. Such as the staterooms right now.

I immediately go to the nearest lift and ride it up to the stores.

Oh, hello there!

 

I can take a 296.

When I first started playing Paradroid, my hacking strategy was to pick the side with fewer dead pins. This is still a pretty good strategy, but it isn't always the best one, especially not at low levels where you don't have enough pulses to hit all of the live pins on your side. Splitters can make your limited pulses go farther, and in this situation, the yellow side has more splitters; the middle wire will split your pulse twice and hit three bits. But one of those bits is guarded by an inverter, which means that at best you are flipping two bits with that pulse, and possibly flipping the third to the enemy's color!

So I went with purple - in retrospect this might have not been the best choice, but Paradroid does not give you time to think about it; you get ten seconds to pick a side and another ten to act on it.

I also learned that it's a good idea to wait a second or two before acting. Bits are flipped to whichever side hits them last, so if you allow the enemy to fire a few pulses first, you can flip their bits back instead of giving them the chance to flip yours. But you have to learn to move quickly; when you're out of time, you're done. And at the higher levels I usually finish with unused pulses because I just didn't have time to use them all.

But anyway, I win this one no problem, and now have command of a beverage dispenser on treads. It's not great, but I'm in a better position to go back to the staterooms and hack a maintenance bot - if I can catch one!

You're not a 476, but you'll do.

 

 

But I failed the hack, because I wasn't paying attention - the 420 snatched two of the lower bits while I was focused on the upper side. Oh well - it happens! Back to the store deck I go to hack another servant bot, and then have another go in the staterooms - this time I get a weak but speedy 302 messenger bot.

And with it, I hunt down and catch another 420.

 

My next step up is the observation deck where I can typically find a 614 sentinel or at least a 500 series crewbot - either one an upgrade.

Getting up there! But the bots are getting stronger; from the 600 series on, they shoot back, and hacking starts getting pretty chaotic.

The quarters deck is populated exclusively by 700 and 800 series droids, both quite dangerous. The 700 battledroids most commonly have screen-clearing disruptors, and the 800 series security droids move fast and shoot accurately with maximally powerful laser guns.

Taking the 751 feels like a close call!

A good strategy at the higher droid levels is to target the repeater diodes first. Even if the corresponding bits are already your color, this effectively locks them down so the enemy can't flip them, and then you can use your next moves to react to whatever the enemy does. At higher levels, you have pulses to spare, but not time.

I upgrade to a 834 before leaving for the bridge, where I have a big fight on my hands.

I lose the fight. I should have hacked the 711 near the lift and used its disruptors to clear the bridge, but instead I kill it with my lasers, and then get destroyed by the other 711's on the bridge.

Back to the lower decks! There are still enough droids left alive that I can work my way back up to something combat effective.

I come back some time later with a 516 crewbot from the robostores deck, and snatch an isolated 711 battledroid before it can disruptor-blast me.

With the 711, I waste a few sentinels and easily hack the commander. Who I then promptly take back down to the quarters deck and downgrade to something that will last more than a few seconds - an 834 security bot. And while I'm here, I take out the rest of the bots too - now the most powerful droid on the ship is the 821 security bot, I know they can be found here, and the only way to ensure the deck hasn't got any is by clearing it. I defeat the droids through hacking rather than by shooting, since they shoot back.

The lights dim after you've killed all the droids on a deck.

 

Commander down, quarters cleared. But there are still some 800 series droids to be found in the cargo holds, which are accessed by a lift behind the staterooms - I go there next.

There are two cargo holds, and they are both large, open decks with a mixture of dangerous security droids and cannon fodder. Most of my failed runs ended in the cargo holds; with nowhere to hide, you can get sniped offscreen, but hacking a level 8 droid is almost as dangerous as fighting it; usually I win easily, but if the sides are roughly even, then the level 8 droids stand a chance of beating you through sheer brute force; they get enough pulses to just flood the board with their color, they can spam pulses faster than you, and it almost doesn't matter that they don't have any strategy. You either beat them by picking the better side of the board and exploiting it, or you beat them by reacting to their moves and ensuring the board flips to you at the last moment.

 

I nearly get killed stepping off the lift to the lower cargo deck!

 

The 883 (ex-term-in-ate!) is a tank but moves like one. Ditch it ASAP.

 

The cargo holds take some time to clear out, but I manage without incident, and I can safely say that the ship is free of anything stronger than a battledroid.

Next I clear out the vehicle hold and shuttle bay, where I again must rely on hacking to take out the majority of the battle droids, as they are immune to their own disruptor weapons, and I did not manage to find and hold onto any 821 security droids, which are otherwise the best 700 killers.

After clearing these decks, I am in command of the sole 711 droid on the ship, and attempt to murder some weaker droids in quick succession to see if I can get the ship's alert level up for some bonus points. I am not successful; the maze-like layouts make it too difficult to track down and kill with the required speed, and eventually I'm forced to downgrade the 711 for a fresh 302 on the reactor deck.

At this point, all of the truly dangerous droids are destroyed, and I'm not at any real risk of losing. A cautious approach will clear the rest of the ship. I take over a sturdy, well-armed 476 droid on the engineering deck below, and this is enough to take on the rest of the decks, which I do in descending order of difficulty, killing the rest of the droids with my laser, and occasionally swapping for a fresh 476.

The last droid is seen cowering on the research deck.

A freighter-clearing bonus is awarded and we prepare to board the next ship, Metahawk. But it's the exact same layout as the Paradroid, just with slightly stronger robots. I wish the game let you pick the starting ship, because I could see myself revisiting this game and picking a harder ship to start with for more challenge, but having to go through the repetition of clearing the "easier" ships each time first would absolutely kill my incentive to bother doing the harder ones.

Especially given how unforgiving Paradroid can be - I had not mentioned this yet, but control mishaps are another means of losing - the one button interface where shooting, hacking, and taking lifts are all performed with the same button can cause you to perform one action when you meant another, and the hacking minigame can be fiddly at just the wrong moments and cost you the game because the cursor moved past your target or didn't move at all.

Despite that,

GAB rating: Good

Paradroid is great. Technically solid, well crafted and designed, and just a great blend of action, exploration, and strategy. Easily the best UK title I've seen so far, and not a half bad showcase for the fairly new Commodore 64 platform that developers were just starting to learn how to tune - the smooth four-way scrolling, the bold, clash-free colors, and ambient whirring and beeping sounds just wouldn't be the same on a ZX Spectrum. I recommend and promote this one to the ivory deck, with a well-deserved harpoon.

Game 468: Paradroid

Apparently, I like robots. The Robot Odyssey was my 1984 GOTY. Berzerk and Robotron are two of my earliest Good ratings. Rebelstar Raiders is one of only two UK-developed titles on my ivory deck. Paradroid is shaping up to be an easy third.

 

Billed as "the ultimate brain drain" and promising a blend of arcade and strategy, Paradroid is like Berzerk but puzzlier. You operate a remote-controlled "influencer device" (this is what I am calling an iPhone tripod from now on), and your goal is to destroy every clanker gone rogue on the 20 decks of the space freighter Paradroid.

Your primary weapon is a pair of laser beams, but this won't be enough. You are the most fragile droid on the ship, and although not all of them are armed, the upper echelon are and will swat you like a fly.

And you only get one life.

Each droid is shown with a three-digit serial number; you, the weakest, are designated 001. The strongest, the command cyborg, 999. The first digit directly corresponds to the droid's class and overall power level; the rest are not inherently meaningful, but you can expect, for instance, that all 615 droids are identical in power and ability, and a 614 will be similarly powerful but differ in abilities to some extent. Incidentally, you can forget about tangling with a 600 series or higher at your entry power level.

Each deck on the Paradroid also generally only contains droids of one or two classes.

To get far, you'll need to use your secondary weapon - a hacking device, which when activated, initiates a minigame when you collide with a victim droid that you wish to commandeer. 

This might look complicated, but Robot Odyssey this ain't. In fact, you don't have enough time to really think things over; you have only a few seconds to try to "flip" the control circuit to your color. And thankfully, you have every advantage. For a start, you decide which side you want - left or right, which in turn decides your color; yellow or purple. One side is often more advantageous than the other, and if you can pick it, then you have a good chance at hijacking a robot who is several levels above you. But if they're about equal, then going after a significantly stronger one is risky.

So how do you determine, in just a few seconds, which side is better? By the number of "dead" pins on each side. No wire connected? Dead pin. Color inverting diode connected? Dead pin. You might not have enough time to count them, but you only need to reckon which one has fewer. Pick the side with fewer dead pins, and you're already off to a great start.

After picking a side, you play by sending pulses down the wires on your side to flip the circuit's segments to your color, while the enemy does the same, and this is your other advantage; the enemy AI seems to be completely random. Stronger robots get more pulses (and in fact might not even have time to use them all) but if you picked the better side and use yours efficiently (don't overthink it but don't waste them either), you'll probably win! Which is good because failure means game over.

Beating a +3 droid on a roughly even board. The droid makes mostly bad moves.

Success destroys the victim robot and causes your influencer device to assume its power, abilities, and serial number. Even better, this power also comes with increased hacking prowess; take over the 247 vending machine bot, and you're in a much better position to hijack the 571 helmsbot, who can probably last long enough to infect the 711 battle droid with yourself, and so forth.

So, is the optimal strategy to work your way up to the 999 and then unload hell on the Paradroid? Not quite. If, while in control of another droid, you should take too many hits or lose a hacking minigame, you revert back to the 001, and if you didn't leave any weaker bots alive, you're screwed. On top of that, a hacked droid will eventually recover, at which point you automatically terminate the host and revert to the 001. The more powerful the droid, the more quickly this happens. 

The 999 droid is found on the bridge and if you can hijack its circuits, is unstoppable... for about 30 seconds.

 

But it has another, not-so-secret ability; access a terminal, and you can view the specs on ALL of the droids in the game, of which there are 24.

Some of these bots seem familiar!

So I took notes on all of them.

Entry	Serial	Class	Height (m)	Weight (kg)	Drive	Brain	Arms	Sensors
1	001	Influence	1	27			Lasers
2	123	Disposal	1.37	85	Tracks			Infrared
3	139	Disposal	1.22	61	Antigrav
4	247	Servant	1.56	78	Antigrav	Neutronic
5	249	Servant	1.63	83	Tripedal	Neutronic
6	296	Servant	1.2	47	Tracks	Neutronic
7	302	Messenger	1.07	23	Antigrav
8	329	Messenger	1.07	31	Wheels
9	420	Maintenance	1.41	57	Tracks	Neutronic
10	476	Maintenance	1.32	42	Antigrav	Neutronic	Lasers	Infrared
11	492	Maintenance	1.48	51	Antigrav	Neutronic
12	516	Crew	1.57	74	Bipedal	Neutronic
13	571	Crew	1.76	62	Bipedal	Neutronic
14	598	Crew	1.72	93	Bipedal	Neutronic
15	614	Sentinel	1.93	121	Bipedal	Neutronic	Rifle	Subsonic
16	615	Sentinel	1.2	29	Antigrav	Neutronic	Lasers	Infrared
17	629	Sentinel	1.09	59	Tracks	Neutronic	Lasers	Subsonic
18	711	Battle	1.93	102	Bipedal	Neutronic	Disruptor	Radar, Ultrasonic
19	742	Battle	1.87	140	Bipedal	Neutronic	Disruptor	Radar
20	751	Battle	1.93	227	Bipedal	Neutronic	Lasers
21	821	Security	1	28	Antigrav	Neutronic	Lasers	Radar, Infrared
22	834	Security	1.1	34	Antigrav	Neutronic	Lasers	Radar
23	883	Security	1.62	79	Wheels	Neutronic	Exterminator	Radar
24	999	Command	1.87	162	Antigrav	Primode	Lasers	Radar, Infrared, Subsonic

I'm not sure what most of these specs actually mean yet, but I do know that a droid's lack of a weapon doesn't mean you lack one after possessing it; it just means they won't shoot you, and you keep your weak 001-grade lasers after you take them. I also know from experience that the Battledroid's disruptors are a screen-clearing weapon that doesn't damage other battle droids or higher, so avoid until you have something immune!

Clearing the Paradroid is going to take some planning ahead, and thankfully, the game provides a map of sorts. Mapping out the droids will be my responsibility.

Games 465-467: Hewson Consultants and the 3D Seiddab trilogy

Whenever I select European computer games for coverage, there's always a bit of arbitrariness. Take Hewson Consultants - a "smaller software company" according to Wikipedia, with a ten year run of fairly consistent quality but not much impact beyond their era of ZX Spectrum and C64 games. Graftgold's Paradroid would be their first whale, and motivates me to retrospect their back catalog.

Hewson Consultants would be kickstarted by the release of the awful ZX80 computer in 1980. Andrew Hewson, an early adopter of this machine, wrote one of its earliest unofficial programming guides, and soon found himself in a position to publish ZX80 and ZX81 software written by his readers.

 

Their earliest titles are, of course, derivative and barely playable.

 

"Puckman" isn't completely horrible, but 5/6/7/8 is a stupid keyboard cluster for 2D movement.

Also on their early catalog are a series of flight simulators credited to pilot and professional air traffic controller Mike Male.

• Pilot (1982), an IFR-only ZX81 civilian flight sim with takeoff, navigation, and landing.
• Nightflite (1982) and Nightflite II (1983) on the ZX Spectrum, offering minimalist cockpit visuals.
• Heathrow Air Traffic Control (1983) on the ZX Spectrum.

 

During these years, Hewson also released the aptly-titled flight simulators Dragonfly and Dragonfly II on the short-lived Dragon computer series. I have absolutely no interest in playing any of these games; I just found it interesting that flight sims make up a significant portion of Hewson's early catalog.

 

What does interest me are the first games by Graftgold's founder Steve Turner, the so-called "Seiddab Trilogy," all initially released on the Spectrum by Hewson and featuring pseudo-3D graphics.

 

Game 465: 3D Space Wars 

Ostensibly a clone of Exidy's Star Fire, but wow, look at all those Seiddabs, moving around pseudo-3D space and scaling up and down in realtime! Granted, it's not nearly as smooth as Star Fire, nor is the 3D effect very convincing, but this has to be a record for sheer number of scaling onscreen sprites in a computer game of this kind.

And honestly, I've played much worse than this. Your ship yaws and pitches with a pleasing rotational inertia which gives the combat a touch of depth beyond mindless twitch shooting. Energy management plays an important role here, too - your fuel diminishes with each shot you fire and each hit you take, and a fueling station (a possible Star Raiders influence?) found on each stage provides your only recharge, typically usable only once.

However, it's still a pretty shallow experience. There's no strategic layer and there are no subsystems to manage; your only controls are axial movement, throttle, and gunnery, and I never saw much point to touching the throttle other than using it to reach the fuel station. The Seiddabs only fire when you can see them, and the best way to minimize your own damage is by targeting them in isolation, using quick sweeps across the viewpoint so that each is on screen as briefly as possible before passing over your laser's kill zone; your forward velocity seems irrelevant.

 

3D Space Wars gets difficult rather quickly, and notably, fuel does not recharge between levels, forcing you to fight efficiently even on the "easy" rounds, or ensure failure later on. I managed to reach the fourth wave once, but I wasn't recording when I did. My best run on record reaches the third round with about half a fuel tank, and ends soon after that.

 

GAB rating: Average. It's competent enough, but there are better games than this.

Game 466: 3D Seiddab Attack

The Seiddabs have invaded earth, and oh wow is this game ugly. An abstract pattern of dots vaguely suggest a city skyline at night, but your main method of navigating will be the on-screen radar. If you can determine which dot on the map represents your tank. There's certainly some Battlezone influence here, but all you can do is aim your gun and rotate when you reach intersections.

To beat the level, you've got to locate and destroy the Seiddab task force leader, who will spawn after you kill a certain number of underlings, and can be recognized by a trail it leaves on the radar view. Missiles are also finite; run out without taking out the leader with your last shot and you die. Sometimes you just have to eat a few hits rather than waste ammo on lackeys. Between leaders, there's a brief bonus round where you shoot down Seiddabs in the countryside, your line-of-fire unobstructed by buildings and your ammo limitless.

Avoiding return fire is usually impossible, but you'll last longer if you can get the shot impacts spread out along the full width of the tank than if you let them concentrate in one spot - one cool visual detail is that chunks of metal get blasted off the tank exterior in realtime based on where they hit. But good luck with that even spread; the shot distribution weighs strongly toward the middle, and you can't even aim at Seiddabs that are too far in your peripheral (or flying too high or low).

I never managed to beat the second round, and I don't feel eager to put in the effort to learn how.

 

GAB rating: Bad. Space Wars was derivative but tolerable. This one's just ugly, confusing, and frustrating.

 

Game 467: 3D Lunattack

The final game in the Seiddab trilogy sees the fight for earth taken to the Seiddabs' lunar base, and it's the weirdest and most ambitious by far. And surprisingly, it's also the best!

Now that I've said that, let's temper our expectations a bit. It's not quite good, and it's not going to shatter any expectations of what can be done on the old Speccy. I'm not itching to play any more of it, either. But it's more original than Space Wars, more playable than Seiddab Attack, and offers smoother, more convincing 3D visuals than either.

Part of this is from improved technology; Lunattack ups the system requirement to the 48KB model, and ditches TRS-80 CoCo compatibility in favor of C64, being the first Hewson game to support the platform, if not to be designed for it. In turn, you get a zippier flight experience than its sluggish predecessors, in which you glide over the cratered surface of the moon, the terrain and ground targets staying in perspective as you bank, turn, and pitch at a silky ~10 frames per second.

Lunattack also utilizes the sparsely supported Currah μSpeech module, currently only emulated by the commercial emulator Spectaculator, and provides some ambiance and audio cues by ingame computer chatter, though it usually sounds like it's malfunctioning (air-e-al mine fi-ield, stïr carefully, the navcom crackles as you enter the aerial minefield zone).

Gameplay-wise, Lunattack reminds me a lot of Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom for its perspective and multiple zones of extraterrestrial dangers, but plays differently enough from it that I don't presume there was direct influence.

Your first goal is to pass through the tank zone, characterized by stationary lunar tanks with slow-firing shells. Your ship's main weapon, a laser turret, takes some getting used to; shots have a delay, but always track the crosshair in motion, meaning that if you aim perfectly, pull the trigger, and jerk the ship away from the target before your shot lands, then your shot is going to miss. Better that you shoot first and then aim before it hits the surface! I've also found that, counterintuitively, the farther away a tank is on the horizon, the easier it is to hit.

One aspect of the controls which I find neat is that the fire trigger is multifunctional and context-sensitive. Aim above the horizon, and instead of lasers, you launch BVR missiles. Aim low, and a HUD indicator points the way to your next objective. Honestly, it's a pretty clever and elegant solution for expanding your ship's capabilities without requiring the use of a keyboard.

Your ship is fragile, but agile. Dodging individual tank fire is pretty easy even though your hurtbox is the entire screen; just swerve away until the shell goes offscreen and you don't get hurt. It's holding still long enough to take them out without getting pummeled in return that's difficult. Fighters occasionally appear too, and their shots are more difficult to avoid, but if you're quick to notice them on radar, you can take them out with missiles before they enter visual range.

 

Next, there's the aerial mine zone, and the mines are not your biggest threat. That would be the mountains themselves, which look like you should be able to fly right over, but you cannot, and unlike the mines, you can't shoot them down either. You just have to fly around them, and since your damage zone is effectively the screen's entire width, this is mega annoying. But eventually you get through - the navigation HUD helps find the way forward faster, but it's certainly irritating when there's no way to go in the correct direction without crashing into a rock.

The third and final zone is full of missile silos, which are functionally the same as tanks, just faster and more damaging. Fighters spawn more aggressively too. Navigate this area, and you'll eventually locate the main Seiddab base, and it will take a few strafing runs to put it out of commission. Do it and you get to play another loop.

GAB rating: Average. Not bad, not great, but a pleasant surprise that surpassed my (low) expectations. 

Ports of Entry: Hewson Consultants

Unknown lead platform:

 

Heathrow International Air Traffic Control

Released for Commodore 64 in July 1984

Released for Amstrad CPC in December 1984

Released for BBC Micro, Electron, and ZX Spectrum in 1984

Firelord

Released for Amstrad CPC, C64, and ZX Spectrum in 1986

Mobygames credits weakly imply that C64 is ported from the ZX Spectrum.

Nebulus

Released for Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum in 1987

Exolon

Released for Amstrad CPC, C64, and ZX Spectrum in 1987

Stormlord

Released for Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, C64, DOS, and ZX Spectrum in 1989

 

In the Mobygames credits, only Amstrad CPC, C64, and ZX Spectrum are by the original designers Raffaele Cecco and Nicholas A. Jones.

Select chronology: 

 

Title	Lead platform	Date	Contemporary ports
Space Intruders	ZX81	1981
Nightflite	ZX Spectrum	1982
Knight Driver	ZX Spectrum	1984
Heathrow International Air Traffic Control	???	1984-6	Same-year releases on various computers
Paradroid	Commodore 64	1985-11
Uridium	Commodore 64	1986-1	Same-year port to ZX Spectrum 1987 ports to Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, & BBC Micro
Firelord	???	1986	Same-year releases on Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum Same-year port to C64
Tower Toppler	???	1987	Same-year releases on C64 and ZX Spectrum
Exolon	???	1987	Same-year releases on Amstrad CPC, C64, and ZX Spectrum
Cybernoid: The Fighting Machine	ZX Spectrum	1988	Same-year ports to various computers
Stormlord	???	1989	Same-year releases on various computers