Penetrator - Levelling the playing field.
It's amazing how sometimes just the loading screen of a game can set off a string of memories, it was 1984 when I first saw this one. ( Penetrator - Melbourne House ). It's possible this was one of the first non-educational games that had entered the house. I had argued that games like Atic Atac and Sabrewulf were educational on the grounds that I attempted to map them. But as I recall this arrived with no pretence of any educational purpose at all. It's a five stage side scrolling shooter, blast your way through the different colour stages, destroy the final bomb store and then blast your way back.
I think it was also my first experience of the unstoppable force of the horizontal scrolling game , that little ship started moving and didn't stop for anything (other than bashing into rocks). You could decrease speed to move back across the screen and throttle forward to speed up , but stopping to look at the screen and have a think where you were going wasn't part of the game play. This was going to give me a whole new experience . My father on the other hand had no such problems, off he zipped, dodging missiles, knocking out satellite dishes, straight onto the second level.
But after reading the instructions ( and I did occasionally read them , honest, I did!) I discovered there was function called a Trainer- infinite ships and a chance to practise the level until you could do it. This was just what I needed and just what I did. Even at this early age I realised just how much of a great idea this function was. Never having had the chance to go to the amusement arcades to play this type of game previously , this was opening up a whole new world of experience and wonder for me.
But more wonder was to come, as I finally scraped through level 1 (with great use of the trainer.) Level 2 appeared, the whole backdrop had changed colour , the landscape had changed as well. Remember this was very early on in my game playing life, so to see changes of this magnitude within a game was pretty jaw dropping. It gave me a thirst for exploration, what colour would the next screens be? What shape would they be? Yet, another session of the Trainer was looming on the horizon. The game didn't disappoint.....
Being able to skip ahead on the Trainer to practise stages you hadn't got to felt a little like cheating, but it kept me interested in the game and gave me game play that I would never have achieved with my very limited gaming abilities. But....there was still more to come.....there was something far, far , far more exciting for me to discover.....
It had a screen editior, you could create your own levels. This to my 13 year old brain was amazing, in fact it was more than amazing it was mind blowing. In the past I had broken into programs ,changed the horses names on Derby Day or changed the bats and the bricks on Thro The Wall. But this was something different, you could flatten the scenery , you could add or take away missiles. In fact you could make your very own levels and store them on tape. I was changing something that I had previously thought was set in stone.
The game itself was a brilliant game, but for me it was the screen editor where I spent the most time, designing easy screens that I could play , then increasing the difficulty . Creating seas of magenta satellite dishes, all turning majestically , forests of yellow missiles , very low down on the floor so I could fly over them high up on the screen. Here was a game where I could use all those creative skills I loved, to create things I could play.....wait....this is educational isn't it?
It was the game that not only introduced me to the horizontal scrolling shooter , but also taught me that it could be fun modifying games. It taught me that even in a game I was struggling with, there were parts of the game I could still enjoy. There's no right or wrong way to enjoy a game, as long as you do enjoy it . Some of us play for the high scores, some of us play to complete the objective, some of us play to enjoy the scenery.
It all eases the mind, takes the focus away from life's troubles and let's us escape to that
ZX Spectrum wonderland where anything is possible.
It all eases the mind, takes the focus away from life's troubles and let's us escape to that
ZX Spectrum wonderland where anything is possible.