Subroc

(Crossposted from We, The Players)
(Original Post)

Most first-person shooters will often involve shooting at people, but the Coleco game Subroc, created by Sega in the early 1980's, places the player in the gunner section and helm of a submarine. The object of this game is to shoot alien ships and flying saucers, as well as water craft, and the missiles, mines and torpedos they shoot at the player's sub. The ships attack in waves, starting with saucers, then leading to a short encounter with a squadron of three green fighters, then to a wave of purple and magenta fighters and another wave of blue saucers. The final boss is a black command plane that hides behind a shield and shoots missiles at your vessel. One shot and the shield is gone for a split second, and a second, well-timed shot can destroy the boss. In most of the waves, the water is populated by nicely-detailed white submarines and yellow drones.

The display is the gunner's POV, showing a crosshair site in the middle of the screen. Enemy fire can be avoided by simply maneuvering the crosshairs so that the fire is off the screen. Torpedos can be hard to evade, as they can mess with the water currents and the motion often gets very jerky when a torpedo is being fired. To avoid torpedos, keep the crosshairs as high as possible, out of the water.

There are certain vessels called 'mystery ships' that give bonus points for the final boss of the level when destroyed. One common mystery ship is a black boat or sub. In the 'Super' version of Subroc, there is a wave in each level where a ship that looks like that ordinary black mystery ship is actually a sort of 'boss' that shoots torpedos at your sub. Shooting that boss ship will cause some damage, indicated by smoke rising from the ship. Other mystery ships include a hot air balloon and galleon, both of which are green. The mystery points earned will be used during the dogfight with the 'command plane'. If the command plane is shot down before the mystery points reach zero, the remaining points are added to the score. Even the green fighters can give a mystery bonus if all three of them are destroyed.

Now, the "Super Game" version of Subroc which I previously mentioned was available to a few housholds for testing with the Adam computer(basically Coleco's answer to the personal computer). My houshold was one of the lucky recipients, and this game took the original concept and expanded on it. In the super version, the gunner could go under water and navigate through mines and other obstacles. Once the player surfaced, the game played much like the original except the gunner could surface right in the middle of a wave or even the bonus round with the three green fighters.

Other segments that were added included a wave where missiles could be seen rising out of the water and heading towards the player's vessel, a missile barrage that could only be escaped by submerging, and a final boss that could only be described as unbelievably awesome. The final boss in this game is an underwater vessel that looked like a robot octopus and shot torpedos and ink(or oil) at the gunner's sub.

The Super Subroc game is available in public domain and with some searching you can find it. I definitely recommend this to anyone who loves the oldschool consoles such as Coleco and Atari.

Subroc was not without its flaws. The motion did get sort of jerky since the Coleco system didn't like scrolling games that well, and the forward motion was not as smoot as the sideways and upwards scrolling, meaning that in one or two seconds, a missile or bomb that was heading towards the sub would suddenly be close enough to where escape was impossible.

The sound was, in my opinion, perfect for the game. During most waves, there would be a constant pulsing sound in the background, and a higher-pitched pulsing meant a missile or bomb was heading towards the gunner. With torpedos, the sound of rushing water could be heard. Missiles shot by the gunner made a sort of whistling sound while the gunner's torpedos made a realistic metallic noise. Blowing up enemies or mines made a satisfying soft explosion while blowing up from an enemy's fire resulted in a louder, longer explosion. When the gunner was submerged in the super game, the background noise gave an almost perfect effect of being under water, complete with sounds of bubbles and sonar.

The graphics in both games were high quality, with many sprites having a complex, multicolour design. In the super game, at the bottom of the screen showed instructions and reports, as well as maneuvers. For example, if the sub were to brush against something that didn't destroy it, the ticker at the bottom reported that speed would be reduced until repairs were complete. It would also warn of missile barrages and instruct the gunner to submerge the vessel. Another feature of both versions of Subroc was the way even numbered levels showed the progression of day to evening, to night, then dawn and then day again. Odd numbered levels only showed daylight, and the reason for that is unknown.

With all its flaws, Subroc is a cool game. The cartridge version doesn't have all the cool badguys and levels of the super game, but it still is a lot of fun and a great way to hone reflexes and coordination. The super game is available for download on quite a few sites, and a google search should lead you to it fairly quickly. It will work on the MESS emulator but an ADAM BIOS rom(also available) is required for running the game file. There may be some problems with running the Subroc rom for some people, as emulators are not perfect, but I would still recommend Super Subroc for those who grew up on Coleco or are curious about what their parents played.

I highly recommend Subroc for all gamers, young and oldschool. And to show you just how awesome this game is, here is a video from youtube of Super Subroc in action!

Watch and be amazed!

Fortune Builder - The Sim City Before Sim City

One of my favourite Colecovision games is Fortune Builder. It's a simple city-building program that is similar to Sim City - specifically the Dullsville scenario, where you have to earn money and build up the population within a certain amount of time. In Fortune Builder, there are no 'residential/commercial/industrial' areas, nor do you have to worry about power plants or havock-wreaking disasters. Instead, you have to deal with events that can either help raise your profits or send them plummeting.

The game even had a two-player mode where two people could actually sabotage each others' efforts to make a fortune. Methods included building structures that made a rival player's buildings less profitable, building toll booths on rival roads, or building in a place that the other player was planning on using. In two-player games, the game would only end if and when one player either made 250,000,000 dollars or went bankrupt. In single-player games, the game ended after five years.

The structures were mostly mono-coloured, but a few(including the oil rig) had at least two, and the area looked more like a map than Sim City's overhead view. Roads were solid gray blocks, and the buildings were shown with their front sides facing up, and the cars themselves were black dots on the roads. Most buildings could only be placed on grass, beach or mountain sides, while others(like the ski lift) were meant for the snowy slopes and there were some water-only structures including fishing boats. Power stations could go on the slopes or land, boosting profitability of nearby ski lifts, factories and coal mines.

The music, while repetative, is very good and not too simple unlike most Coleco music. It includes "The Four Seasons" and "Fur Elise" by Beethoven, and a fanfare for the winner.

I won't go too much into detail about the controls of the game; instead, I will direct you to a couple sites that will be most useful. I'd also recommend getting a Coleco emulator program and either downloading the ROM or subscribing to Console Classix. Emulator and ROM programs can be found in a search; won't be linking to them here as their legality is questionable at best.

Here are the links:

Fortune Builder Walkthru
Fortune Builder Manual
Console Classix


A note on controls for emulators: On most keyboards, especially ones like mine that have no separate 10-key sections, use the '=' key to place objects - the Console Classix emulator for the Coleco system recognizes the '=' as the '#' button. By default, the 'z' and 'x' keys function as the left and right buttons. I'm not sure if multiplayer games are possible in the Meka emulator that Console Classix uses; it might be possible to link online or via some other network and I will update on this when I find out how.

Sim City Classic PC - Still a Favourite

In the late 1980's, Will Wright was designing random maps for a video game and was inspired to use that style of mapping to make a game where the player could build a city from scratch. This idea became the world famous Sim City, soon to be followed by many newer versions.

The classic Sim City had pre-made zones, roads, rails, power lines, two kinds of power plants, parks, and a few other necessary buildings. Each game would start with a desired amount of money to build the city, and for every zone or other structure placed or bulldozed, the player would pay a certain amount. Taxes would earn the player, known as the 'mayor' some revenue, and maintenance fees for transportation, police, and fire departments would be deducted each fiscal year.

If the taxes were low, the city would attract more sims, but the revenue would also be low. High taxes would earn more revenue initially, but would also chase away the citizens. It's a trade-off and the correct approach would be looking for a happy medium.

Crime and polution are also something to think about in Sim City. Police stations were needed in order to lower crime, and industrial zones needed to be spread out to prevent the concentration of pollution. Roads had to be planned out carefully to prevent traffic and make sure the sims were able to get to work and shop, and to prevent noise pollution. The seaport and airport, as well as the stadium, had to be placed carefully because of crime, pollution and noise.

Land value is another problem - low values would mean high crime, but too many high value lots and the sims would complain about housing costs. Again, there had to be a happy medium. I prefer to put my residential zones around water and trees, raising the land value.

Fire departments were needed if the disasters(earthquake, fire, flood, tornado, monster, plane crash and a few others) were enabled, to prevent the fires from spreading. They would especially be needed if the city had any nuclear power plants, because in Sim City, nuclear plants sometimes had meltdowns.

With power plants, there was also a trade-off - Coal plants gave off a lot of pollution, and less power, while nuclear plants gave off more power and less pollution, but would sometimes explode and contaminate the area with nuclear waste that took years to dissapate. The mayor would have to choose between economical, clean and dangerous or safe but toxic. With nuclear power plants, disabling disasters is recommended. Both types of plants are best placed on the edges of the map to minimize pollution and contaminants.

Stadiums, Airports and Seaports are all required when the residential, commercial and industrial populations reach a certain level. Unless the structures are built and powered like the rest of the city, those three zones will not develop any further.

There are even scenarios, little games with different win conditions and time limits - if the mayor is able to meet all conditions before the time is up, then he/she wins the game. If not, the sims get mad and boot the mayor out.

There are several versions of Sim City for the PC, and now you can find them in the Maxis or Electronic Arts collections. Search for them on google or shop for this and other great classic titles at places like Target, Walmart, Bestbuy and Fry's. There are also versions of Sim City and its successors for consoles such as the Super Nintendo. And if you are into older consoles like the Coleco, I would recommend looking up Fortune Builder, an early city-building game that came before Sim City but has many of its features and plays like one of the Sim City scenarios, Dullsville. The map is always the same but the game is still very fun.

If you haven't tried those games, check them out!