[ZX] Nether Earth

Nether Earth

Genre: real-time strategy, indirect control
ZX/developer: Icon Design LTD
ZX/publisher: Argus Press Software
Year of release: 1987
Players: 1
Media: casette tape
Additional peripherals supported: Kempston joystick, Interface 2

Let me tell you something. For a gamer, who rocks it on since the year 2005, ZX Spectrum doesn't ring a bell. But, let me tell you, it had something that would make you shout something like 'Wow, and that was made in 80s? Cool...' Of course, the hardware specs didn't made Spectrum save from various platform games, but. It had the first real-time strategy ever, Stonkers, released in a mileage before Dune II. It also had a first adventure FPS game, Total Eclipse, shown to the world long ago before Half-Life. 3D billiards? There sure will be one. ZX Spectrum has it too. A music tracker? Thanks to the fans, it's present as well. Point'n'click adventure? Say hello to Vera. And so on, and so on, and so on...
No hardware limitations stop entusiasts from making ZX Spectrum's fanbase even bigger than the one that exists on the NES. They'll sure create something that will make Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril like your poor kid's I Wanna Be The Guy. Look at them remaking old-skool FPS games and you'll ask yourselves if NES is really superior to ZX Spectrum. Of course, the reason of why the ZX scene is more active than NES is still a mystery, even to me. Well, maybe because you were unable to create your own games on our Best Beloved Console (Dezaemon doesn't count. It was a standalone cart and had no saving feature.) while with the magic of BASIC, you could create everything limited with your imagination, knowledge of BASIC itself and the free space on the tape. At least I think so...
But ZX had something kinda revolutionary even in its' early ages... Meet Nether Earth, an RTS whose game mechanics were later used in Herzog, in Herzog Zwei, in Tanktics, in Uprising, in Battlezone...
Damn those who think that Modem Wars really was the closest predcessor to Herzog Zwei... Nether Earth was! If you've played this, you'll know why.

***

Right off when you run the game, you have an excellent one-time possibility to listen a gorgeous techno intro track... And it's the 48K version. I swear, if there would be the 128K version of this, this tune would lose everything it had before. Why do I think so? Well, was Robin of the Wood's 48K music great, despite it sounded like 'DRRRRRR' if you had no musical hearing? Yesh. Had the 128K version of the same game same celtic spirit as the original? No. Was Lode Runner 128K version music REALLY ANNOYING despite it was a cover of a classical piano tune? Certainly, considering that it's the only tune in the game which will, sadly, repeat even ingame. And that the loop is no bigger than 20 seconds. And that the only way to keep your ears save was muting the TV set or put the headphones off, because YOU ARE UNABLE TO TURN THIS FREAKING ANNOYANCE OFF IN OPTIONS!!! Ahem, never mind, that's the wrong game. Back on topic...
So, in Nether Earth, you're thrown into the first and, at the same time, the final battle against an alien race known only as isignians. Okay, you already guessed that this game has only one mission. And let me warn you: THIS MISSION ALONE IS INCREDIBLY LONG! And kinda hard for the beginners, because these extraterresial bastards start with three warbases, while you're obliged to mess up with the remaining one! That sucks, but hey, I have overwent more hellish obstacles, and that is a strategy game, after all, so why not? Also, thank godness we would be able to save the progress on the tape if we would play it on real ZX...
The concept. In here, you control the, ehrm... 'device'. So, with this device, you'll be able to fly across the map, request the production of battle robots, give orders and control the robots directly. Pretty much like it, but even this is enough to rush through the game. What's also important, the device is invicible all the time, which means that it may even resist nuclear attacks! It sure gives a WTF face expression, but it helps and PERIOD.
Now, the robots. These are, perhaps, the only units in this game (aside from the device), but these may be fully configurable! Before he sees the light (or rather the light sees him), you need to equip him with a chassis, bunch of weapons (starting from a lame cannon and ending with the implanted nuclear bomb) and electronics, if you want the robots to have their own, even lame, almost identical to Battle City, AI.
Now, with what you pay to create these iron dummies. As I said, from the start you get one warbase, which will equip you with a plenty of 'General' points every day. 'General' points (no, not army ranking ones) are basically universal: with them, you will be able to pay for every add-on for your robots... But no matter what, no matter how, you need to capture factories that produce separate credits for each add-on. You can't capture them. But, your suite can! So, that's where you have to pay attention the most: resource management. Luckily, the map is just one long straight line, which means that the 'domination factor' will be more than obvious. Yes, you guessed it, the enemies capture factories too. But, in case of the emergency, you may destroy them, no problem.
Oh. Have I already mentioned you can control robots directly? Ah yeah, I have. But let me explain the process with more details. So, after you sit on robot's head (you start to lay eggs. Kidding.), you may either give him a capture/destroy/retreat order, or... Choose 'Direct Control' and dispose of that stupid pathfinding mechanism: you will ride him yourself. In fact, if you need a faster ride (because these dummies are VERY slow), always take the tanks with antigrav chassis. Not only they are the fastest, but they can also get through many ground obstacles (holes, humpy roads) in a second. There will be a trouble if you meet an enemy robot, however, because the direct control and battle mode are separated from each other. And the 'Move Robot' option makes 'Direct Control' completely obsolete. Also, thanks to the sucky control responce time in the orders menu, your robot will be ashed before you fire any of your guns. Well, the menu and the robots are a bitch to control, but, weirdly enough, the device controls as slight as like nothing happened!! How do you call that?!
How it plays... Slow tempo yet kinda high replayability. Paradoxally, because since Red Alert, we know RTSses usually being fast-paced and dynamic. NE, however, didn't even broke the rule, because it came earlier, obviously. At least it's faster than the above mentioned Stonkers... Still not sure that the gameplay will be fine? It once eaten all my PDA's battery when I was emulating it on UnrealSpeccy. Not because it was a complicated game to emulate, but because I was messing with the damn aliens for so much time. That's how exciting it is.
Since I've told you pretty much about the game itself, lemmie describe the graphics. Well, the 'working area' uses only two colors (forget about the bevel on the bottom-right side), but everything is recognizable: buildings, factories, robots, stuff... The view is isometrical, but no worries, that didn't inflicted the control scheme (contrary to Snake Rattle 'n Roll). Everything moves at the same side as you want. If only they would fix the buttons' response time...

***

Nether Earth was a pretty popular ZX game in muddahrussah, if you will forget that its' popularity has been shadowed by Dune II. Really, really shadowed. Right, once again I'm sorry that the press didn't care about everything that helped Dune to become a success. But even with that, Nether Earth got a simple 3D remake (yet with lots of custom maps), a mobile game adaptation (known as Wasteland), an unofficial translation to Russian and even Nether Earth Editor. But will I EVER know how to enable the editor mode, hah?!!
Oh, and this gamie has also been available on Commodore 64. But, only due to one reason, you should refer to ZX Spectrum version rather than this... The interface placement sucks there! Short but you get the idea.

BOTTOM LINE:
If you've just discovered ZX Spectrum for yourself, this thingie is one of the must-haves for your collection. Slow yet goddamn exciting gameplay, only one but awesome tune, only one mission that will take hours to complete. Okay, that may sound weird... but, think of exciting gameplay again. After all, it was really innovative, wasn't it?

SCREENSHOT TIME!


Laconic.

Lemmie see your brains...

That's when you have to dispose of annoying pathfinding.

Making a bomb on a floating platform, seriously.

Battle between ours and theirs.

No, that's not a bug. That's a nuclear bomb explosion shot at the wrong time.

[ZX] Doctor Mario

Doctor Mario

Genre: puzzle game

NES/developer/publisher: Nintendo

ZX/developer: Romantic Warriors

Year of release: 199?

Players: 1

Media: 5-inch floppy disk

Additional peripheral supported: Kempston joystick, Sinclair joystick, Sinclair II joystick

Today, we're gonna do a thing which is an opposite to our regular program. I previously reviewed the computer-to-console games, but for this run, I'll do a console-to-computer port. What's really nice, however, is that this port is obscure (and this actually follows the rules) - that's one, and that the computer is not your regular PC that every teenager owns at home, but something that an ordinary guy used to own long ago, ZX Spectrum - that's two. Just imagine: a little keyboard box which is supposed to be an 8-bit computer working with regular cassette tapes as a method of data storage got such a large and smart fanbase that it actually has more quality homebrew software than NES does. Possibly, that may be because of the usage of BASIC rather than assembler for writing the code and stuff, but that's not the topic of our today's discussion, no.
The fanbase was SO freaking huge that some guys did excellent ports and remakes (NOT romhacks) of their faved games. So there, we've got Dizzy X, Battle City, numerous Mortal Kombat games, demos of Dune and Warcraft, a newly-released Wolfenstein... I sure would keep listing all of this stuff but I definetly know you haven't actually seen this one!
And I know why you haven't. No words about it on Wikipedia (obviously), not even a symbol on it on any ZX Spectrum community I've ever seen (which IS unexpected now) and no proper results when googling for this thing. The only site that owns the floppy image of this game I know is Emu-Land.net (latest version of UMKT may be downloaded there as well, just make sure you have someone or something that knows Russian), under the name 'Doctor Mario' (not Dr.!). But, since it's mine and Indy's (my mate) deed to introduce you to old forgotten (without being deserved it) stuff that may make your eyes pop. Shall we start dancing?
So, the title says everything. It's a NES classic (sometimes noobishly considered to be just a mere clone of Columns which is itself a clone of Tetris) ported to ZX by one person entirely (except for the music, we'll talk about it later). Apparently, this recreation was made by a Belorussian dude nicknamed Brodyaga (may be translated as 'roamer') who was a member of a little ZX programming team called Romantic Warriors. Judging by the intro text he left, he does some mistakes in his Russian, and doesn't know English that good (i.e. writes 'Buy!' instead of 'Bye!'), but his recreation of Doctor Mario is just excellent... and ZXish at it's best, I think.
So meet a fresh new game of Doc Sigma... Brrrrrrr, I mean DOCTOR MARIO! Woohoo!

***

Not really much is required for such a game to run, just a mere 128K ZX machine, a floppy disk driver and, if possible, a Kempston or Sinclair pad, that's it! Why 128K? Well, because you won't be able to hear that gorgeous music, of course! It sure has nothing to do with the original BUT there are three completely new themes to choose from (I said 'themes', not 'tracks' because the NES game had victory/game over jingles while the port plays the 'overworld' music all the time). And don't be scared at these tracks' weird names, because these are... these are not track names, these are the names of artists who done them. Brodyaga himself made a tranquilizing tune in the loader screen while KSA, KLAV and KENT made music for the gameplay process itself. I know very little, a'mean, NOTHING about the last two guys, but KSA... oooh... From all what I know, he replaced the original Treasure Island Dizzy's soundtrack with Castlevania's, when this game game was translated to Russian and even did a little tetris game himself (we'll take a look at it A LOT later, guys). So here's the proof that these are not track names.
Every tune in this game is just overstacked with awesomeness and nostalgia, so they may get boring after a loooooong while, I swear. Seriously, every time I hear these tracks, I recall those silent evenings I spent at my grandma's as a kid (she still lives at the same place, but I visit her without enjoying Dennis the Menace and other stuff I don't want to list here, sadly)... Okay, why am I telling all that to you? Go listen them and judge yourself.
OH and the gameplay. The gameplay remains pretty much the same as in the original, there's only one little problem... The controls. No, they're pretty easy to get over with, but, pretty much like in 99% percent of ZX games, they are laggy. No matter if you're a wannabe spectrumer or if you've beaten Dizzy, like, 9000 times, ALWAYS set the lowest speed. The ending won't change anyway.
There's one new mode, however. If you think of Dr. Mario as a really easy game or if you're a real masochist, then this will be for you. Instead of killing viruses with regular three colors... you'll have seven. You'll be messing with five useless microbes like there would be thirty of them. There would be even more useless pill garbage which you'll be barely able to clean up, so this mode is recommended for REAL VETERANS.
Aside from Spectrum control syndrome, this game is not that hard to beat. Especially on final levels where viruses get COMPLETELY random placement in the jar... which means that there will be a couple or two self-destructing rows.
Another slight difference is that Chill, Fever and Weird won't get hit or even disappear, but who really gives it a shit.
Talking about additional stuff. You also gotta love Dr. Mario when the level is finished. 'YESSSSS!' And the flashing Locks LEDs, through it has been an old tradition for a game to have the LEDs flashing in rhythm with the music, heh?

BOTTOM LINE:
That is the port that truly has the 'overlooked' status. Why? No idea. In any case, you have to give this little game a shot. The graphics are too simple, but that's Spectrum. The controls are not always responsive, but that's Spectrum again (in fact, I know games on this computer that have even more sticky keys than there). There are custom chiptunes instead of Hirokazu Tanaka's NES music classics, but that may be a nice break from the soundtrack that everyone knows, counting that ZX chiptunes tend to be awesome. So, all in all, it may be simply treated like a new superfresh look on Dr. Mario. No more, no less.

Crash Nicker

SCREENSHOT TIME!

Shiny new intro screen.

Whatever happens, ALWAYS pick the lowest speed.

Wait... That's NOT LEVEL 000001! I started on level 10, for sure...

7-color mode in all its' masochistic glory.

Mario says 'No.' while Dr. Mario says 'YEEEEES!'

Ending. 'You have beaten all the viruses. The Romantic Warriors team congratulates you with this. See you in our next games!' To be honest, this is the ONLY game I've seen from them.

TESTING WITH FIRE...

The footage is done by Indy Starry, Mr. Pantless Alien, yay! Glad he liked this game too. And yes, I asked him to make a footage. Of course, it's not that really informative (plus, a bit glitchy, our team has crappy comps, yay), but you'll get the idea of what it looks like.