Tubular Worlds

"TUBULAR WORLDS - Mega- Action in the finest arcade tradition! You are a senior cadet at the country's elite school for fighter pilots. Your final exam involves flying the gauntlet of four virtual cyber worlds and destroying the Warlords encountered there. But be warned! At the end of each combat segment a very powerful Warlord will be waiting for you! The sixteen major encounters require complete concentration and will test your ability to the limits. With TUBULAR WORLDS" all Hell breaks loose on the screen before you. Massive numbers of sprites, enormous end monsters (up to three screens big!). metamorphosis, transparency effects, animated and wonderfully impressive scenery scrolls by smoothly, while hot music and a fantastic array of advanced weaponry creates that true arcade atmosphere right on your desktop!"

Tubular Worlds was released in two versions for Amiga 500 class machines and 1200 as well as PC and Mac versions. The difference between the two Amiga versions is mainly the higher colour count of the 1200 game and the A500 game looks dithered down. I first encountered the Mac game and played in Shapeshifter for Amiga which allows you to play the game on the desktop. The Amiga game cant do that but it is notable for allowing you to hd install the game. It does not seem to take any advantage of the 1200s 2mb of ram, nothing is cached and loading times from floppy are atrocious. (Which I've cut out for this video)

Turbular worlds is quite an average shooter and very accessible on the easy and normal levels. It can be frustrating hard as there are so many enemy projectiles around that blend into the backgrounds they can be hard to dodge especially when multiple enemy types are firing all over the screen. You get multiple weapons which power up the more weapon powerups you collect. You do lose the lot if you die though which can be a problem. Destroying enemies will drop blue orbs which again can blend to much into the background and especially with enemy projectiles. Collecting a hundred of these will award a shield and each shield can absorb one hit. Later you can collect a forward facing shield to absorb enemy shots. The levels can be quite short and end abruptly as the next part of the level is loaded in.

The overall presentation is ok with an intro and ending but they are both drawn out displaying there text over a long time. The sudden abrupt ending of levels is a bit of a let down and could have been useful as a score tally between levels. It kind of pulls you out of the rhythm when it just ends. Speaking of rhythm, we get music plus sfx which is unusual and the music isn't bad, if a little repetitive as it loops. There is a cybernoid inspired tune in there as well and Terminator vibe from the opening level.

The longplay goes through all levels at Hard difficulty. After game completion the game loops at a harder difficulty and with enemies firing three times there normal fire rate, it has gone from hard to ludicrous but at least the projectiles are easier to see now as a flashing cluster. Lets call this bullet hell mode and it's a bit of a strain on a stock Amiga 1200. I don't bother going through this mode as I have already verified (with in game cheats) that the ending is no different for completing this loop and the next.

00:00:00 Intro / Title Screen
00:02:31 2player demo
00:04:14 Level 1
00:06:50 Level 2
00:09:27 Level 3
00:12:02 Level 4
00:15:46 Level 5
00:18:24 Level 6
00:20:58 Level 7
00:23:37 Level 8
00:25:09 Level 9
00:27:44 Level 10
00:30:22 Level 11
00:32:57 Level 12
00:35:39 Level 13
00:38:17 Level 14
00:40:52 Level 15
00:43:30 Level 16
00:45:18 Ending
----------------------
00:50:55 Quick look at extra hard / Game Over