Batalyx
Batalyx, developed by Jeff Minter, published by llamasoft and distributed by Ariolasoft in 1985.
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Player's Review
"A mighty Empire. A darkened Galaxy. Thus was the situation with the combined might of the Irata/Zzyaxian empire enslaving sentient life across known space. Barely a free world glimmered in that evil night. Not many-but to those that believed, enough....
BATALYX is a game system. That is, a collection of six sub-games linked in such a way that the player can, at any time, jump from one game to another. The aim of the player is to do the best he can within each subgame, adding to a common score held between all the games"
The box says it all. A collection of six minigames that can be switched between on the fly. The challenge comes from the time limit that is set by the difficulty level at the start with one being a hour, two half an hour and five, five minutes. Each game has a competition icon to unlock being completing enough levels in a given game. One they are all unlocked play continues until the timer runs out allowing for further scoring. Each game is unique and ever game gets progressively more difficult as the timer runs down so there is decisions to make in that the more challenging levels are best played first. A sixth mode is also included which is just a play thing for dragging colour effects around the screen, similar to the pause mode in Iridis Alpha and the timer does not progress while in this mode.
Overall its a pretty decent collection of mini games full of the usual strobing effects and odd ball sprites typical of llamasoft games. Iridis base is probably the standout game but is only one level. I quite like the effect of showing you riding on the back of the camel and can see that there would have been scope for some kind of shoot em up game play with the pyramid getting larger as you get closer, kind of like aztec challenge but now my imagination is running away with me.
A brief run down of the game from the manual:-
1. 1: Hallucin-O-Bomblets
You control a little robot droid attacking the Hallu...ok let's call 'em aliens then. You fire by leaning the stick in the direction you want to fire. Thanks to Newton, your ship is thrust in the opposite direction to bullets you fire. Thus you steer your ship by carefully firing in the direction you don't want to go whilst simultaneously trying to blap the aliens with your bullets. Each time you blap an alien with a bullet, you get a little square added to the tally at the bottom of the screen. If you should blap an alien with your ship, (naughty naughty!) you have a number of squares taken off. When the tally reaches the right-hand-side of the screen, it resets and you get a bonus and half the Completion Icon. Thus you need to do it twice to gain the full Icon.
2: AMC II
I'm sure this will need no introduction. Attack the dromedroids with your ship's bullets. Repeated hits on the camels weaken and eventually destroy them (strength being shown by the colour of each camel on the scanner). Hits on your ship by camel's bullets, or by flying into the camels, reduce your shields. You can get by a camel's legs if you fly low. The camels march towards the right hand side of the scanner. If they reach it they are 'taken up' and an extra beast is added to the number remaining. Your objective is to destroy all the dromedroids within the level, then warp to the next level. You get one quarter of the completion icon following a successful warp, but only if you cleared all the camels. Thus, you must clear 4 different levels to get the whole Icon. If you run out of shields, you are chucked down one level.
3: The Activation of Iridis Base
You are sitting on the back of this Mutant Camel, see, riding towards Iridis Base and attempting to activate it by displaying a carefully-vectored trail of phosphenes. Very simple, basically. Watch the Vector Indicator. The 9 pixels represent the 8 joystick directions and the FIRE button in the middle. The Indicator feeds you a vector, and you must respond with your joystick as fast as you can react. Your reaction time is measured and points awarded for being quick. Each time you're too slow, you lose a phosphene from the trail. If you lose all six you must do the sequence again. You have to do 100- step sequences; for each phosphene you bring through to the end of the sequence, you get one layer of the pyramid illuminated. When all levels are done you get your completion icon and the pyramid lights up.
4: Cippy on the Run
Cippy runs along a grey corridor. Wherever he walks, bands of rainbow light appear. The objective is to paint all the walls with colour. There are hostile spheres, however. They don't affect Cippy, but they change the colour of the wall sections wherever they hit. If Cippy walks on one of 'he changed sections then strange things happen; he may be inverted, or made to jump, or teleported, or his grav changed, depending on the colour of the changed panel. Cippy fires out a stream of bullets which may be used to blap the spheres. A scanner below the screen shows progress. You have to paint in all the grey bits allowing the spheres to claim as few bits as possible. Each complete corridor you do, you get a quarter of the Completion Icon. Every two phases there are Bonus Runs, with no spheres and a psychedelic Cippy.
5: Syncro II
Here you see spheres bouncing about over a grid of coloured squares. By moving the joystick you can select any square you like. (The selected square is bracketed by flashing grey). If you press the button and move the stick, the selected square can be made to 'rotate'. All squares of the selected colour assume such rotation.
The objective is to make all the spheres on the grid stop dead. The spheres velocities are modified by the rotation of any square they pass over. Thus, to halt a sphere, you cause it to pass over a square you've set up with a velocity exactly opposite to that of the sphere.
Halted spheres stay halted a finite length of time; eventually they drift, so don't hang about. Once all spheres are stopped, you get a bonus and go to the next level. Completing all 8 levels gives you the whole completion icon. On later levels you encounter invisible squares, too. These may be used just like normal ones; just that you can't see them!
6: Psychedelia
Well I was going to put a PAUSE mode in, but this is much better. When you need to, drop into SUB6 and relax. The timer stops and you can stay in the subgame until you've got your head together enough to play on. The controls are a subset of real PSYCHEDELIA, allowing S-symmetry change and C-cursor speed. You can also use f1 and shift-f1 to change fore- and background colours.
BATALYX is a game system. That is, a collection of six sub-games linked in such a way that the player can, at any time, jump from one game to another. The aim of the player is to do the best he can within each subgame, adding to a common score held between all the games"
The box says it all. A collection of six minigames that can be switched between on the fly. The challenge comes from the time limit that is set by the difficulty level at the start with one being a hour, two half an hour and five, five minutes. Each game has a competition icon to unlock being completing enough levels in a given game. One they are all unlocked play continues until the timer runs out allowing for further scoring. Each game is unique and ever game gets progressively more difficult as the timer runs down so there is decisions to make in that the more challenging levels are best played first. A sixth mode is also included which is just a play thing for dragging colour effects around the screen, similar to the pause mode in Iridis Alpha and the timer does not progress while in this mode.
Overall its a pretty decent collection of mini games full of the usual strobing effects and odd ball sprites typical of llamasoft games. Iridis base is probably the standout game but is only one level. I quite like the effect of showing you riding on the back of the camel and can see that there would have been scope for some kind of shoot em up game play with the pyramid getting larger as you get closer, kind of like aztec challenge but now my imagination is running away with me.
A brief run down of the game from the manual:-
1. 1: Hallucin-O-Bomblets
You control a little robot droid attacking the Hallu...ok let's call 'em aliens then. You fire by leaning the stick in the direction you want to fire. Thanks to Newton, your ship is thrust in the opposite direction to bullets you fire. Thus you steer your ship by carefully firing in the direction you don't want to go whilst simultaneously trying to blap the aliens with your bullets. Each time you blap an alien with a bullet, you get a little square added to the tally at the bottom of the screen. If you should blap an alien with your ship, (naughty naughty!) you have a number of squares taken off. When the tally reaches the right-hand-side of the screen, it resets and you get a bonus and half the Completion Icon. Thus you need to do it twice to gain the full Icon.
2: AMC II
I'm sure this will need no introduction. Attack the dromedroids with your ship's bullets. Repeated hits on the camels weaken and eventually destroy them (strength being shown by the colour of each camel on the scanner). Hits on your ship by camel's bullets, or by flying into the camels, reduce your shields. You can get by a camel's legs if you fly low. The camels march towards the right hand side of the scanner. If they reach it they are 'taken up' and an extra beast is added to the number remaining. Your objective is to destroy all the dromedroids within the level, then warp to the next level. You get one quarter of the completion icon following a successful warp, but only if you cleared all the camels. Thus, you must clear 4 different levels to get the whole Icon. If you run out of shields, you are chucked down one level.
3: The Activation of Iridis Base
You are sitting on the back of this Mutant Camel, see, riding towards Iridis Base and attempting to activate it by displaying a carefully-vectored trail of phosphenes. Very simple, basically. Watch the Vector Indicator. The 9 pixels represent the 8 joystick directions and the FIRE button in the middle. The Indicator feeds you a vector, and you must respond with your joystick as fast as you can react. Your reaction time is measured and points awarded for being quick. Each time you're too slow, you lose a phosphene from the trail. If you lose all six you must do the sequence again. You have to do 100- step sequences; for each phosphene you bring through to the end of the sequence, you get one layer of the pyramid illuminated. When all levels are done you get your completion icon and the pyramid lights up.
4: Cippy on the Run
Cippy runs along a grey corridor. Wherever he walks, bands of rainbow light appear. The objective is to paint all the walls with colour. There are hostile spheres, however. They don't affect Cippy, but they change the colour of the wall sections wherever they hit. If Cippy walks on one of 'he changed sections then strange things happen; he may be inverted, or made to jump, or teleported, or his grav changed, depending on the colour of the changed panel. Cippy fires out a stream of bullets which may be used to blap the spheres. A scanner below the screen shows progress. You have to paint in all the grey bits allowing the spheres to claim as few bits as possible. Each complete corridor you do, you get a quarter of the Completion Icon. Every two phases there are Bonus Runs, with no spheres and a psychedelic Cippy.
5: Syncro II
Here you see spheres bouncing about over a grid of coloured squares. By moving the joystick you can select any square you like. (The selected square is bracketed by flashing grey). If you press the button and move the stick, the selected square can be made to 'rotate'. All squares of the selected colour assume such rotation.
The objective is to make all the spheres on the grid stop dead. The spheres velocities are modified by the rotation of any square they pass over. Thus, to halt a sphere, you cause it to pass over a square you've set up with a velocity exactly opposite to that of the sphere.
Halted spheres stay halted a finite length of time; eventually they drift, so don't hang about. Once all spheres are stopped, you get a bonus and go to the next level. Completing all 8 levels gives you the whole completion icon. On later levels you encounter invisible squares, too. These may be used just like normal ones; just that you can't see them!
6: Psychedelia
Well I was going to put a PAUSE mode in, but this is much better. When you need to, drop into SUB6 and relax. The timer stops and you can stay in the subgame until you've got your head together enough to play on. The controls are a subset of real PSYCHEDELIA, allowing S-symmetry change and C-cursor speed. You can also use f1 and shift-f1 to change fore- and background colours.
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