We are still waiting on a suitable Amiga AGA emulator with robust recording features before tackling such games.Gridrunner
Gridrunner, developed by Jeff Minter and published by Llamasoft in 1982.
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Player's Review
"By the year 2190 the Earth is a barren and desolate wasteland. With all natural resources used up, the human race's last hopes rest with a huge orbiting solar power station known as the GRID. Now the GRID has been invaded by a race of evil droids, intent on the total subjugation of Earth. To combat these droids, an incredibly powerful and manoeuvrable ship, the Gridrunner, was developed. Your mission: stop the droids and save the Earth! Gridrunner is an arcade game requiring 1 joystick."
Jeff Minters first release on the Commodore64 I believe. Heavily inspired by the Arcade game centipede, Gridrunner takes a fun game and adds a frustrating twist that will either have you firing the game up once, not getting to far and never play again or maybe just one more go for the score attack fanatics.
The gameplay is fairly simple. Move your grid runner around the lower levels of the grid shooting any droids that come down from the top. The droids will be working there way down to the bottom in an effort to destroy you. Bombs will randomly appear which block there path giving you some breathing room but if left they will also fall down the grid and can easily hit you. If all that sounds to easy then there are also two scrolling lasers constantly firing in an effort to ruin your day.
The game has 31 levels but realistically there was never a need for more than 10 but instead it can get dragged out for 31 whole levels. Something to aim for? Not a chance this is 1982 and games just looped and you play the last level over and over until dead. Nobody was actually expected to play long enough to reach the end.
The longplay goes through all 31 levels. There are a few deaths here and there but not much time is wasted. The video gets dragged out by the crazy long later levels. A slow fire rate doesnt help and it gets silly by the end. Around level 15 I give up attempting to play properly and cheese the remaining levels by doing the work in the left most lane where the lasers cant touch you. It still gets a bit claustrophobic mind as the droids swarm around you. Overall a good release for 1982 but the fun soon gets eroded away as there is too much working against you to want to keep coming back tot he game. It also doesnt take long for the sound to get annoying.
Jeff Minters first release on the Commodore64 I believe. Heavily inspired by the Arcade game centipede, Gridrunner takes a fun game and adds a frustrating twist that will either have you firing the game up once, not getting to far and never play again or maybe just one more go for the score attack fanatics.
The gameplay is fairly simple. Move your grid runner around the lower levels of the grid shooting any droids that come down from the top. The droids will be working there way down to the bottom in an effort to destroy you. Bombs will randomly appear which block there path giving you some breathing room but if left they will also fall down the grid and can easily hit you. If all that sounds to easy then there are also two scrolling lasers constantly firing in an effort to ruin your day.
The game has 31 levels but realistically there was never a need for more than 10 but instead it can get dragged out for 31 whole levels. Something to aim for? Not a chance this is 1982 and games just looped and you play the last level over and over until dead. Nobody was actually expected to play long enough to reach the end.
The longplay goes through all 31 levels. There are a few deaths here and there but not much time is wasted. The video gets dragged out by the crazy long later levels. A slow fire rate doesnt help and it gets silly by the end. Around level 15 I give up attempting to play properly and cheese the remaining levels by doing the work in the left most lane where the lasers cant touch you. It still gets a bit claustrophobic mind as the droids swarm around you. Overall a good release for 1982 but the fun soon gets eroded away as there is too much working against you to want to keep coming back tot he game. It also doesnt take long for the sound to get annoying.
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