We are still waiting on a suitable Amiga AGA emulator with robust recording features before tackling such games.Ancipital
Ancipital, developed by Jeff Minter and published by Llamasoft in 1984.
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Player's Review
"The Anciptital is trapped in a 10 x 10 maze of interconnecting rooms, each inhabited by the freakiest collection of hostiles since 'Revenge'. Fast blasting and quick thinking are required to get through. Collect the six Key Camels and the five Goats of Power as you travel. Frantic, psychedelic, cybernetic and pseudo- gravitic, Ancipital is an adventure for blast 'em up fiends who hate adventures."
Like pretty much all of Jeff Minters games, it has a wacky aesthetic that makes it stand out and that includes wacky headache inducing strobing effects. And just like all his other games, designed from the outset to be as frustrating as possible with the sole aim of going as far as you can for a highscore. In nearly all the games, it is not enough to simply avoid the enemy as you have energy sapping time limits working against you as well. The only saving grace here is that you have a bunch of lives to start out with. In this game there are a couple of ways to die not least by getting hit by enemies which can frustratingly track you but also you energy is constantly draining and when it hits zero ..boom! When jumping and turning its so easy to get the timing wrong and fly into a wall facing the wrong way ... boom! The game being so fast it can all get quite manic and cause you to errantly crash into something and .. boom!
Now with my frustrations out of the way, the plays like a shootemup in the sense that you just blast everything to win, except you also have to do it in such a way that reveals the doors to other nearby rooms. The longplay shows playing through all 100 rooms. At the start of each room I reveal the clue that gives you an idea how to beat the room. Each room requires you to survive for 16 seconds before any doors open. Not long right? When under constant attack it can be frustrating to find the door in the opening seconds which gives you a bit of an energy boost and then those remaining seconds are fight for survival as your energy drains away. Each room has arrows at the top of the screen showing what doors are available and these change colour showing how much more damage you need to do to reveal the door. A camel shows where you need to collect a camel key to proceed further into the maze. The keys are placed elsewhere in the maze and are coloured to show which camel door they open. Collecting a key also rewards a few extra lives.
Also in the maze are goats of power to find and collect. You need all five of them and once you have the power, you can jump between walls to damage them which can save some time and is required to get through some rooms as you approach the end of the game. It is a good idea to try and open all doors in a room before leaving it as if you don't and go back through it later the room will be cleared with no way to open other doors.
The option is then to continue around the maze and open it through another adjoining room or you can self destruct which will open the door whilst costing you a life. if you are already near death then its no big loss to destruct. Overall a good game for 1984 that's not really copying anything else at the time. It could have been a whole lot less frustrating though by simply removing energy drain over time.
In game keys:-
H = Reveal clue
B = Bomb (Destruct)
Like pretty much all of Jeff Minters games, it has a wacky aesthetic that makes it stand out and that includes wacky headache inducing strobing effects. And just like all his other games, designed from the outset to be as frustrating as possible with the sole aim of going as far as you can for a highscore. In nearly all the games, it is not enough to simply avoid the enemy as you have energy sapping time limits working against you as well. The only saving grace here is that you have a bunch of lives to start out with. In this game there are a couple of ways to die not least by getting hit by enemies which can frustratingly track you but also you energy is constantly draining and when it hits zero ..boom! When jumping and turning its so easy to get the timing wrong and fly into a wall facing the wrong way ... boom! The game being so fast it can all get quite manic and cause you to errantly crash into something and .. boom!
Now with my frustrations out of the way, the plays like a shootemup in the sense that you just blast everything to win, except you also have to do it in such a way that reveals the doors to other nearby rooms. The longplay shows playing through all 100 rooms. At the start of each room I reveal the clue that gives you an idea how to beat the room. Each room requires you to survive for 16 seconds before any doors open. Not long right? When under constant attack it can be frustrating to find the door in the opening seconds which gives you a bit of an energy boost and then those remaining seconds are fight for survival as your energy drains away. Each room has arrows at the top of the screen showing what doors are available and these change colour showing how much more damage you need to do to reveal the door. A camel shows where you need to collect a camel key to proceed further into the maze. The keys are placed elsewhere in the maze and are coloured to show which camel door they open. Collecting a key also rewards a few extra lives.
Also in the maze are goats of power to find and collect. You need all five of them and once you have the power, you can jump between walls to damage them which can save some time and is required to get through some rooms as you approach the end of the game. It is a good idea to try and open all doors in a room before leaving it as if you don't and go back through it later the room will be cleared with no way to open other doors.
The option is then to continue around the maze and open it through another adjoining room or you can self destruct which will open the door whilst costing you a life. if you are already near death then its no big loss to destruct. Overall a good game for 1984 that's not really copying anything else at the time. It could have been a whole lot less frustrating though by simply removing energy drain over time.
In game keys:-
H = Reveal clue
B = Bomb (Destruct)
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