Superman

Another game from 1979 and one of my earliest gaming memories.  It's not a great game, but I remember it being kinda fun.  At the beginning of the game, Lex Luthor blows up a bridge in Metropolis.  The idea then is to collect the three parts of the bridge to rebuild it and catch Luthor and his four henchmen and put them back in jail.  Making this more difficult are 3 kryptonite satellites which will keep you from flying or picking up items.  If you're touched by one then you must kiss Lois Lane, who is also wandering around, in order to regain your powers.  Random, huh?

After playing through the game once I managed to finish in 611 seconds, just over 10 minutes.  I figured, if I can get it done in half the time, 300 seconds, I would consider the game "completed".

After finishing the game a few times, I was able to complete my goal, however, it felt a little too easy.  After playing with the difficulty settings however, I found something that made it feel more satisfying.  When the "B" difficulty setting is changed Lois no longer appears near you when the satellites touch you.  Having to walk around the game looking for Lois turns a minor inconvenience into a major annoyance.

Soaring over Metropolis!

Luthor is escaping!

It took a few more playthroughs to really start to get a grasp on what the map looked like.  I found that the subway screen with the pink background was right next to the jail.  And the bridge location was down one screen and left one screen from the jail.  After figuring out a few more shortcuts like this and having a lucky break with the satellites I was finally able to beat the game again at less than 300 seconds.  My new record, 250 seconds.

 

Lois and Clark

Level complete!

Overall, the game is a bit repetitive and I can't see a lot of replay value once you've done it in as short an amount of time as you're willing to call "done".  It's fun to play a few times, but I'm pretty much done with it.  Thanks for all the happy memories Superman, it's time to retire you.

Adventure!

Let's get this thing started!  I decided to compile a master list of all the games I've played and always wanted to play.  It's a huge list and I'm going to start working my way through it from oldest to newest.

My gaming history began with the Atari 2600.  I was probably about 6 when we got one and I had probably a dozen or so games. Some of them were good, some were terrible and then there was this one, Adventure!

Let me take one second to mention how much I LOVE the old Atari box art.  There is something incredibly cool about it that I can't put my finger on... I'll try to figure it out before I exhaust my Atari playthroughs.

There are 3 difficulty levels to this game, level 1 is the easiest version with only 2 dragons, 2 castles and everything is easy to find.  Level 2 gives the full game with all three dragons, all three castles, invisible labyrinths and the Bat.  You could probably call level 2 the "official, complete game".  Level 3 takes things a bit further and gives you the complete game, but randomizes the location of all the objects.  I'm not sure if that means that there's a possibility of impossible combinations, i.e. the white key inside the white castle, etc.). But it adds a ton of replayability to the game.

I decided that "officially completing" this game would entail beating the game once each on levels 1 and 2 and 5 times on level 3.

I have to say, level 1 was a breeze, but level 2 was harder than I thought it would be.  The stupid Bat kept switching things around on me.  One time he stole my sword, leaving me a live dragon and another time he stole my bridge leaving me trapped in a wall.  There was, of course, a lot of getting eaten by dragons.


Overall, I loved playing this game again.  It didn't take long to get the hang of it, but the randomness of the hardest difficulty made it a lot of fun.  There were several times that I was being chased around the screens by two or three dragons and I was desperately looking for the sword.  So much fun!

Starting my quest!	AAA!  Don't eat me!
That's one dead duck, uh, dragon.	The forbidding, black castle.