Page 15 - OSG Presents Classic Gamer Magazine #5

ickman
oon Cresta
K Kickman M Moon Cresta
Featuring a Fea-
turing a cameo
appearance by
Pac-Man and the
monsters, this
lost Bally/Midway treasure is one of my favorites (except for its controller: a lateral
trakball, which only moves left or right!). As a pointy-headed clown, you maneuver
a unicycle across the bottom of the screen, trying to catch or pop falling balloons,
monsters, or Pac-Men on your head. If
you miss one, try to kick it with your
oversized clown shoes. The item will
bounce upward, giving you another
chance to try and catch it, or kick it
again. But the law of diminishing re-
turns soon kicks in as well: while the
kicked item bounces upward, another
item falls from the top of the screen. If
you miss even one, you lose a "life."
Cheerful calliope music tinkles away in
the background, and every so often This is an example of the YASIC principle
you'll get to play a "challenge rack," in (Yet Another Space Invaders Clone) that
which you must catch balloons and dominated many video games between
avoid bombs. Why people in high-rises 1979 and 1981. This shooter from Nichi-
would lob bombs at unsuspecting, inno- butsu (the makers of Crazy Climber) has
cent, unicycle-riding clowns, I'll never been seen in the U.S. both with its original
know. (Then again, they may have title and in a Centuri-licensed version with
seen a news bulletin about Mr. Do! and different graphics and sounds under the
assumed the worst.) name Eagle. Though it’s incredibly tough
to beat – the life expectancy of your first
eactor
R Reactor “life” is probably somewhere around 30
seconds – Moon Cresta has some very
weird (but somehow cool) sound effects,
Gottlieb's classic bit of arcade ab- and a novel approach to letting the player
stracta, this trakball-driven Tim know how many “lives” remain. The
Skelly game sports one of the most player’s spaceship is presented as a three-
bizarre game premises this side of stage rocket, the top stage of which sepa-
Qix. It pits you as a mobile… rates to play the first level. If you complete
something...trying to slam particles a few levels, you’ll have the opportunity to
into the walls or control rods of a perform a sometimes tricky docking ma-
nuclear reactor, and sets the whole neuver with the next stage of your rocket,
thing to something not unlike syn- which will also give you more firepower (à
thesized hard rock. The level of la recapturing your ship in Galaga). If, on
difficulty increases exponentially, the other hand, you get your butt blown to
the strategic placement of your two bits, the remaining stages of the rocket will
decoys per level becomes ever appear, and the next stage down will sepa-
more critical, and eventually even rate for your next round. When all three
the reactor itself isn't shielded. stages of the rocket have been destroyed,
This creates a gravity source that can draw your…something…to its death just as the game is over. I thought that aspect,
easily as the pesky particles. There's something compelling and addictive about and the wild variety of fast-moving ene-
this game, and yet at best it was a sleeper hit. Just as the Star Wars films were mies waiting to be gunned down, were
perpetuated, in part, by the plastic replicas of Luke, Darth Vader, and R2-D2, some really cool elements of this game.
video games were immortalized by decent home versions. Unfortunately, no such
animal existed for Reactor, whose Atari 2600 edition (released by Parker Bros.) was
barely playable. Again, a good bet with MAME - your mouse makes a good upside-
down trakball, and even the speech synthesis is emulated.

So there they are, five of my favorite relics. As hard as it is to find an actual work-
ing Defender cabinet, you’ll have an even harder time trying to find one of these in
an arcade, or trying to add a machine in decent condition to your collection if
you’re stockpiling real live working coin-ops.

Classic Gamer Magazine December 2000 15