Page 40 - OSG Presents Classic Gamer Magazine #5

blame Harris for Type & Tell's dis- as two letters - wave 1 = letter A,
jointed speech. "I only contributed wave 26 = letter Z. So if you had a
some technical capabilities to this one. perfect game up to level 26, you'd see
Prior to this cartridge, you generally ZZ, but if you had a few waves where
didn't see more than twenty or so char- you lost some bees, you might see
acters on an Odyssey screen. I fig- something like ZT. The vice president
ured out how to get 96 characters up over our group thought that was
there." "teaching people base 26," and I was
But the Voice managed to sound forced to change it. So the released
much better in other games, which version has two digits for the attack
raised the question of its split person- wave, and you have to figure out how
ality. "The robot-like voice was done you’re doing on the bonus.”
completely with phoneme-based text- “By the way, that's why there are
to-speech. The other voice was pre- only 26 waves in Killer Bees,” Harris
canned words. There were also a cou- reveals. “After wave 26, it goes back
ple of sound effects in there." to wave 20. Another experiment was
In fact, it was an odd sound effect a good lesson in psychology. I have
from the Voice that inspired Bob Harris always hated games in which every
to create his best game for the Odys- scoring action yields multiples of thou-
sey 2, Killer Bees. ”The idea for Killer sands or millions. The last three digits
Bees came from one of the sounds in were always zero, so it just seemed
the Voice module. It was supposed to worthless to me. During much of the
sound like a “boing,” but actually Killer Bees project, the score was
sounded like buzzing bees. If you had listed as X.XXX. In other words, you
a Voice module, you heard this sound scored in increments of thousandths
at the start of an attack wave, as your of a point. While it makes no mathe-
swarm forms, I think.” matical difference, there was some-
The Challenger Series from which thing not at all satisfying about getting
Killer Bees sprang was notorious for to the end of the game and saying
basing its games on familiar arcade ‘Yeah! I scored 3!’ So I took out the
staples, but making them different don't know if War Room players decimal point. It was a humbling reali-
enough to avoid legal trouble (with the caught on to the fact that they can pro- zation.”
exception of Ed Averett’s K.C. Munchkin, duce laser fuel.” The traditional process of the Od-
which drew an Atari look-and-feel law- But not everyone, it seems, “got” yssey designers playing and offer-
suit). But was Killer Bees designed to be Killer Bees. “One experimental ing suggestions on each other’s
similar to a coin-op title? “Everything was thing I did was also probably lost on games yielded some valuable addi-
trying to duplicate the feel of the arcade players,” Harris admits. “At least I know tions to Killer Bees as well. “The portals
game Centipede. I definitely wanted that when Bob (Burt?) Hochberg called at the screen edge, where the bad
something fast paced. A good player can (he was doing a review of it for Games swarms form, was Rex [Battenberg]'s
polish off some of the early Killer Bees Magazine), he hadn't noticed it. Most idea, I think. Or maybe it was a result of
waves in a few seconds. One of the people think you only have one life in Kil- a bad experience he had playing an early
things I liked in Centipede was that a ler Bees, that as soon as the bad swarm version. I think the swarms just appeared
smart player could make use of the pat- touches you, you're dead, game over. in the portal and immediately came out,
terned behavior of the centipede to force That's not true, though. You have twelve and this nailed Rex's swarm and he
it into a channel of mushrooms and pick it bees in your swarm at the start of each swore several times at the top of his
off easily. The corresponding concept in wave, and you lose bees while you are in lungs. His point was he didn't have any
Killer Bees was the predictable behavior contact with a bad swarm. So if you are chance to avoid them. My counterpoint
of the robots. A robot either always only in contact briefly, you'll lose a couple was that you shouldn't sit near those por-
turned left, or he always turned right. bees. If you sit there and let them swarm tals! But after a while, I realized it'd be
You could take advantage of this by kill- over you, I think you lose your whole better if the swarm sat in the portal for a
ing a robot or two in the right place, which swarm in about a half second. I think it's while so you'd have a chance to see it.
forced another robot into a tight loop, actually possible to fly right through a bad The bug zapper was Sam Overton's idea,
making it easier to kill. Or at least that swarm and not lose all your bees.” and I think it helped the game. When
was my theory. I'm not sure if any play- And if you thought Nimble Numbers there are no other sound effects going
ers ever caught on to that. Similarly, I NED was the only educational game Har- on, there's sort of a heartbeat. That was
ris programmed for the Odyssey 2, think the VP's idea. He insisted that the main
again – Killer Bees reason Pac-Man was successful was the
nearly contained a cou- repetitive sound. He might be right, but
ple of interesting lessons the heartbeat in Killer Bees would have
in math. “At the end of a been more useful if I had more than one
round, you get a bonus voice.”
for each bee you have
left. And each time you
make it through a wave Next Month: Part 2 of Earl Green’s
without losing any bees, interview with Bob Harris.
the bonus multiplier in-
creases. This was
something I borrowed
from the classic pinball
machines. Through
most of the development,
both the bonus level and
the wave were displayed
Killer Bees
Classic Gamer Magazine December 2000 40