Page 45 - OSG Presents Classic Gamer Magazine #5

Pressure Gauge by begin a new, and more challenging
John K. Harvey round. The target range may begin to
Platform: Atari 2600 randomly shift or blink about the
edge, making it harder to hit. Your
Genre: Reflex/reaction game rising bar may zip with blinding
Released: 1999 speed, causing you to constantly
overshoot the range. The bar may
How fast can you move? How accurate even disappear for short periods, ne-
are you when the pressure's on? Are you cessitating a blind guess.
certain? Plug this cart into your Atari and The game is simple enough, re-
test yourself! quiring only the joystick button to
John Harvey's Pressure Gauge will be play. However, in the upper levels,
the judge of how fast you can hit a specified your eyes will be bugging out of your
target in a quickly-dwindling time period. head as you try to hit the bouncing,
The screen itself is simple - only three bars. disappearing target.
The first bar rises to the top of the screen, There's a nice little title screen
and you have to hit the joystick button when the top of the bar is when the game begins, and although the game screen is pretty
within a "range" marked on the far left of the screen. If you're fast simple and there is no scoring to speak of except for "how many
enough and accurate enough, the second bar shown on the levels can you survive," this game is effectively addictive as you
screen will go up a bit as a reward. If you miss the target, the sec- try one more time to beat your last score. Anyone who's ever
ond bar will drop back down a bit. The object is to get your spent the afternoon playing "Flinch" or "Slap Hands" will want to
"scoring bar" to the top of the screen before the third and final try their reflexes on this. Your soon-to-be-frazzled nerves will
bar - the timer - ticks down from the top of the screen to the bot- thank you for the workout.
tom.
Each time you get the scoring bar to the top of the screen, you John K. Harvey has a website at: www.cs.wisc.edu/~harvey/

Dark Mage by Greg Troutman
Platform: Atari 2600
Genre: Text adventure
Released: 1997

Yes indeed, years after fantasy games like Adventure and Crypts of
Chaos have come and gone, Greg Troutman finally brings the realm of
TEXT adventures to the Atari! Get ready for an Infocom/Scott Adams
flashback you never thought you'd see!
You're placed in the role of a jester who's been ousted from his home
kingdom for accidentally losing the King's beloved black rose. To get back
into His Majesty's good graces and to be allowed back into the kingdom,
you'd better find a replacement! Wander over a colorful countryside, meet-
ing and interacting with the strange inhabitants, collecting and using items,
as you fight to get back home!
The game is played with a joystick. The upper screen tells you what you
see with each move and the bar at the bottom of the screen lists the commands at your disposal. Moving the joystick up, down, left, and
right allows you to move north, south, west, and east, respectively. Pushing the button brings up another menu of commands including
Look, Talk, Give, Take, and Inventory.
Of course the game is pretty simple to play, but winning takes a bit more thinking than is usually seen in Atari games! It's a blast to
actually try to solve the puzzles to situations you face. The troll won't let you cross the bridge, eh? What can you do to convince him?
What is the snake trying to say to you? And what's this hammer for anyway? Dark Mage comes in two versions; a 4K "mini-version" and
an 8K "director's cut," with more locations, items, and characters to meet. Greg has broken new ground with this quest and I'd love to
see more text games like this one in the future.

These homebrews (excluding Stella Sketch) are currently available on cartridge from
Randy Crihfield at Hozer Video Games, P.O. Box 1332, Pepperell, MA 01463.
Check out www.netway.com/~hozervideo/index.html for catalog and further details.

Classic Gamer Magazine December 2000 45