1980s isometric games retrospective

[Infinitron]

This article might be interesting for some of our local orthography fetishists: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...isometric-games-that-tried-to-break-the-mould

felipepepe cherry blossom

The classic 8-bit isometric games that tried to break the mould
Head over heels through the years.

The recent release of Lumo has proved there is still much love not just for retro-themed games, but also the isometric viewpoint that became popular on 8-bit computers in the mid-80s. While Lumo's creator, Gareth Noyce, freely admits to the classic Head Over Heels as a major influence, there are many other fine examples of how the genre inspired new gameplay and technological advances back in the 80s.

3D Ant Attack was one of the earliest and most significant examples of isometric games, although it wasn't until the renowned (and mysterious) software house Ultimate released Knight Lore in 1984 that they emphatically took off. Once rival developers cracked how to replicate the overlapping techniques, it was inevitable a swathe of similar games would appear, and most of them added little to the template laid down by the genre's progenitor. The ZX Spectrum in particular was inundated, but there were also many hugely influential and memorable isometric games that attempted to break the mould.

Ant Attack (Quicksilva, 1983)
USP: First major entry in the genre, scrolling landscape

Sandy White and Angela Sutherland's iconic Ant Attack took a basic premise - your partner, male or female, must be rescued from the ant city - and transformed it into an atmospheric and frantic experience. The graphical technique was dubbed 'soft solid' by White, whose chief occupation at the time was, appropriately, as a sculptor. Inspired by the movie Tron, White studied other 3D games that were on the market and set about creating his own world for the story to take place. "The biggest problem was making sure it was fast enough," the programmer told Your Spectrum magazine in 1984, "as some of the mathematical algorithms were really cumbersome." To function as a piece of entertainment, Ant Attack needed to be fast enough to keep the game tense and exciting, and fortunately, after 15 weeks of constant coding, White succeeded. It was just a shame you needed 167 keys to play it.

Knight Lore (Ultimate, 1984)
USP: Amazing graphics, innovative overlapping sprites

It may not have been the first, but there's no doubting the Stamper brothers classic is the daddy of the genre. It continued the adventures of the perennially-hassled Sabreman, who had now become afflicted with a lycanthropic curse. The only cure lay in the hands of an ancient wizard who sat wheezing in the eponymous decrepit castle, and of course there were plenty of puzzles, traps and wandering monsters to impede Sabreman's progress. Using advanced techniques, the Stampers eliminated issues that had dogged Ant Attack (smoothing out the sprites, simplifying controls and the giving the graphics a clearly-defined, almost cartoon look) and created a beautiful game that stunned press and gamers alike. Visually, nothing like it had been seen before, and Knight Lore soon beget a series of comparable efforts, not least from Ultimate themselves.

Movie (Ocean, 1986)
USP: Speech, icon-driven

Drawing on its creator's love of detective stories, Movie was the story of a down-trodden gumshoe, recruited to recover an incriminating tape from a crime lord's office. To help him was a friendly gangster's moll, although the player had to be wary of her psychotic identical twin sister. Movie's theme wasn't the only thing that set it apart; the game's engine allowed its characters to interact with comic-style speech bubbles that were vital in gaining information from NPCs, a rudimentary interrogation element that impressively consumed just 500 bytes of memory. Movie also utilised a novel icon system that, while fashionable and undeniably cool, didn't really lend itself to the style of game.

Fairlight (The Edge, 1985)
USP: Inventory management, advanced physics engine

Developed by Swedish programmer Bo Jangeborg, and developed with his own engine entitled Grax, Fairlight was set within a medieval castle, and traipsing around this lovingly-designed map was Isvar, searching desperately for the Book Of Light that would enable him to escape its ancient walls. Fairlight's puzzles often involved skilful manipulation of its many objects, each of which had its own weight and size characteristics. Combat was also key, as Isvar was frequently accosted by the castle's denizens, and there were potions and food to collect as well, making Fairlight an early entry in the action RPG genre seen so commonly today.

Nightshade (Ultimate, 1985)
USP: Scrolling, improved graphics

Alien 8 had taken the predictable step of putting Knight Lore into a sci-fi setting, using the same engine and partially developed at the same time as its famous forebear. When Ultimate unveiled this follow up, boasting a new updated engine imaginatively titled Filmation 2, expectations were high. Filmation 2 not only improved the engine's sprites - adding colour and more detail - but also included scrolling environments. While scrolling had appeared (albeit much more crudely) in Ant Attack two years earlier, Nightshade and its fellow Filmation 2 title, Gunfright, marked another impressive technical expansion of the genre, despite criticism for a lack of significant advances in terms of gameplay.

Glider Rider (Quicksilva, 1986)
USP: Use of vehicles

While it may not sit entirely comfortably with some 8-bit fans given the heavyweight company, Glider Rider was undoubtedly distinctive enough to stand out from the crowd. The setting was an artificial island, home to the nefarious Abraxas Corporation. The player could travel efficiently around the island astride a motorbike, but that didn't really help them complete the mission. Dotted around were ten reactors which had to be taken out with grenades. However, these could only be thrown from above after transforming the bike into a hang-glider, a process achieved by descending one of the island's many mountains. Original concept and gameplay aside, Glider Rider boasted a magnificent soundtrack thanks to David Whittaker and was brilliantly designed by Binary Design, aka brothers John and Ste Pickford.

The Great Escape (Ocean, 1986)
USP: Continuous world, superlative atmosphere

The Great Escape was based upon the wartime event, rather than the famous, but historically dubious, 1963 movie. Presented chiefly in stark black and white, an entirely appropriate vision of a German prisoner of war camp, the game featured a combination of scrolling and room-based environments, mixed with a tense and claustrophobic atmosphere. However, The Great Escape's finest achievement lay within its brilliant gameplay. Here was a living, working, prisoner-of-war camp where the guards patrolled incessantly, accompanied by vigilant German shepherd dogs, and every prisoner was expected to be present and correct at daily roll call and meal times. The player was required to follow this routine, while taking the occasional stroll into forbidden areas to acquire items to help them escape, and store them in a secret tunnel. The potential swag included a guard's uniform, wire cutters and chocolate bars, and different methods of escape were possible. Further, the main character's morale was vital; get banged up in solitary too many times and your POW would give up, spirit crushed and content to sit out the rest of the war in glum, hungry despair. Engrossing and technically impressive.

Hydrofool (FTL, 1987)
USP: Great sense of humour, ability to float in each screen

Having already published the isometric comic adventure Sweevo's World, Gargoyle Games produced a sequel which was to not only retain the sense of humour, but also introduce some stunning new environments and gameplay. After clearing up the world of Knutz Folly from the previous game, SWEEVO (Self Willed Extreme Environment Organism, in case you were wondering) found himself in the Deathbowl, a massive aquarium that had become so polluted, the only way to solve the problem was to drain it completely by pulling out four plugs located across the floor. Spread over 200 rooms, and seemingly unaware of the mass nautical genocide his 'cleaning' was likely to cause, SWEEVO needed to solve various puzzles in the isometric tradition. Hydrofool was the first game of its kind to take place underwater, and as such offered a variety of movement not seen before: your character, unbound by gravity could swim up and down, giving the gameplay greater depth. Together with the humour of the original, it added up to another fantastic offering from Gargoyle, or rather, its sub-label, FTL.

La Abadia Del Crimen (Opera Soft, 1987)
USP: Able to control two characters, advanced AI

La Abadia Del Crimen was originally intended to be an adaptation of Umberto Eco's novel, The Name Of The Rose, until the developers were unable to secure an official licence from the author. Undeterred, they kept the setting and rough plot intact and the result was an absorbing isometric game. The player took on the role of two characters, Franciscan friar Guillermo of Occam and his young protégée, and was able to switch between them with a single key press. Upon arriving at the eponymous religious building, the player was confronted by the abbot and asked to solve the disappearance of one of his monks; you were then free to explore, but required to heed the religious services and attend meal times. Failure to do so resulted in a loss of obsequium (Latin for obedience) and, as with The Great Escape's morale, should this reach zero then the game was over. La Abadia Del Crimen's programmer, Paco Menendez, sadly died in 1999, but he left behind a game thick with atmosphere, exceptional artificial intelligence and challenging gameplay.

Head Over Heels (Ocean, 1987)
USP: Two controllable and combinable characters with puzzles to match each character.

Buoyed by the success of their first isometric game, Batman, Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond combined once more to surpass even that classic. The inspired concept of Head Over Heels was its two main characters, separated at the beginning of the game and each with its own unique abilities. Some puzzles could only be solved by Head; some puzzles could only be solved by Heels. And some puzzles could only be conquered when the two strange creatures were combined. A hub-style gameplay, multiple paths and a wacky sense of humour inspired a generation to fall in love with the gender-neutral creatures, and it remains one of the 8-bit era's finest games.

Notable mentions: Quazatron (Hewson, 1986), Get Dexter (PSS, 1986), Inside Outing (The Edge, 1988)

 

[Severian Silk]

Some systems had non-square pixels, which would affect the exact dimensions and angles of the graphics. The article fails to mention this.

 

[Neanderthal]

I seem to remember playin a Batman game wi same kinda engine back in day.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

I seem to remember playin a Batman game wi same kinda engine back in day.

Check out the Head over Heels section.

 

[Shackleton]

The overriding feature I remember about all these isometric games I played on my old spectrum was the incredible unforgiving difficulty of them. I remember one called 'Quazatron' with particular fondness as it was about the only one I ever felt I made significant progress on. Most of them had no save feature at all and usually around 3 lives with which to complete the whole game. Bearing in mind any screen could have several ways to kill you just walking across it and the game usually made a selling point of how big it was, I fail to see any way that anyone legitimately completed any of them. The jumps required pixel perfect positioning and the perspective made each one a gamble. Batman, Head over heels, Underworld, all of them were as hard as a rock and just as interesting to play around with.

The addition of a 'save on room entry' would have made them about a million times better, if such a thing were possible back then. I look back on these games not with fondness but with relief they've gone, personally.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

The addition of a 'save on room entry' would have made them about a million times better, if such a thing were possible back then. I look back on these games not with fondness but with relief they've gone, personally.

Don't forget that back then the only alternative entertainment was reading a book after a hard day of working down t' mine. Children played games repeatedly until they beat them and then played them more to get a higher score. If you can complete a game first time through, saving every screen, then what else do you have to do until you can afford another one? The challenge was part of the game.

Incidentally, to give a complete lie to the above statement, I enjoyed Spindizzy, which had a ridiculous time limit, and could never get anywhere near completing it without hacking the timer. Great game, though!

 

[pippin]

You can play a version of The Abbey of Crime for free here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/474030/

 

[Shackleton]

The addition of a 'save on room entry' would have made them about a million times better, if such a thing were possible back then. I look back on these games not with fondness but with relief they've gone, personally.

Don't forget that back then the only alternative entertainment was reading a book after a hard day of working down t' mine. Children played games repeatedly until they beat them and then played them more to get a higher score. If you can complete a game first time through, saving every screen, then what else do you have to do until you can afford another one? The challenge was part of the game.

Incidentally, to give a complete lie to the above statement, I enjoyed Spindizzy, which had a ridiculous time limit, and could never get anywhere near completing it without hacking the timer. Great game, though!

That's not the way I remember it. It's all subjective of course, but the games I look back on with happiness from my first foray into gaming with my Spectrum+ are the ones I feel I achieved something each time I managed to get it loaded up. Elite, Kevin Tom's Football Manager (god I will never forget that bloke's name), Microprose's Gunship and Bard's Tale I. There were lots of others of course, but Batman, Head over Heels, Knight Lore etc I just feel some level of bitterness even now that they were such a frustrating experience I didn't enjoy them and just wasted my time because all the mags said how 'awesome' they were.

Yeah, yeah, 'git gud' and all that but when you're a 12-15 year old boy, there's no internet and only a copy of 'Crash' to try and help you through them it was never going to end with me manfully struggling onwards until I finally beat them. It ended with me chucking the tape in the drawer and browsing the budget 1.99 Mastertronic range in Boots looking for a cheap game to play until the next AAA bollox came along. Very similar to now and the Steam sales tbh.

God, too many memories in this post. Where's the 'old fart' smilie?

Sorry Tommy, you'll have to do.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

That's not the way I remember it. It's all subjective of course, but the games I look back on with happiness from my first foray into gaming with my Spectrum+ are the ones I feel I achieved something each time I managed to get it loaded up. Elite, Kevin Tom's Football Manager (god I will never forget that bloke's name), Microprose's Gunship and Bard's Tale I. There were lots of others of course, but Batman, Head over Heels, Knight Lore etc I just feel some level of bitterness even now that they were such a frustrating experience I didn't enjoy them and just wasted my time because all the mags said how 'awesome' they were.

Yes, those kind of hard work games were never my thing either - I preferred slower moving games like some you mentioned and naturally RPGs. But most of my friends did like them, and so did most young gamers at the time. I never worked out how they had the patience for it.

Get of my lawn, etc...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

First question: What the hell does "USP" mean?

I've personally played 4 of these games to some extent (Knight Lore, The Great Escape, Hydrofool and Head Over Heels) and completed the last 3 of them (eat it Shackleton ). I've never heard of Movies nor Fairlight, but Fairlight sounds like it deserves a place on this list.

This article is clearly the work of someone who, at best, was born during the era of these games and hasn't really played any of them himself, only researched them online and maybe tested them on an emulator. I'll admit that I still haven't had a chance to play Get Dexter! (it's on my To Do list) but I think it should be on there. Another isometric game that deserves a place on that list is The Land That Time Forgot/When Time Stood Still, which uses the same engine as The Great Escape and is possibly one of the first survival (horror) games ever made.

Meanwhile, Hydrofool does not deserve a place on that list. That "ability to float in each screen" bit? There are pockets of air found on some screens that spawn bubbles, floating above one of them so that you "ride" the bubble sends you up into the air a set distance (from just a short height all the way up to the screen above!) but once you leave that square you start to float back down again. And these bubbles aren't on every screen, so on that point the author is talking with his arse.

But if there's one game that does NOT deserve to be there (and good to know it isn't), it's the Batman game. That game is one massive troll, as I brought up last year, and quote below:

The first Batman video game ever made ("Batman '3D'" by Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond) is one endless barrage of cheesy trolling from the devs. We're talking I Wanna Be The Guy! levels of cheese here. Let me give you a couple of examples:

This is one of the first screens of the game, and a vital one as the first part of the game involves Batman gathering his gear. The boots on the right allow Batman to jump, which is the only way he'll be able to get back up to the grey conveyor-belt platforms you see (not to mention allowing Batman to go "against the flow" on such platforms. That grey baddie walks up and down the blue bricks, back and forth, nothing more, but as much as touching him costs Batman a life.

So how do you solve this room?

Well obviously, you use the blue bricks that jut out from the path to stand and wait while the patrolling baddie walks past...and here is where one of MANY trollings take place. The first blue brick, right next to the conveyor belt (and almost completely obscured by Batman's presence) is perfectly normal and harmless. The second one, however, disappears with a *POOF!* and causes Batman to fall to the spiked floor below, costing him a life. The third tile doesn't disappear - it's a hidden conveyor belt that pushes Batman back onto the path! So the correct answer is to stand on the first block, wait until the baddie is walking back towards the boots, then walk behind him on the path until you reach the third block, then step onto that and KEEP WALKING ONTO IT. That way Batman should be out of harm's way when the baddie turns around and walks past. Repeat the process to get back and out. Fortunately the boots only need to be grabbed once.

Not enough? Try this screen:

Those pink dogs patrol in a clockwise direction, always turning right when they hit a wall or object. Touching them costs Batman a life. But see all those green blocks? Touching them ALSO costs Batman a life! Batman can't touch ANYTHING in this room or he'll lose a life, yet he needs to navigate around an object in a tight space, while having a funky-looking dog on his heels. This screen is about 2 screens away from the previous screen I showcased, and is a common layout for many other screens you'll encounter in the game.

Keep in mind that at this point we're not even out of the Bat-Cave yet - and the game revolves around finding the 7 parts of the Batmobile so that Batman can go rescue Robin! Fortunately their next game, Head Over Heels, is MUCH more forgiving than this.

So yeah - I'm calling slight BS on the article, but otherwise it's a nice little walk down memory lane.

 

[DwarvenFood]

First question: What the hell does "USP" mean?

Unique Selling Point.


Argh fuck, you made me throw up in my mouth now...

 

[Siobhan]

So I guess these games provided the blueprint for Software Creation's Solstice on the NES? It's uncanny how similar some of the sprites are, in particular Head over Heels and the Batman game.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So I guess these games provided the blueprint for Software Creation's Solstice on the NES? It's uncanny how similar some of the sprites are, in particular Head over Heels and the Batman game.

Correct. Head Over Heels quickly became the de facto king of isometric games on the 8-bit computers, and every game released after that was compared to it, or "borrowed" (more like stole in the case of Solstice) elements from it.

Isometric games managed to evolve somewhat on the 16-bit computers (with Cadaver by The Bitmap Brothers being a notable example) but with the arrival of first-perspective games and more powerful hardware the genre (if it could be called that) kinda died out. The last game I know that actually used the perspective with a straight face was a indie title from 2007 called Mr. Robot.

 

[sser]

I don't think I've heard of any of those games.

When I think of 1980s isometric, all I know of is Marble Madness which we used to play on an Amiga. I wasn't even aware graphics like that went that far back, and then I looked it up and saw Marble Madness first released in 1984

 

[Severian Silk]

There's probably a Marble Madness (or clone) for every platform.

 

[Old One]

Q*bert came out in 1982, followed shortly after by home computer and Atari 2600 versions.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Q*bert came out in 1982, followed shortly after by home computer and Atari 2600 versions.

Yes, but Q*bert is not an isometric game in the same sense as the others. The other games feature either vast areas which scroll about, or the ability to travel between screens. Q*bert is just the one static screen with the same static level layout.

Not that makes Q*bert a bad game - it's just not comparable to the others.

 

[Gauldur's Bait]

Would the Last Ninja qualify? That, and its sequels were amazing back in the day (and still are). And parts of the gameplay of Infiltrator were also isometric.

 

[Old One]

Not that makes Q*bert a bad game - it's just not comparable to the others.

True, although I don't believe the article specified scrolling. It's just "classic 8-bit isometric games that tried to break the mould."

Whether Q*bert broke any moulds or not is a matter of opinion, I guess.

I see one of the commentors mentioned Zaxxon, which also came out in 1982. That was isometric and scrolling, FWIW.

NOTE: I played a lot of Q*bert and Zaxxon when I was a wee lad.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

True. Though I get where the author of the article is coming from, he clearly is forgetting that before the home computers and their isometric extravaganzas, there were arcade games doing the same thing.

 

[octavius]

I remember Ant Attack, but alas I never got to play it.

Tried Knight Lore, but it was frightfully difficult.

Loved Fairlight; some of the best sound and graphics of any Spectrum game, with gameplay to match, and I managed to finish it. Tried Fairlight 2 some years ago, but alas too many Spectrum games are unplayable with emulator due to the weird UI (also my fingers are 30 years old than in my Speccy days).

Great Escape was perhaps the only Ocean game I comtemplated buying.

Sweevos's World, made my my my favourite designers Gargoyle Games , should have been included on the list, I think (never played it):

EDTI: Uh, just noticed the sequel was listed.