You may have noticed that in this little intro section for these posts I sometimes like to give a background of the game in hand. Whether that’s on the development of the game, or it’s journey to my collection, I’ve always have a habit of ‘setting the scene’ and I hope you’ll indulge me at least one more time:
I first came to own this game, and a Commodore Amiga, when an old work colleague asked if I’d like some old computers he had, as he was clearing out to move abroad.
These ‘old computers’ turned out to be an Atari 400 and an Amiga 500.
In the collection of software for latter was, of course, Crack Down.
It was never my intention but I actually ended up selling both machines.
The Atari was non-functional beyond my skills to repair, but the Amiga 500 was just too big for any of the 4 different games rooms I’d had set up while I owned it, so I sold it and used the proceeds to pay for repairs to an Amiga 600 I had picked up for a tenner at a boot sale in the intervening years.
Crack Down (I feel obliged to point out that there is no relationship to the modern Crackdown series) is a conversion of a 1989 Sega arcade game, it was never particularly popular, but still managed to get ports to most of the home consoles and computers of the era.
You control one of two characters, Andy or Ben, from a vaguely isometric but mostly top-down perspective as they work their way around a mazey map planting bombs before making their escape - It's very much an iteration on the classic ‘Gauntlet’ formula.
An innovation offered in this game is that the characters have the ability to ‘sneak’, pressing themselves against a wall and inching towards enemies, but in practice I rarely found this of any value.
There’s a large, real time, ‘scanner’ view of the whole area at the top of the screen, which is of much more practical use. It show’s all enemies, the locations that the bombs need to be placed, ammunition, and the all important exit.
Giving the accuracy of this additional importance, is the fact that the in game view is absolutely tiny.
Crack Down prioritises it’s two-player mode, giving each participant their own view so that each can explore the labyrinthine maps independently. In single player, the player-two part of the screen is blocked out entirely.
With the scanner and player information (lives, ammo, etc) occupying most of the top half of the screen, and the lower half divided for each player, you end up with a very small square of real estate to operate in; I have my Amiga hooked up to a 14” CRT, which meant I was actually playing on a screen no bigger than that of my mobile phone.
For the time being it’s impossible for me to know how much better Crack Down would be with a friend, but I’m concerned that as much as it might make the game a tad easier, it might just double the number of people with the same problems.
It casts my mind way back to Gaming the Pandemic Day 2.
On that far distant occasion I played Sanctum 2 for the PC, a very much co-op focused game that was more or less enjoyable on my own. That’s pretty much the case with Crack Down but, even as an arcade game, I found it to be a little on the basic side for my tastes.
I first came to own this game, and a Commodore Amiga, when an old work colleague asked if I’d like some old computers he had, as he was clearing out to move abroad.
These ‘old computers’ turned out to be an Atari 400 and an Amiga 500.
In the collection of software for latter was, of course, Crack Down.
It was never my intention but I actually ended up selling both machines.
The Atari was non-functional beyond my skills to repair, but the Amiga 500 was just too big for any of the 4 different games rooms I’d had set up while I owned it, so I sold it and used the proceeds to pay for repairs to an Amiga 600 I had picked up for a tenner at a boot sale in the intervening years.
Crack Down (I feel obliged to point out that there is no relationship to the modern Crackdown series) is a conversion of a 1989 Sega arcade game, it was never particularly popular, but still managed to get ports to most of the home consoles and computers of the era.
You control one of two characters, Andy or Ben, from a vaguely isometric but mostly top-down perspective as they work their way around a mazey map planting bombs before making their escape - It's very much an iteration on the classic ‘Gauntlet’ formula.
An innovation offered in this game is that the characters have the ability to ‘sneak’, pressing themselves against a wall and inching towards enemies, but in practice I rarely found this of any value.
There’s a large, real time, ‘scanner’ view of the whole area at the top of the screen, which is of much more practical use. It show’s all enemies, the locations that the bombs need to be placed, ammunition, and the all important exit.
Giving the accuracy of this additional importance, is the fact that the in game view is absolutely tiny.
Crack Down prioritises it’s two-player mode, giving each participant their own view so that each can explore the labyrinthine maps independently. In single player, the player-two part of the screen is blocked out entirely.
With the scanner and player information (lives, ammo, etc) occupying most of the top half of the screen, and the lower half divided for each player, you end up with a very small square of real estate to operate in; I have my Amiga hooked up to a 14” CRT, which meant I was actually playing on a screen no bigger than that of my mobile phone.
For the time being it’s impossible for me to know how much better Crack Down would be with a friend, but I’m concerned that as much as it might make the game a tad easier, it might just double the number of people with the same problems.
It casts my mind way back to Gaming the Pandemic Day 2.
On that far distant occasion I played Sanctum 2 for the PC, a very much co-op focused game that was more or less enjoyable on my own. That’s pretty much the case with Crack Down but, even as an arcade game, I found it to be a little on the basic side for my tastes.
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