Did you know there are only seventeen games for the NES ‘Zapper’ accessory? That’s sixteen games that no-one has ever played because they aren’t ‘Duck Hunt’.
It’s never really occurred to me before but when playing a light-gun game it’s usually the case that the human player represents a human character.
And it’s a good job too, as with just four levels on offer, the level of challenge is necessary to ensure longevity. A complete and successful playthrough would take about twenty minutes, but many hours of practice and failed attempts will be under your belt before there’s any chance of that happening. Luckily, everything about To the Earth makes it a ‘just one more go’ game, rather than a ‘throw your toy gun at screen’ one.
Okay. That’s not fair.
I know there are fans out there of ‘Wild Gunman’, ‘Gum Shoe’, ‘Hogan’s Alley’, ‘Operation Wolf’, and ‘Freedom Force’. And a lot of people know of ‘Bayou Billy’, and ‘Barker Bill’.
But I reckon that about does it for the Zapper games that most people could name off the top of their head; not even half of them, by my maths.
Which is a shame because there’s a couple of games in the ‘other’ half that are better than most of the better known games. I don’t own SNK’s ‘Mechanized Attack’ as it’s US only, but I was able to play it at a game show a few years back and it’s definitely one of the better games for the peripheral and deserving of attention for more than it’s infamous debug screen.
And then there’s ‘To the Earth’, which, incidentally, has possibly my favourite box art on the system; the lettering alone is pure joy to behold.
It’s never really occurred to me before but when playing a light-gun game it’s usually the case that the human player represents a human character.
However, in ‘To the Earth’ you are the pilot/gunner of a spacecraft as it flies through the Solar System between Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, and finally Earth defending yourself from attacks by alien craft and defeating each of the stage bosses.
Despite a story that describes you delivering the cure for the effects of a biological alien attack, this is a Zapper game, so the gameplay involves shooting everything on screen.
‘To the Earth’ puts it’s own spin on the basic formula by placing the focus very much on accuracy; the quality of your aim affects not just only score, missed shots also drain your craft's shields.
This makes ‘To the Earth’ a very tough game, but, remarkably, I didn’t find this exacerbated by inaccuracy of the hardware.
I have my NES linked to a 14" Sony TV using the AV ports on the side. Sitting a comfortable distance away I was able to use the sights to aim completely accurately.
As someone who’s recently had to faff around for quite some time calibrating a Dreamcast gun I can’t tell you how nice it is for this to just work - and this is a 33 year old console, with a 31 year old peripheral, on a 20 year old TV. Impressive.
In play the screen area is a very slowly scrolling starfield which is crossed very quickly by enemy craft using a neat faux-scaling effect. It’s almost a shame that these move as fast as they do because the sprites are actually really nicely drawn and the speed makes this a little hard to appreciate.
Most of the time you’ll be concentrating elsewhere anyway as these enemies are aggressive little buggers and it’s often necessary to concentrate completely on the missiles they fire rather than the craft themselves.
As in every other example of this genre there are patterns that can be learned and anticipated, but the high price of failure in ‘To the Earth’ means that hardware and software come together to create one of the most skill-based gun-games there is.
And it’s a good job too, as with just four levels on offer, the level of challenge is necessary to ensure longevity. A complete and successful playthrough would take about twenty minutes, but many hours of practice and failed attempts will be under your belt before there’s any chance of that happening. Luckily, everything about To the Earth makes it a ‘just one more go’ game, rather than a ‘throw your toy gun at screen’ one.
No comments:
Post a Comment