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commentary? Check out the Double Decker
Vectrex review page, which offers two
distinct opinions of each official Vectrex
release. Every review is served
up piping hot by The Gameroom Blitz editor
Jess Ragan and science-fiction author Brian
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PROTECTOR/Y*A*S*I |
 
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ALEX
HERBERT |
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SHOOTERS |
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GCE
VECTREX |
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This is the story of two games.
The first is Defender, a loud, obnoxious
American who never thinks twice about leaving his dirty
socks, or hundreds of aggressive enemies, all over the
place. The other, Space Invaders, is polite,
refined, and annoyingly anal retentive. His strict
Japanese upbringing has taught him to keep everything in
his collection perfectly organized... even his
formations of steadily marching aliens. Can
these two classic video games live in the same cartridge
without driving each other crazy?
Believe it or not, these two
entirely different games can co-exist peacefully,
and even complement one another. When you're overwhelmed by the swarms of landers
and baiters in Protector (the Vectrex conversion of
Defender), you can simply reset your Vectrex and play a
few rounds of Y*A*S*I to calm your nerves. When
you've lost interest in the slower, less
demanding gameplay of Y*A*S*I (short for "Yet Another
Space Invaders"), it's time to hit that reset button
again and experience the unrelenting intensity of
Protector.
This odd couple has the kind
of synergy you don't often see in classic game
compilations, which offer a handful of similar titles,
all created by a single company with a specific approach
to game design. No matter what you choose to
play, there's a homogeny to the gameplay that eventually
makes the entire collection boring. Protector/Y*A*S*I never suffers from this,
however, because you couldn't
possibly pick two more different 80's shooters than
Defender and Space Invaders.
When you've got two great
games on a single cartridge, it's important to keep them
evenly balanced so that one game doesn't eclipse the
other. Designer Alex Herbert has accomplished this
by putting an equal amount of effort into both Protector
and Y*A*S*I.
Protector is important to the
collection because it brings a new style of gameplay to
the Vectrex... a blisteringly fast side-scrolling
shooter that offers more to do and more incentive to do
it than the many Asteroids clones on the
system. It takes a while to get used to the
convoluted control... rather than pressing left or right
to go in those directions, you must thrust, then turn
your ship to face enemies. However, this
gives the game a better sense of inertia, and a lot more
challenge, than its closest Vectrex equivalent
Scramble.
Y*A*S*I is just as important
for introducing an amazing visual technique, which
brings raster scan graphics to a system with vector
graphics. This makes not only the graphics much
closer to the arcade original than previous Space
Invaders clones on the Vectrex, but the gameplay as
well. When you fire at one point of a barrier,
you'll eventually peck a hole through it, rather than
steadily weakening and eventually destroying the entire
structure at once. This gives the player strategic
advantages that just weren't available in John
Dondzila's Vector Vaders.
It's tough thinking of ways
that the two games could be improved. Alex Herbert
thought of pretty much everything, from the thrilling
special effects in Protector to the ability to control
your base in Y*A*S*I with either the joystick or
buttons. I can come up with a few complaints, but
they're pretty minor. I can't help but wonder why
a cartridge with battery backup doesn't give you the
option to save your controller configuration in
Protector. I also get a little annoyed when the
screen calibration menu pops up every time I play
Y*A*S*I. I've adjusted this once already... do I
have to go through this again? Furthermore, is it
even necessary to have this whole screen
calibration stuff in the first place? How much
different could my Vectrex be from everyone
else's?
That's really all I can bitch
about in this collection. Everything else in
Protector/Y*A*S*I is spectacular... it's the best
Vectrex homebrew you can buy, and even outperforms
the vast majority of commercially released titles on the
system. A Vectrex without Protector/Y*A*S*I is
like a Dreamcast without Soul Calibur, or a Nintendo 64
without Super Mario 64... or Jack Klugman without Tony
Randall.
