Air Cars
Atari Jaguar
by Fred Horvat
As most of you have heard by now ICD has released a limited
number of Midnight Entertainment Group, Inc's 1995 game "Air
Cars" for the Atari Jaguar. The game comes on cartridge with
a professional label on the cartridge. Documentation is in
English and about 20 pages thick. It is printed on heavy stock
glossy paper in black and white. The manual is very complete
showing a game play screen shot, enemies, weapons, power ups, and
explaining all of them. No overlay is included, but an image of
one is on the back cover. There is no box for the game but it
comes shrink wrapped in a normal Jaguar game box insert with the
cartridge label facing out acting as cover art. Well here is a
mini review of the game with about 2 hours of playing time so
far.
Story Line :
- Story takes place in the future after a nuclear
holocaust. Briefly a plot has been discovered of an
organization to take over the world. They have developed
advanced weapons one of them being a nuclear powered Air
Car. Your spies have stolen plans and have built an Air
Car. Your mission is to destroy the 28 known enemy bases
with the Air Car.
Support for Pro Controller :
- Yes, no mention is made in the manual but the top buttons
make mine laying and smoke screen use very easy in the
heat of battle.
Multiplayer / Network Capable :
- Yes, and great to say up to 8 players with Catboxes or 2
with Jaglinks. I tried 2 player with the Jaglink and I'm
very happy to report that it never dropped once during 30
minutes of play. So all the network errors in Doom are
due to buggy code in Doom and not hardware related. Each
player is a different color to help identify a good guy
from bad guy on the radar and on the screen.
Game Play :
- Involved is the best word to describe it. Midnight
Entertainment Group has put a great deal of thought into
this game. On the surface it appears to be a run of the
mill shoot'em up type game. Granted that's what your
mission is, but from what I found out immediately was
that you need to plan your attacks carefully and that you
have to concern yourself with weapon selection, radar,
immediate power ups, saved power ups, and working every
single button on the controller keypad. Your mission is
to destroy all main targets at each base (level) and
leave through a teleporter to reach the next level. There
are 3 difficulty setting for the game.
- Controlling your Air Car takes practice. Your Air Car
speeds up and slows down at the same rate of speed unless
you have a brake power up. So approaching enemies and
buildings you need to start slowing down almost before
you see them. Otherwise you will ram them and take some
damage. Turning the craft you have two options, one of
them is normal turning which is slow and can take a large
radius at speed or banked turning which turns your craft
at roughly 45 degree angle for sharp turning abilities.
You toggle between them with the "Option" key
on the controller. I found in my limited playing time
with the game the normal setting worked for me best. It
was just easier to see objects upright when trying to
fight and shoot them. With practice I may get the hang of
the banked setting. When engaging enemies you have 2
weapons active at a time. You are defaulted a Shotgun and
Auto Cannon. These are not the most powerful available
but do enough damage with well placed shots to live with.
If you have other weapons available you can toggle them
by either pressing the "1" or "3"
buttons to place them on the left or right side of your
craft. To fire weapons press "A" for the right
and "B" for the left. To get more powerful
weapons you must destroy enemies and their weapons become
available to you, but you have to get them in under 5
seconds after destroying an enemy or they are gone.
Weapons range from the weaker shotgun to the destructive
tank cannon. Mines and smoke grenades are available to
help screen yourself and slow down or destroy enemies
chasing you. Enemies can be stationary gun placements,
slow and big tanks, to small and fast vehicles. After
certain levels there are Bosses to contend with. I've not
progressed far enough in 2 hours to meat one yet. The
device you rely on the most is your radar. Simply put
without it your lost. It gives you tremendous amount of
information. Every enemy, building, power up, or another
player is a different color and some of them flash on the
radar meaning something different. In the manual each
color is explained. When an enemy toasts you the view
changes into a 360 degree rotating camera view from
overheard. This gives you a look of the surrounding
terrain and who blasted you.
Graphics :
- From first glance sub par for a 64 bit system. Nothing is
overly detailed pretty much looks like a 8 or 16 bit
graphics. Objects appear very plain looking or somewhat
blocky. But not to make excuses for Midnight
Entertainment Group, but this game takes place in the
future after a nuclear holocaust. So how pretty would the
landscape be then? The graphical atmosphere presented is
pretty gloomy. You don't get to see to far in the
distance, is it from fog or fall out? I don't know, but
that's why your radar is so important.
Sound :
- Thunderous explains it best! I played it through
headphones on my Catbox and explosions are awesome. This
is the best sounding Jag game. If hooked up to the stereo
your house will really rock on the foundation. But the
best part is that you have true 3D sound. For those
unfamiliar with this new buzzword it means that you have
true 360 degree sound. You know exactly where enemies are
via sound alone. With my headphones I could tell if I was
getting shot from behind, left, or my right. It really
adds to the playability of the game. There is no music
during game play, just intro music.
Overall :
- I'm quite pleased with the game. It's a very involved
game. Don't let the graphics fool you. It may be simple
looking but this is not a simple game. You won't blow
through this one quikly. Add to the fact that you and up
to 7 others (if you can find them) can play one hell of a
seek and destroy mission. Each player can take a certain
area of the base and destroy it. Only problem I saw when
attacking a base together is that you can easily mistake
your partner as the enemy and toast em.
(No scores provided...)
--Fred Horvat
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