Review: Montezuma’s Revenge (C64) by Utopia Software Inc.

Today’s game is “Montezuma’s Revenge” by Utopia Software Inc. from 1984 on the Commodore 64. In fact, I don’t even know if it ever existed for other platforms, but it being available on the C64 basically means 100% coverage. Whaddayasay? OK, ok. 98%.

Introduction

The game is a 2D-Platformer, 160×200 pixel graphics and can be played with a digital joystick. To play it, you have to connect a joystick into joystick port 2. We’re playing it on VICE, the de-facto standard for cross-platform C64 Emulation, and set the keyboard’s numpad to emulate our joystick #2.

At the start screen, you can choose one of 3 difficulty levels. After you press “1″, “2″ or the “3″, the game immediately starts.

In the game, you are (supposedly) Montezuma, and walk around maps which are constructed of individual screens (no scrolling) and pick up objects like keys (keys of a given color open doors of the same color), daggers (with daggers, you can remove enemies from a screen), gemstones as bonuses etc., hit on enemies like snakes (stationary), skulls rolling on the floor, or alternatly, skulls bouncing over the floor, or spiders which even crawl on your beloved ladders. The aim of the game is not to die (obviously) and to make it off each map. For this you have to use both skill and logic (the puzzles are not on the skill level of a Rubik’s cube, but they have their level) and, since a map is combined of many non-scrolling screens, to a good extent also your memory.

A sense of perfection

What becomes apparent after playing a few minutes is that the map layout and the graphics, the map logic, the movements of the enemies, and the timing of changing objects are very, very neatly done, and this is one of the points in which the game excels and stands out over many of the games of its era. Here, you don’t have bad collision detection (so you jump onto that rock but the collision detection is so bad, that 2 out of 3 times, even though you stand at the same spot, you fall), too many different styles and graphics for floors (so you might run into trouble deciding whether this ledge there is something you can in fact stand on, or is just a decoration), jerky movements of enemies (so you can not time your movement because the enemy moves in an unpredictable way, and unintentionally at that, that is, the map itself presumes you should be able to predict the enemy’s movements).

The logic of the maps is very intelligent, very entertaining and thoroughly thought through. This is not only a game in which the aim of the authors seems to have been just to make you visit all the rooms in a map in a seemingly goalless chase, but the maps are actually puzzles, combined puzzles, that is, puzzles of both logic and skill, in their own right. Very well done!

The style of the game: the style is minimal, and indeed many games from 1984 were like this simply due to limitations of the hardware and yet unknown soft or hard hacks on the respective machines back then. In this game, though, you can feel that the minimalism was by choice, and not by neccessity. One could also say they made good use of the resources available, but that wouldn’t quite do it justice.

Let’s have a look at an example screen:

Montezuma's Revenge Map 1 (screen: exit first screen left, then down)

You can clearly tell what and where the floor is, what the enemies are, which items you can pick up. The choices of colors make it easy to distinguish objects from one another, and to recognize them later in the game.

Playing it

A screenshot can not convey this, but when playing the game you get a good sense of aim at precision by the authors; not cold precision taking away the fun but rather giving the player the precision he needs to learn the rules of the world he’s in and be able to fulfill his/her task. This sounds, again, like something that would apply to most games from the early 1980ies due to their neccessitated simplicity, but it is not neccessarily true. If you look for example at Dynamite Dan, a game by Mirrorsoft from 1985, which has very simple graphics itself, after playing it for a few minutes you clearly realize that everything looks uniform and it is not possible to tell apart what is an object that has a function in the game (an enemy, bonus, or the floor or just something you can stand on), and what is background, except for experience when playing the game and for movement, and the control of the player sprite (more to the controls in this game below) is absolutely, ultimately horrible. I must say Dynamite Dan is one of the games I always tried to get a grip on but just gave up because overall, it was just not fun (the screens were sort of funny though and you could quite get a sense of an unique style pertaining to the design).

Not so with Montezuma’s Revenge. Not only that the authors have a rather er.. twisted sense of humor (see Montezuma’s Revenge on Wikipedia), but you can clearly feel that they wanted the player to feel that the world is stable, predictable and clear, thus making it very enjoyable to interact with.

Metadifficulties

One thing must be said, though, sadly, which is somewhat of a minor malus for the game, namely, the control of the main character. Before I continue: it is not terrible. It’s not completely terrible and doesn’t mean the game is unplayable. But, still, sometimes you have to be very, very precise when jumping from one ledge to another, for example, as not to fall into a fire, and one pixel of difference decides whether you’re alive or a cloud of smoke. While it is surely not a big problem after you gain some experience with the game, it is somewhat of a letdown for starters, since you will, most likely, lose a lot of lives (and nerves) to this circumstance. As a good thing within the bad thing I’d like to point out that even despite that you have to sometimes jump very very pixel-precise, the overall control feels very good and is much better than in many many games of its time.

What is also somewhat of a nuisance is that you can not jump off one level to the next level, most of the time (as in levels of platforms in a screen), since the game was designed so you die when you do that. You always have to climb down to the lower-next level, using either a ladder, a rope or a sliding pole. Remember that!

All in all, it is a very enjoyable, very well made game which is highly recommendable if you are looking for a game which can be quickly gotten into and keeps you retrying to beat it without too much frustration, and which simply and elementarily just feels right. Albeit, some frustration when losing always ensues, which is an universal truth of gaming… or was that a truth of being human?

Either way, with these words I wish you all a nice farewell, and always remember: what matters in a game is the fun. Don’t let ‘em stop you.

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