Game Review: 1985 – The Day After (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic)

The Storyline

The aim of the game inlay guide to 1985 doesn’t read too bad.  It effectively boils down to flying to four different planets (set over twelve terrains) and then getting the fusion core from the last most difficult cavern which the last civilisation left behind.

Playability

The first thing that you’ll notice is that your spacecraft rotates extremely quickly.  In fact, you can get very frustrated as it can seem very uncontrollable (even with some practice).  When you take-off from the space station base, there isn’t too much room so a tough learning curve.

Using the thruster isn’t great, and you’ll find that when you need to move, you can easily end up spinning around a lot just to move a few pixels over.  Collision detection isn’t perfect so when steering, it adds to what is already a tough game to steer through.

When you either crash or get shot, no matter where you are in the game, it’ll put you back to the launch pad at the very beginning.  A downside to this is that the launch screen takes about 5 seconds each time to draw the fuel level increasing.  The player is therefore waiting a while before even starting to be able to take-off.

Control Advice

I would advise that when you launch your spaceship to use the thruster slightly more rather than less.  Trying to save the fuel just seems to result in small movements and not really getting anywhere.  More fuel is then used to lift upwards again.  Its far more controllable once you have the spaceship facing in the correct direction and thrusting faster overall (but not too fast!)

Graphics and Animation

The loading screen of 1985 isn’t bad.  It has a nicely drawn spacecraft and 1985 accentuated in blue.

The main thing that I found surprising was that when using your thruster, you do not see anything from the back of your spacecraft.  It would have looked better if at the very least had a few animated pixels behind it when in use.

There is a bit of colour clash during the game, but it has been kept under control fairly well (when you take into consideration what the Spectrum can do).  Flying near a wall for example can cause it to change white but doesn’t always mean that you have crashed. Colour throughout the game isn’t too bad and the planets terrains are alright.

Poor Horizontal Scrolling

This will sound very strange, but 1985 is a static side scrolling game!  When your spacecraft reaches the far left or right-hand side of the screen, it scrolls along a block at a time to create the next screen.  It would have been much better without that scrolling effect and been a flip-screen instead.

Watching the demonstration mode (pressing D on the Main Menu), it does scroll across the levels but during the game but unfortunately doesn’t play in that way.  It’s nice to see a demonstration mode though.

Collecting The Fuel Pods

Your spacecraft has a what is known as a tractor so when hovering over the fuel pods, press symbol shift (or fire button on a joystick) to start obtaining the fuel.  When doing this, your spacecraft turns red.  Once collected, you’ll see a nice boost to your fuel supply, the pod disappear and your spacecraft turns back to white.

Sound Effects Only

There is no music at all in this game, so it is purely sound effects only.

Unfortunately, the sound effects aren’t good.  You’ll constantly hear what I’d describe as a siren noise whilst playing the game.  This constantly repeats every couple of seconds and can’t be switched off.  Remember, you can’t switch off the beeper on a real Spectrum so you can’t just turn the sound down.

When thrusting, you’ll hear an extremely quick tapping noise.  The other noise you’d expect is the crashing of your spacecraft.  It does make some noise but not like a sampled crashing noise. A long way into the game, there is a warning screen which has a few beeps repeated for a while.

Back in The Day

I think most of us would agree that when we spent our pocket money on games, most of us probably did try to complete a game (even if it was bad).  This falls into that category.

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