Game Review: Bullet (Vic 20, Mastertronic)

Like so many early Mastertronic releases, Bullet for the Vic 20 relied on the cover art from Mark J Brady to grab the attention of the would-be buyer. As with most of the other games at the time, the artwork – and dare I say the title itself – bore little resemblance to the game, but that wasn’t all that important for the target audience who were going to be drawn to the game by the artwork alone.

Bullet – A Game With An Identity Crisis

Just like a large part of the Vic 20 catalogue released by Mastertronic, Bullet was a re-release licensed from Richard and David Darling’s company Galactic Software. In this case, Bullet – written by an uncredited David Darling – was originally titled Robot Mouse and was tweaked to update the text and graphics hoping that no-one would notice the difference.

Playing The Game

As the opening screen explains, Bullet is a high speed chase putting you at the wheel of a sports car trying your best to avoid a police car racing around the city streets while collecting all the coins scattered around. Manage to gather them all up and you move onto the next stage where you have to raid four banks.

The first stage is played in a top-down view in a Pac Man styled maze. Instead on having full control of your car, you use the joystick or keyboard to change lanes driving in a clockwise direction. At the same time the police car is heading towards you in a counter-clockwise direction. While this may sound rather bland, it’s strangely challenging and addictive, relying on planning and quick reactions.

Looks Familiar

This part of the game – as with so many early 8-bit games – is actually based on the Atari 2600 game Dodge Em, which itself was inspired by the SEGA arcade title Head On. With Atari’s game managing to stay safe from legal challenges from SEGA, Mastertronic (and Galactic Software before them) were certainly going to be safe from any concerns despite the blatant ID infrigements taking place!

Breaking The Bank(s)

Once you’ve completed the first stage, the game swaps over to the bank raid. Instead of being another Dodge Em stage, this level is based on the ever-popular Snake. While many people associate the game with Nokia’s 3300 series of phones, the game as we know it has its origins in the late 70s and early 80s and there were clones cropping up for home platforms even before the release of Bullet!

As you drive around this single screen level, a bank will appear on screen. As you drive towards it, a trail will be left behind your car which you can’t cross over. Reach the bank and the next will appear and so on until you have raided all four. Collide with your trail and it’s the end of this bonus stage and you’re sent back to the city for the next level to avoid the cops.

Hybrid Action

Each of the two elements of Bullet work well and could have been released as standalone budget games. Both are entertaining, addictive and would have only needed slight tweaks to expand their longetivity (in particular the bank raid stage). But for these to be released as a single game is commendable.

What I found impressive wasn’t just the fact that there were two completely different game styles vastly expanding the depth and longevity of the game, but the fact that this was running on an unexpanded Vic 20. Truthfully, the same could be said of most of Mastertronic’s Vic 20 releases as the majority were impressive on a technical level to one degree or another.

Graphics and Sound

This is probably the weakest part of Bullet. While they’re not particularly bad, the most accurate way to describe the visuals is functional at best. They move quickly and smoothly enough and I had no quibbles when it came to car responding to the controls when I needed them to (although I did feel that it was better suited to joystick control rather than keyboard), it felt rather bland.

Sound was quite limited to the odd blips here and there and the title “tune” was downright irritating. Just a single channel, short in length and repeating over and over – something that seemed to be a pattern for most of the games written by Richard and David Darling on the Commodore 64.

Overall

Despite the miselading cover art, Bullet really shines as a fun and challenging game. The simplistic gameplay in both stages hides an addictive game that will keep you coming back for just “one more go” time after time. The best game from the Darlings on the Vic 20 and a must own game.

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