Game Review: Cage Match (Commodore 64, Entertainment USA)

Cage Match, or as the loading and title screens refer to it, Intergalactic Cage Match, is effectively a wrestling game, but set in a cage with opponents from different parts of the galaxy.  You effectively have a praying mantis, a character that looks suspiciously like Hulk Hogan, a minatour, an alien, a beefed-up masked fighter, and a horned creature.  They are ill defined on the title screen with very blocky graphics depicting what they are and who you can choose from.

On the title screen there is a dreadful piece of music playing – even more so when you consider the musician, Jim Cuomo, was responsible for Defender of the Crown on the Amiga, and you can choose both the fighters or players one and two, as well as toggling two player or computer opponent.  It notes that F7 restarts back to the title screen at any time.  Once you select an option, the music stops, which some of you may see as a relief but you would think it would play until you start the game.

Fighting Talk

The instructions give you all the details of the controls, so you can move around the ring in a pseudo 3D effect with the Mastertronic M logo in the middle of the ring, and then use the fire button to hit, kick or grab your opponent.  Once grabbed (which is not always that easy to tell if you have) you can do head butts, head slaps, a lift or neck chops.  If you manage to lift the opponent, you can throw them to the ground so that they lose energy, indicated on each side by the energy bar.

Reducing their energy to a low enough amount, where only the red part of the bar shows, and the music changes.  This normally would be your time to escape and climb the cage whilst the opponent is stunned and cannot move for several seconds until their energy replenishes enough to be able to get back up.  Climbing the cage to the top and escaping means that the cage floor caves in, leaving the loser a long drop to their doom (it is intergalactic, after all).  In theory, that is what should happen.  However…

Fatal Flaw

You will soon learn that in fact you do not need to reduce the opponent’s energy before climbing the cage.  You can climb at any time you like.  So, you can simply turn around, start climbing the cage, reach the top and let the opponent sink down.  And that is it.  And despite what the instructions claim, in that you get a different opponent, you get the same one that you selected on the title screen.  Over and over, and over again.  I must have won around twenty times to see if it changed, but no.  I even body slammed the opponent enough to go red, climbed up – and still the same.  Oh dear.

More Bugs

Unfortunately, although that is a game breaker, the other thing you will notice when playing as certain characters is that the graphics are broken.  There is one frame of animation where you can clearly see that the area of memory for the sprite is filled with garbage, and displayed as part of that character as such.  This smacks of either bad playtesting or mastering – either way, once you see it, you cannot unsee it either.  Certain opponents are more difficult and can grab you quickly – in fact one of them appears to grab at will and is almost impossible to defeat in combat.

You are supposed to be able to shake the walls of the cage, in either a bid to remove your opponent climbing, or to put them off.  However, this does not work when your opponent s climbing the cage – you cannot shake it, and once you have an opponent half way up, that is it – game over.  Unlike if you win and play the same opponent again, it is instant game over.    I should add that I did road test this both on original tape and a TAP tape image, also from an original cassette, just to verify that it was not a glitch.

Two Player Tedium

Two player mode at least allows you both to have some form of combat against each other, provided you both agree not to climb the cage and cheat.  It is one bout to the death, so you may want to just look at being able to hit each other and do the throw moves, and then from there climb afterwards.  It does not give you the option to say best of three or even best of five, so you are limited to one bout, after which on the title screen you can change the characters, so that at least gives you a change to try out.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics are very blocky and poorly defined for all the characters, including the glitching sprites that appear on two of the characters that look shoddy and unprofessional.  The pseudo 3D effect for the ring is passable, and the crowd watching the fight at the bottom of the screen is reasonable.  The music in game is the same as the title screen, dull and repetitive, and changes briefly when an opponent is low on energy, and a little tune when you climb the cage, but really is poorly executed, as are the sound effects, mainly masses of white noise when you throw your opponent to the ground.

Final Thoughts

Cage Match has so much wrong with it, that it was clear that no one tested the game properly.  You should only be able to climb the cage once the opponent has a small amount of energy, but no, you can climb and win any time you like, and keep building the score.  The moves that you can try to do just do not work so well, and the graphics can sometimes glitch, badly, when playing certain opponents.  Even in two-player mode you would have to set a no climb rule to stop someone cheating and winning every time.  Add to that the horrid music, and it is a game best avoiding, for completists only.

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