Game Review: Molecule Man (Commodore 16 and Plus/4, Mastertronic)

As per the Commodore 64 version, Molecule Man was converted from the ZX Spectrum original and released later – hence the different packaging.  Compromises had to be made with the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 version, so you have no screen designer here for example and the graphics generally are smaller in size to ensure everything fits into the memory.  As per the other versions, as Molecule Man, you must survive.  You are placed in the middle of a large maze with radiation reducing your chances to survive, as does the time limit.  You also can come across credits where you can use them to buy radiation pills (to extend your life) or bombs, which when activated can destroy parts of the scenery making other parts of the game more accessible.   There are sixteen circuits to collect which makes the teleporter active, so you can make your mistake.  You just must be able to find them first.

Joystick? No Joy

Although the game’s instructions do say that you can play with a joystick, in fact the joystick controls do not work unfortunately. You can utilise a series of POKEs to be able to enable this, but surely during testing this should have been picked up and fixed so that you could at least do the movements with the joystick?   The keys are not redefinable either, so to summarise, it is Q, A, O and P for the up, down, left, and right controls, B is for buy, X is to use the bomb, and SPACE for picking up items, with the F1 key being used for pause too.

Moving the Right Way

Once you start, you will notice that Molecule Man and indeed the other graphics are smaller than the other version.  On the plus side, everything moves much more quickly, with the screens drawn with a distance between each section of the backgrounds and the pick-ups.  This does mean you can see what you are doing and if you head right from the start screen to the next screen, pick up the coin (SPACE), and then buy the radiation pills in the cube (B), you can survive a bit longer.  This is the same as the Commodore 64 version but because you cannot see the coin due to being obscured by the background – you may never realise.  Sadly, as with the other versions, the speed your radiation pills reduce means that it does still feel far too much like trial and error and much too fast to die – which replicates the faults of the Spectrum original version.

Buy to Survive

Some of the cubes are marked with the symbols for the pills or a bomb, and you need to use your coins wisely to purchase accordingly.  Each purchase of pills adds 20 pills to your supply, and still counts down relentlessly, so you will need to do this often.  Once you have a bomb, you can use the bomb key (X) and if successful, a part of the background vanishes, allowing you to walk to another part of the game where needed.  It is worth noting that it is best to be close to the part of the background you wish to remove and this frees up sections of the game, or early on for example one of the sixteen circuits which you need to complete the game – in this version you do not need to locate the teleporter, just get the circuits, which is challenging enough.

Survival of the Fittest

The radiation pills reduce at a significant rate, and that is the same fault as the other versions, so although accurate in its conversion, you just wish you would be able to tweak the difficulty level slightly just to be able to get further – maybe a slower reduction in pills would be helpful in say an easier level.  The game layout also has a significant space at the bottom for the status display, which shows you the radiation pills and bombs remaining, how many coins and circuits you have as well as the main timer which counts down.   There is no score display, as per the other versions which still seems a bit odd.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Molecule Man are small but are reasonable, and there is distance between the background and the objects – it feels more spaced out and you can see the isometric 3D grid a lot better because of it.  The main Molecule Man does walk around with a little animation and with its face can seem a little cute too and moves at a very good pace, much faster than the Commodore 64 version.  The sound is almost non-existent with a few sound effects here and there such as the collection of the coins and use of the bombs and pills, and a ping when you die due to lack of pills.  However, this was to be expected as a compromise to get the game into the limited memory.

Final Thoughts

Molecule Man may still have the same gameplay faults as the other versions, in that the amount of radiation pills comes down much too quickly, meaning quick death.  However, the speed of the game is increased and the fact you can see the objects such as the coins that you need to collect, or the background to remove to get the circuits for example, really does show that smaller can be more perfectly formed here.  Whilst not a classic game by any means to cram this much into a smaller 16K footprint does deserve some faint praise here, even if the joystick controls are sadly broken and require some additional POKEs to resolve that issue.

One final thing worth noting is that for Plus/4 (or Commodore 16 with 64K ram expansion) owners, there was a homebrew conversion of the Commodore 64 version which really does play the same as that version.  It was interesting to see it being attempted and certainly shows that the version could have been converted in full and has added music which does at least help with the gameplay.  More information and downloads are available here – https://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Molecule_Man_Plus4

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