Game Review: Molecule Man (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

Molecule Man had been released first on the ZX Spectrum, where magazine reviews of the time were positive and as such meant that conversions to other formats would follow – note the different packaging style between this and the Spectrum original.  One thing that did not change though is the loading screen – it is the same.  No attempt was made to perhaps try and do a Commodore version of the cassette inlay, just a lazy port over.  And sadly, that is only the beginning of a feeling of déjà vu.

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.

Redefined

Once the game has loaded, you can select keyboard or joystick, and if you select the latter, you are also asked to select the keys for buy, use the bomb, pick up, as well as pause and quit.  By default, there are F1, F3, F5, CTRL and RUN/STOP respectively, but rather than ask to redefine, you must select the keys when selecting the joystick, which is a bit rubbish.  It would have been sensible to choose the joystick (or state it is enabled by default) and then ask if you wanted the additional keys defining.  Not very good really and adds little to the overall presentation of the game itself.

Molecular

Once you start, you will notice that Molecule Man is quite a large figure, but also moves relatively slowly.  It is not as slow as some isometric games on the Commodore 64, where it is swimming through treacle, but slow enough.  Sadly, the speed your radiation pills reduce means that unless you find an option to purchase more pills quickly, you will die and fail at the game almost straight away.  With practice, you can find the right initial direction, but it does feel far too much like trial and error and much too fast to die – which replicates the faults of the Spectrum original version.

Purchasing

As you progress through the maze, you come across coins which need to be picked up – why these are not automatically picked up – you must press the pick-up key (F5 by default) which seems like a design flaw.  Once you do have some coins, you need to locate the cubes, some of which have a symbol for pills, others have symbols for bombs.  Using the buy key (F1 by default) you can purchase accordingly.  Each purchase of pills adds 20 pills to your supply, and still counts down of course.  Once you have a bomb, you can use the bomb key (F3 by default) and if successful, a part of the background vanishes, allowing you to walk to another part of the game where needed.

Survival

The radiation pills reduce at a significant rate, and a tweak of the gameplay so that they do not reduce as quickly would give you chance to explore more and work out a route instead of having to rush and to try to be pixel perfect, especially as you need to face the cube when purchasing pills or bombs.  The circuit parts are well hidden in the game too and you do need to progress quite some way to locate the first one – whereas if one was much earlier to get you into the game a bit, that would help also to at least get you into the game at a gentler pace.

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.  That also means, strangely, that there is no score to think of – surely that would have been easy to implement based on rooms explored, circuits found, points per coin found and used, that sort of thing.  Without that you either complete the game or you do not, with nothing in between.  That does also seem not very good either.

Design A Maze

After the main game on each side of the cassette, you can load the level designer.  This does start with a blank design although you can then load the original maze from the cassette straight either.  Once loaded, you can move around the screens and edit the screens themselves, adding and removing objects from the overhead view which then reflects when playing the game itself.  You can also look at the map in its entirety which shows the size of the maze and does seem a little small to try and fit on screen – maybe if you could zoom in or out and scroll that would help.  Once you have saved the maze, this can be loaded back into the main game from the title screen and you can choose to play this instead as you wish.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Molecule Man are not very good and are ported over, with single colour on each screen with a black background.  The main Molecule Man does walk around with a little animation and with its face can seem a little cute too, but the speed of movement is not quite thee – yes, it is faster than some games but still feels a little too slow.  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, but apart from that, it is relatively quiet and feels somewhat empty in the background without any form of soundtrack or better sound effects.

Final Thoughts

Molecule Man has the potential to be a much better game than it is.  However, having a ZX Spectrum game ported as is to the Commodore 64 and not have any thought of developing any improvements, including tweaks to the difficulty level, really does feel like an opportunity missed somewhat.  It becomes too frustrating for most as you move around the maze and an attempt to try and find a new route will usually result in death far too quickly because you may get stuck at a location and not be able to backtrack in time.  It does little to appease the game player, and even with the maze designer allowing you to create your own mazes, why would you bother to play them when the game play is not up to scratch?  If you do want to play a good isometric genre game across all 8-bit formats, Head Over Heels is by far and away the one to go for – even here on the Commodore 64.  Save up the cash and buy that instead.

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