Game Review: Sub Hunt (Vic 20, Mastertronic)

Mastertronic’s Sub Hunt for the Vic 20 is a strange creature. As with most of the early releases, there are no screenshots to give you an idea of what the game is like, and strangely the description in the inlay isn’t much better. Mark J Brady’s cover (stunning as always), gives you the impression that it’s an underwater game with you at the helm of an all-powerful submarine. And that’s what obviously drew people in to buying it when it was first released…

Sub Hunt – The Reality!

When it comes to the game itself, Sub Hunt definitely seems to have something of an identity crisis. This is how the inlay describes the game: “Experience the awesome perils that lurk beneath the ocean waves. The water is infested with fast moving enemy fish and bombers fly overhead dropping depth charges. Only dextrous manouvering and careful planning will keep you alive in the terrors of the deep.”

But in reality, Sub Hunt is nothing like that at all. While we know that inlays often took liberties when it came to describing games, in this particular case there’s little resembling the game on the cassette! In fact, you’re in control of a small submarine and you have to rescue divers who are amongst an endless swathe of enemy subs and deadly fish. You’ve got to save at least six divers and get them to the surface before your oxygen runs out, with an unlimited supply of torpedoes between you and their survival.

If you manage to save all the divers in time, it’s on to the next level. Collide with any fish or enemy subs, or run out of oxygen and you lose a life. Lose all your lives and it’s game over.

Gameplay

Playing Sub Hunt is simplicity itself. The joystick moves your sub up, down, left and right, and the fire button launches a torpedo. You can fire several in quick succession but you need to be cautious about firing too rapidly so you don’t shoot any divers that swim on to the screen. While you don’t lose any lives for killing any accidentally, rescuing them all within the time limit can be tight so you want to save them all as fast as you can.

There are no fixed attack waves or patterns and while nothing is shooting back at you, and you could aim to complete each stage just by rescuing the divers, points are scored for everything you shoot adding not only a rescue aspect, but a high score challenge to the game as well. Keeping the appearance of the divers, fish and enemy subs completely random – as seems to be the case with so many budget arcade shooters – gives Sub Hunt a welcome boost to its replayability as well, as no two games will ever be the same.

Playability

Despite the simple premise, I found Sub Hunt to be surprisingly addictive. Like most, I spent my first game or two not bothering to read the instructions seen on the loading screen, and went in guns blazing. Even playing that way I found it to be a fun shooter, even if was frustrated that I couldn’t figure out how to replenish my oxygen levels…!

A quick read up and then taking the time to play it properly revealed Sub Hunt’s real charm. It manages to strike a balance between a frantic arcade shooter, with a strategic rescue element, but then with the added time pressure as well it makes Sub Hunt a much deeper game than it first appears. And once you start to see that, you get drawn into it and it becomes very difficult to put down.

Graphics And Sound

Sound is limited to just a couple of sound effects and there’s a slight quirk where some sounds will continue playing indefinitely until you shoot or destroy something else (the programmer obviously forgot to put the code in to stop the sound playing!). Visuals are quite simple as well, although the choice of colours work well enough, characters are clearly defined and everything is easy to make out on screen. Just nothing spectacular but it does the job well enough.

Overall

Sub Hunt is a surprisingly fun game and once again Mastertronic have managed to prove that the Vic 20 didn’t need a memory expansion to deliver great games. With an impressive level of depth and great replayability thanks to the random nature of the levels, it gives the player a great skill-based high score challenge instead of one reliant on memory alone. While it’s not Mastertronic’s greatest Vic 20 release, it’s certainly one that shouldn’t be missed.

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