Game Review: Apollo 2 (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic)

Mastertronic’s Apollo 2 for the ZX Spectrum has something of an identity crisis. Originally published in 1983 by Darkstar, the game’s actual title is Apollo 11, presumably named after the first moon landing. At some point the name was mis-read by someone either at Mastertronic or their design company Words and Pictures and became Apollo 2, with someone obviously thinking that the title had been written in Roman numerals…

Apollo 2 – The Eagle Has Landed… Early!

If the screenshots haven’t given it away, Apollo 2 takes inspiration from Atari’s 1979 arcade game Lunar Lander. Taking control of the lunar exploration module for Apollo 11 (or Apollo II according to the instructions in the inlay), the module has experienced a computer failure so you have to take manual control and safely guide it to the moon’s suface.

Using the keyboard you have to adjust the orientation of the lander, alter its speed and position using its thrusters and find a suitable safe spot to land. There are four readouts that you need to monitor – horizontal and vertical speed, rotational speed and altitude. Each of these is displayed both in units and as an indicator. Once these turn green it’s safe to land.

So Far So Good…

Up to this point, Apollo 2 sounds fairly good and similar to most other versions released for other systems. Instead of landing in a cave system, scoring more points depending on the complexity of the location, Apollo 2 is set over a continually scrolling landscape. Landing areas vary in size and points scored vary depending on the size of the landing area you select.

If you’ve played the original, or any of the other clones out there (I was addicted to Commodore’s Jupiter Lander for the Vic 20 growing up) then you’ll know how challenging, but how fun and rewarding games like this can and should be. But unfortunately Apollo 2 misses the mark on every level…

What Went Wrong?

There are numerous issues when it comes to Apollo 2 compared with other games in the genre which take away from it being a fun, entertaining game. A large part of the problem is that Apollo 2 is unnecessarily complicated. For most games like this, you just want to focus on your fuel levels, pointing the lander in the right direction and making sure you’re not coming down to land too rapidly. The latter you can usually judge without the need for any sort of on-screen readout and fuel displays are fairly easy to monitor.

Adding the scrolling landscape makes landing incredibly difficult and with continual forward momentum you’re fighting to slow the craft down horizontally before you can even think about landing. And to slow your craft down, you have to make sure you can rotate and face the opposite direction, giving you something else to worry about and all this does is adds more elements that frustrate rather than challenge.

It Doesn’t End There…

All of that would make Apollo 2 a difficult game to enjoy, but in addition to that, the game is unbelievably sluggish. Using O and P you can rotate the lander module, but it can take a couple of seconds before anything happens on screen and there’s a notable delay before your thrust activates as well. All too often this leaves the feeling that you’re not in control of the lander at all, or you rotate aimlessly or even worse crash into the landscape without being able to use your thrusters to escape to safety.

Graphics And Sound

As an early Spectrum game, apart from the odd basic sound and crash effect when you finally hit the landscape there’s no sound to speak of, but that’s nothing I’m going to be too critial of. Visually however this is a huge disappointment. The lander module looks reasonable when it points in some directions, but in others it resembles a garbled mess of pixels. The landscape however… I honestly don’t know what went wrong with this but where other clones had a solid rough terrain representing the lunar landscape, the ground here looks like a chaotic display of random ASCII characters in the shape of mountains.

Again, I have to mention the speed of the game here but this is an important point to bear in mind with the visuals. It takes seconds to react and turn the lander so what you see on screen rarely represents what is probably going on with the game. From what I understand, this was written using HiSoft Pascal 4 rather than Z80 assembly language and it certainly shows. While I don’t like making comparisons generally, the Vic 20’s Jupiter Lander ran quicker, had a solid landscape and had smooth visuals yet the machine was often regarded as being inferior to the Spectrum in terms of performance.

Overall

I really can’t find anything to redeem with Apollo 2. The sluggish gameplay and frustrating controls make for an experience that you won’t want to repeat for more than a few minutes. I can’t imagine how disappointed anyone must have been when this was first released if they purchased this and sadly games like this didn’t help the reputation of budget publishers.

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