Game Review: Bug Diver (Dragon 32, Mastertronic)

When Mastertronic first launched their range, they attempted to cover as many platforms as possible. What surprised many was their support for the Dragon 32, a platform ignored by many. While they only released a couple of games, their debut lineup included this arcade collect-em-up Bug Diver…

Bug Diver – A Game That Makes No Sense

Like so many games in the early 80s, the concept and plot to Bug Diver is – to be frank – absolutely ludicrous. As the opening screen explains, you take control of an insect and you’re tasked with diving deep into the ocean to steal eggs from fish swimming around. Obviously, they’re not too impressed with you doing this, so they’re not only trying to block your path but they’ll eat you on sight.

If you manage to collect an egg, you’ve got to head back to the surface, deliver it to an awaiting boat (I said it makes no sense!), then repeat until all the eggs have been collected or you run out of lives. Essentially it’s a variant of Frogger but plays top to bottom instead of bottom to top but just with a storyline that makes no sense whatsoever.

Dive Dive Dive!

Once you get past the concept for Bug Diver and get into the game itself, it’s a pretty straightforward affair. You move your bug with the cursor keys and just have to make your way down to the bottom of the screen to collect the eggs. The fish move left and right across the screen but unlike Frogger, they all move both left and right.

As an added twist, they change direction randomly making it harder to predict patterns when to head down towards the eggs and back up again towards the speedboat.

Swimming Through Treacle

That all sounds simple enough, but what should be a fun and challenging game is hampered by one key flaw… The controls are very unresponsive and I found repeatedly that the game just didn’t want to respond to the keys that I was pressing or at least not on the first attempt. Then on other occasions it seemed to be too responsive.

In either case, the end result meant that you either couldn’t avoid the fish heading towards you, movement took much longer than you expected, or worst case scenario you moved too rapidly and went straight into them head first and towards certain doom.

Dragon Exclusive

Despite also being released for the Commodore 64 and Vic 20, Mastertronic only opted to license the Dragon 32 version of Bug Diver from Galactic Software for their opening line-up. The majority of their first wave of games were sourced from other publishers including Mr Chip Software and the aforementioned Galactic Software (run by Richard and David Darling) but trangely, despite obtaining a large number of their other games, they chose not to pick up their other Dragon release from Galactic – Froggy – at the same time.

Playability

There is a fun game hiding away inside Bug Diver, but unfortunately it does take a lot of perseverance to find it. The random nature of the fish movement does add an unpredictability to the game that may be off-putting to anyone expecting a straightforward Frogger clone. There are instances where fish can turn so rapidly that they will change directions several times in a matter of seconds giving you little or no chance of getting past them.

If you can forgive this and cope with the sluggish controls I mentioned earlier, then you’ll find an enjoyable and challenging game lurking underneath the fishy exterior.

Graphics And Sound

Visually, Bug Diver is fairly simple but everything is clearly defined and the eggs are easy enough to distinguish from the background which is the most important part. One nice touch is the animation of the speedboat as it moves towards you when you reach the surface regardless of whatever position you are on the screen.

Sound is somewhat minimal though, with just three basic effects used in the game – one when you collide with a fish, another when you collect and egg and a third when you get to the surface. And all three are variations of the same sound – just a single note, sliding up or down in pitch.

Overall

I have somewhat mixed feelings about Bug Diver. While it can be a fun, entertaining game at times, frustration kicks in very quickly over the controls and there’s a very strong urge to rage quit at times. With a refinement to the controls, and more forgiving fish (if there is such a thing), this could have been great, but as it is it struggles to be average.

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