Game Review: Energy Warrior (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

Energy Warrior was programmed across all the 8-bit formats by Binary Design, based in Manchester, but the Commodore 64 version did have a separate Mastertronic disk release over in the US (ICD 0217) and that catalogue number was not used in the UK for a Commodore 64 release.  In the UK, it was issued as part of Mastertronic’s short lived MAD X label (IC 0236), with the X being that you got an extra game free. In this case it was Molecule Man that was on the B-side.

The game’s plot is effectively that most of planet Earth has been decimated, a mere shadow of its former glory.  There are a few areas of natural beauty left, which are precious to the remaining people.  You are the reserve warden, responsible for maintenance of some of the largest areas, keeping it well respected and safe.  After the planet Cygnus Alpha has gone into supernova, the Wavaren who lived there need a new place to live, and these aliens have decided to come to Earth.  Each of the areas are kept in pristine condition with aura energy and zoned off accordingly, so your task is to clear the areas of aliens, and once cleared it will seal off.  If you let the aura energy go too low, that zone is dead, and if three zones are gone, your mission is terminated.

Anger Is an Energy

The game does have an identity crisis.  Once you have loaded the game and had a good blast of Invade-a-Load as you do so, the title screen clearly calls the game just Energy, with no warrior in sight.  There are also some nice firework type effects with the graphics all around the screen, and a scrolling message with the game title and information in the middle.  You do have some very nice music playing here too, that SID music fans can tell the player of straight off by its style, but the close to four minutes is an under-rated piece in my view and one that you should enjoy a good listen to before you play.

High Energy

When the game starts, you immediately will note your ship is quite well drawn, and that the screen scrolls smoothly horizontally with some nice parallax effects on the background itself.  The aliens appear in many forms, with the main regular bodies of aliens all having names, with bubble alien and trialien being round capsules, bubbly being more like bubbles chasing you around, and the square tri being more difficult.  The skulls, fighters, skaters, spikeys and eye balls often take more than one hit to remove and become more noticeable as you play.  In each case, the aliens can come at you individually and in waves, and careful manoeuvring is required to ensure you avoid them – the majority of these do not fire at you but colliding with them does reduce your substance.  Yes, for a game called Energy Warrior, your energy is not called energy, but substance.

Enter the Dragon

After blasting several waves of enemies, you will soon encounter one of the dragons.  They come in different shapes and sizes, and can be slow or whizz around.  You need to shoot the dragon in the head enough times for this to be killed, and when it does, it leaves behind a round icon, which flashes between different collectables and so timing is needed to collect the right one.  For me, this was where it proves a tad frustrating – the flashing gets quicker the longer you wait, and it then explodes.  The key is literally key here to entering the next region (note that it is region and not zone here), but you can instead collect the wrong icon by mistake.  Granted, you can top up the aura, energy tops up substance, bomb adds more blitz bombs, and mystery is like Toyah – it’s a mystery!

Ballroom Blitz

You do start the game with nine blitz bombs, and these can be activated with the Commodore key.  The use of say holding down fire may have worked better for this, but nonetheless that can be quite effective for getting rid of the dragon quicker should you feel the need to do so.  The instructions have an error in that the status of the regions can be shown by pressing M, it is instead the space bar.  This can also act as a handy pause mode to break the action, and you can see which areas within the region you need to explore and how much aura is remaining in each of those.

In The Area

If you do manage to shoot enough aliens, or are fortunate enough to get the key icon after killing the dragon, you move on to the next zone (or area in this version).  This just appears to be the same graphically but with a different background colour, which does appear to be a cop out and does not snow enough variety graphically either.  Similar waves of aliens will also appear, also adding to that more repetitive feel.  You may also have encountered the mothership, which seems almost impossible to kill and whizzes off the screen far too quickly for you to get any decent shots in and to destroy that and move from the current zone to the next one.  All this time, each zone’s aura will reduce and unless you use one of the icons to top up that aura, there is no other way of doing so which appears to be more a time limit of some sort during play.

Regional Energy

The first region is the JOS Isles (your ship is a J.O.S fighter) and some of the areas within each region seem to be Greater Manchester based too, with their seven names being Halsville, Bury, Brookdale, Cheadle, Offerton, Mippleton, and Affetside.  Note how there are only seven areas, the instructions claim ten per region which is false.  This version only appears to have two regions too – the second region is Rockville, with the areas being Elton, Woolfold, Walshaw, Jos, Funtown, Slasha and Lowton.  If you complete all the areas you move to the next region, and completing both regions just sends you back to the first one, with no game ending.  Checking the game’s memory shows that there was supposed to be a third region called Alex Park, but the area names were just A to G, so sounds as if it was not completed in time.

Infinite Energy

Whilst the blasting does initially sound good fun, there are a couple of aspects which spoil the game a little.  The mothership whizzes around when it arrives and you cannot seem to catch up with it, meaning more blasting of aliens and an attempt to get the key.  The collision detection and shooting down does work well, but the icon toggling after you shoot the dragon means you cannot time it well enough to get the key to exit that area, and that does appear to be somewhat frustrating.  Some of the aliens take multiple shots and at least there are sound effects for that, but may have been useful to have some on-screen instructions before play to show you how many that each type take to assist first time players.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Energy Warrior are pretty good, with some nice backdrops and some parallax scrolling as well giving the landscape some depth. The enemies are reasonably well animated, especially the dragons to shoot the head at and the large ships that appear are well drawn too.  Your own ship has a nice sprite overlay which enhances the look and feel.  Until you get to the next island, it can appear to be repetitive though.  The title screen has some nice animated fireworks around the game’s title, and the music by Andy Grimson is a nice piece and a shame you could not have had that as an in-game theme, although the sound effects throughout are reasonable and add to the blasting action.

Final Thoughts

Energy Warrior does sound a promising shoot-em-up on first play, and the graphics and sound are more than reasonable to draw you in for blasting.  It does however feel like a slightly cut down conversion though, with only seven areas per region instead of ten, and with repetitive graphics for each area within the region and just a different background colour.  There was plenty of memory left to add more regions and areas in with different graphics too, so not sure why that was not used to its fuller potential.  It does have some promise but unfortunately, some of the aspects of the gameplay can prove to be a little too frustrating and boredom will also set in after a time due to it appearing somewhat repetitive.  Even having Molecule Man on Side B does not save it as an overall package – it certainly feels like this conversion was rushed and not given the same treatment as other versions.

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