Game Review: Mission Mercury (Vic 20, Virgin Games)

The name Steve Lee might not be familiar to Commodore fans, but his games certainly will be. When it comes to Mastertronic, his most well known is the arcade shooter Hunter Patrol, but arguably his most well known are the Falcon Patrol series on the Commodore 64. But before gaining fame with those (and the Vic 20 port Skyhawk), he released a hidden gem from Virgin Games, Mission Mercury…

Mission Mercury – A New Twist On An Old Favourite

Even by 1983 when Mission Mercury was released, the market was already starting to get flooded with clones of popular arcade clones. Pretty much every publisher was doing it and at the time, none of them were facing any legal consequences for doing so. In almost every instance publishers were just releasing their own versions of the classics without adding anything new to the games so for the most part we were buying the same game over and over again with just new packaging.

Mission Mercury was different. At the heart of the game, it’s a Lunar Lander clone, but it’s been tweaked dramatically, almost beyond recognition. Here the game takes a land-and-rescue approach and your lander is a smaller craft being dropped down to the surface of Mercury(!) from a larger craft flying overhead. On the planet below there are scientists in need of rescue as the planet is being flooded by a wave of radiation following an unexpected solar flare…

Scientific accuracy aside, have 3 landers at your disposal initially and have to steer them as they drop from your craft towards one of three landing platforms on the surface. Manage to do so and a survivor will get to your lander and then you have to take off and guide your lander carefully back to the ship. Sounds easy enough, right?

A Dangerous Trip

It’s not as easy as it sounds as blocking your route are asteroids are blocking your path (yes, I know they should be in space and not in the planet’s atmosphere but no need to be picky here). So you need to get to grips with the controls of your lander to avoid all of them as collision will cost you one of your lives.

You do have some help as you have limited use of thrusters on board that will speed up your ascent towards your craft or slow you down when heading towards the platforms but having a fixed amount of fuel means you need to use this sparingly and only what absolutely necessarily. Also, to add one final twist in the mix, once you’ve rescued a scientist from a landing platform, it’s disabled so you can only use the remaining ones so you can’t pick a route that you’re comfortable with and stick to it for each drop.

Rescue the scientists from all three platforms and they all reset and it begins again your main craft speeding up making it harder to reach.

Playability

For a game that is played over a single screen, Mission Mercury is surprisingly addictive in its simplicity. It’s easy enough to pick up and play but because of the randomised patterns for the asteroids, no two games play exactly the same so it’s impossible to play from memory alone so it’s reliant on quick reactions and skill. Because of this, it gives the game almost endless replayability in the same way most classic arcade games did of the era.

Graphics and Sound

Special mention has to be given to the visuals here. Good use is made of the Vic 20’s palette and everything is clearly defined and easy to make out. While the scientists themselves are rather plain stick figures, everything on screen is animated and colourful. What really does make the graphics stand out is how smooth they all move. Even though the Vic 20 doesn’t have any form of hardware sprites at all, everything moves on screen with almost pixel perfect animation – something rarely seen on the system making for incredibly smooth gameplay.

Sound is your typical explosive effects that you’d expect from most sci-fi games on the Vic. Generally quite good, but nothing particularly origin or anything that we haven’t heard countless times before from some of the better games on the system. There is a short title tune as well that’s nothing to write home about which sounds as if it’s using a couple of sound channels although it would’t have been missed if it were left out completely.

Overall

Mission Mercury is a suprisingly novel and addictive twist on the lunar lander genre, and Steve Lee has worked wonders to get the whole game to run on an unexpanded system. One of the best games on the Vic 20? No, but certainly one that’s worth adding to the collection and one to show why the Vic was such an underrated system.

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