Game Review: Omega One (ZX Spectrum. Mastertronic)

Loading Screen and Menus

The loading screen is reasonably good with a drawing of your soldier in a spacesuit holding a yellow gun with a few stars.  It does fit the gameplay and what to expect before you play it, rather well. Once loaded there are two opening screens.  At the bottom of this review, I’ve described what is on the first one screen (it’s rather technical!) but I’ll move straight onto the second one here.

So as the screen changes, it fades with a short, sampled sound effect that sounds like a scrunched up crisp packet!  This is then followed by a short tune and what likes like forest with some distant mountains in the background.  Here you also get to choose to play either by keyboard or joystick.

Once the tune has stopped, there is a short scrolling message.  One slight discrepancy I noticed between the inlay card and the actual game is that the inlay card says 12 hours to complete the game, but it is 24 hours as per the scrolling message.  Once you begin, the game, a timer counts down from 24:00).

Playability

The game moves at what I’d call an average pace.  It’s not too slow but at the same time, it could have done with slightly more speed.  For example, it takes around eight seconds to go from one side of the screen to the other (without stopping to shoot anything).

You begin the game with nine lives.  Now straight away when I see any game give you so many lives, it makes me wonder if the game is going to be so difficult that you’re going to really need them or is it down to poor collision detection.  Anyway, the good news is that it turns out that this is a fairly generous amount of lives and the collision detection is acceptable (although not perfect).  You can re-boost your energy along the way (you do need to collect it first) and in addition, won’t lose a life instantly if you collide with any of the aliens.

It may look a bit like a space platform game, but it isn’t.  You walk, jump, shoot, fall down tubes, use lifts and teleport your way through the levels.  This is an arcade adventure game where you’ll need to can pick up items, decide where to us them.  The obvious ones are getting the colour cards and changing them to coloured doors.

There is one very frustrating point though to make here.  You’ll either need to have a good memory or consider drawing a map (as it can be easy to get lost as you move around).  This is because there are a few tunnels, where using the wrong ones can lead to you falling to a screen where you are zapped, resulting in an instant game over (regardless of the number of lives you have remaining!)

You don’t get an infinite amount of ammunition, so each time you take a shot, you will an electrical line slowly disappear in the lower part of the screen.

Graphics

The graphics are very good with a fair amount of colour throughout the game.  This is very evident when reading the Instructions section before playing the game.  These instructions show you what you will be looking for and are neatly displayed.

The animation on your spaceman as he walks along, is very good.  The legs and feet are very well animated and look natural in they’re movement.  The real standout feature is the aerial on the top of your backpack (as it whips left and to right when you walk along).  Even turning around results in rotating around to face and turn the opposite way and that looks neat as well.

All the aliens and backgrounds tend to have plenty of detail and it’s clear that a lot of time and effort went into making these all look right.

Don’t Lose Your Head

If you lose one of your lives, your head launches upwards (whilst spinning around),  It then lands perfectly back on your head to continue the game.

Music and Sound Effects

There are a few couple of short tunes (at the start and when the hi-score table is displayed), the usual style of shooting and collecting item type effects and a little bit of sampled sound in Omega One.  This all adds to the atmosphere of the game and even redefining each of the keys has a punchy sound to it!

Shooting an alien results in a short bleeping on/off sound effect and if you collide with any aliens, you will hear a tapping noise.

Slight Repetitiveness…

When moving through the screens, you will tend to see that the aliens move pretty much in the same pattern.  The aliens do move in horizontal, vertical and diagonal paths.

When you walk onto a new screen, after a few seconds, you’ll see the same alien descend vertically downwards on the right-hand side so it gets a bit predictable in places.

Stats For Nerds!

Once Omega One has loaded, there is a drawing of your spacecraft and a scrolling message going along the bottom of the screen.  This contains the programmers name and that it was copyright 1987.  From the front screen, you can choose to 1. Play The Game, 2. Instructions and 3. Redefine Keys.

What is different about this though (apart from parts of it being in different colours) is that the programmer has given details on how the game was designed and essential hardware and software which was used to create it This includes how much memory each part of the game took up and I can’t any other game doing this before, but I like the idea.

Hardware:-

Firstly, what I found surprising though that it mentions the game was designed using an Amstrad 6128, but there was only ever a Spectrum release of Omega One.  This does, prompt why there was never an Amstrad release of the game as well?

Software:-

• Run using Hisoft Devpack 80 CP/M Assembler
• Screen Picture designed using The CCP Art Studio
• The Page RS232 Interface
• The NIDO Valley Slomo Speed Controller
• The Romantic Robot Multiface One & Two

Technical Data:-

• Program Code, Text and Tables 10K
• Graphics 19K
• Room Data 6K
• Space Screen 4.5K

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You know what we think but why not share your thoughts on this game! Let us know what you think of it in the comments below, or add your own score using the slider in the summary box at the top of the review!