Planet 10, ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic
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Score - 7/107/10
Summary
It was a shame that Planet 10 never made it to retail as it’s a really innovative twist on the Pac Man concept. It’s fun, the 3D works really well and it looks great. With Mastertronic’s partnership with Namco this inevitably gave them cold feet and forced this to be cancelled, but this is one game that really deserved better.
User Review
( votes)Every retro game collector has that one “holy grail” title that they want to own more than anything else. When it comes to Mastertronic, the one that eludes all fans is the mythical Planet 10. The 1989 game, developed by Davor Magdic, was reviewed by most of the major ZX Spectrum magazines but then disappeared without a trace and never made it to retail…
1, 2, 3… Planet 10
You might be asking, why Planet 10? Set in the future, a tenth planet is discovered in our solar system. I won’t go into the ongoing debate about the current status of Pluto or the disputed discovery of an actual tenth planet as that’s a discussion for elsewhere – but the one here is found to be an artificial construct. On examination, it appears to be a threat to the rest of our solar system, comprising of 12 heavily guarded complexes.
It’s your job to infiltrate these, collect energy cells in each of the laybrinth like complexes allowing you to access the control computers at the centre of each of them. Once done, you can progress to the next. Deactivate them all to save the solar system. Each complex is protected by guardians and these can only be stopped by collecting large energy cubes that grant you a temporary power boost allowing you to take them out of action…
Looks Familar
The plot itself maybe somewhat corny, but when it comes to the game Planet 10 was an impressive reworking of an old friend. Yes, Planet 10 is essentially a 3D version of Pac Man. Each complex is a recreation of the original maze design from the Namco classic, the guardians are the ghosts, and the the cubes are the power pills. The only key differences here are that you complete each level by heading to the centre rather that collecting every pill, and that there are 12 levels instead of the original 256.
Gameplay
If you’re a fan of the original Pac Man you’ll immediately feel at home with Planet 10. Movement is automatic in the direction you are facing and you can turn in all directions and perform an 180 degree flip to change directions. The screen is split into five windows – the main large window is the 3D display for the gameplay and underneath are four smaller sections.
The first is your status panel covering your score and remaining lives. Second shows the controls, and third is a radar showing a small local map of any guardians in relation to your current position. The final panel shows a small map of the complex itself and your position in it altthough strangely it only shows you and not the guardians. While this seems like a strange idea, it does add an element of tension to the game reminiscent of Aliens having to rely on the scanner to stay one step ahead of your adversaries.
Technical Marvel
One thing I have to say here is that Planet 10 runs at an impressive speed. While the sound is limited to sparse effects and a bland tune on the title screen, the visuals more than make up for it. The maze looks great, the screen layout is clearly defined and easy to understand and the overall look is superb and is quick enough to be perfectly playable.
There’s no issue when it comes to the game being responsive to the controls, plays well and is a really great modern update of what is already a classic game design. While the developer could have written a straight Pac Man clone, taking this approach was a bold move, but he managed to pull it off superbly and delivered a great game that should have been a huge hit for Mastertronic…
So What Happened?
But after receiving generally positive reviews from the press, as I said at the start Planet 10 disappeared without a trace. Scheduled for release at the end of 1989 Mastertronic certainly wouldn’t have been worried after the response from the media. Crash was the only title to give it a low score, but even then the review team were split with most of the staff agreeing with the consensus from other publications.
What was most likely to be the root cause was Namco. There was no denying the origins of the inspiration behind the game, but one thing the market was doing at the end of the 1980s was moving more toward official licenses and away from unofficial clones. Mastertronic had already worked witth Namco with licenses for Bosconian ’87 and Gaplus in 1987 and 1988 respectively so would releasing Planet 10 have been a risk?
Even if the Namco deal had come to a close, with the launch of the Mastertronic Plus range, arcade conversions were being sought for re-release from other publishers or fresh licenses were being acquired following the merger with Virgin (such as Double Dragon) so perhaps it was simply a case of playing things safe. Regardless, the game never reached retail and according to records only 9 copies reached distribution (and we assume all of these were sent to the media), making it the rarest physical title produced.
A Premium Release
The original plan for Planet 10 was to have released it with Mastertronic Plus branding, and giving it a £2.99 price tag. With a scheduled release date of October 1989 it would have been a perfect stocking filler for Christmas. Despite being treated as a higher priced release it was certainly worth the higher price, even without a license or sub-license – as was the case for most of their other re-releases.
Overall
Planet 10 really is a great update of an old favourite and deserved much better than its eventual fate. With rumours of a Commodore 64 port as well (according to Mastertronic’s records) it could have been a great addition to the range but instead slipped away into obscurity and became a thing of legend. Unfortunately it’s highly likely that none of the physical copies still exist, but at least we can be thankful that this has been preserved so we can all enjoy this lost classic. It’s one that’s well worth tracking down so give this one a try – you won’t regret it.
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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!
I’m Davor Magdic, I wrote the game back in high school, thank you for the kind review! Living in Yugoslavia without internet (back in 1989 🙂 I had no idea how the game fared, and only later found out that it didn’t but never knew why. The licensing explanation makes total sense; the nuances of intellectual property escaped a kid growing up in a socialist country where, IP-wise, more or less anything went.
My latest game for PVP play in game rooms is a mixed reality TRON clone, and reading this article makes me wonder if I have really learned my lesson. You can check it out at kinetronix.com (shameless plug but also amusing in a way; this game I sell to small business so I doubt it would get on anyone radar, not that I think it’s infringing anything).
Great to hear from you Davor. I thought it was a really fun game and to be honest back in the early 80s pretty much every publisher – Mastertronic included – was releasing their own clones of games without worrying about copyright. For a few years they even used Invade-A-Load on the Commodore 64 allowing people to play a clone of Space Invaders while games loaded so things were pretty relaxed!
I don’t know if you can clear one thing up for us… Mastertronic’s records show that a handful of copies were sent out for the Spectrum as well as a few for the Commodore 64 but no-one can find anything else related to a C64 version. Do you know anything about a version existing at all?
Anyway, thanks again for creating such a fun game!
Hi Simon! If there exists a C64 clone of Planet 10, I was never told about it. But it is possible it did exist, because some months after Mastertronic purchased the rights to Planet 10 for the Spectrum, they hired me for two conversions of C64 games to ZX Spectrum: Pinball Power and Cowboy Kidz. The way it worked is they would just send me a final release tape of the game for the Commodore and ask, can you make this for Spectrum? I said yes, and in both cases all I got were some short hand-written notes about the game from the original developer (Cowboy Kidz included a map of all levels), and that was it — no source code or algorithms or anything of that sort, and no way to get in touch with the developer either. It is likely Mastertronic did the same for the ZX Spectrum games, and possible they did it for Planet 10 as well. I am not sure if I was asked for any notes, but for this game you didn’t really need them. Actually to think of it it is amazing how little in common code-wise any two versions of the game must have had, from graphics to sound to data structures, which needed to be optimized for the respective CPU anyway. Fun times! Anyway if there is a C64 version of the game I hope to see it some day.
Pinball Power ended up being released as 3D Pinball (nothing new there with games getting their names changed at the last minute) but Cowboy Kidz was released by Byte Back. If Mastertronic sent that to you then it’s strange it was later sent to someone else for release though although there are so many strange things that went on with their releases I don’t think we’ll ever understand all of it!
We don’t have much to go by with Planet 10 for the C64 to be honest – just a comment in a spreadsheet! From a technical point of view, it does seem odd that it was even attempted as I don’t think back then that the C64 could have handled it. I know coders are MUCH better at pushing the machine now, but back then the Spectrum was far better and I don’t think anyone could have got fast 3D to run anywhere near as close as what you managed.