Game Review: Sidewinder II (Commodore 64, PAL Developments / Mastertronic Plus)

Back when Mastertronic were attempting to put games into arcades with the Arcadia System, effectively based on a Commodore Amiga but with hardware changes, one of the first games released was Sidewinder, and later had its own Amiga release. Even if you do not get on with the game’s arcade difficulty level, and it is insanely hard, you can hear those explosions from a mile off and any computer shop that showed off an Amiga at the time would usually have this playing due to its audio-visual impact. It was one of those games which did define the earlier era of the Amiga and made people sit up and take notice.

This game is marketed as its sequel, and started life in the PAL Developments stable on the Atari ST first, with an Amiga conversion that followed not long after. This time around, it was also converted for some of the 8-bit machines – the Spectrum, Atari XL/XE and the Commodore 64, but no Amstrad CPC version was released. The plot is effectively that a mass is approaching from the aliens’ home world, and a battle station many times larger than the Star Killer, the ship you destroyed 27 years ago in the mission that brought peace – the sidewinder mission. So, in effect you are undertaking the second mission to get to the alien battle station via tunnels used to vent excess energy.

Winding It In

The game loads, unusually for a Mastertronic game, with Cyberload, and the loading screen is nice enough. When the game starts and the title theme plays, most of the plot of the inlay has been recreated here in a film credits styled scrolling message, with a nice Sidewinder II logo at the top. The plot then gives way to the game’s credits as well as a high score table, which adds nicely to the presentation. It is joystick in port 2 only, and no two-player mode either. A nice animation of the rear thrusters of your ship shows as you launch into combat with the tunnel soon approaching, and the screen scrolling smoothly as you would expect from a Commodore 64 shoot-em-up.

Straight away you see the theme of the game – as the screen scrolls, close to the edges of the walls there are the defensive positions which fire bullets in all directions at you. Shooting those stops the bullets and in some cases, also stops a laser from firing across the tunnel itself so you can get past it. There are also venting doors which open and close, with the timing crucial to get past them and not lose some of your shields along the way. Yes, thankfully, the game does operate a shields system so if you do get hit, it is not a loss of life but a loss of shields, and this does mean you can at least take some risks when shooting the defensive targets.

Stopped In Its Tracks

One very different feature of this game is that if you hold down on the joystick at the bottom of the screen, the tunnel on each level will stop scrolling. This means with this held down, you can move left or right to get into position and take out the defensive positions. Whilst this will not work for every target, it does at least give you a chance to size up the next set of positions ahead and get a way to destroy them. Similarly, going far enough up the screen will result in the screen scrolling faster, allowing you to use that speed to get past some of the defensive positions or the venting doors as needed.

There are not that many aliens that come down at you, but those that do are in the form of maintenance and defence drone. These are either in small waves or a larger craft. You do also have extra weaponry ported in and these will come down to be collected. You can either have your main weapon upgraded, with a twin laser later being the weapon to have, forsaking anything else due to its power and accuracy. Unfortunately, if you do lose your shields and lose a life, any weapons that you have gained are not retained, meaning you are awaiting the neck weapon drop off. Thankfully, these do happen regularly, and the shield that lasts an age and allows you get to the end of level two without mishap is very much welcomed.

Difficult Destruction

The game does have a high difficulty level at first, and remains quite difficult in later levels. What is impressive is the number of bullets and enemies on screen aiming at you, with no slow down whatsoever – the original Atari ST version suffers very badly from this. The fact you can pause and shoot when holding down can help, although some of the defensive position placements do mean that if they are blocked off, only certain weapons that fire diagonally or with a good range can destroy them. The key is also knowing when to whizz a quick way past the venting doors to get to the net set of defensive positions to hit, and timing is everything – one wrong move can mean loss of all shields and loss of one of your three initial lives. Thankfully you can get an extra life at 10,000-point intervals, and the more you progress, that score can ramp up quite quickly.

With practice and patience, this can reap its own rewards and this does mean that you can progress to later levels to take on the more fiendish layouts. There are five levels in all, each with some difficult paths to head through along the tunnels. The speed up pick up does allow for smoother movement as needed, and that can help considerably early on – but do not pick up a second speed up as then the movement can be a little too quick. The controls generally do feel very responsive and the collision detection with the side walls is reasonably fair – you will only lose shields if you really do go off course into the walls. These aspects to help to keep the game playable and although still difficult, less frustrating once you get to learn the layouts and where the enemies and defensive positions will appear.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Sidewinder II are well drawn, with a nice high-resolution sprite overlay on your ship giving it definition and very clear – with the thrusting effects at the start being a nice touch.  The level layouts are a good mix of colour palettes, with the green on level two and blue on level three showing off the effects well, with all aliens also well drawn overall. The title music from Julian Potts is highly under-rated in my view, it is a great and moody five- minute piece which has a quite brooding dark feel with a funky drum groove and dramatic main lead later. It also has a cracking part half way through with two channels of bass and a funkier higher section to give it more mood too. The sound effects are a little weedy in parts but they do the job, notably more so for the different firing weapons.

Final Thoughts

Sidewinder II may not seem that much of a shoot-em-up at first, but the more you play, the more you get into it. The fact you can either speed up or stop the scrolling to get past certain sections of each level is a smart move, and means you can effectively map out when to go fast and when to go slow. There is perhaps too much reliance on having to take out the side targets with not enough aliens coming at you directly, but that also does make for a different challenge too.  It can prove to be difficult but learning the layouts means patience does reap its own rewards, and with you having shields and having responsive controls, that does help immensely to make the game more playable. The only thing is that there are other shoot-em-ups out there which are better, and in a crowded market, this game was sometimes overlooked. It is a shame, because what is there is solid enough and arguably executed a lot better than the original Atari ST version – there are no slowdowns here when the action gets busy for example. Worth checking out, but you will need some patience during play.

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