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Funkmaster V Reviews
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7800 Rank: Unranked
Genre: Action/ Flight
Incomplete Prototype
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I'll Take One Scoop of Mountain and Two Scoops of Mesa, Please. |
Pros:
Tremendous mountain scaling for the time.
Cons:
It wasn't finished! Looks like it would have been great. |
What the Hell Did You Put in my Drink??? |
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Overview: Rescue on Fractalus (ROF to it's friends) was a game that was graphically ahead of its time back in the dizzity day. It's still cool looking today. ROF famously featured beautiful fractal technology to render constant scaling of dangerous mountains and valleys as pilots flew around them. The scrolling of these spiky peaks on the Atari 5200 and fellow computer systems were computer news-worthy at the time. While playing a full fledged port, a player must pilot into hostile sherbert flavored lands to rescue downed ally pilots... without crashing, getting lazer-fried, or accidentally getting scared to death by alien solider posing as a human pilot. The surprise alien jump scares (never mentioned in manuals or promos) made Rescue on Fractalus! one of the first computer games that literally "scared people". ROF is considered a computer classic for the Commodore 64, Atari computers, Tandy Color, ZX Spectrum and beyond.
What We Gotz Here: The 7800 version looked super slick, and with it, you can fly around the landscape to see what it was going to look like on the 7800. Sadly, not much else remains but flying around the alien, sugary sweet citrus wonderland. There's no menu or end screens. You can't even crash the ship or end the program any way. That's unfortunate because I think this game would have been a killer version on the Prosystem.
Verdict: There's not much to do, but the game populates the mountains wonderfully... so being able to see that on a 7800 captures a ROF a low end CURIOUS ODDITY
ranking for this unfinished prototype.
Additional Information: I would like to thank AtariAge and AtariProtos.com for the screenshots used in this review.
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