Your Vanguard space fighter has infiltrated a heavily-defended alien base. The
enemy outnumbers you by six or seven to one at any given time (thank goodness
for animated sprite limitations, or you'd be in real trouble!). You can
fire above, below, ahead and behind your ship, which is an art you'll need to
master since enemy ships attack from all of these directions. You can't run
into any of the walls and expect to survive, but you can gain brief
invincibility by flying through an Energy block, which supercharges your hull
enough to ram your enemies (something which, at any other time, would mean
certain death for you as well). At the end of your treacherous journey lies the
alien in charge of the entire complex - but if you lose a life at that stage,
you don't get to come back for another shot!
(SNK, 1981)
Very much like their earlier game Fantasy
(which was licensed out to Rock-Ola), SNK's Vanguard was an early entry
in the exploration game genre. Sure, shooting things was fun, but this game
made it clear - through the "radar map" of the alien base at the top
of the screen - that there was a clear destination to be reached. And if you
weren't good enough to get there with the lives you had, you could continue the
journey - for just a quarter more - again and again, until you got there.
The controls were no help. Robotron:
2084 was still a couple of years away, and Vanguard could have -
and should have - been the first game to use dual joysticks, one for directional
control and one for firing. But alas, your little ship's lasers were controlled
by a compass rose of fire buttons which required almost superhuman agility.
I also seem to remember SNK getting in trouble for using Queen's blast-off music from Flash
Gordon without permission; the song would play whenever you entered an
Energy tunnel.
Vanguard was translated for the Atari 2600, where it actually survived
the translation (and became infinitly easier since the Atari joystick's solitary
fire button simply threw a volley of electrical death in all directions at
once).
Rating:
Four quarters - a couple of minor irritants, but mostly a compelling and
addictive game.
Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster
The Atari 2600 version of Vanguard - not bad,
and you don't need to have an octopus at the weapons controls.
Four quarters - a couple of minor irritants, but mostly a compelling and
addictive game.
