Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: beeper@vibraphone.lirpa.com (Beeper McChumley) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: BLAZEMONGER Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Date: 1 Apr 1993 05:10:38 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 287 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <1pdtge$1jm@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: game, arcade, bloodbath, commercial PRODUCT NAME BLAZEMONGER BRIEF DESCRIPTION BLAZEMONGER is an extremely fast, highly violent action/arcade game. Features include multiple virtual joysticks, 18-dimensional hyperparallax scrolling, 160-decibel digitized sound effects, and live dynamite. WARNING: some graphic scenes may be too upsetting for casual users, or even for experienced axe murderers. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: BLAZEMONGER INCORPORATED Address: 666 Satan Speedway Chickenmilk, WI USA Telephone: (900) EAT-DEATH [$195.00 per minute] FAX: Get REAL! Fax machines are for WIMPS. E-mail: BLAZEMONGER@blazemonger.blazemonger.blazemonger.bm LIST PRICE $9.95 (US dollars). To quote the outside packaging, "REAL software doesn't have to be EXPENSIVE; and with BLAZEMONGER, you PAY FOR IT LATER!! (Heh heh.)" Most stores sell it for full list price because it's so cheap. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS Despite the (widely advertised) fact that BLAZEMONGER breaks every known rule of "correct" Amiga programming, the game runs properly on all Amiga models under all versions of the operating system. The literature claims that BLAZEMONGER can run on other brands of computers, and even on other household appliances, but we didn't test this out. COPY PROTECTION This game has the heaviest multi-level copy protection scheme that I've ever seen, even in my dreams! It was obviously devised by a sick mind, and is a little difficult to describe, since I'm still not completely sure what it is. But I'll try. The master disk has a non-standard format which cannot be read by DiskCopy nor any of the existing hardware or software copiers. Believe me, we tried! My dealer and I used every copying mechanism he had in the store, and all that we accomplished was to melt several disk drives and an Amiga 4000. (He was NOT pleased.) The next level is a "look up the word in the manual" scheme which, considering the effectiveness of the disk-based protection, seems unnecessary. But the manual lookup is pretty well integrated into the game, and you quickly get used to typing the 255-letter keywords as needed. (The manual, BTW, is the largest I've ever seen for *any* computer application, let alone a game! It's HUGE! Have you ever seen the complete set of DEC VMS manuals? This is bigger!!!) The next level is where things start getting weird. After the game boots from the master floppy (this takes about 0.00001 nanoseconds), you must remove the disk from the drive and -- I'm serious here -- plug it into the parallel port! Yes, you plug the DISK into the PORT. In this way, the disk acts as a "dongle" to insure that you can't use the disk in a second Amiga while you are playing on the first. The remaining 9 or 10 levels of protection get progressively tougher and stranger. Frankly, I don't really know how to describe them. One of them looks like a big, black, sticky, rubber blob that covers the entire monitor, and yet somehow allows the graphics to show through without any interference. Another is a small box of yellow dust (spores, perhaps?) that must be sprinkled around your room before you boot the game for the first time. (This only needs to be done once, unless you move your computer to another room. The company will send you more dust free of charge.) A third mechanism consists of two large iron "walls" or "monoliths" with hundreds of steel spikes sticking out. While you are playing, these monoliths must be standing on both sides of you. Now, they don't appear to DO anything... and they aren't CONNECTED to anything... but still I get the creepy feeling that they are built to SLAM together, with me in the middle, if I try something illegal. Needless to say, I have *not* tried copying the game with these babies installed. (However, the game won't boot without them.) I know this all sounds pretty strange, but it's not really that inconvenient when you consider how much fun the game is! After a while, you don't even notice the protection any more. Some of my less patient friends have purchased a second Amiga just for running BLAZEMONGER so they don't have to do the "protection ritual" all the time. Just for fun, I gave the program to some of my super-hacker friends to see if they could break the copy protection. Their confident smiles soon turned to frowns of frustration, and then screams of agony, as they attempted to get past the various deadly mechanisms. Nobody was successful, and one of them had to spend a few weeks in a mental hospital! Personally, I think that BLAZEMONGER INCORPORATED could invent a whole new computer game whose object is to crack this bizarre and twisted puzzle! :-) REVIEW After reading about BLAZEMONGER for years in comp.sys.amiga.advocacy, I finally decided to check it out! I was surprised at how inexpensive it is! I managed to get the last copy on my dealer's shelf. After doing the whole copy protection ritual, I popped the disk into my A500 and booted up! Folks, the opening animation is AWESOME. I don't think I've ever seen a more terrifying use of a pair of tweezers anywhere. Even if you never play the game, you MUST check out this intro. Once the game begins, BLAZEMONGER quickly takes off. The arcade action is fast and furious as thousands of deadly enemy menaces divebomb you. The game takes place on a series of dungeons and worlds, each one with an unknown number of levels (rumored to be up in the hundreds of thousands). It's unbelievable how much stuff they packed onto a single disk! You can make your "hero" character male, female, or one of several thousand different alien races and sexes. The character generator is very sophisticated, and can "roll up" your character entirely automatically (the fastest method), or you can do it manually, or a combination. All the usual features are there: height, weight, strength, intelligence, armor class, hit points, etc. But there are also some unusual ones: blood type, preferred musical instrument, hat size, number of fish, etc., and some of these come in VERY handy in the later levels of play, so choose carefully!! I had to quit my most successful game and start over because I didn't equip my hero with enough bowling balls. Joystick control is phenomenal. Kudos to the programmers at B. INC. for the incredibly smooth and realistic handling. In fact, I had the eerie feeling several times that the *hero* was controlling the *joystick*, and not the other way around. Weird. So, how is the gameplay? In a word: HARD! This is *not* a game for beginners, or even for intermediate players. This game will give even the most advanced game gods plenty of trouble. Despite several weeks of non-stop playing, I have been unable to raise my score above "3". This is partly because of BLAZEMONGER's difficult scoring system which deducts points from your score whenever you mess up, or sometimes even at random (I think -- but it's hard to be sure, because there is so much going on). But even if the scoring were different, the playing itself is nearly impossible. I don't want to pat myself on the back, but I finished "Turrican" in 20 minutes, "Shadow of the Beast" in 18 minutes, and "Battle Squadron" in a record-breaking 655 seconds. But BLAZEMONGER is in a league by itself -- I just can't beat it! I can barely get to the second level!! Even so, the difficult gameplay has not prevented me from enjoying the game. The scenery, when there is any time to look, is beautifully drawn. It looks like every screen was raytraced in 36-bit color and then hand-edited for detail... and at 5000 frames per second, that is a *tremendous* number of screens!!! (How the @%*&$! did they get it ALL ON ONE DISK?!?!?) DOCUMENTATION As I said above, BLAZEMONGER comes with a gigantic manual. In it, you'll find every piece of information you'll ever want to know about the game (except cheats, of course!). It also includes a history of the game and the company, lists of recommended music to play during the game, maps of many other Amiga games (!!), tables of logarithms in several bases, several hundred recipes, the complete Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary (part of the copy protection mechanism), printouts of all source code and documentation from the first 800 Fish Disks, several thousand pages of legal disclaimers, and much, much more. I can't believe that you get so much information when the game itself costs only $9.95!! The paper itself is worth more than that; I don't understand how BLAZEMONGER INCORPORATED makes any money. BTW, I think it's a little ridiculous that BLAZEMONGER INCORPORATED recommends that you read the entire manual before playing the game. Realistically speaking, I'd be decomposing in my grave long before I'd even finished the first volume. Hell, I don't even know what is *in* most of the manual because the freakin' Table Of Contents is slighly longer than an average encyclopedia! Personally, I'd like to see BLAZEMONGER's documentation come on CD-ROM, since it's so huge. Building an extra wing onto my house to store the manual was feasible, but only because I work in construction. Some users might not have the patience for this. A ten-meter-high stack of CD-ROM discs would be much more convenient. LIKES AND DISLIKES BLAZEMONGER's graphics are the most obviously stunning part of the game. Like the TV ads say: no other Amiga game even comes close. I tried playing "Shadow of the Beast III" after a game of BLAZEMONGER, and SOBIII looked so pathetic that I tossed it into the trash. The copy protection is annoying at first, but it's not so bad once you get used to it. (Those monoliths still give me the creeps, though!!) My only real complaint is the packaging does not adequately describe the EXTREME level of violence and gore in the game. Although the box is shaped like a plastic explosive wrapped around a lit stick of dynamite, I don't think that's enough of a deterrent for innocent little kids. Also, the screen shots on the box are relatively "tame" compared to most of the game. There is a brief warning on the box, but it says only that the game is "not for the squeamish." I think they should change it to: "not for the squeamish who don't enjoy seeing human heads forcefully pressed through a meat grinder and served to carnivorous, belching slime-beings that looks like piles of flaming tyrannosaurus excrement." COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS There is NO comparison. BUGS [Minor spoiler] I thought I had found a bug on level 3. Every time I pressed the elevator button and the giant spyrochetes jumped out, the game appeared to "freeze", and nothing I did had any effect. A quick call to BLAZEMONGER "Customer Service" cleared up the problem -- my hero had been breathed on by an invisible ice monster, which froze him (and all of the surrounding countryside!) solidly in place. In later games, I learned how to avoid the ice monster, so the problem went away. VENDOR SUPPORT My experiences with BLAZEMONGER's "Customer Service" department have been mixed. Although they answered my question (above) with great efficiency, they also claimed that I owed them several hundred dollars in "protection money" for continued support. When I protested, they sent a representative to my home to "discuss" the matter, and this helped me to understand why regular, monthly payments to the "Customer Service" department were a good idea. Out of curiosity, I asked the "Customer Service" department why their name is always written inside of double quotes. They said it was for "legal reasons" but would not elaborate. And charged me another ten dollars. WARRANTY The disk media and all accessories are warranted for the first two thousand games of BLAZEMONGER. This might sound like a lot, but it really isn't, since it's normal to lose several hundred games of BLAZEMONGER before you can even plug in the joystick. But everything has worked reliably for me so far. CONCLUSIONS There is no other game like BLAZEMONGER, and there is no other experience like playing it!! I've seen various games that call themselves "Blazemonger-killers" [sic], but none of them compare to the awesome spectacle of the real thing. It's a game that inspires intense loyalty in its fans, too. Even as I lie here in my hospital bed, waiting for the burns and lesions to heal, I am eagerly awaiting my next session with the Ultimate Game. And NEXT time, I'll remember to jump BEFORE the napalm hits the beef stew! COPYRIGHT NOTICE I hereby transfer the copyright of this review to Daniel J. Barrett, current moderator of comp.sys.amiga.reviews, because he is such a swell guy. Copyright 1993 by Daniel J. Barrett. All rights reserved. This article may be freely distributed as long as it is distributed in its entirety. It may not be included in any publication without the written permission of the copyright holder. --- Respectfully submitted, Beeper McChumley 1 Prosio Fall Road West Chester, MA 11111 beeper@vibraphone.lirpa.com --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu