Spectre VR

I Just Blew Away My Boss

A Review of Spectre VR

In the beginning there was the box. And the box was without form and void of software; and darkness was upon the face of the computer screens. And the challenge of developing a truly cool game faced the programmers. And the programmers said "Let there be software". And the marketing dudes saw the software, that it was awesome: and they said let us give this software a unique box. A box that will not fitteth upon the consumers shelf. A box that will truly taketh up a lot of space at the retail stores. A box that cometh to a point, but not quite. And we shall call this software Spectre VR.

OK, you guessed it, I'm writing this review on Sunday. Spectre VR (hence referred to as just SVR) is a game reminiscent of Battle Zone. The not-so-exciting goal of SVR is to plow down flags located throughout the arena before proceeding to the next level. In the mean time, you have to preserve your own existence while toasting the various enemies that are attempting to prevent you from reaching your goal. To accomplish this task, you pilot this bulky tank like vehicle, that can be customized with emphasis on ammo, strength, or speed, through a virtual (yea right) 3D polygonal world. You score points for blasting enemies and avoiding their shots, with additional points for beating the clock. As you proceed through the levels, things become increasingly more difficult with new enemy types appearing every so often. So, you must be saying to yourself this sounds arcade-ish and boring. Well, to tell you the truth, it is. But don't despair! Although this game has limited single player appeal, its beauty is in multiplayer play.

Multiplayer you say? Multiplayer I say! I originally purchased SVR after signing up with an Internet provider that has Game Connection(TM) access. Through the Game Connection, you can play SVR with up to 8 other players. This may not seem that incredible, but you have to realize that SVR has been around since 1993, and its predecessor, Spectre has been around a lot longer. Also, realize that this is all possible over a 14.4 kbps modem! Try playing 8 player Descent or 6 player Falcon 3.0 over a modem.

The fun starts in the arena. The contestants duke it out until a certain number of kills are reached or for a specified length of time. You have a primary projectile weapon as well as secondary weapons including smart missiles, seekers, scattershot, proximity mines, spinners, impulse bursts and cyberblasters. The enemies include rovers, warriors, radar cloaked robots, optically cloaked robots, sliders, vertical area mines, turrets, hunter killers, orbiters, cybermud, intelligent walls, bouncers and at higher levels, enemies of differing abilities (none of which is half as fun as blowing up your best friend :).

But the fun doesn't stop in the arena. In addition, the following scenarios support up to 8 players:

Flag Rally
The object is to collect all the flags A - F. The first person to do this gets a match point. As in arena, you play to a certain number of points or for a specified time. The clincher is when you kill someone you get all their flags. Personally, I like to watch and see who is getting the flags, setup an ambush, and steal their flags.

Base Raid
The SVR manual refers to this as capture-the-flag with missile weapons. Two teams have bases at opposite sides of the arena and you get points for destroying the other guys base. You accomplish this by bumping into it with your tank.

IT!
Tag, your IT! The players who are not it score points by avoiding the player who is it. Basically, if you don't get tagged you win.

Keep Away
Tag, I'm IT. This time you score points while you are IT. He who stays it the longest is bound to win.

Bumper Tanks
One, two, three gentlemen start your engines. Score points by ramming head on into the other players.

Zone Control
The SVR manual refers to this as Tic Tac Toe with cannons in cyberspace. In this scenario, the arena is split up into a 4 x 4 grid with a flag in the middle of each square. The square becomes yours when you capture the flag. Get a complete row either diagonally, vertically, or horizontally and you score a point. This is not as easy as it sounds, however, since squares can be recaptured at any time by members of the opposing side.

BitBall
Ram your tank head first into a cyber ball in an attempt to drive it into a goal located in the center of the arena. An interesting twist is the ability to cause the other player to shoot before he is ready. This is not without a price as you loose 1 point for doing this.

Cyber Soccer
Pele eat your heart out!. This time the goals are at opposite sides of the arena and you score points by ramming the ball into the opposing players goal.

Wheew! That's a lot of ways to play multiplayer, and to tell you the truth, I have not tried them all. My favorite, so far, is deluxe flag rally. The difference between this and regular flag rally is your secondary weapon changes with each flag you get. Also, many of the scenarios I mentioned above have variations that will keep you playing for hours on end. So, now that I have peaked your interest, go and buy a copy of SVR. You will find it in the bargain bin at most software stores ranging from $10 to $20. Keep in mind that this is the DOS version and not the Enhanced Windows CD version. I originally purchased the CD version but was unsuccessful in playing over the Game Connection because Windows has this nasty habit of monitoring its serial ports. This resulted in the modem carrier dropping whenever I would leave the program I dialed into the BBS with and tried to pull up SVR. There may be a way around this, but since the disk version of SVR was $30 cheaper than the enhanced CD version, I just took it back and got the disk version.

The requirements for SVR are minimal. It will play on a 16 MHz 286 or better with 640k of RAM and 3 MB free on your hard drive. It uses 320x200 VGA graphics and supports Sound Blaster and AdLib sound cards. I play on a DX2-80 with 12MB RAM and a Sound Blaster AWE32 sound card. Needless to say, I had no problems installing and running SVR. It worked out of the box with no changes to my config.sys or autoexec.bat. It is playable with both a joystick or keyboard, and IMHO I saw no advantages to the joystick over the keyboard. This may be because Spectre was originally developed for a Mac and keyboard play.