1999 (ZX Spectrum)
In 1987 the game 1999 was released with a story that takes place at an unknown time in the future. Already hitting things off with the odd juxtaposition of naming itself after a specific year but telling the player it doesn’t matter when it’s set, 1999 shows off perhaps its best trait: its unusual story setup.
If you only go on what’s actually present in the game, either based on its audio sample or the slowly scrolling small string of letters on the title screen, the game has the odd premise of the evil Dr. Vargon wanting to destroy humans for attacking innocent aliens. First off, you are all the evil Dr. Vargon, the game even referring to him as evil, and wiping out humanity certainly doesn’t seem like the thing a heroic character would do. However, this warped story of playing as the villain becomes a bit more interesting if you read the back of the box, as Dr. Vargon has actually been recruited by familiar arcade aliens of the time. The Space Invaders, “Galaxions” from Galaga, and “Pheenix’s” from Phoenix all want to get some payback on humans for being shot down so often in the context of other classic arcade shooters. The humans have joined together in a group known as The People’s Allied Centre for Mankind and Neighbours to keep up the fight against these aliens though, the acronym P.A.C.M.A.N. a silly little continuation of this setup that seems to imply we’re getting revenge for all the enemies in popular games of the time. Sadly, beyond the back of the box and in that small part of the title screen you won’t find this coming across in the actual gameplay, the player seemingly shooting down aliens themselves and it’s a little hard to believe humans would be using giant monster brains to defend their planet.
The action begins with you flying into a region of space the game calls The Kingdom of Death. The player’s spacecraft flies horizontally and can move anywhere it likes on screen, initially able to only fire one shot at a time and needing to wait until it’s hit something or gone off screen to fire another. This first level is actually a pretty decent slow ease into the game despite its intimidating name, the green orbs that fly in doing so in a predictable pattern and giving you a decent chance to test out your movement and weapon. If you can kill every enemy in a group you’ll see a blue power-up pop out and drift away, but if you can grab it, you can start working towards ship upgrades. A single blue power-up can be cashed in for 5000 points if you only care for score, but if you grab two power-ups before cashing them in you can up your fire rate so you can have two shots out at once or more if you keep collecting and redeeming at this level. Three power-ups can be exchanged for automatic weapons fire, and four can go towards getting you an extra life, the player starting off with only three. Going for the fire upgrades feels like the only one worth really investing in though so it avoids some of the usual issues with a Gradius-inspired upgrade system where you can feel powerless while trying to build up to good upgrades, but it’s very likely you won’t get to enjoy the fruits of your upgrades for very long because they all disappear on death and 1999 is actually a ruthless and unfair game once you get past the first level and the following boss stage.
Before you get to see the cruelty waiting ahead in 1999, you’ll first spot something odd in the form of a little asteroid that flies in from the left periodically. Enemies and obstacles always come in from the right, the player often needing to stay close to the left edge of the screen to remain safe and have time to respond to those incoming dangers. However, the little asteroid is a constant nuisance, meaning you either float ahead a bit so you have some time to react to its frequent appearances or you take your chances and hope it doesn’t spawn right on top of you. In the first two stages this isn’t a death sentence once you understand its existence, but level three introduces The Walls of Hades. In the wall levels, you don’t have to shoot anything but instead need to weave your way through barriers that will instantly kill you if you touch them. The spaces between them are already so small you can barely weave through them, but they come so quickly that you often need to hug the left edge of the screen to have the time to move your craft into position to slip through the small openings. Somewhat mercifully you usually need to weave up and down in the same pattern to pass through, but you need to learn this pattern in a game where three deaths sends you back to level one, there are five wall levels total that get harder and must be reacted to more quickly to have any hope of reaching the right spot in time, and the asteroid doesn’t care that it might make it impossible to survive the stage if it appears in a certain spot.
The walls are certainly not the only issue with 1999’s game design. In levels where you fight monster faces, yin-yang orbs, or computer chips you will find things manageable and the boss fights with the orb turrets have a ricochet attack pattern you can predict fairly easily even when it returns later with new tricks. However, even if luck and superhuman movement allows you to win at The Walls of Hades’s repeat appearances, Hells Gate practically makes the game impossible. At first the fight with these big red brains is possible albeit slow and difficult. The boss fires two large yellow spikes forward that absorb your attacks and it fires these fairly quickly, meaning you’ll be landing few shots since it often is behind those yellow spikes or you’re moving to a spot while dodging where you can’t shoot the evil brain. You can eventually win the first visit to Hells Gate, but the next time you run into the brain he now starts closer to you, giving you less time to dodge the yellow spikes and meaning you have to stay back farther than before to have a chance of outmaneuvering them. The asteroids are in every stage so here they are pressure from the left that can be just as deadly as in the wall levels. There are 5 encounters with this brain boss and it is closer every time, the final encounter with it giving you almost no room to move.
The repetition of stage designs where the alteration is just to make them brutally difficult really makes it hard to justify continually pushing forward in 1999, but even before you’ve seen every unique level type you’ll have repeated the walls and brain boss multiple times. Thankfully those other stages just introduce new enemies for the more tolerable regular waves, but getting there is a grueling task and you likely won’t be holding onto any upgrades you get from them. You might be tempted to think that going for extra lives with the upgrade system could be the way to go instead of firepower, but since all power-ups disappear on death it’s hard to get four while still utilizing a basic shot and taking the kind of risks required to gun down an entire enemy wave.
Normally I wouldn’t use the phrase “impossibly hard” but even the Youtube playthroughs of the game use invincibility cheats or a rewind feature in an emulator to make the game possible to beat. I had to go through the more grueling task of using Antstream’s limited and somewhat clunky save feature to mark my progress and actually have the opportunity to learn stages or luck through them. Factors like the asteroid appearances and the late game squeezes in Hells Gate really make this the kind of game where so many things would have to align for you to have a hope of getting to the end, and even if you do, the game itself believes you had to have cheated to get there and calls you Banana Breath.
That odd insult does at least show one of the few likeable things about 1999, and that is that it almost feels like a game put together by a group of friends happy to throw in weird and wacky ideas. The actual action doesn’t benefit from this, but the high score table is written like a conversation between two people talking about developing the game, the credits include the developers telling you how they made the game, and the weird story attached to this game gives it a character its gameplay components do not. Each life begins with the very appropriate message of “PREPARE FOR DEATH!” and even the developer’s name Ice Cool Coders gives this impression that the three guys who made the game, Stephen Corry, Balor Knight, and Chris Pile, were having fun doing so. They didn’t make another game under that development name though and their future in game creation seems to involve them splitting apart but occasionally collaborating once more, but this is seemingly their first game and it definitely shows in the terrible balance shown in the harder stages.
THE VERDICT: 1999 has two decent stage types in the form of the ones focused on enemy waves and the rehashed turret boss, but the other two not only require perfect performance to beat but random factors can be your downfall. The Walls of Hades and Hells Gate not only reappear five times each but each time it becomes more difficult to realistically move in a way to avoid instant deaths. While the upgrade system seemed a decent idea for the simpler stages, the more brutal ones are hard to beat even before you need to move absolutely perfectly to slip through small gaps or avoid a boss who is right in your face. The asteroids flying in from the left constantly are a complication that makes even memorizing all the dangers still no guarantee of success, but it doesn’t seem like 1999 was intended to be beaten fairly. It’s brutally difficult and doesn’t try to pretend its fair, so it’s hardly worth the effort to actually try and see the somewhat amusing developer text at the game’s end.
And so, I give 1999 for the ZX Spectrum…
An ATROCIOUS rating. Four levels into the game and you’ll likely already feel how strained the gameplay design is. The asteroid is a fine complication in stages where its presence can be accounted for, but The Walls of Hades and Hells Gate practically require hugging the left edge of the screen to survive only for this little rock to fly in to undo your progress. Your extra life pool is so small and building up to upgrades is constantly sabotaged by the reappearance of the harsh stages where the challenge eventually boils down to heavy memorization and a huge dose of luck. Even when you’re not in the two worse level types, the main ones are harmed by their presence as the work done in the enemy wave levels and turret boss will likely be undone, and since the game repeats these more tolerable levels with only minor shifts to the dangers you face in them, it’s not even worth seeing their late game variants since they’re so basic. Take the asteroids out of the wall levels and brain boss fights and things would at least seem manageable despite still being absurdly difficult since danger closes in so tight later in the experience, but it feels like the Ice Cool Coders didn’t want people to win, especially since the design ethos of the time was to make short ZX Spectrum games last longer just by making them obnoxiously challenging.
In one way it is probably appropriate that the evil Dr. Vargon’s quest to avenge arcade game aliens is almost unwinnable by design. You are playing as a villain who is on the side of the creatures designed to lose in other games, so Dr. Vargon being practically doomed to failure aligns with that same unfortunate destiny. A game can be enjoyable and make that point though, and it feels like the Ice Cool Coders would have left a message saying as much if that was their intention since their personalities certainly are on show elsewhere. The sad truth is 1999 was likely designed to frustrate and its ending made practically unachievable on purpose. Hopefully all parties involved didn’t lean so hard on absurd difficulty in their future work, but I’m certainly in no rush to see it since their first project seemed needlessly opposed to the player enjoying their time with it.