Hyperblast! (Atari 8-bit)
If you took just a quick look at Hyperblast!, it might seem like you can easily identify some issues with its design. The player’s spacecraft in this shooter is rather large and since it can only move left and right, it feels like it would be easy to get hit by incoming enemy fire. The enemies though all appear at the same spot in the center of the screen, meaning you can be firing into that spot before they appear to take some out before they have a chance to fight. In a lesser game, these design choices could make the game far too difficult or too easy, but as you start playing Hyperblast! you’d find the designer John Brierley knew how to accommodate those elements, leading to an addictive shooter that might make your finger a bit sore from how often you keep coming back to fight the alien menace.
The player’s spacecraft in Hyperblast! is deceptively designed, it being larger than any alien you’ll be shooting but its responsive movement means that whether its a bug flying down towards you or a hail of laser fire, you can navigate out of its path if you’re quick about it. In some games it can feel like if you lose a few lives you might as well get a game over and try again, but of the five lives you’re given at the start, you can make it surprisingly far on a single one so long as you’re reactive and choose when to move into the enemy’s line of fire. Your fighter has three guns on it, one directly in the center while the other two are affixed to the end of your wings, and when you press the fire button, you’ll either fire that front-facing gun or the pair of wing-mounted ones as they alternate. However, you can fire so rapidly in Hyperblast! that you can have shots firing from all weapons with incredible regularity, so you don’t need to work hard to position your weapons to hit a foe while still sitting comfortably in the knowledge you can just position a wing weapon in the line of fire so you can zip away quickly if the aliens fire upon you.
One unusual yet helpful feature of your spacecraft though is the fact that your own lasers remain loaded on the ship. The light green lasers will fly forward when you hit the attack button, but once they’re quickly off screen they vessel will have them back in place. The aliens you are fighting move all around the screen including towards you, and the fact your lasers are literally attached to the fighter means they can fly into them and be killed by them without you even firing the shot. This means, in essence, you have a shield on your sides and a bayonet up front, and since aliens can only fire downwards, you can try to bump into them to defeat them. If they touch any part of your ship as they come close you’ll be the one taken out though so it’s not a foolproof tactic, but there’s one more peculiarity about your vessel and one that might not be intentional. There were definitely times enemy fire passed through the spaceship without immediately destroying it as I played, and while it often seemed to be when the shot passed through the wings, I also saw times the wings were hit and it counted as a kill. Whatever providence allows a laser hit to sometimes not be fatal doesn’t make the game too easy, so a few moments where you slip through somehow certainly doesn’t weigh down the excitement the game provides.
The enemies you face in Hyperblast! are definitely what makes it work so well. The game features 10 unique alien types, but which type you’re facing depends on how deep in you are. The game opens with a set of fly-like fiends, and while you might expect the opposition to get stronger over time and some later aliens certainly are tougher, these bugs are more likely than many other types to actually claim a few lives even once you’re an experienced player. The enemies in Hyperblast! fly around chaotically, opening fire with single shots or a cluster of lasers as they do so. Even if you are opening fire on the middle as they appear, each wave of foes has six aliens and at most you’re likely to hit two or three as they show up, the others requiring some skill to track and avoid. Still, waves of foes can be cleared quickly if you’re aggressive, meaning the fact each enemy type appears in a sequence of seven waves doesn’t make them feel like they’re sticking around too long. Once you have cleared the seventh wave starring that alien species though, you’ll fly off to another region of space to face a new one, all of them moving a bit differently or having different weapon firing habits so that facing a new creature isn’t just a visual change.
Getting to the 10th alien type is no easy feat, and while you can earn an extra life every 10,000 points, you can only really score that high by reaching the last unique alien type. Things will loop if you can clear them out, but along the way you’ll find the game manages to stay engaging and energetic despite the aliens not having any truly unique tricks or techniques. The waves are quick to clear but immediately dangerous, often firing down as they first appear as well, and trying to poach some foes right as they appear becomes a death wish on the highest difficulty. Hyperblast! has 3 difficulty settings, and while 1 is already a good challenge, having the option to crank it up can inject some new life in the game. Difficulty setting 3 does feel like a bit too much at times though, the aliens bombarding the center as they appear and barely waiting to open fire when you’re in sight. It’s a perfectly acceptable extra option despite it somewhat breaking an otherwise well designed balance found in enemy and player strength, but the two-player where you alternate who’s playing as you earn competing high scores is also in that bag of features that don’t hurt the game but are there if you want to use them.
High scores are technically the main goal of Hyperblast!, but trying to push through to see the unique alien types also makes it more than an endless challenge. Enemies like the thin arrow-shaped aliens take precise angular turns while the snake-shaped ones can squirm around in less predictable patterns, and since you and the enemy need to be lined up right to fire on each other, you’re always going to be in danger when you go in for a kill. You can try and wait for the enemy to hit the edges of the screen, the aliens able to warp to the other side, but your limited movement can almost mean their shots might corner you if you wait too long to take them out. Your general strategy likely won’t need any shakeups, but you will likely come to know which enemies will be trouble and which you can avoid a bit better.
THE VERDICT: All you can do in Hyperblast! is move right and left while mashing the attack button, and yet it can be exhilarating because of how cleanly its few elements fit together. Hyperblast! is a blast because your ship is a bit large but very responsive, meaning you are in a good deal of danger but able to zip out of the way of incoming fire well enough. The aliens, despite appearing from a spot where you can likely blow up a few without much effort, move in erratic and dangerous ways, and the fact they often open fire when lined up with you also means figuring out when to go for the kill is crucial to stay alive. The different alien types showing up add in a sense of progression and their small differences help freshen things up a tad, so trying to get as far as you can ends up being a goal with more substance than just blasting down the same bugs over and over again.
And so, I give Hyperblast! for Atari 8-bit systems…
A GOOD rating. Don’t judge a game by its cover, or a few screenshots. Hyperblast! looks like it’s just another space shooter and it’s not exactly bringing some brilliant new innovation to the table, but it is kinetic and challenging, the player needing to be constantly moving to survive and yet able to push through waves of aliens sometimes without falling thanks to the game’s approach to difficulty. The game expects a few aliens to be instantly blown up as they appear so the remaining ones are flighty and have tools like the laser fire cluster to keep you on your toes. The action doesn’t grow stale because you can feel an appreciable shift in how enemies fight when you enter new regions of space, although the game could have definitely benefited from even more variation like different approaches to laser fire or other special tricks for certain alien species. The high score may be the stated reason to keep playing, but knowing that you’ll be facing new enemies as you get further in is a stronger motivation and one that means even though there’s almost never a reason not to be firing your weapons, you still are thinking about what you’re up against and adjusting your movement strategies a tad. The game almost hits on the appeal future bullet hell titles have, where you get a feeling for your vessel’s movement and then instead watch the opposition, looking for moments to slip in and fire, and on the game’s highest difficulty it even gets to the point you will be faced with laser barrages you truly have to weave through expertly.
Hyperblast! definitely is more an addictive type of game rather than one that holds you with frequent novelty. You’re constantly going to be firing, but it still is clear your own smart movement is what allows you to get further in the game. A score chaser that wants you to focus on survival is probably best off not throwing in huge shake-ups and Hyperblast! knows how to gently alter certain parameters so that things avoid feeling repetitive. Hyperblast! is fair as well so you can’t really argue with any deaths, that fact only making it more likely that you’ll want to immediately plunge back in and see if you can get further on the next run.