Out of Gas (Game Boy)
Even if you have a well-designed game, if you don’t know how to sell it, it won’t find an audience. Out of Gas isn’t the most exciting name, and its concept of collecting gas for a space ship also sounds a bit strange and almost mundane save for the science fiction spin. This Game Boy game’s gameplay also makes it sound like an action game when the gameplay actually requires more logical reasoning to win than good movement or reflexes. For a while, Out of Gas was even my go-to example of the strange forgotten depths of the Game Boy’s large library, but now that I’ve played it, I’ve found a game that deserves so much more attention than it got.
Out of Gas’s cool futuristic box art actually belies a story set-up that is a bit silly. In the far future, Eric managed to convince his father to let him borrow a new space shuttle to take his girlfriend Natasha on a date in space, but along the way, they run out of gas. This opening is actually depicted through a simple but fairly goofy cartoon scene, and while Eric heads off to nearby areas to collect gas, at the end of the game’s eight level worlds we’ll check in with Natasha to see how she occupies her time while waiting on Eric to return. It’s a bit charming in how old-fashioned the cartoon characters look, contrasting a bit with the sci-fi set up so it’s more evocative of The Jetsons than some modern vision of the future. Strangely though, none of this carries over to the actual gameplay portions where you’ll be riding a space bike around in areas that feel more cold and grounded.
Whether it’s the crater filled surface of the moon, sterile space bases, and even what seems to be the surface of a giant computer chip, the levels themselves aren’t trying to be comedic at all. However, while the visuals don’t excite, the music in Out of Gas can be quite exceptional even in a fairly small soundtrack. Composer David Hayes and arranger David Warhol did not hold back when making the three level themes that the game alternates between. One of the songs, often heard in cutscenes as well as having part of it sampled for a level clear jingle, is upbeat and absurdly catchy, better fitting the excitement of an journey through the wondrous mysteries of outer space. Even after hearing it for the whole level, it’s such an energizing and delightful track that you’re happy to hear it kick off in miniature for the victory theme. Another main music track isn’t as memorable or adventurous, but it does fit some of the tougher levels better since it sounds more serious and dangerous. It evokes a higher pressure situation with a high tempo base line but still has slower breaks that pull on similar spacey feels to the other track. A song that also serves as the title theme is perhaps the most directly focused on action, almost sounding like it could work in a racing game and maybe best matching the idea the box art promises. All three songs are of decent length, meaning in the span of the game’s often short stages they won’t grow repetitive, especially since they travel through a few different sounds that make them stand out as more than the bare minimum music you might expect from a lesser known Game Boy title.
While out on your space bike in Out of Gas, gas is still actually a major concern. Eric’s job is to collect more gas but he also seems to be burning through it as he explores, meaning every level essentially has a flexible timer to it. In each of Out of Gas’s 64 levels, you must find all the available gas panels and shoot them with your bike, your weapon only useful for flipping panels. Dangers do exist like pellet firing turrets and laser blasting guns, but these can’t be destroyed and while some will only bump you around, others will cause you to lose some gas should you get hit by their fire. Your gas will tick down second by second, meaning you need to keep moving to clear levels before you run dry. You can see how many panels are in a level on the bottom which helps with some of the more labyrinthine stages, and while there are extra lives to earn for hitting score thresholds, most of the game’s early levels can be cleared with a decent mastery of the game’s movement and a mind that’s good at picking up on how the game likes to lay out its levels.
The space bike in Out of Gas controls close to how the spaceship in Asteroids is maneuvered. You turn it in place by pressing right or left and then activate a thruster to move where the bike’s front is pointing, and while eventually there is some slippery ice to complicate this as well as a few points where you need to squeak through tiny spaces between a wall and a bumper that will send you flying, it doesn’t feel too hard to get used to the vehicle’s handling and account for its momentum. What ends up more important to success is identifying how a level’s design is throwing out hints and using that to find the gas panels in time. This mostly ends up a factor because of the presence of numbered panels where you can only hit one if it is the next one in the sequence. If you paid little attention to the level layout or its name, you might think it guesswork driving around to find where each of the numbered panels are so you can then hit them in order, but there’s a clear logic at play in most cases. A level named Double Helix for example has its numbers panels placed high and low in separate little rooms. If you were entering them one by one to check what’s inside, you’d burn through your time, but you’ll notice the numbers alternate in the ones you inspect and realize the game is telling you to zig zag up and down to hit the numbered panels in good time.
There are definitely some levels, especially later in worlds 7 and 8, where the logic isn’t quite as sound. A great reliance on movement panels that try to force you in a direction can lead to some levels where you can’t explore as freely and there are three levels that are seemingly just guesswork mazes where you find multiple eight-way intersections in a row and have no clear clue on which way to go. You can at least often check the dead ends quickly and you’ll often beat a level on a second or third attempt if you’ve been building a mental map properly. However, well before these later levels, Out of Gas provides a good deal of stages that can be a bit difficult to navigate but reward you for puzzling out the ways to go. For example, many levels start you off with little gas, so if you see one long path ahead or a tiny side route to take, the side route is probably the way to go because it will give you that first injection of gas to let you actually tackle the level. If there are movement panels near a level’s start, the game expects you to take them to see what’s there because going back to investigate later would be wasteful.
Even early on it’s not too hard to pick up on the clues that come from certain realities in Out of Gas. Levels aren’t going to be too huge due to the timer. If a pellet spewing machine is trying to shove you onto movement panels, it’s probably defending some gas panels nearby. It’s not always straightforward, a level name like Red Rover isn’t giving you a big clue while a name like DURL DURL might take you a bit to parse its meaning. There are sometimes invisible pick-ups like more time or speed that can help you if you come across them but there aren’t really clues on their placement. Out of Gas doesn’t want you to be able to jump in a level and basically have it figured it out immediately, although it will give some more forgiving levels where time won’t be much of a concern between levels where you might cut it tight even when driving adeptly. Passwords are only provided for the start of each world which maybe holds the game back a bit, the final worlds feel like they try to make you fail more often but that would be easier to let slide if retrying at the current level after a game over wasn’t an issue. However, there are still a great many interesting stages with pronounced concepts or challenging designs to make Out of Gas enjoyable to figure out and then conquer once you’ve cottoned onto how you need to weave your way around the rooms and halls in search of fuel.
THE VERDICT: Out of Gas may not sound like much, but with its excellent music and intelligent approach to level design, it proves to be an action puzzler that deserves a lot more attention than it received. Finding the gas panels in each stage in time requires picking up on clues on how the level is laid out, the player needing to work some to keep their bike under control but mostly succeeding by noticing trends in not just how an individual stage is designed but how the game generally accounts for things like how much gas you have or where it can safely place dangers. Figuring out the idea behind an area while fighting a timer to survive gives the stages an interesting edge despite some later stages losing their way a bit.
And so, I give Out of Gas for Game Boy…
A GOOD rating. If you want a straightforward driving or action game, Out of Gas probably won’t hit the marks you’re looking for, and if you’re looking for a deep cerebral puzzler, it might not be as in-depth as you’d hope. However, Out of Gas does build an identity for itself by borrowing from all those genres that works for what it is. You might contend with slippery ice to make getting around in one area tougher, but you’re also needing to factor it in to how you explore so you can get to the panels in time. You figure out what hallways or rooms are likely to contain what you’re looking for and adjust your path through the stage, using what you know about the game to better form some helpful preconceptions that send you down the right path. You’re working to figure out a small stage quickly even though you can’t view too much of it at once, and while getting pushed onto movers or bombarded and losing gas can be a bit irritating, levels are rarely huge so even if you do lose a life you can dive in and use your knowledge to clear it quickly. 64 stages would almost feel like the perfect amount if it didn’t seem to be running low on ideas a bit near the end, especially with the eight way intersections, but before then you have themed levels that make good use of the small range of variables in play. One might present itself like a pinball table with many bumpers to worry about, another named Mneumonic places its numbered panels in a strange way that encourages you to make a mnemonic to remember them well enough to clear it in time. There might be only one panel at the end of quite a gauntlet, others the level is littered with fuel spots so the idea is to be thorough exploring each room lest you be stuck hunting down that final panel.
Out of Gas could definitely use a nicer coat of paint, maybe even put forward its cartoony look beyond the occasional scenes to make the world more appealing. A name change feels almost crucial though, even Outta Gas would be a touch more exciting, but it might also be hard to come up with a name that best encapsulates it. It’s not a slow thinking game or a raucous racer, your movement is a tool for figuring out rooms where logic is important but there aren’t many true puzzles at play. You don’t rearrange things or utilize tools, you just need to know how to find some fuel by interpreting clues and trends in design. It’s an odd game to sell, but maybe in something like the modern gaming climate that is willing to take risks on indies with genre mixes, Out of Gas could have found fans. It will always likely be an obscure part of the Game Boy’s library, but being obscure or unusual is not the same as being bad, and a lot of thought and effort was put into making Out of Gas enjoyable even if the creators didn’t seem to know how to market the idea well afterwards.