Bagman, 1982 Valadon Automation/Stern (20 From 1982 #15)
16Endearing and fun game-- but man oh man, is it one of the hardest! You get the rare opportunity (for the time) to play the chief antagonist; here, you are an escaped convict trying to steal all the bags of gold in a gold mine. The mine spans 3 screens of action, peppered with bags of gold, ladders, mine carts, and elevators. Your chief method of making off with the gold is picking up one bag at a time and dropping it into your wheelbarrow. You CANNOT descend a floor with the wheelbarrow-- it must remain at the top floor. But you can wheel it across the 3 screens (and you can travel between them all even though they're fixed screens) and collect the bags in any order you choose. But note that you have a timer of 4,000 time units that tick down 100 units per second (or thereabouts) and when you are out of time, you DIE! In order to replenish the timer back to 4,000, drop gold in the wheelbarrow. You fortunately get a sound effect to indicate you're under 500 units. Another element hindering your progress are two pesky guards. They will follow you to the ends of the sub-earth to catch you, and you can't sneak up behind them (they will turn around and pursue you). Now, what a lot of people don't know when they play this is that the cops get faster and smarter THE MORE YOU SCORE. So, it's quite possible to wait till you have almost no time before putting gold in the wheelbarrow and thus getting very little scoring for the "time remaining bonus". Do this religiously! When the guards get a little too close for comfort, there are ways to knock them out-- one is to use the pickaxes scattered about the mine sections; you can smack them with the pickaxe (one-use item) or better yet, you can simply scare them away! Another method (I LOVE this) is parking the wheelbarrow over a ladder to bait a guard into getting hit and falling the length of the ladder. Early on guards are stupid and can fall off ledges or whatever to get stunned on their own volition, but again, your score determines their intelligence/speed. One bag of gold is blue and much heavier than the others (allowing the guards to catch up easily) and is worth double the time remaining bonus.. boo! If you are carrying a bag and get killed with it in your arms you will not need to worry about it on your next life, so maybe do that with the blue bag (you must break down a wall with the pickaxe to reach it, in a very clumsy manner). You can ride a minecart between the rooms, but only by hanging from a beam and dropping right into the cart. Screwing up the dropping motion or getting hit by the cart is fatal (the cops get to pass right through it; lame!), so learn the proper technique for dropping in safely, though you can climb up a ladder safely while riding in the cart. Elevators are useful too but only go up one floor at a time (the last room's elevator will drop all the way to the bottom after reaching the top), and you can easily be screwed by guards waiting patiently on a floor to nab you. When all screens have been cleared of gold, you will go to the next "Act" with 3 screens with more gold than before, following a scene played during the attract mode and you get an extra life-- but ONLY if you successfully put the last bag in the cart (you didn't get killed while carrying it). WONDERFUL music, action and sound effects make this insanely tough game (most people can't pass one act) much more tolerable than it has a right to be. If you're confused by the unintelligible dialogue spoken in the game, it's French because Valadon Automation is a French company (this was licensed to Stern in the US). Despite my warnings of its extreme difficulty, give it a go anyway. Torture was never so much fun!