Venture, 1982 Coleco Ind. Inc. (20 From Colecovision #13)
13Wonderful port of the incredibly tough arcade original from 1981 by Exidy. This is definitely easier, though the hall monsters sure as hell get fast! The protagonist of the game that you control looks like a smiling little red ball named "Winky" (!), and is armed with a bow and arrows as he enters the 4 rooms in a dungeon. His goal is to grab the treasure and make a break for the exit, but he can shoot the dungeon monsters if he likes.. but he must wait for their corpses to disappear-- they are deadly to touch! When inside a dungeon room you are against up to 4 monsters (usually 3) and you just want to grab the treasure and exit. Whenever you are outside the rooms, the map makes Winky a tiny red dot and you must evade the hall monsters in your pursuit of the next room to loot. Touching a monster (hall or dungeon), its corpse, or the walls in the Wall Room is fatal. If you are quick in collecting the treasures you will be rewarded with a bonus multiplier (which decreases as you take longer to clear all 4 rooms). The bonus multiplier takes your score gained that round and multiplies it by the number remaining when you've cleared all 4 rooms. I like that the list of treasures you've gained appears between lives/rounds, and when you've gained them all the final dungeon and 4 treasures repeats. It is annoying how stiff Winky moves-- he pauses as you try to change direction. Knowing this, minimal movement is helpful. As is using diagonal shots to surprise the monsters-- they seem to know sometimes that you are trying to shoot them. Also; the Serpent Room is one you don't want to enter from the right, since the serpents crowd you right away if you do. Diagonal shots will see you through this game quite well and certainly make it easier than the arcade original! Stay safe everyone, and I'm hoping things will return to normal a bit sometime this summer. See you soon with game #12!