Games with their own "Airwolf Wall"

[SteveSmith]

I had a quick go on Jungle Trouble yesterday, and I could not even jump onto the first platform. I couldn't even jump at all. How on earth are you supposed to do it? Though that's not the subject of this thread. I was also listening to the latest RGDS podcast where they mentioned the second room in Knightmare being impossible.

I was wondering, as well as Jungle Trouble, Knightmare and (obvs) Airwolf, what other games have a ridiculously hard obstacle at the very start of the game?

[stupidget]

For me Olli & Lissa springs to mind. I bought this BITD and even though the graphics were really, really nice the gameplay was just too damn hard. The pixel perfect jumping made it an utterly unenjoyable experience.

[bluespikey]

Its easy. Don't get what the problem is at all....

Certainly Jack And The Beanstalk. On the first screen, the path up the beanstalk is so narrow that you repeatedly think you are doing something wrong. Even if you make it to the second, the forced 3D is so messed up, that if you touch any of it at all (Or simply go near it), you immediately die, but again its not clear why.

[Joefish]

Oh, Jack and the Beanstalk is just non-stop stumbling about effectively blind. There are simply zero clues as to the safe route. Worst it tries to look like a side-on platform game but it's been programmed just as a top-down walkabout with a 'jump' that simply teleports you left or right a bit.

The random Lunar-Lander type thing at the start of Jason's Gem is annoying. If you lose a life on the first screen you effectively restart the game but one life down, so you have to wonder what's the point of carrying on. It's just there's no 'Abort' or 'Quit' control, so then you have to deliberately crash three more times and sit through the ending before you can properly restart. With modern game design sensibilities I'd hope you'd get infinite retries, at least at that bit.

[AndyC]

I've forgotten the "solution" to the first rooms of Knightmare, but it was something so unbelievably convoluted than you absolutely needed help to figure it out. And, from what I can remember, doing the wrong thing could very easily soft lock the game so you couldn't get anywhere. Absolutely terrible game design, especially given that "vaguely follow the approach of the TV show" would have produced a competent enough game.

Wizball is another one that comes to mind. I'm told you can get a power up almost immediately that makes the controls vaguely sane and the game, therefore, playable. But it is so utterly impenetrable I never got more than a half a screen in. Again just terrible game design that seems to be geared around making the game start incredibly hard, which might have made sense of it was a coin guzzling arcade machine but for a home computer game it's just insane.

Jack and the Beanstalk at least made sense and you vaguely understood what to do. Just the collision detection and movement was so ridiculously janky you would die on things for seemingly no reason, making progress nigh on impossible.

[PROSM]

The random Lunar-Lander type thing at the start of Jason's Gem is annoying. If you lose a life on the first screen you effectively restart the game but one life down, so you have to wonder what's the point of carrying on. It's just there's no 'Abort' or 'Quit' control, so then you have to deliberately crash three more times and sit through the ending before you can properly restart.

Press Q to go back to the menu.

I do agree though, that first screen is a bit fiddly.

[Joefish]

Press Q to go back to the menu.

Really? Ah balls, should have read the instructions!

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Very often in text adventures, like Questprobe One: The Hulk.

[Joefish]

Wizball is another one that comes to mind. I'm told you can get a power up almost immediately that makes the controls vaguely sane and the game, therefore, playable. But it is so utterly impenetrable I never got more than a half a screen in. Again just terrible game design that seems to be geared around making the game start incredibly hard, which might have made sense of it was a coin guzzling arcade machine but for a home computer game it's just insane.

I really like Wizball, though I played it on the ST. And my dodgy copy crashed once you'd opened up more than a few stages.
You just have to be really patient with it to get started. Only make tiny movements to start spinning, then you bounce gradually left and right, and can shoot down the first wave of enemies that are all stationary power-up droppers. Your first two power-ups should give you better Left/Right then Up/Down control, then you need to save up for the 'catellite' to collect paint drops from killed enemies. But the 'catellite' control is awkward too, and having to wiggle left/right to take a power-up is very counter-productive. Losing all your lives makes you start again, but completely filling a paint-pot lets you choose a permanent power-up. Left/Right control is a must, though on your next one it's better to go for a more expensive power-up like the catellite, extra shots of the beam shield.

Retrospec has a pretty good PC remake of it:
https://retrospec.sgn.net/game-projectl ... nk=wizball

[TMD2003]

I really like Wizball, though I played it on the ST. And my dodgy copy crashed once you'd opened up more than a few stages.
You just have to be really patient with it to get started. Only make tiny movements to start spinning, then you bounce gradually left and right, and can shoot down the first wave of enemies that are all stationary power-up droppers. Your first two power-ups should give you better Left/Right then Up/Down control, then you need to save up for the 'catellite' to collect paint drops from killed enemies. But the 'catellite' control is awkward too, and having to wiggle left/right to take a power-up is very counter-productive. Losing all your lives makes you start again, but completely filling a paint-pot lets you choose a permanent power-up. Left/Right control is a must, though on your next one it's better to go for a more expensive power-up like the catellite, extra shots of the beam shield.

@AndyC: don't give up on Wizball - follow Jason's advice and it's a cracker of a game. The Spectrum version has one glaring flaw, though - a game based on colour mixing really doesn't translate well to the Spectrum's colour palette! Now, if there was such thing as a ULAplus version, it'd be a different can of worms and it'd be better able to compete with the C64 and CPC versions.

I always stick to the 16-bit versions, even though they have their critics in that the motion physics is markedly different from the 8-bits. There's the same bouncing ball mechanics in the beginning, and success in the game requires completing two colours and getting permanent full control before losing a life. Take the control power-ups first and second and the Catellite third. If you don't get that far, quit and start again to save yourself a lot of pain. What grinds my gears the most about the 8-bit versions is that everything will shoot at you, including the colour pods - these are unarmed on the 16-bits.

I would also say that a joystick is preferable - but it really needs to be something with very little movement, more like a NES D-pad with a stick bolted onto it.

[Alessandro]

Wizball was and still is one of my favourite games of its era on the Spectrum, and I never found its beginning that difficult. Just, as Jason wrote, bounce very slightly and acquire left-right movement, then full directional movement. The rest should be rather straightforward.

On the other hand, Kayleth is a good text adventure marred by a start where you have to break free from a conveyor belt in three moves or so, or you are dead.

[Oloturia]

I never passed Space Quest's first part.

[WhatHoSnorkers]

Aliens (US) looked awesome. Level 1 had you identifying the equipment from the film! Level 2 was the landing sequence. Fly through hoops.

I couldn't do it. I had Warajevo which let me slow down the game.

Still couldn't do it. Even at lowest speed I couldn't do it.

Gah!

[bluespikey]

Still couldn't do it. Even at lowest speed I couldn't do it.

In its defence, it did stop you playing the later levels. So not all bad news then.

[Oloturia]

I had a quick go on Jungle Trouble yesterday, and I could not even jump onto the first platform. I couldn't even jump at all. How on earth are you supposed to do it? Though that's not the subject of this thread. I was also listening to the latest RGDS podcast where they mentioned the second room in Knightmare being impossible.

I remember the first time I made it through. It was on the emulator. You have to get the rhythm of the jumps, pressing the key only when the stickman hits the stone. You have to do the first jump more or less over the T of TIME, releasing left and pressing up rapidly. BTW I never understood how to get rid of the monkeys, killing them only by pressing keys at random.

Anyway, another game that had some kind of insurmountable early level is Sam Stoat Safebreaker. To pass from a house to another you have to pass some kind of random falling pillars. Every walkthrough stops there. Also I've never beaten the first screen of Bug Eyes but it seems that the rest of the game is similar... like Abu Simbel Profanation, it's hardly a "first wall". The game itself is a wall.

[worcestersource]

Curiously, I didn’t seem to have much trouble with Jungle Trouble. Found it a bit repetitive, if nicely animated.

[Nick]

Trying to get out of the hangar in Death Star Interceptor was always a bit of trial and error for me. Occasionally I would do it first time but most of the time I would lose all of my lives on that first screen.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

First screen of Raid Over Moscow was another example. I think this made many people not appreciate the game better.

[Stu]

Rigel’s Effing Revenge.

[worcestersource]

Mr Wimpy

[zup]

First screen of Raid Over Moscow was another example. I think this made many people not appreciate the game better.

I think that stage is easy...

As it starts press down and make your fighter point at the door. When it opens, press up and go for it. It's hard to lost a plane doing that.

The second and third stages (flight to launch site and launch site demolition) are easy, too. The last stages (confrontation at the red square and the reactor thing) are waaaay harder.

[Lethargeek]

strictly speaking, not an obstacle, but the seeds in Road Runner, even those lying in the open, are pain to collect

[MarkRJones1970]

Wizball is another one that comes to mind. I'm told you can get a power up almost immediately that makes the controls vaguely sane and the game, therefore, playable. But it is so utterly impenetrable I never got more than a half a screen in. Again just terrible game design that seems to be geared around making the game start incredibly hard, which might have made sense of it was a coin guzzling arcade machine but for a home computer game it's just insane.

[media] [/media]

[R-Tape]

I never passed Space Quest's first part.

That's harder than it looks. It scrolls slowly enough, but the monotony and character based movement make a mistake very likely sooner or later. It's nowhere near as bad as Rally Driver though, which is basically as long string of 'Airwolf Walls'.

[R-Tape]

This bit at the end of level 4 of Sir Lancelot is my Airwolf Wall. That ball moves so damn quickly.