Features
In the "Modify" screen, a player can modify the number of nuclear missiles ("nukes) and "Hyperspace" uses he carries. The more nukes and hyperspaces he takes, the less power he has to distribute among Laser, Shield, Speed, and Agility. By increasing any of the four attributes, the others decrease. This customization both balances the ship and makes it easier for players to face different missions, as they can adjust their ships to deal with the particular strengths of each race. The game imposes a 10-second time limit on modifications.
In the arenas, each enemy appears as a squadron of one to three ships. Destroying the last ship in a squadron (or a player-controlled ship) produces a power-up satellite which supplies more energy, nukes, hyperspace uses, or even (rarely) an extra life. The satellites are be marked (respectively) with an E, N, H, or L. More often, the satellites are marked with a ?, which indicates an unknown resource. Flying into the satellite grants the player the power-up. Some power-ups have a "2x" or "4x" in glowing yellow characters just above them. They are worth 2 or 4 Nukes or Hyperspaces, or double/quadruple the Energy as usual. Extra lives are never multiplied.
Another feature of this game is a computer-generated female voice with a British accent, which serves as the player's on-board assistant, and often relays important alerts and messages. If enough enemies are destroyed with a single shot (as with a nuke), the voice shouts anything from "Good shot!" to "OutRAGEous!!" When attacked, the voice shouts, for example, "Get us out of here!" If damage increases, the voice shouts "Danger!" or "Warning!" In addition, if a player's ship is struck by laser fire at point-blank range, a motorized hammer strikes the inside of the game cabinet on that player's side in cadence with the laser fire, to provide more feedback.
Scoring is handled on a "Ranking" basis. On a player's first "Life," each single kill is worth 1 rank point, with bonuses for 3 or more simultaneous kills. The exception to this are the players' ships (whether computer-controlled or player-controlled), which by themselves are worth the 1 rank point and 37 bonus points. Three alien ships destroyed at once yields a single bonus rank point. The bonuses increase as more ships are killed with a single shot, up to the maximum of 56 bonus rank points.
Once a player dies, he loses 20% of their total ranking and from that point on, each of his kills is only worth about 0.7 kills. Each successive death loses them another 20% of their total ranking, and lowers their kills' worth even more. A player can finish the game after continuing several times, but would have a ranking around 300, or lower. Ranks are also granted based on the player's score. The ranks in the game are Cadet, Corporal, Lieutenant, Captain, Admiral, and Space Lord. The perfect score in the game (which yields the rank of "Space Lord") is 999.9.
Read more about this topic: Space Lords
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother’s face,
Her aspect and her attitude.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
““It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times—the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie—seem attractive by comparison.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)