Saturday, August 6, 2016

Atari emulator -> Lawkeeper

So before I go to bed, I feel compelled to profile yet another Atari game that I apparently haven't done yet.  It's called Lawkeeper and it's brought to you by the people who gave us the world renowned "Lode Runner."  It's very definitely not up to the quality of "Lode Runner," but somehow that didn't seem to matter much when I once had my Indus disk drive for 5.25 inch disks, and my old Atari 1200XL, I believe it was.  Every once in a while I'd give Lawkeeper the old test run.  You know, just to see if I had what it takes.
But now that I'm practically an old, grey-haired pensioner, I realize that it's actually a very, very cheap knockoff of Taito's classic Zookeeper, and as always, games like Lawkeeper showcase the deep limitations of the Atari 8-bit computers when it comes to games.  I believe it's Graphics 13 mode with the modified font; like Graphics 0 but with the more solid colors.  See, in Graphics 8, you have to space out pixels to get the reds and greens... I'll tell your grandchildren someday while they're using their virtual reality Google glasses to pay attention to something else.  ANYTHING else.
Once you get the youthful convicts inside the walls, they can't escape.  Hence the yellow balls that bounce rather predictably around to help break down said walls.  They bounce diagonally, then to the left.  Apparently, the emulator isn't able to show you, the brown circle that tries to reign in all the chaos.  I do kinda like those "Chomp Levels."  I remember now!  You have to get your reaching claw through the mouth to get it to disappear and not eat the walls of your prison.  Ugh.  What a mediocre game.  SOOO glad I didn't buy it for $39.99 way back when.

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