Rabbit Transit (Starpath)
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Entry posted by DoctorSpuds
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Alright, so what genre of game is Starpath trying to improve upon today? We’ve already gotten FPS space shooters, Galaga, Breakout, Asteroids, first-person-maze-puzzle-solving, RPG, and Defender, out of the way, so what’s popular and doesn’t have a particularly amazing home port? Well Q*Bert of course! Yes, Starpath’s eighth offering, Rabbit Transit, is a Q*Bert clone, and a damn good one if I might add. I’ve already done a comparison review on the three most popular console ports of Q*Bert, so you can get my opinions on the Atari version (HERE) (INSERT HYPERLINK YOU DUMB BASTARD), but needless to say the Atari version was rather graphically challenged, as many Atari arcade ports tended to be, but was still a big winner when it game to the gameplay. Enter Starpath, again, with their more powerful Supercharger add-on, obviously they couldn’t just make Q*Bert, Parker Brothers currently owned the license to publish Q*Bert on all home videogame consoles (As we’ll find out tomorrow that license did have a loophole, but that’s for tomorrow), so Starpath used the gameplay of Q*Bert and melded it with something so weird I’m a bit dumbfounded. You are a rabbit who is trying to get home to bang your rabbit wife, to do so you must make your way through the Mysterious Meadow, and finally the Land of Ledges which you get to by riding your wingman turtle. This is just weird, I know Q*Bert isn’t exactly what one would call pedestrian, but this is just weird, the goal of this game is to get to your rabbit wife and make a bunch of babies. The concept of this game infuriates me, mainly because where I live there is an extreme rabbit problem, my mother, who lives in the same neighborhood that I do is an avid gardener, and has lost more plants to those little bastards than I care to count, they’ve gotten too big for the birds of prey to get them, and at this point I’m hoping a roving band of coyotes takes up residence in the neighborhood to wipe the bastards out. Enough ranting about rabbits, let’s talk about the game itself, starting with the graphics.
This game looks quite incredible; all of the screens are well crafted and are simply a joy to look at. The real showstopper graphics wise is the amazing water effect at the bottom of the screen it’s so multilayered and fluid, it’s kind of hypnotizing in a way… Most of the enemy sprites are monochrome, and rather small, with the exception of the slithering sneaky snake, and Mr. Man, who throws rocks at you in the Land of Ledges. The Land of Ledges looks a bit more like Q*Bert’s Qubes, instead of a pyramidal formation the platforms cover the whole screen in more of a squareular fashion. Mr. Man is the most impressive sprite in the game, coming in at a whopping five distinct colors, he puts the rest of ‘em to shame, also when you complete the level he does a classic Q*Bert swear bubble. This game actually has a cutscene which is rare for 2600 games, when you complete the Land of Legends screen it shows your rabbit running off screen in a meadow, at night, and emerging again followed by his lady friend and a bunch of babies, so this is probably the only non-pornographic 2600 game that has the sex in it, hooray! Words really can’t describe how amazing this game looks so I’ll be including screenshots from all the screens in the game.
This game actually has background music, which is another rarity for the 2600; there are two songs one of them is For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow, one of the most annoying songs ever penned, and London Bridge is Falling Down, the second most annoying song ever penned. Otherwise it’s just your standard beeps for when the rabbit is hopping around, and a fairly evil sounding death and game-over jingle. The 1-up sound is absolutely terrifying, otherwise there is pretty much nothing else to talk about, unless you want me to talk about the bonus score sound, which is a sort of ringing noise, that plays whenever you complete a screen, too late I just did. I can either get on to the gameplay section or keep padding this paragraph with useless filler that nobody cares about, alright I’ll give you one fun fact, there is a prototype for this game that will run without the Supercharger add-on, it was programmed by the same guy, and it’s just as good as the Supercharger version, so if you’ve got a Harmony Cart use that one instead of this one.
This game plays like a mix between Q*Bert and Frogger, the Mysterious Meadow screen is very much like Frogger where you have to avoid horizontally scrolling objects to get to the safe-zone, except you have the control style from Q*Bert which adds some extra challenge, there are various different enemy types that have different behaviors, some will have varying speeds, some will bum rush you when you get in their path, others are just long. There are also the butterflies that hide out in the flowers and will send you back to the top of the screen if you touch them, don’t touch them. At the bottom of the screen there is your wingman turtle friend who’ll transport you to the Land of Ledges; this is where the meat of the game resides. The Land of Ledges is basically Q*Bert, with a twist, there is only one enemy, Mr. Man, he throws rocks at you, in the later stages the rocks begin to do different things, like change the color of the platforms so you have to go over them again, which increases the challenge somewhat, but there is a workaround to that (and I won’t tell you what it is, you’ll have to figure it out for yourself). Once you’ve changed all of the platform’s colors you will go to the Bunny Bushes, where you bang your hot bunny wife, and make lots of children, repeat with more challenging enemies and layouts as you progress. This is a very fun game, and any fan of Q*Bert is liable to love this game.
I like this game, despite this silly story and goofy graphics, it has creativity and charm that seems to be lacking in many 2600 games. Kudos to the guys at Starpath for taking such a ridiculous concept and making it into something great, unfortunately this is the part where I tell you not to buy this game because it’s stupidly expensive. Don’t buy this game it’s stupidly expensive, there is a loose cassette on Ebay for 150$ buy it now, and a boxed copy with the starting bid set to 150$, clearly the average consumer/ casual collector should stay far away from this. Unfortunately I have to put this game in the Collector’s Zone due to it being inaccessible to the average consumer, which is a pity since it’s one of the best games Starpath ever produced.
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