Laser Gates (Imagic)

Entry posted by DoctorSpuds November 1, 2018

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Imagic makes me sad… I oftentimes wonder how such an amazing game company fell so far and so fast, then realize I can just look at the Wikipedia page for it and find out. Imagic was one of the most high profile deaths of the Video Game Crash starting out strong in 1982 and quickly crashing in 1984, eventually their games were distributed by Activision in the black box/blue label variation. Many of Imagic’s 1982 releases are well known and fondly remembered as well as cheap to buy, their 1983 releases, while more advanced are usually less known and harder to come by, and their 1984 releases are nearly impossible to find in any capacity. My main problem with the 1982 releases is that they’ve been done to death, almost all of the Imagic titles we immediately think of when we hear the name are from ’82, so I’ll change things up with one of their 1983 releases, how about Laser Gates? Technically I own the Zellers version ‘Laser Volley’ for some reason the CIB copy was cheaper than just a loose cartridge, and I’m always lookin’ for a deal.

When I popped this game in I was pretty impressed, it’s a side scrolling shooter, which on its own merits is impressive for the 2600, but when you factor in the titular laser gates well… That’s quite a fine recipe for success if I do say so myself… And I do. One thing that I’m not too keen on it the oversized HUD, it takes up half the screen just to show you your score, shield level, energy, and time, it seems a bit overkill but then again it was probably a programming necessity so as not to use up too much RAM. The color scheme is a bit plain, grey on brown on black, but that is made up for again by the titular laser gates, they’re just so wonderfully colorful that it makes me forget the rest of the rather bland color scheme because if there’s one thing I like, its pretty colors. There’s a small selection of colorful and distinct enemies you will encounter from a bat to a missile to flying saucer.

This game doesn’t have too many sounds, more than some but still not too many. The one sound that I love though is the sound the gates make when they appear and disappear, it makes my subwoofer go crazy, and if there’s one thing I love its heavy bass. Otherwise it’s your fairly standard affair of beeps boops and otherwise, though the sound that was used for the gates with the moving opening I can’t help but think of Xonox’s Ghost Manor since that particular wavelength was used quite often and to great effect.

This game is a side scrolling shooter *sigh* with a twist. Instead of it being a standard ‘shoot the enemies’ affair like pretty much all shooters, Laser Gates shakes things up by adding obstacles that you must avoid. The titular laser gates are back and they come in three varieties, first you have the appearing and disappearing gates, they come in twos and are fairly easy to avoid. You are then faced with the gates that smash into one another in an attempt to crush you, they are also fairly easy to avoid if you get the timing down. The third variation of the gate has a moving hole that you must fly through again its fairly easy to avoid. So if the gates are pushovers where’s the challenge? The enemies make up for the lacking challenge, they are small and fast, each has its own unique movement pattern, the missile makes a beeline for your ship but will not fly into your direct line of fire until the last minute, making it quite difficult to hit and nearly impossible to avoid. The bat moves in a zigzag pattern towards your ship making it hard to predict its location, it will also follow your ship if you move past it. I don’t really know the pattern of the saucer thing, since I’ve only gotten to see the one in all of my time playing the game. There is also a sort of radar tower that is in a fixed position of the tunnel floor or ceiling, it’s very easy to hit and tends to only fire in a straight line ignoring the position of your ship.

Overall this is quite a fun game to play; unfortunately it loses its luster rather quickly, after you fly past the 20^th set of ineffectual obstacles and get hit by an enemy you can’t really avoid the game just becomes boring to play, at least to me. This is not a cheap game, a loose cartridge will set you back at least 10-20$ and a boxed copy recently sold for 60$, I would recommend against buying this game since the experience simply can’t justify the price, it’s the Collector’s Zone for this one.