Let's talk Escape from the Mind Master

[Mind Master]

...anyone have fond memories of this game? When all is said and done, I think it was my favorite Starpath game. It was incredibly engrossing at that time to see a videogame with a first-person maze perspective. Those weird monsters roaming ominously around, the moving force field barriers- it was creepy fun!

 

But that 6th level was perhaps my greatest videogame disappointment ever...

 

But still a fantastic game. "The Mind Master declares you to be Quaint" cracked me up when I first saw it on the screen. Anybody remember the sequence of Mind Master ratings? Quait, Intriguing, Impressive, Awesome, or something like that...

[Godzilla]

i frikkin loved mind master. i memorized the game back in the day.

I loved the end scene and the music. It really made you feel rewarded for playing the game. I used to beat the game over and over to get the best rating, and to see the cool ending :-) didnt it have fireworks, iirc?

[Paul Slocum]

Yeah, that was definitely one of my favorite games. It was really fun and the complexity and graphics were more on the level of computer games than 2600.

 

-Paul

[joeybastard]

It is a kick ass game. The VCS one is a s good as the CV prototype of it I've played on emulators. I like pretty much all of the Starpath games. I wish I had one when I was a kid.

[GrizzLee]

The VCS version was/is still my 2nd favorite 2600 game of all time (Right behind Dragonstomper). The CV version is weaker in the graphics dept. (IMHO). I was surprised they didn't leverage the power of the CV more to make a more robust game.

 

Man, what a game EFTMM is.

 

-Lee

[Dan Iacovelli]

I love this game (I got it on the stella cd) I could only make up to level 2.

I think this game would be good to use in a game tourny too.

(I say that because Esacpe from the mindmaster will be one of tournrys at VGS in july)

Dan Iacovelli

[SS]

One of the best games on the whole darned system. Loved it then and love it now.

[StanJr]

While I never had it as a kid, I bought it CIB at Philly3 last year, and I LOVE IT. Maybe the very best puzzle game for the VCS hands down. Thus far I am only "Amusing" in the eyes of the Mindmaster.

[J.Max]

I love this game...It was the reason I originally bought a Supercharger way back when...The graphics were absolutely mind blowing for the time and the gameplay was absolutely perfect. One of the top 10 2600 games.

[Video]

I love the SuperCharger, and Escape from the Mind Master was, and still is even by homebrew standards, an Awesome game.

 

It seems to me, there was a way to beat the first maze, and skip to the last level, as the first few times I played it, I did that. But All the levels are fun. (I remember orriginaly being kind of dissappointed at the two levels and then you have to restart the game)

 

If someone did a remake of this game, the only thing I'd say they should do different is.....

 

Have the computer randomly place the pieces, and "keyholes" I've got many of the earlier levels memorized.

 

I will say that moving through a door, and up the staircase was at the time, one of the most amazing effects I saw back then.

 

And to this day, I still wonder, what was with that last level? Frogger style?

[Mind Master]

"Frogger style"? I don't understand. Please explain...

 

I also don't recall any way to skip to the last level from the first. Perhaps your tape was malfunctioning?

[Video]

I guess it could have been. But wouldn't the thing refuse to load at all if it didn't load properly? It seemed to me that the cart was really sensitive to having the tape load right.

[NE146]

Man.. I really gotta check out more Supercharger games. With a cuttle cart and a Stella gets a new brain cd.. I have no excuse not to

[slapdash]

"Frogger style"?  I don't understand.  Please explain...

 

Possibly he meant that challenge where you have to dodge through moving bricks?

[Video]

Huh? Oh yeah, sorry about missing that question. Frogger is as close as I could think at the time. You gotta get from the bottom to the top of the screen through the moving blocks. I guess Freeway would have been a better example, though it's blocks instead of cars.

[Keir]

God, I love this game.

 

I never saw the MM say "Quaint", that's funny! As as I can tell, he has a word for scores in ranges of 100. In other words,

 

1-100 Quaint

101-200 Promising

201-300 Amusing

301-400 Impressive?

my highest score is only 267 so I don't know what the other ratings are.

 

Also, could this be the first game to include "mini-games"? I wouldn't count the Swordquest games because, well, they suck!

[Video]

May have been. Those mini games ruled though. Of course, most were obvious ripoffs of actual games.

[Mind Master]

The mini-games in MM were as good or better than some of the early Atari VCS games. I especially liked the lunar lander mini-game.

 

I know that some of the Mindmaster's ratings included Quaint, Intriguing, Impressive, and Awesome.

 

What was up with that 6th level? Did the programmer just get bored or something?

[Video]

Maybe they wanted to confuse people beyond recognition so they would fail? Doubt it. Probably just wanted to break up the action. I don't know :

[slapdash]

What was up with that 6th level?  Did the programmer just get bored or something?

 

Could be an intentional part of the design -- you escape the creatures, but there's still a little maze to go. You know, like you're out of the main maze, but still gotta find the exit.

[Video]

Sounds good to me. "BWAHAHAHAH!!! You figured out the mazes, now try this on for size"

[+Nathan Strum]

I never saw the MM say "Quaint", that's funny! As as I can tell, he has a word for scores in ranges of 100. In other words,

 

1-100 Quaint

101-200 Promising

201-300 Amusing

301-400 Impressive?

my highest score is only 267 so I don't know what the other ratings are.

 

The highest I ever scored (I kept a running list back then) was 471 "Impressive". Seems to me I had to play the game to death to get that score.

[Mind Master]

I remember seeing the rating "awesome". The trick is to really do great on all the mini-games.

[ulij20]

Video, you said that the pieces and "keyholes" should be randomly placed. You must have a different version of the game than I do, since in that one, the pieces are randomly placed.

 

As for the "mini-games", I thought some of those were awesome.

The first one, falling rocks(?), could be frustrating, but if you were fast enough, you could do well in that one. I just didn't like the way that the rocks became longer as well as faster.

 

The second one, Reflexes, was probably the easiest one of all. There was a square in the middle of the screen and an arrow would point out of one of the four sides and you simply had to push the joystick in the direction in which the arrow was pointing. The trick for this one was to be as fast as you could (since you had a limited amount of time)without being too hasty. Sounds sort of hard, but it takes practice. I was usually able to do pretty well in this game.

 

The next one, Memory, I always aced because, well, I sort of cheated. A random sequence of arrows would appear on the screen for a short while and you had to memorize which way the arrows pointed (sort of like Simon). What I did was to have a piece of paper and a pencil nearby and, when this game came up, I'd write down the arrows' directions. As a result, I always got a perfect score in this game (which would be 36).

 

The mini-game in Level 4 was the Frogger style game that Mind Master was talking about. This one pretty much depended on "luck of the draw", meaning, the way the bricks were placed. One time, I had such an easy brick sequence that I sailed through the bricks until the time ran out, since they were placed pretty close together, forming an almost-straight line. Other times, I couldn't get through but two or three times.

 

The last mini-game, the lunar lander game, as Mind Master put it, was the one that I had the most trouble with. You had to land the ship right smack in the middle of a platform without using too much fuel. If you ran out of gas, the ship would go straight down and if it wasn't centered right, it wouldn't count (come to think of it, I don't think it even counted if it was right over the center). I only got two good landings if I was lucky.

 

As for the ratings, they go like so:

0-99: Quaint

100-199: Promising

200-299: Amusing

300-399: Intriguing

400-499: Impressive

500-599: Awesome

 

My all-time high score in this game is 542 (I believe that was the game where I aced the Frogger-style game), so I have no idea what happens after that. I hear that it's virtually impossible to get to 600: I think you have to place all the shapes in their corresponding holes in record time, ace all of the bonus games, never get caught by the Alien Stalker, and memorize the layout of that last maze so you can get through it quickly. And who knows, maybe even then, you wouldn't get 600. Or maybe "awesome" is the highest rating, even past 600.

 

Possible ratings I've come up with for past 600 (again, if they even exist) include "outstanding" and "unbeatable". Or possibly even "perfect".

 

Anyone here ever surpass 600 points?

[Fellow Atari Man]

To Godzilla: yeah, it had fireworks at the end; one of the tops of the letters of "a winner!" (scared me at first, since I thought it'd say "is you!" ) splits open and the fireworks come out of it.

 

It is a kick ass game.  The VCS one is a s good as the CV prototype of it I've played on emulators.

 

Say what? Were they (Starpath, I mean) going to release a Supercharger for the Colecovision, or just have their 2600 games ported to other systems?

 

Were they planning on releasing other games for other systems as well?