I can’t imagine anyone really dreams about pipe laying.

Featuring some very peppy music for pipe laying.

To Beat: Beat Round 16-1 in Game B
To Complete: Beat Round 16-4 in Game A, Beat Round 16-1 in Game B, and get the high score in Game C
My Goal: Complete the Game and get the high score in each game mode
What I Did: Met my goal
Played: 12/14/18 – 12/26/18
Difficulty: 4/10
My Difficulty: 4/10
My Videos: Pipe Dream Game A, Pipe Dream Games B & C

I have not played a puzzle game for this project in a very long time. Tetris certainly counts as a puzzle game and I think you can count Lemmings too. Other games like Mendel Palace and Q*bert are more action and arcade oriented and less centered around puzzles. There’s a fair amount of other puzzle games on the console so maybe this is a turning point where we will see more of them come up soon.

Pipe Mania is a 1989 Amiga puzzle game developed by The Assembly Line. The game was widely ported to many different platforms by Lucasfilm Games over the next couple of years, where they distributed the game as Pipe Dream. A popular version was the Windows version as part of the MS Windows Entertainment Pack. The NES version was released in September 1990 in North America only. This version was developed by Distinctive Software and published by Bullet-Proof Software.

Pipe Dream is a straightforward puzzle game. The game takes place on a grid and you have to build the longest consecutive pipeline as possible. One piece is the start where the liquid called the flooz will flow from. You get a series of pieces at random and must lay them down on the board so that you can build out a pipeline to help contain the flooz. The goal in each level is to meet a minimum pipeline length before moving on. There are three different game modes.

Starts out simple enough.

The controls are simple. Use the D-pad to move your piece around the grid. Press A to place it down on the board. The Start button pauses the game. The Select button speeds up the flow of the flooz, typically used when you have built a long enough pipeline and want to complete the level quickly. There is a menu before play that you control with the D-pad. Up or Down moves the cursor and Left and Right adjusts the values on that line. On the menu you can change the number of players, game mode, starting level and round, and the game music.

The screen consists of the top status bar, the main playfield, the flooz timer, and the dispenser of pieces that you will place on the board. The status bar contains your score and your bonus points. Wrenches are shown which act as your lives. You also see the level number and round number. Level represents the complexity of the game board, while round influences the speed of the flooz. Dist is how many tiles the flooz must occupy before you can clear the stage. There is a vertical bar to the right of the playfield called the flooz timer. It counts down before the flooz starts flowing out of the start pipe, giving you time to get a head start on building your pipeline. The dispenser on the left side is your queue of pieces to place on the board. The bottom most piece is the current piece you are placing, and the queue is always five deep so you can start to plan out your moves a bit ahead of time.

Your dispenser only distributes a few types of pieces. There are straight pieces, both vertical and horizontal. There are four elbow pieces. You can’t rotate the pieces you are given so you’ll need to wait for a specific elbow. There are also cross pieces that you can use both horizontally and vertically. In later levels, you will get arrow pieces and the flooz may only flow in the pointed direction.

The special reservoir piece slows down the flow.

The first level just contains the start piece while later levels introduce other special fixed pieces on the board. Reservoir pieces are thick, straight pieces that take longer for the flooz to fill up. These are nice to incorporate so that you get some more time to work in a round. Conversely, pump pieces speed up the flooz for several tiles. An end piece is labeled with an E. You are not required to finish your pipeline with this piece, but if you do you get double bonus points. Tunnels may also appear on the playfield edges. They aren’t pieces, but instead let you direct the flow from one edge of the playfield to the opposite side.

It’s very likely that you will put a piece in the wrong spot. As long as the flooz hasn’t entered a piece already, you can drop a different piece on top of another one. This is called blasting a piece. The primary downside of blasting a piece is that there is a slight delay introduced before you can drop the next piece. You also lose 50 points per blasted piece.

Pipe Dream has two ways of scoring points. First are the non-bonus points which are scored per piece as the flooz moves through. Normal pieces give you 50 points. One-way pieces earn you 100 points. Special pieces are more lucrative. Reservoirs give you 200 points each. Pumps give you 1000 points, which is the price to pay for forced increased flow speed. Crossing a tunnel gives you 800 points. End pieces don’t award you any points. Once the flooz can’t proceed any further, the level ends. Each piece not used by the flooz loses 100 points. A pump piece speeds up the flow temporarily, and you can also force the speed to increase for the rest of the round manually by pressing Select. The base points are doubled for each piece filled during the fast flow.

Make loops to add bonus points.

The big points are earned through bonus points. You earn bonus points each time you create a loop in the pipeline through one of the cross pieces. Basically, you need to guide the flooz through a cross piece in both directions. The first loop gives you 100 points times the level number. Subsequent loops increase this value by 100 times the number of special pieces on the board, tunnels excluded. Let’s use Level 3 as an example. This level has two special pieces, the start piece and a pump piece. The first loop is worth 300 points. The second loop adds 200 points to the first loop score, and so on for each further loop. So, loop 1 is worth 300 points, loop 2 is 500 points, loop 3 is 700 points, and so on.

There are also loop bonus multipliers granted for including special pieces within a loop. So, for instance, if a reservoir is one of the pieces within a loop, your bonus is doubled. Pumps give x4 multiplier, while incorporating a tunnel gives you a x8 multiplier. These multipliers are additive if multiple special pieces are included within a loop. Including both a reservoir and a pump gives you a x6 multiplier, as an example. Once you can wrap your brain around using tunnels in a loop, you can get a huge multiplier giving you a bunch of points. If you can do these things while also linking to the end piece, that doubles your entire bonus score for the round. There’s one additional bonus. If you somehow manage to have the flooz touch every square on the playfield, you get 10,000 points times your level number added to your score.

Pipe Dream features a simultaneous two player mode. Both players can lay pieces on the game board and each player gets their own dispenser. You need to work cooperatively to make it through each round. The fun of it comes if you want to compete for score. Each player gets credit for the basic scoring for each piece utilized, including losing points for blasting pieces or leaving some unused. The player dropping the piece that directs the flooz into a special piece gets the points for that special piece.

There are three game modes that all function about the same. Game A is Standard Play and for each level you play four rounds. In Game B, Tournament Play, you only play one round per level. Game C is one-shot play and you only play a single round. The gameplay in each game mode is exactly the same. In Game A, you can choose the starting level from 1-12, but you always begin at round 1. Game B is the opposite; you pick the starting round from 1-4 but always begin from level 1. For Game C you can pick both the level and round you want. The main games have 16 levels. In Game B you play only 16 boards, but in Game A you play a whopping 64 game boards. Once you complete Level 16 in either mode, you start back at Level 1 on a new round. In Game A you go to round 5 and in Game B you go to round 2. Sadly, there is no ending to this game as play will continue indefinitely. Each game mode has its own high score table as well.

There’s a falling block style mini game!

After every four rounds in Games A and B, you play a bonus game. This is a falling block style game. The starting piece is in the center and new pieces appear from the top left corner, one at a time. Each piece slides along the top of the playfield automatically and you press A to drop it straight down. Then a new piece will appear. Simply build the pipeline as long as you can for the most points. Typically, you will have a very short pipeline because you can only see one piece at a time and all pieces fall to the bottom of the pile every time. Still, it’s possible to do a loop or two for some big bonus points if it comes together correctly.

Pipe Dream has lives in the form of wrenches. You get three wrenches at the start of modes A and B. If you fail to meet the minimum pipeline length, you lose a wrench and start the round over. You can’t earn any more wrenches throughout play. There are no formal continues in the game, but in Game A you can choose your starting level up to a certain point which achieves the same function.

This was my first time beating Pipe Dream. I’m sure I’ve tinkered with the game a little bit but didn’t play beyond one screen. This game was supposed to come one game earlier in the list sandwiched between Robocop and The Terminator. I had a little problem with my game cart. I normally play on my AVS so I can record video in 720p, only this time the graphics were glitchy and the game would not play. That cart worked just fine on a regular NES console. I really like having HD video longplays where possible, so instead of recording off my CRT and stock console, I decided to try buying another cart in hope that it would work. While waiting for my replacement to arrive in the mail, I decided to skip ahead and beat The Terminator. Luckily the other cart worked great and I was able to clear the game.

With some hard work, you can set up for huge points.

Pipe Dream has an unclear winning condition with all the modes and levels and whatnot. My take is that the levels are what is most differentiated in the gameplay. There are 16 levels in all, so beating Level 16 should be enough to consider the game beaten. The quickest way to get that done is to play Game B, so that is what I chose for considering the game done. Just for completeness sake, I also did all 64 rounds of Game A and also played some Game C as well. I ended up beating both Game A and Game B and set the high score in all three game modes. I had to continue a few times in Game A and I beat Game B on my first attempt. It took me quite a few tries to get a good round going in Game C.

I believe the trick to getting high scores in Pipe Dream is to best understand conceptually how looping works. The way I think about it is that a loop begins when the flooz passes through a cross piece the first time and it ends when the flooz crosses it the second time. Any piece in between that is part of the loop. What I do is put a cross piece in the pipeline early on, cross it once, and then leave it alone. Then I work on directing the pipeline through as many special pieces and tunnels as I can before I connect it back to that initial cross piece. Pulling that off makes almost the entire pipeline one giant loop and makes it eligible for a huge multiplier. My best multiplier was a x48 in Game A and I managed a x40 in my Game C high score.

Pipe Dream is a good puzzle game that is a good fit for the NES. The controls are simple and responsive. The graphics are nice for a game like this. I thought the music was catchy and not bothersome. The gameplay is solid and I found it very satisfying whenever I got the right piece at the right time to pull off a clever turn in the piping. It felt good to pull off a big multiplier too. The game modes leave a little to be desired since the game is almost always the same no matter what, and playing an extended game gets tiring and monotonous. That kind of comes with the territory of a puzzle game like this. I would say this game is best enjoyed by fans of puzzle games, otherwise, you probably won’t find the game interesting.

#110 – Pipe Dream (Game A)

#110 – Pipe Dream (Game B)

#110 – Pipe Dream (Game C)

Take pursuit of the top score as the bad guys pursue you.

The font is a bit hard to read.

To Beat: Complete the Winter season and the River section
Played: 11/21/16 – 11/23/16
Difficulty: 5/10
My Difficulty: 5/10
Video: Spy Hunter Longplay
Bonus Video: Spy Hunter Glitch

This is another first for Take On The NES Library with the first racing game covered on the site. However, if you know anything about Spy Hunter then you’ll already know that this is a loose claim at best. Since Spy Hunter is less about racing and more about combat, survival, and high scores, we will have to save the first true racer for another day.

Spy Hunter is originally an arcade title released by Bally Midway in 1983. It was supposed to be a James Bond game and it carries that kind of vibe. Spy Hunter was popular enough to spawn a pinball game bearing the same name in 1984. Later the game was ported to a host of home computers and other consoles. The sequel Spy Hunter II was released in 1987 and featured more of a 3D perspective from above and behind the car as opposed to an overhead view. The NES port of Spy Hunter was also released in 1987 and was both developed and published by Sunsoft. In 1991, Sunsoft released a Famicom title called Battle Formula which plays as a racing shooter game similar to Spy Hunter. When they brought the game to the NES, they obtained the Spy Hunter license from Bally Midway and released the game as Super Spy Hunter in 1992.

Spy Hunter experienced periods of dormancy sandwiched between a number of reboots. The next Spy Hunter game was released in 2001 along with a sequel, Spy Hunter 2, in 2003. Around that time a Spy Hunter movie was starting up but it has not yet seen the light of day. There was a movie tie-in game called Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run that was released in 2006 anyway despite no movie release to go with it. After another long quiet spell, yet another video game reboot of Spy Hunter was developed for handhelds in 2012. There have been rumors that a Spy Hunter film is still in development as recently as 2015, but at this point it seems unlikely this will ever come to fruition.

Just crusin’ along!

Spy Hunter is a top-down racing and shooting game. You control the G-1655 CIA Prototype Interceptor as you are being chased by a bunch of enemy agents who only want to destroy you. Your task is to take out the enemy agents, protect innocent bystander vehicles, and drive as far as you can.

The controls are simple. Use the D-Pad to steer your vehicle left and right. You go faster by holding up and you slow down by pressing Down. Your Interceptor is armed with a machine gun that you can fire with the B button. If you have a special weapon you can use it with A, and the Select key will switch between special weapons if you have more than one. There is no pause feature with the game which is a significant omission as far as I’m concerned.

When you begin the game you are unloaded by the big brown weapons van and you can start driving right away. Your score counter is displayed on the upper-right of the screen and it increases as you drive. You want to stay on the pavement since you don’t get score while you are riding along the edge of the road. If you go faster you accrue points more quickly while at a higher risk of crashing. There are a number of vehicles and hazards that will get in your way from both ahead and behind so you want to maintain a decent speed. You also earn points by defeating the enemy agents. If you happen to bump into or destroy a non-enemy vehicle your score counter blinks and stops increasing for a little while.

Try to avoid shooting the regular cars.

There is also a time counter on the bottom-right that ticks down pretty fast from 999. The timer ties to an interesting mechanic concerning your lives. As long as the timer is running, you can crash your vehicle and you can get right back on the road with no penalty. The timer runs out quickly and it only counts down once at the start of the game, so this juncture is when you want to be more careful. You want to drive well enough to earn at least 10,000 points before the timer runs out. Fail to reach that score and your next crash ends your game immediately. However, if you reach that mark then you get an extra life that is shown where the timer used to be displayed. If you play really well and get to 30,000 points you get another extra life, and you can earn another life at every 30,000 points beyond that.

The enemy vehicles on the road all share the same deep blue color so you can easily distinguish them from the others. There is a skinny enemy called the Tire Slasher. You can easily shoot it with your machine gun when it is in front of you, but if it gets to your side it will deploy spikes out of its tires and try to collide with you, causing you to lose control of your vehicle completely. The second enemy agent is a thick car called a Bullet Proof Bully. Naturally this vehicle is immune to your machine gun, so the way to take it out is to bump it off the road with your Interceptor. This enemy will try and do the same to you, so be careful. The third agent is a long Limousine. This vehicle attacks you via a backseat passenger firing a pistol out the side windows whenever you run along side of it, so you want to avoid approaching it just as you want to avoid the Tire Slasher. There is a fourth enemy which is a white helicopter. This is the only flying vehicle and you can hear it coming long before you see it. The helicopter drops deadly bombs on the road that create a deadly pothole in the ground should you run over it.

The helicopters are relentless!

To help fend off the enemies, you can find three special weapons. At certain times the same brown van that drops you off at the start appears with a symbol on the top. If you get close to the van it drops a ramp so that you can drive up into the back of the van. If you do this, the van will pull over to the side of the road and drop you off with your new weapon. The weapons are indicated by letters in the upper-left corner of the screen. The one denoted by an S is the smoke screen which lets you spew a wide fan of smoke out of the back of your Interceptor. This pretty much causes everything behind you to crash, including innocent drivers which halts your score counter. The M is a homing missile that is used solely to take out the helicopter. You have to drive in a way to keep the helicopter still long enough so that you can hit it, and getting the hang of it takes some time. The O is an oil slick which drops a car-wide stream of oil behind you. The effect is similar to the smoke screen but it is much easier to target a single enemy. These weapons are useful but if you crash you lose them all.

As you drive you will occasionally find forks in the road. You have to be careful to pick a side so that you don’t crash in the median. You will also drive across long bridges. When you come out of the other side the background scenery changes. There are four different areas you drive through and each one corresponds to a season. You can bounce around a bit between the different seasons, but usually you go through Spring, Summer, Fall, and then Winter.

If you get really far into the game you will eventually come across a small branching path to the left with a small building at the end. It’s very easy to miss it when you are going fast, and it is completely optional anyway. Drive into the building and you switch over to a boat and drive on the river. There are two types of enemy boats you will encounter and no friendly vehicles to avoid. Cruise boats fire torpedoes both ahead and behind them, and speed boats drop explosive barrels you need to navigate around. Enemy helicopters can also join the fray. You can stay on the water for as long as you want, or eventually you can find a path back to the boathouse and get back on the road.

The water is more dangerous than the road.

Looking around online, it seems a common rumor about Spy Hunter back in the day was that the game eventually has an ending if you play long enough. I can put that rumor to rest: Spy Hunter is an endless game. With an endless game comes deciding on what constitutes a win. The closest thing Spy Hunter has to levels are the seasons and the river. Winter is always the last unique season you will encounter in the game, so my winning condition is to drive through the Winter scene and also survive one loop of the river.

Spy Hunter is one of my childhood games and one that I spent time with on an occasional basis. Play sessions are pretty short so this was a good choice for a pick up and play game. I never committed to it long enough to ever get really good at the game, so this was my first real shot and beating it and seeing everything the game has to offer.

Because Spy Hunter is a pretty short game I ended up recording all my attempts, so I have some hard data on my effort in beating the game. It took me 18 attempts over almost exactly an hour and a half of total playtime. 17 of those attempts took place the first night I played, and the next time I sat down to play I had my winning run on the first try. I took on the river at my first opportunity and ended up getting through it for the first time in my life. The river scene was a childhood gaming nemesis that I was super proud to finally conquer. Going from car to boat or vice versa is the only time the game stops for long enough to capture a proper picture since there is no pause feature. I managed to capture a quick image with my camera even though I hadn’t technically finished the game yet. I was able to drive well enough to pass through Winter and beat the game with a final score of 108,595.

I don’t think many Spy Hunter players have seen this snow!

My 11th attempt was where I got my highest score. I looped through Winter twice and was going pretty well when I decided to go for it and try the River. Unfortunately, I failed out pretty fast. I earned a score of 134,525. I don’t remember what happened after that but I must have been pretty disappointed that I missed my best chance to that point. I stopped recording for a little while and then started back up again a little later. Those last attempts that night were not very good so I smartly cut my losses and went to bed.

During my 4th attempt I unintentionally triggered a glitch that soft-locked my game. I was trying to drive into the weapons van when I bumped into another car at the same time. The game started the sequence of steering the Interceptor into the van without actually putting the car inside. It left my car in a state where it was hovering over the road where I couldn’t move it and no one could touch it. That’s the first time I’ve seen that happen while playing and I had no choice but to reset and start over. I bet the timing of the glitch is really tough to reproduce!

Spy Hunter is a classic game that would be a good fit it any NES collection. There may not be a lot of substance to the game, but it plays well and it is a great game to pop in if you just want to kill a few minutes. I’m just glad to say that after all these years of playing that I have finally seen all there is to see, and it didn’t take me nearly as long as I thought!

#38 – Spy Hunter

Let’s kick the board game format up a notch with Archon.

Dueling dragons!

To Beat: Win a match
To Complete: Win as both the Light team and Dark team
What I Did: Completed the game
Played: 9/21/16 – 9/23/16
Difficulty: 3/10
My Difficulty: 3/10
Video: Archon Longplay

Today is a big day for Take On The NES Library! I am finally incorporating game play videos for some games going forward, and we are kicking off this momentous occasion by talking about the first strategy game covered on this site.

Archon: The Light and the Dark was originally released in 1983 for Atari 8-bit computers. It was developed by Free Fall Associates and published by Electronic Arts. The game is notable both for being among the first titles published by EA and a huge hit for Free Fall Associates. The game was so popular that EA wanted a sequel quickly, so the developers released Archon II: Adept the following year in 1984. The original Archon was ported to many home computer systems and was a success on pretty much every one. The NES would receive a port of this game all the way in December 1989 published by Activision and Bullet-Proof Software.

Archon can be adequately summarized as an action chess game. There are two sides, light and dark, composed of fantasy creatures that duke it out for control of a 9×9 grid. Each side takes turns moving a creature from one space to another. If a character is placed on a square occupied by a member of the opposite team, the gameplay switches to the combat arena. Here you take direct control of your creature as you attempt to defeat the opponent by thumping or shooting them enough to deplete their life bar. Defeated creatures are removed from the board and the winner occupies the square. There are also five power spots on the board: One in the middle of each of the four edges of the board and one in the center. You can win by either destroying all of the enemy creatures on the other team or by occupying all five power spots at the same time.

One strategy is to try and hold the power points.

The game board consists of light squares, dark squares, and shifting squares called Lumina squares. Light squares and dark squares always stay the same, but the Lumina squares change color throughout the game after every other turn. There are five different shades of Lumina square: light, light blue, blue, dark blue, and dark. All the Lumina squares start off blue and shift toward dark, then reverse and shift toward light. This cycle repeats through the course of the game. The color of these squares is important because light characters are stronger on lighter squares and dark characters are stronger on darker squares. It is to your advantage to engage in combat on those squares when they match your color.

There are several types of creatures in the game and they can be separated into two groups. There are ground creatures and flying creatures. Ground creatures cannot move through squares occupied by other characters and must have a direct walking path to the desired square. Flying creatures can go over units and land on any square within flying range. Each character has a range of squares they are allowed to travel during a move ranging from three squares to five. If a ground character can walk four squares, then it gets a combination of four horizontal or vertical steps and that’s all for that turn. If a flying character can move four squares, then it gets up to four squares of horizontal movement and up to four squares of vertical movement. As a result, flying creatures can cover significantly more ground per turn than ground creatures.

Ground characters on each side match up against each other on the board for the most part. The leaders are the light Wizard and dark Sorceress. They are the only characters capable of spell casting which I will get to in a little bit, and they also move via teleporting which evidently is exactly the same as flying but with a different animation. The light Knights and dark Goblins are the pawns of this game with short range attacks and weak stamina. The light Unicorns and dark Basilisks are quick and reasonably strong. The light Archers and dark Manticores are a tad on the weaker side but have long range attacks. The light Golems and dark Trolls are very slow but very strong.

The starting lineup!

The remaining matchups demonstrate the differences between the two teams. The light Valkyrie is a bit stronger than the similar Archer. On the other side, the dark Banshee has a scream attack that drains the enemy health when in close range, and it is the only attack in the game that allows the character to move while the attack is in action. The light Djinni is the best light attacker though only a little better than the Valkyrie. Opposite it, the dark Shapeshifter turns into whichever enemy opposes it in combat, matching its stats exactly. The light Phoenix can explode dealing massive damage when touching an opponent while doubling as a defensive move that nulls any attack during the move’s duration. The dark Dragon has both the strongest long-range attack in the game as well as the most health.

Combat is pretty straightforward. The arena contains the two combatants and a seemingly random arrangement of objects. You can move in eight directions and attack with the A button. When you or an opponent fires off an attack, there is a delay before the next attack is allowed. This recharge time varies per character. A noise will sound whenever the next attack is ready to go. The tone is a higher pitch for the light character and a lower pitch for the dark character so you can easily distinguish the two. The objects in the arena are stationary but shift state frequently enough that there’s no real way to determine how those spaces will behave. Sometimes attacks will go right through them and sometimes they get blocked. Character movement through these obstacles may or may not be permitted or it might be allowed at a slow, plodding pace. It adds enough randomness to the battles so that combat is tense and exciting.

Both the Wizard and Sorceress have access to the same complement of spells. Each spell may only be used once per game, and the spell may not target a character stationed on one of the power spots. If the Wizard or Sorceress is defeated then no spells may be cast by that side. Another interesting wrinkle is that using a spell drains a bit of health from the spellcaster. To use a spell, press A when selecting the caster and a spell dialog will appear at the bottom of the screen. You may cycle through the spells with Up and Down and cast the spell by pressing A. You can also select the Cancel option if you don’t want to use a spell.

Attack from afar with an elemental if you want!

There are seven spells in Archon. The Teleport spell moves any character on your team to any square not already occupied by another team member. You can move a character onto an opponent to engage them in battle directly. The Heal spell restores the health of any one of your characters. The Shift Time spell reverses the flow of the Lumina squares. The Exchange spell swaps any two creatures on the board no matter which team they belong. The Summon Elemental spell calls a temporary elemental to attack any opponent on the board. It could be an earth, air, water, or fire elemental that is chosen at random and each has different characteristics in combat. Either win or lose, the elemental is removed from play after the battle is over. The Revive spell brings a defeated creature back into play. The revived character must be placed on a square adjacent to the spellcaster. The Imprison spell can be cast on any creature locking them to the board. The affected creature is not able to move on the board until the Lumina squares match the team color, though opponents may engage an imprisoned creature in battle at any time.

One more interesting thing to mention is that there is the possibility of a tie game. If there are few characters remaining on each side and no combat or spellcasting occurs in a set number of turns, the game will be called a draw. This was implemented to encourage combat. The other more straightforward stalemate happens when the last two characters on the board kill each other at the same time.

Combat is a balance of staying out of danger while finding an open line of fire when you can.

This was my first time playing Archon but I had great success for a beginner. I started playing as the Light team and I got beat down pretty quickly. I was losing characters left and right as I got used to the combat and characters. About halfway through the match the game clicked with me and I started mounting a comeback, but despite that it started to look like it was too little to late. The best character I had remaining was my Wizard and I decide to go for broke and try to take out the Sorceress. She had not moved the entire game and her square is always dark, but despite the disadvantage I managed to win that fight. After that I picked off all the remaining enemies for a win by brute force.

Since it didn’t take me very long to win the game and the dark team plays differently from the light team, I wanted to get a win from the other side. This was the run I recorded for YouTube. It did not start out particularly well but I ended up winning in half the moves required for my first victory. I also won the match by occupying all five of the power spots instead of defeating all the enemies.

Archon is a fun, short game that might be worth a look if you are interested in chess or light strategy games. The graphics and music are adequate and don’t get in the way of the action at all, but the gameplay is solid and that’s what’s important in a game like this. I didn’t even mention yet that the game has a 2-player mode that is sure to be a lot of fun once both players get a few matches under their belt. For myself, I enjoyed playing the game but unless I get another player involved I don’t see myself playing very much more Archon in the future.

#31 – Archon