Overall 8.2 Graphics 7 Sound 5 Addictive 4 Story 4 Depth 7 Difficulty 9
6.9
Moral of story - Exploring caves is crazy dangerous! endings
Spelunker was one of the first games I played. I found out later that its a bad game to choose for beginners. The difficulty is quite brutal, only once you understand the two most annoying causes of death, do you start making headway without dying every minute or even every 5 seconds. You are an explorer looking for lost treasure in a cave network, and by the end you can be like Scrooge McDuck and have a huge pile of gold coins to dive in. But many don't get that far, because our hero has some of the deadliest, deceptively easy looking jumps to navigate.
Graphics: 7
When this game out, way back in the mid 80's, this game had good graphics. There is not a lot of enemy types, a bat, a ghost, but they are done well for the time period's limitations. The player is well designed, looking like a Mario type with a miner's hat on. The terrain changes, having water elements, idols, mine cart, there is a lot to see and other than the badly designed tools you have, nothing is vague. Speaking of those items, the flare looks like a big pill. why not a firework design? The player also starts with a strange ghost-busting gun (flashlight?) that destroys the spook. Its all its used for but doesn't tell you that is what it does. I enjoyed seeing the ruins, the waterfalls, and other small touches to make it more than just brown-yellow cave walls.
Sound: 5
There is a beginning track, and several tunes for situation dangers, such as running low on energy or the ghost coming out. The beginning tone and the game over music are probably the best. I found it humorous that you can pause the game over screen, but not quickly end it, it must play out. This is a preference, but the sound effect for the bat is super annoying, and I'd mark it down for being so grating.
Addictiveness: 4
This is a really hard game because of the precise placement needed of your character and meticulous controls. So hard a player unfamiliar with the game can easily lose all 3 lives in a minute. You will very likely die many times, but at least the game starts your life back near where you died, so its not like you have to slog through the whole place again.. until you run out of all the extra lives. There is no continues here, and with the unforgiving controls, this game mainly appeals to nostalgia and those who like beating difficult games.
Story: 4
You are just a really greedy guy who wants treasure, like an old-school Wario. This guy should have just opened a bank or something, because this cave is seriously dangerous to him. There is a celebratory screen once you find the lost ruins, but Spelunker doesn't tell you 'in game' what your goal is. Just keep collecting treasure, much like other platformers at the time. Definitely could have expanded on this a bit, and maybe talk about what ghosts are haunting you.
Depth: 7
Its a game built around exploring a game, and while there are segmented parts, it is sort of split into levels. Each opens up new challenges, there is no backtracking needed once you descend past the locked gates and get on the moving platforms. The use of a flare and bombs is nice, as they are used in real spelunking. Due to limitations on the graphics, I can see why they went with small drops killing the player, so the threat of falls, a serious hazard to spelunking - is your main threat.
Difficulty: 9
This game has a strict learning curve regarding your falls and jumps. Its so precise, before you figure it out you might just be making leaps off ropes by blind luck. There are 2 main hardships you face in the caves- neither are the bats or the ghosts - who are easily dealt with a flare or the gun, respectively.
The first thing to master is the jumping. The main hero doesn't jump high, but he can only fall less than half an inch before it will kill him. This smacks in the face of other games at the time, where you suffered no penalty for jumping long distances. Jumping horizontally come with some danger as well, as he always leaps the same distance. You will find some rocks are placed just outside pits so you jump, hit the rock, bounce back in the pit and die. You must master the spacing of the jump, and know even a small distance can kill you.
The second is the horrible, horrible controls regarding jumping between ropes. In many other games this is a simple effort. Here you must not only get the timing of pressing direction and jump -- because if you have any delay after pushing your direction -you will push off the rope and die instantly, but also where you place yourself on the rope. The rope is probably about 3 pixels in length. You could jump from the closest pixel to the other rope, or the middle - but often these lead me to death. I had the most success moving to the far end of the rope, one more push over, a hair's length - and I would fall off and die. But from this treacherous distance, I could make good jumps. As long as your not too high up on the rope, or low. Thats right, he can kill himself by falling off or bumping his head on the roof and missing the jump.
More often than not, this situation is the killer, jumping from rope to rope.
I died A LOT, even with save states. You have to play patiently, but not too lax. There is a timer on your oxygen, the bar at the top moves from MAX to MIN, and if it gets there, you will die. Did the game mention that using the ghost gun also uses this oxygen/thing? It should have. So be on the look out for the strange pylon white towers with rings on them. Those refill your meter and keep you going.
Overall score: 6.9
As a kid, I hated this game. Its too focused on being hard and not enough on being fun. But as an adult, I went back and saw how you had to really plan ahead and use your limited items wisely. This is a tough game, and it doesn't apologize for its sharp difficulty. But upon beating it, i felt rewarded, I had earned this. If you like hard old-school games. try the controls on Spelunker - and I wish you luck!
Graphics 7 Sound 5 Addictive 4 Story 4 Depth 7 Difficulty 9
Review Rating: 5/5
Submitted: 08-04-14
Review Replies: 1
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