Wastelands

Published on Game On 01/90

It's Wastelands, the classic, post-apocalyptic... one-on-one fighting game? Wait, what - oh, right, WastelandS.

The game opens with a blank screen and a digitized voice sample shouting "WELCOME TO WASTELANDS!" with a faint German accent. The voice is clear enough that you can hear the "s" at the end, thus erasing any doubt you might have about which of the two very similar-titled games you're about to play.

After that, an animated title picture appears, accompanied by a catchy tune featuring chunky digitized drums. The image reminds me of the famous robot sequence from Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I also think to remember that upon starting Wastelands for the first time, I had seen this illustration of a human silhouette before, but I can't remember where.

The title screen uses the C64's multicolor bitmap mode. Apart from its halved resolution (thus the elongated pixels), there are some restrictions how colors can be displayed in this mode. Imagine that the entire picture consists of square blocks, each of them 8x8 pixels, like this: Every block can have up to four different colors. Three of those can be defined individually for each block. The fourth is the background color, and it is shared among all blocks. This means, if you change it, the entire image immediately updates without you having to do anything else. The trick in Wastelands' title screen is the usage of two blacks, so to say. The background color is only used where the flashing effect is supposed to become visible (i.e. the human outline and the inside of the letters). All other black parts are displayed with one of the other colors. Contrary to what one might expect, the horizontal bars that move up and down are not done via raster interrupt (see my post about loading screens). Instead, sprites are used, with drawing priority given to the bitmap graphics. This means that sprites always get obscured by two of the four colors that can be used in each square block. However, the other two colors appear behind the sprites. That is why you can see the bars not only in front of the letters' insides (which have the black background color applied to them) but also in front of the scattered dark gray pixels that make up the letters' outlines. If you look at the animation, you can even see that part of the top right star flashes for a brief moment whenever a sprite passes its height.

Some brief loading time later, you get greeted by this rather basic-looking title menu:

Curiously, the music that's playing during this part is a SID rendition of Visage's Fade to Grey. There's likely no particular reason for this, apart from someone liking the tune. Maybe there is a tenuous connection to the game's dystopian setting, but that's just speculation.

The story is only available in the diskmag part of this Game On issue, and it's once again a bit peculiar, shall we say. It may have been "embellished" by the writer of the article. Here's the short version:

In 2058, mankind is so bored with life, it organizes TV game shows where volunteers can fight to their deaths. Wastelands is one of the more popular shows. It features two contestants waving laser swords at each other until one loses their arms and legs because they didn't have the high ground and had acted like a whiny prick for the entire movie. Sorry, I digress.

Going by the symbolism implied in the title screen, I expected something more like a fighting tournament for genuine survival where the winners are the few chosen ones to leave the barren wastes of Earth and start a new life on a paradise-like world. Then the inhabitants get greedy, the whole system collapses, and people start saying "Would you kindly" a lot. But I digress again.


The Game On article claims that the game comes with a full manual included, but I've never been able to locate it anywhere. Of all the games that don't really need instructions, they had to (accidentally?) omit them from a fighting game where the joystick has about 16 different functions. Well done!

You have the option to play a single or a two player game. For the single player mode, you can also select between three difficulties. I'll just try single player on Beginner because that's how I want to roll tonight. In some sense even literally. You know, because there's a roll move.

The tournament starts with a nicely digitized "BEGIN!" as the contestants materialize on stage. The first scenario looks like a proper battle arena, but that backdrop makes me immediately question where this is supposed to take place. We already had one game on this blog that featured a gray landscape with a clear view of Saturn. What is going on?

If we go by Game On's TV show plot, then the landscape might actually just be green screen trickery to make the spectacle look more interesting.

Wastelands' gameplay is very much inspired by System 3's International Karate and its successor IK+. Each of the eight joystick directions performs a different move which changes depending on if the fire button is pressed or not. Here I'm attacking the air for a while to show off a couple of moves:

While the player sprites are comparatively small, their animations are diverse and look very smooth. Regardless if you're in a single or two player game, your opponent always looks identical to you, apart from the different color of their attire. This is in line with the game's inspirations where you also just fought against palette-swaps of yourself.

Apart from jumping and attacking, you can slowly move left and right or do a roll on the ground to quickly get away from or close in on your opponent. There is no way to move into the background or foreground, so the only thing that determines if one of your attacks hits is your horizontal position relative to that of your challenger. High attacks can be evaded by ducking, low attacks by jumping, and I think there is also a blocking move by walking backward, but I can't do it reliably. Would've been really nice to see some instructions for the game. Really nice... I'm looking at you, Game On's editorial staff from 17 years ago!

Each player has a points bar displayed on top which consists of six full points or twelve half points (not to be confused with the score shown below). Depending on the attack you perform, you can be awarded between one and three half points. If one player reaches six points, they win the round. In a single player game you have to win every round or it's Game Over.

After two successful rounds, a bonus game starts which gives you score points for destroying flying balls. Or monoliths, as the game calls them. I've always been rubbish at hitting the balls, but while playing the game for this blog, I discovered that standing near the center line and doing a ground kick almost always hits the balls that oscillate.

After the bonus game is over, the next scenario is loaded, and the fighting starts anew. This time, the background depicts some temple-like building framed by two statues that remind me of the sphinxes from the NeverEnding Story. There must be one hell of a party going on either inside or behind the temple, judging by that blue light drowning out most of the night sky. If it's even meant to be light, that is. The scattershot dithering makes this not very clear.

As you land hits on your opponents, you raise in rank which is denoted below your score. This is Wastelands' equivalent to International Karate's belts. Even the color order is similar. Here's a list:

NOVICE
APPRENTICE
SWORDSMAN
FIGHTER
BARBARIAN
WARRIOR
MASTER
HIGH MASTER
WARLORD
HIGH WARLORD

As far as I know, the ranks don't actually do anything. They are just an indicator of your continuing success.

The third scenario, with its abundance of water, would look rather displaced in a game called Wastelands if it weren't for the erratic dithering that makes the background look like a deteriorating matte painting.

In this screenshot, you can also witness the AI opponent's habit of bunching up with you so you can't hit it unless you move away. All in all, the computer doesn't play too badly. Even on Beginner difficulty, it doesn't always just repeat the same moves over and over. Sometimes it tries rolling into you, sometimes it waits for you to move. If you don't do anything at all, the AI still takes a good while to hit you. I'm usually rubbish at fighting games, but I can manage Wastelands on Pro quite well.

I should also mention that all moves have digitized sound effects, which were recorded specifically for this game. Most of them are your standard martial arts shouts and hits. One particular hit sounds a lot like bowling pins getting knocked over, which inadvertently punctuates the action in a delightfully cartoonish way.

If you listen to the SID file from the High Voltage SID Collection, you can find a, to my knowledge, unused sound sample. It is a spoken expression of affection that sounds very much like "I LOVE YOU, TED TURNER!" but is probably meant to say "I LOVE YOU, TATANA!". Maybe there is a way to trigger it in the game, but if that's the case, I haven't been able to find it.

In an unexpected twist, the fourth and last scenario takes place on board of a space station. A weirdly oversized space station at that, judging by the huge controls and that giant security door (?) in the background. Again, if Game On's plot is to be believed, this might just be another green screen effect, this time with some serious scaling issues.

If I had to guess, those two boulders visible through the viewscreen are most likely supposed to be Earth and its moon. Our home planet seems to be doing fine. At least from this distance, I can't make out any Wastelands.

Once you've defeated your opponent twice in this scenario and finish the bonus round, the game loops back to the first scenario and continues indefinitely. At least that's the impression I got. I played until I reached round 31. At that point, I had already maxed out my rank several rounds ago, but the game didn't show any inclination to come to a conclusion. Speaking of...



CONCLUSION

For a game whose genre isn't really my cup of tea, I still enjoyed playing it for a while. The single player mode never becomes unfairly hard. The AI sometimes has the tendency to run into the same hits several times in a row, but so far I haven't found a move that works all the time. I would've liked the game more if it had a proper ending. Once I reached the highest rank, there wasn't much of a motivation for me to keep on playing, so I just stopped.

Wastelands is competently made, with custom sound effects and quite an impressive move set. Graphically it's a bit of a mixed bag. The fighter sprites are not as large as the ones in International Karate, but they still look fine and their animations are great. The backgrounds, however, are sometimes rather messy and amateurish looking.

The game won Game On's 50,000 DM competition, which consisted of software contributions sent in by readers of the diskmag. Wastelands is certainly a suitable winner, but since I don't know the other games that were also in the competition, I can't tell you if I had selected a different number one.

Norman Neubert, the game's author, went on to make Black Panther some years later, which can be seen as an evolution of Wastelands. Maybe I'll cover that game as well, if I ever get to Game On Issue 02/92.