Vindicators

Vindicators was another gauge to measure the decline of the Apple II.

Apparently it was a simple case of pulling the plug as the Apple IIGS was becoming a less profitable platform to develop for. One of Tengen's testers, an anonymous IIGS user, saw the game in a Tengen catalogue and asked about it. It was retrieved from the company vault, pronounced dead and then moved onto the ECC - who not only then released it, but fixed some of the remaining bugs of the final candidate version.

Originally an arcade game by Atari, it was converted by Westwood. It's a shoot-em-up; you control a tank and it's your job that nothing stands in your way to the next level. It can be played by 2 gamers simultaneously, one by the keyboard (with keypad, arrows, or IJKM for directional controls, shift is the first fire button, control is the second and both together toggle between your secondary weapon) and the other by joystick (Button 0, open apple/fire button 1 and Button 1, option/fire button 2).

As you destroy everything that moves, you collect stars along the way. At the end of each level, the stars can buy you a faster tank, longer shot distance, more shield, more secondary weapons, etc; quite neat that actually. The toughest thing about this game is your fuel; your tank guzzles it down at a rate of knots and you blow up when you run out. I'll NEVER understand why vehicles blow up in games when you run out of fuel.

This isn't one of Westwood's better conversions, although to their credit, it wasn't finished either. The graphics are fair, the music sounds electronically cute. The game's not bad for a bit of short lived fun.

Note that it's best to play the game at the speed of a stock IIGS - anything faster and you'll find yourself crashing into walls and running out of fuel and subsequently blowing up frequently.