#severn software

[retrocgads]

UK 1985

[retrocgads]

UK 1985

[retrocgads]

UK 1983

[retrocgads]

UK 1983

[retrocgads]

UK 1983

[nojetpac]

1985 - The Day After

Published 1985 by Mastertronic Ltd. | Authors: Severn Software | [WOS]

“This is the kind of game that gives budget software a bad name” - Crash

“It is the day after, big brother has been destroyed and the earth has to learn how to survive on its own,” sez the instructions. Time to open a distillery to shore up against dwindling supplies of Victory gin? Well, no. Instead, the player is in charge of flying a tiny spaceship to recover stashes of nuclear plasma stored on a series of neighbouring planets. Hmm, ok then.

1985 - The Day After is a poorly implemented clone of the Atari game Gravitar, in which the player navigates a series of screens by turning and applying thrust to a craft that is yoked by gravity. It’s nice to look at – the screenshots of colourful pseudo 3D caverns were what prompted me to buy it at the time – but the gameplay is rotten. 8-bit era gaming was frequently challenging but here, a combination of an unresponsive thrust key, over-sensitive turning control, unforgiving inertia and one-touch death creates an experience more akin to Flappy Bird, as the ship meets its firey doom again and again and again before you even leave the first screen.

You could endure the frustration and repeated failure. Given enough patience and practice you could get used to the game’s quirks, make it through every planetary level plus the final extra-twisty boss cavern. Your only reward though is to do it all again – this time with ‘negative gravity’. Imagine the video game equivalent of a boot stamping on the player’s face – forever.