I had high hopes for today’s scrolling shooter, Raptor. This game follows the proven formula for shooters, emulating many of its commercial bretheren. In my opinion, the game is attempting to be a Raiden clone with some minor attempts to exceed the arcade and multiplatform classic. However, Apogee and its developer, Cygnus Studios, fell short on a few aspects.

The game definitely has production value. When starting the game, the player can sit through a simple cut sceen showing the Raptor aircraft flying towards a city in ruins. One would expect the production value to be high, however, as the game is the largest yet in this Retrochallenge, measuring in at nearly two megabytes compressed. Uncompressed, the game requires about five megabytes, probably for the graphics.
This size might seem silly to talk about, but it is actually quite a problem. The game as downloaded cannot fit on a single high-density floppy disk. I have been using floppies to move games onto my 486, but this game presented some nasty issues. The archive does not simply contain the game files, but rather Apogee’s silly installer, which is nothing but a glorified decompression program. One file within the Apogee installer measures in at nearly 1.8 MB, again making this game impossible to fit onto a floppy. I had to launch DOSBox, install the game, then rezip the contents into two separate zip files and transfer the resulting zips via two floppy disks.
This nuisance annoyed me, but I was a determined man. However, for a shareware program, this process presents a problem. At least in my case, much of the shareware I acquired through friends via floppy disk. Raptor, in its base archive distribution, simply doesn’t fit on a floppy. Apogee managed to completely eliminate this distribution stream, a major technique in the early nineties, with Raptor.
Anyway, I suppose I should begin with reviewing the game. After selecting new game, the player is allowed to create a profile. This process involves selecting the player’s face from four available (not exactly a large selection), entering the player’s name, and the player’s pilot handle. Personally, I’m torn on the two-name requirement. I suppose some people might want to use “Iceman” or “Bandit” for handles while keeping a more formal “Nathan Scott Phillips” in the full name slot. I simply found it to be redundant.

After creating a pilot, the player is presented with the access to the base. The above picture is static other than some simulated welding flashes, so its a bit underwhelming. The player has a handful of options on this screen, namely saving, purchasing junk for their plane, or flying a mission. A new pilot is given 10,000 credits initially to make purchases, so a trip to the supply bay might be worth it.

The supply bay offers the player the opportunity to buy energy capsules, something called an ion scanner, or a whole bunch of really expensive ammunition and shields. For new players, one hint is to return and purchase the overpriced energy capsules after each level. Raptor seems to be stingy with the in-game energy, so purchasing some explicitly might be a good plan. My propensity to save lead to my demise just as the second level’s boss flew onto the screen.

The gameplay itself is what one would expect in a top-down shooter. A notable feature of Raptor is that nearly the entire game is dedicated to the actual game, relegating statuses to the thin side bars. While this might seem to be a feature, the lack of a Raiden-like side bar makes the game feel somehow less polished in my opinion. I’m probably wrong, though.
The game can be controlled via mouse, but I chose to play using the keyboard. The Control key is used for firing, the arrow keys control movement, and the Alt key causes the game to make a noise as if tyo suggest it has a function that I’m not allowed to access. The fire key, however, can simply be held the entire time. The bullets, however, are a bit on the lame side, and the PC speaker sound effects only act to enhance that perception. The game “felt” more fulfilling once I found some air-to-air missiles.

The gameplay is adequate. On the 486, the game played slow but smooth. The types of enemies I encountered were pretty standard for this type of game, and the enemy variety was limited at best. I was able to dodge almost all enemy bullets without issue on the 486. The game ran considerably smoother on DOSBox, but that didn’t make it better necessarily. The surface the plane flies over is very uninteresting, featuring occasional enemy structures and bridges. Hardly any bonus items were found while flying missions, which was also disappointing.
Raptor, while it had a lot of promise, was underwhelming. The game doesn’t offer anything beyond other top-down shooters except being available for MS-DOS. A quick Internet search session reveals, however, that I may be in the minority with this review of Raptor. Personally, I would suggest people look for alternative vertical-scrolling shooters. Raptor is acceptable, but I guess I may have been spoiled by Raiden for the Atari Jaguar.
Tags: 31 Games in 31 Days, Games, Vintage Computing // 1 Comment »