Homebreviews - part 28
Entry posted by Nathan Strum
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Today marks the fourth anniversary of my blog! And to celebrate the event... the review that nobody thought would ever happen!
(And no, I don't mean N.E.R.D.S 2 
)
Yes, it's Actionauts.
So, you're probably wondering, "How and or why the sweaty heck did you get Actionauts?!?" After all, I wasn't exactly enamored with the marketing fiasco associated with it.
Simply put, I got a comp copy for having done some work on the manual and label. Ain't no way I'd plunk down $79.95 for an unfinished/prototype/reproduction/collectible. It's just not my thing.
Nonetheless, a year-and-a-half after doing the work (I guess that answers the question of what my time's worth), I got my copy of the game, and decided to give it a fair shake.
No, seriously... 
Actionauts
2/5
Actionauts was a prototype game programmed by Rob Fulop in 1984, after his departure from Imagic. As the video game market collapsed, the 2600 version of this game was shelved until recently when it was revived and spruced up for a limited edition release.
In Actionauts, your goal is to program a little robot to navigate a series of mazes to reach a goal (referred to as "the cheese"). In one screen, you see the maze with your robot and the cheese; in the other, you enter in your program that will move your robot. You have three commands you can tell the robot: move ahead, turn left, and turn right. There's also a "jump" button, which makes your program jump back to the top, so it will run in a loop. This is a necessary element in later mazes, because you only have a limited number of program lines to use, and you can't reach the goal without using loops. So a big part of this is figuring out which loop, when repeated, will get you to the cheese.
Actionauts is an interesting concept, but clearly a very unfinished prototype. For one thing, there's no way to lose a game. You just keep endlessly trying, failing, and reprogramming your robot over and over, until you reach the cheese - then you move onto the next maze, and do the whole process again. And while it's interesting enough the first time you get to a maze, once you figure it out, there's really no reason to revisit it. There's no score to improve on, and even if there's more than one solution per maze, there's no reward for using the fewest possible moves, or penalty for using more moves than necessary. There's also no way to clear a program (short of hitting Reset), and since your program can be long enough to extend off the screen, it's hard to keep track of exactly where you are within your program. Line numbers would have been most welcomed, or color coding so every fifth and tenth line would be different colors. Just counting symbols is tedious, plus there's no clear indicator of the top or bottom of your program - you just have to scroll until it stops to see where the ends are (hint: keep some scratch paper handy). While the program is running, the command being executed is the one that just went off the screen. Having it highlighted when executed would have been better, so you'd get a clear idea of where your program failed.
There are also some bugs in the game, including one where you can't see which command you've selected, another where the screen rolls badly when switching to the maze, and one where the robot sprite gets distorted (but that's far less frequent). These all seem to clear out by switching between the maze and programming screens, but still the first two happened pretty frequently even in my relatively brief time with the game. The sound is pretty minimal, and is really hurting for some robot noises and computer blips and bleeps. The robot graphics are disappointing - having a more interesting looking robot and a variety of objects to collect (or rescue) would have added more appeal to the game.
Certainly, there's some potential in Actionauts. The original design notes hinted at more. Adding enemies to shoot, obstacles to move, objects to pick up, walls to tunnel through, etc, could have made for a pretty cool game. But none of that is here. It's a good start, but that's about it. Admittedly, I did have some fun cranking up the robot's speed all the way and watching him repeatedly bash into the walls - but that's not really the point of the game. The "exclusive limited edition" of Actionauts came in a nicely printed box, with a manual and a photocopy of the original design notes describing the concept of the game. There is no insert to hold the cart in place, so perhaps this explains why it was stuffed into the same form-fitting bag with the manual - to keep it from rattling around in the box. Unfortunately, that resulted in the manual being wrapped around the cartridge and getting creased - probably something most collectors wouldn't appreciate. The cart and box are both signed and numbered, and mine is #204 (or #207, depending on how you decipher the handwriting).
Box or not, Actionauts is basically just a collector's item. It was always intended as a collector's item, despite some extra work being put into it to make it more playable. And while it is playable, it's not really re-playable. It may take you awhile to work through the mazes (if you decide it's worth doing), but then there's nothing left to do with it. So Actionauts is a collector's item, a historical footnote, and an interesting concept. But as-is, it's not really much of a game.
Next time: Who's on First?
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