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Black Cyclon, Parallax (1993)

October 17, 2024   |   1,423 words

PlatformMSX2
PublisherParallax (1993)
Played onPhilips VG8235

Parallax, not to be confused with Parallax Software, was a Dutch software house that was founded in 1989 because the owners needed a company to publish a game. That game was Vectron. The story is that Vectron won first price in a contest organised by a publisher called Eurosoft. The first price was publication of the winning game, but Eurosoft went bankrupt instead, so Parallax was founded. Parallax produced a number of high quality MSX2 games and went on to become Shape9 who make mobile games. I decided to cut my teeth on Black Cyclon from 1993. I found maps on msxblue.com and a small set of helpful tips on Shape9's nostalgia site. I also found a manual on archive.org.

Philips VG8235 with Panasoft FM-PAC OPLL playing Parallax' Black Cyclon Philips VG8235 with Panasoft FM-PAC OPLL playing Parallax' Black Cyclon

Black Cyclon was distributed on two double-sided disks, which don't seem to like being disk images on an SD card. So I went old-school, bought a box of 10 3.5" disks, formatted two and put the images on them. I even printed two nice labels. The loading times from the floppies themselves are fine, so there's no problem here.

When playing Black Cyclon on my Sony HB-F1XV, I noticed some odd artefacts, so I decided to use my Philips VG-8235 for this game instead. That meant I had to give up on my ren-sha autofire and my speed controller, but the Philips is a PAL machine which means it runs at 80% of the Sony's NTSC speed, so that would certainly make up for it.

Black Cyclon, level one screenshot Black Cyclon, level one screenshot

Mobygames doesn't know about Black Cyclon and MSX Games Generation lists the game as an arcade. I am not sure why, though. I found it a pretty tense top-down action puzzler with RPG elements. There's a story that involves weapons of mass destruction and interstellar pirates. The story starts in the manual and continues before and between the levels in so-called blue terminals, as well as during play using little dialogue boxes. These conversations are just to be read, though. I don't get to select responses, so they're just there to provide helpful information and for story progression.

Dialogues provide the player with useful information on how to progress Dialogues provide the player with useful information on how to progress

Parallax didn't bother with scrolling in this game, so it's a flip-screen affair. It starts out easy. Most rooms in the first level present one or two huge insect-like sprites that start firing slow bullets at me, but they're easy to avoid. These insects take quite a lot of fire to take out, though. After a few minutes and some internal reflection, I head into level two. This one is more difficult, and much longer. I let ungrateful cynical aliens out of their cells to get information from, there are doors that only open when there's power and hatches to switch that power on or off. Meanwhile, damaging little critters are creeping up on me to quickly lose track of while a dozen other flying things are homing in on, also, me. At the end of the second part is a boss who constitutes the entire level three.

“Being more complex than Vectron, it's a good blast. And quite difficult to finish, too. It is probably the most difficult game we've ever made, so if you think you're good at this kind of game, try to complete Black Cyclon!”

-- Shape9 Nostalgia site

Black Cyclon is not only difficult. It's also blatantly unfair. Every time I enter a screen for the second time, it has been reset, so when I have to go back a few rooms, I get to fight the same enemies, but now from a different, often more difficult, position. To get access to terminals, I need to slay large enemies. When I've done my thing and exit the terminal, the screen is reset as well, so the enemy I just slew is there again, right on top of me. If I happen to be where he spawns, I'm dead immediately. Another example: the first time that I play a level, I get the bomb gun, a nice weapon that fires in three directions at the same time. Each time I die, I get a less effective version of the weapon, making the game harder the more attempts I need at a level.

In level four (“please insert disk 2”) it feels like the gloves come off. Walking tank like enemies fire rockets at me from right at the beginning. It's a good thing the rockets can't reach me when I'm behind a door, while my bullets can still reach them. That also holds for some bigger blob like enemies. I have to beat them before the doors to their rooms open. When I stand too close to the door, it opens while there are still bullets flying towards me, letting them hit me. Further on, I find a terminal that allows me to select which weapon to use. I select the needle gun and in the next screen I die quickly. In my next attempt, I select the spread gun, which spreads bullets around in five directions, but they are weak and useless.

Terminals are spread throughout the levels and are useful to the player. Terminals are spread throughout the levels and are useful to the player.

The OPLL chip is normally not my favourite MSX audio expansion. The thin FM sounds feel toy like, especially in the hands of Japanese composers. Black Cyclon instead mostly uses simple low bases and melody lines with no more than a little percussion to make the game sound grim. The intro music conveys loneliness, reminiscent of none less than Ys II. So when frantic level four starts with an upbeat tune, it's even fitting, as if the game is laughing in my face.

Level five is, of course, more difficult than its predecessor. It's quite long too and there are four terminals to visit, tucked away in hard to reach corners. At each terminal I get to store my progression, but when I die, my weapon still degrades. The big bad black space ships that rush through the room leaving six fast moving bullets each are not so bad once I understand to just stand still when they fire. They will miss, unless I move. Still, the many landmines and other baddies make this level quite difficult, so difficult in fact, that I practiced on my laptop using OpenMSX before being able to complete it on my MSX. Switching floppy disks all the time is too slow and quite frustrating.

Fast moving bullets keeping me stuck, landmines and slow moving star-like baddies needing me to hurry Fast moving bullets keeping me stuck, landmines and slow moving star-like baddies needing me to hurry

Before the start of level six, a text screen tells me I'm going to die. It's right. In this level, I need to find and collect nine crystals. While looking for them, there are indestructible dark blobs from which white spider like things spawn when I pass them. They fire fast moving bolts at me. There are also black spider like enemies that fire the same bolts, but more. I can destroy them with some focused effort but they re-spawn within a few seconds. To reach some of the crystals I have to destroy the same spiders more than once, just because they keep re-spawning. I find that running in erratic paths, to avoid the white things, the spiders and their bullets, is often healthier than trying to kill them.

Level six is quite large and has several disorienting teleport platforms that move me around the level to find all, but one, of the crystals. There is either a bug in the game or some portal that no-one has ever found but the ninth crystal is impossible to reach. The last part of the level is quite intense. I have to blast my way through two screens filled with fast spawning and bolt shooting spiders in white and black until I climb up some platform at the end which just won't let me go on. Being stuck and without any further purpose, the re-spawing black spiders quickly killed me off.

Normally, I'd find ending a game like this very unsatisfactory, but considering the amount of enemies and bullets that during six levels were send my way, I consider this ending, however anticlimaxic, earned. I still don't think I'm good at this kind of game, hence the training sessions, but it certainly was a blast, and it looked and sounded great too.

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