Earth vs The Flying Saucers

Earth vs The Flying Saucers

Release type: Demo game
Release date: September 18, 1993
Levels: 1
Author: Sheldon Chase
Related games: Desert Defender

Earth is one of Sheldon Chase's earlier known games, and it sets several of his patterns right up front. The game seems to have been in part designed to capitalize on the new Sound Blaster support in Game-Maker version 2.0, as it glories in elaborate, dramatic, and often strange samples for every in-game action. The "doom bell" and "Be careful!" sound effects introduced in Earth later became sort of notorious.

Earth vs The Flying Saucers can be compared to Eugene Jarvis' Defender, maybe crossed with a bit of Dan Gorlin's Choplifter. The player pilots a space ship or advanced plane back and forth across a cityscape, attempting to prevent enormous UFOs from emerging from a sinkhole. To achieve this, the gap must be bridged with electricity. The player must gather TNT to blow away detritus from electrical towers, then collect and assemble the towers in place. Along the way, goblins and volcanic rocks spew from the sinkhole and threaten the player's progress. Normal shots take care of the little enemies, while the more scarce photon torpedoes can take out a whole UFO.

Sheldon Chase can't seem to make a straighforward game. Everything he turned out with RSD's tools is both highly experimental and brief. It's like he is more concerned with whether he can achieve something than with developing an idea into a full-fledged experience. It's a good thing that his experiments are so very advanced and interesting in their own right, with Earth as maybe the most interesting and entertaining of the bunch.

In this game, play is based on a combination of relative monster attack movements (the blocks of TNT that follow the player's craft) and item collection and distribution to manipulate the level geometry (itself a sort of glichy concept). The game's most significant feature is a huge multi-block monster with complex behaviors. By Game-Maker standards there is nothing "normal" or lazy about this game, except at a stretch its short length. But then, the game lasts about as long as its concept holds out. It is actually paced and timed pretty well, and within that time it gives a pretty satisfying experience.

A large part of that experience is carried by the sound and graphical design, both of which are very charming. We've covered the sounds, but the visuals are universally sharp and distinctive, and completely original.

Also noteworthy is the game's scenario and title graphic, which establish Chase's affinity for retro film and TV sci-fi, a fondness that comes into bloom in his later Woman Warrior series.

The game may not be as crowd-pleasing as a Blinky or Badman, but especially for Game-Maker authors there is much to appreciate here.

Story

The Earth has been taken over by the "bad guys" from below. You need to fight the little goblins, look out for the "hot rocks" flying around and avoid the flying saucer. In order to stop the mayhem you must repair the broken power line section.

Instructions

You can shoot a laser by hitting the space bar or trigger on the joystick, or you can shot a photon torpedo by hitting the "[" to go left or "]" for right. You have unlimited laser power but only a few photon torpedoes.

Press "p" to pick up items and press "d" to drop them again.

When you find the open pit, go fly back to the airport and pick up a load of TNT. The TNT is used to blow away the rusted brown wire covering the power trusses. You then must land on top of each power truss and pick it up by hitting the "p" key.

When you have picked up all the trusses, fly over the "open pit" and drop them by hitting a "d" key. If you do not like the placement you can pick it up again and drop it where you like. Once this job is done fly into the "blood red moon", it should turn yellow and will bring you to the ending screen.

Credits

Designed by Sheldon Chase.

Availability

This game was distributed to Game-Maker Exchange members on a 3.5" floppy labeled "Gameware Disk #1" (December 30th, 1993).

It also seems to have been made available on several shareware compilation CD-ROMs. More precise details TBD.

Archive History

Earth vs The Flying Saucers was introduced to the archive with the distribution of the December 30th 1993 floppy exchange. It was then lost in the mid-late 1990s, during repeated data migration. The game was then returned to the archive on February 24th 2011, during a discussion with Gary Acord.

Links

Misc. Links

• Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) (Wikipedia)
• EvFS trailer (YouTube)
• Play Earth vs The Flying Saucers online

Downloads

• Earth vs The Flying Saucers (478.2 kB)
• Game map (18.4 kB)