Space Dude (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

Prolific guest contributor mecha-neko jumps in from out of nowhere to save us all from the stampede of dinosaur games.

 

 Are you ready for Space Dude?

You'd better take a seat, because I don't think you are.

"HELLO. I'M SPACE DUDE!"

Kaboom.

So what the hell is Space Dude about, then?

From what I can gather, Space Dude is a disembodied head on a skateboard who's decided to save a golden city on a far off planet from an alien attack by some nasty bastards and their prerendered battle spider. Our job is to guide Space Dude through some mini-game like sequences.

And it's damn difficult. It took me a couple of tries to figure out how to work the menu screen without dying.

Game 1: Ride The Coco Pops.

After winning the menu screen, Space Dude's gliding towards the planet on a cosmic trail of chocolatey cereal. I've got to... um... I have no idea.

Failure.

The best thing about Space Dude is that even if you fail, you get a proper failure animation and you get to continue. After falling off the choco-highway, Dude's landed in a field of evil fireball throwing flowers.

Game 2: Avoid The Evil Fireball Throwing Flowers.

That's not what happened.

After being tossed into the air by the fireball, the git's landed safely in a swamp. Hooray.

Meanwhile, at the golden city.

Space Dude's way more interesting to try to figure out than to actually play.

I think that this screen acts as an intermission in between 'acts'. The bad guys make their way from the battle spider in the distance and slowly destroy all the stuff on screen until they reach the golden city in the lower left. The timer above Space Dude's head counts down as the bad guys advance; the better you do on the mini-games (each game has a timer that counts down), the less time the aliens will have on this screen. When the timer reaches zero, you can pick an enemy to attack.

Either that or it's completely arbitrary.

To adventure!

Game 3: Dodge The Rocks.

I failed at dodging the rocks.

Game 4: Dodge The Sharks.

I also failed at dodging the sharks.

This game is really difficult! Though most of the games are simply 'move Space Dude to avoid the stuff', the prerendered sprites are so distorted you can't tell exactly what's a hit and what's not. A lot of the levels have objects coming towards or away from the screen and the presentation of depth is all screwed up.

Game 5: Attack the Alien Springamajig.

In this game, Space Dude takes turns flying towards and away from the alien mushroom. When you fly towards it, you shoot at it and miss. When you fly away from it, it kills you and blood shoots out your ears.

Space Dude flies back to the golden city in disgrace. They actually boo him as he flies back.

The enemy battle spider is launching missiles. C'mon, Space Dude, it's time to...

Game 6: Get Hit By A Fucking Missile Before You Have A Chance To React

Space Dude's flung far away from the battle spider and smacks his face into a mountain.

Game 7: Roll Down The Side Of The Mountain Uncontrollably

Space Dude's powerless without his hoverboard. There's rocks and plants and stuff, but you can't avoid them because you can only move in one direction until you hit the side of the screen and then you can only move in the opposite direction.

"Mama?"

Battle Spider!

Game 8: You're In The Battle Spider Momentarily And Then Lose

The controls for this one made even less sense than the rest.

Sometimes the controls move Space Dude around the screen, other times they make him shoot.

Game 9: Avoid The Rocks On The 3D Screen That Use The Same Graphics As Game 2

Space Dude got hit by a rock the size of a car but he's still bloody smiling.

Game 10: Defend The Golden City From The Alien Attack

You can probably guess how that turned out.