Mega Motion (Amiga)

Developer:

Extend

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Amiga, DOS

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing... uh... I think it says Mega Motion?

Mega Motion is a budget-priced puzzle game that was originally released on the Amiga in 1994, late in the machine's run, and then two years later on PC, right at end of MS-DOS's run. It was developed by Extend, and it's apparently the only game they ever made.

I have played this one before, but it was years ago when I was a tiny baby and I haven't kept hold of many memories of it. I do still have a vague recollection of what you're supposed to do in the game, but what I mostly remember is that I was eating a pack of strawberry laces at the time. In fact it feels weird to play it without them.

Okay, my first observation is that they've used an extremely 80s snare drum sample in the theme music. The gated reverb is strong with this one. 

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Hey, a helpful in-game guide to what all the stuff does. It's a shame I'm going to forget all this about 0 seconds after the screen goes away. Also, it's a bit vague on what the different kinds of bombs and stones do. On the other hand, I feel like the word 'killers' gets its meaning across clearly. I need to stay away from the bad gems.

Hey this is different. Not many games start off by asking you what music you want to listen to.

When I'm writing about a game I typically pick 'Normal' at the start, but that's because it's usually asking what difficulty I want to put it on. This time I'm not so sure what I want. The choice would be easier if it'd let me hear what I'm picking!

I'll go with... 2: 'Original'. I prefer my music to be 'rave' rather than 'slow'.

Oh then it gives me the rest of the options after the music screen!

I'll set the music/SFX option to 'Both' and I'm going to pick 'Easy Levels' to start with. I know I just said I always pick normal difficulty, but it's different when the choice means I'm going to skip out a chunk of the game.

Always nice to see a game give me a password for level one. Just in case the 'start new game' button ever stops working.

Though actually this is level 00. This first stage is a prequel!

Alright, here's how the game starts. There are three balls in the top left connected by threads, there's an exit in the bottom right (helpfully marked by arrows) and there are blocks unhelpfully situated in-between them.

I've got a mouse cursor so I should probably try clicking on something.

Okay that's pretty intuitive. Clicking on a ball pins it to the level and unpins the others so they can rotate around their new pivot point.

The balls never stop orbiting, so I can keep moving them around the map like this. I'm going to have to smash through these blocks to get to the exit however, and it seems like it might take a while.

Fortunately I've got all the time in the world. Wait, no, there's a timer up there I didn't notice!

Okay I've reached level 01! This time the arrows are drawing my attention towards a switch that opens the wall blocking the exit. There are also some silver coins to collect to boost my score if I can be bothered smashing through the beige blocks. They're in my way so I might as well.

That level was simple enough, if a little boring. Waiting for the balls to bounce off blocks is really straining my interest.

Oh damn, things just got a lot more complicated on level 2, and a lot more dangerous as well. I just slammed one of my balls against the spiky killer gems! It's gone now!

Seems like the black hexagons are the fuses, the red ones are bombs and the skulls leave a pile of deadly gems for me to smash into. I'm not sure there was any way I could've avoided leaving gems everywhere so I suppose the trick on this stage is just not to smash into them. Like I just did.

Fortunately the ball arrangement can survive and keep moving as long as there are at least two of them.

If I'm down to one ball however, I lose. I just learned that lesson when I tried smashing through these red blocks to see what happened. What happened is that there are killer gems underneath.

The lives counter went down by one and the level reset to give me another go.

I'm making decent enough progress though I think.

Hang on, level 04 is called "Do Nothing!" huh? Maybe I should see what happens if I take that advice.

Oh cool, the level really is completing itself. The ball gets stuck on the mud and the mud disappears when it's hit, so it's just following the trail all the way around to the exit. I wasn't needed at all this time.

Oh damn, I don't think that's very fair. So the stones can fall when they're they're freed, and the ones with skulls painted on explode into gems, just like the hexagonal skull bombs did on that other stage. Not good when my bloody exit's right beneath them!

Now I need to get my balls destroyed so I can try that again.

Mega Motion Demo (MS-DOS)

Here's what the game looks like on PC if you're curious. The PC version has different levels (at least they're different in this demo I'm trying), but this particular stage is basically the same as level 5 in the Amiga game so it's a good place to compare the two.

The graphics have been redrawn to take advantage of the extra colours, so it's got shiny metal balls now, but I think I prefer the look of the Amiga original. The Amiga game's got shadows for one thing which makes it look nice and 3D. Also I feel like the movement of the balls have changed somehow but I can't really tell how. All I know is that this bloody thing never goes where I think it's going to go. Just get under my mouse cursor so I can click you already!

It's called the Motion Rotator by the way. So if you were wondering if it had any purpose within the fictional world of Mega Motion beyond moving and rotating, it does not.

Level 06 has me smashing blocks to release harmless stones to unblock the path to the exit, and man this is boring. It just keeps bouncing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and once one set of blocks is destroyed I move on to the next one.

I can click the right mouse button to change the direction of rotation manually and speed things up, but the blocks still take a lot of bashing before they break.

Uh... what? What just happened?

Oh bloody hell, you mean I have to do all this again from the start and somehow make it so the stone falls the other way next time? How do I even do that? Man this is not a game for players predisposed to impatience.

EVENTUALLY

Well there goes my last life. Easy mode got hard all of a sudden!

I could just continue with the password and get all my lives back, but I think I'll jump ahead to the average difficulty levels and see what they're like.

Level 25 is kind of pissing me off now to be honest. C'mon balls, get through the gap!

At least I've discovered that I don't have actually have a time limit to worry about. The timer's just there for bonus points.

They've given me some complicated balls for this one. I can smash the spare ones against some gems if they start to bother me, and I think that's going to end up happening whether I want it to or not with all these skull stones around. It's kind of hard to control my ball array when it's bouncing around chaotically like this.

Oh no it's making me squeeze through a gap again! This game is not respecting my time.

Crap, I was just a little too slow with my click this time. The game's not just about solving the puzzle, you've got to be fast enough and accurate enough with your ball clicking to execute that solution as well. The game's not easy!

That was my last life so I'm going to crank the challenge up even further and see what the harder difficulty levels are like.

Yeah, no. I'm not going to squeeze through a gap of killer gems, that's just not happening.

I guess this is where I'm turning the game off then. Seems that I'll never know where the balls were trying to escape to. At least I've played enough of it to understand why my fondest memory of the game is the strawberry laces I was eating while playing it.


CONCLUSION

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I've never been very comfortable criticising puzzle games, because I'm not very good at playing them. I can never tell if they're too hard or I'm too dumb. But here are my impressions of Mega Motion:

First up, despite the title it's not a Mega Drive game, I noticed that right away. This is probably a good thing because trying to control the game with a D-pad probably wouldn't be much fun. Trying to control it with a mouse is hard enough! It's a bit like Lemmings in how you have to be fast and precise with your clicks as well as smart with your brain. You also have to be patient, as sometimes blocks need to be smashed through and smashing takes time. It'll likely also require a bit of patience to figure out what the hell you're supposed to do on those stages covered in bombs that explode into spiky rocks. Fortunately the game only gives you a few lives, so you don't have to suffer for too long. Except it also comes with passwords so you can actually just replay a stage as much as you like. And there are 100 of the things.

On the positive side it'll offer you plenty of challenge if that's what you're after. Plus I did like the soundtrack; it's proper authentic Amiga techno. Though it's weird how you have to pick a song at the start, before you even get to the menu, and then you're stuck listening to it on a loop throughout the rest of the game. Why not just alternate tunes each level like Lemmings?

I think Mega Motion's main saving grace is that there's not much out there like it. In fact I'm not sure there's anything out there like it. I don't know if that's because it's too obscure to have been an inspiration to other developers, or because they just didn't think it was a great concept. I do know that it was fairly well reviewed at the time however, getting a massive 75% from Amiga Power (no really, that's a decent score for them).

Personally I've got no plans to play this again any time soon, though I wouldn't talk anyone out of giving it a try. Maybe it'll be exactly your kind of thing.

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Thanks for reading! If you can think of any other games that play like Mega Motion or you've got opinions on the game feel free to leave a comment in the box below. You could also take a guess at what you think the next game's going to be.