ANCIPITAL REVIEW (PC Games Magazine - Oct 84)

Preliminary Note from the transcriber (June 2000): It has been 
said in business journals that the gaming industry was run in 
the 80s by Hippies, and Nintendo came by the force of the 
corporate types who threw out the hippies. Well, Jeff Minter 
who built and ran his own software company, Llamasoft, and had 
long hair too, could have been seen as the hippie the business 
journals referred to. With him originality was no longer the 
point of the activity of making games, it was to make money! 
That's the main reason why some see the present-day game 
industry as no longer having anything new to offer.
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Main Article: 100 screens of zany zapping!

Here it is folks, the one you've all been waiting for...the 
latest from Jeff Minter. As usual with this famous animal lover, 
it's different from anything yet seen. It's a game you will 
either love or hate-and either way you'll go wild about it.

The basic scenario is simple: you are Ancipital, a two horned, 
goatlike, superbly-animated beast, and have to travel through 
100 rooms containing various enemies and puzzles...that's it! 
But getting right through the 10x10 grid of rooms in one sitting 
is like trying to get a mutant camel through the eye of a needle.

Each room is a separate screen with four walls which Cippy can 
walk along and jump between. Doors can be found in most walls 
allowing you to pass into adjoining sections.

The procedure for doing this is different in every location but 
follows several basic patterns.

Most doors can be opened by shooting a particular enemy which 
will fall to the wall you are standing on and dislodge a shield 
from it. When enough hits are made, indicated by arrows which 
change color with each hit, the gap will appear.

You may not be able to pass through it straight away, though, 
since there is a time limit to survive on each section before 
the door will be activated.

Other doors can be opened by camel keys or by passing through 
already blasted objects. However you need to open all the doors 
without leaving a room since the aliens will not reappear if 
you re-enter and you will not be able to open any more walls.

If in real trouble you will find there is a help screen avail-
able for each room giving hints on what to do, but don't expect 
too many giveaways.

The characters are the usual motley Minter crew with animals 
everywhere, including Rory the guinea pig (a new star), anti-
smoking and CND waves, hippies, and much, much more. There's a 
different collection in each room!

The first screen presents you with some apples bouncing around. 
You'll find you're firing weird ammunitions - bananas!

You have to shoot the green apples with your bananas. The 
apples turn to apple cores and fall to destroy the shields.

There is a wave based on the recent TV series 'V' and frequent 
appearances are made by Neil (from The Young Ones), who usually 
has to be shot. The camel keys are dolled around the place and 
need to be picked up before doors marked with a colored camel 
can be unlocked.

The screen titles have obviously been plucked from the depths 
of some alien imagination and include 'Not a breadhead', 
'Stargoat', 'Rory wins the cup', 'Strap me to a...', 'Metagal-
actic Ancipital', and 'Neil's refreak'.

Controlling Ancipital takes some getting used to as he hops 
from wall to wall. The thing to practice is doing right-angled 
turns where you have to move forward, fire, then move left or 
right.

Firing is pretty odd as well since Jeff has employed what he 
calls 'demand firing'. This effectively means that the more 
accurate you are with your blasting, the more bullets you will 
get to fire.

For the technically minded, the program uses a sprite-swapping 
routine which shares the '64's eight sprites between Ancipital's 
shooting and his targets.

This results in you having tons of bullets at one moment and 
none the next. Also the number of enemies will increase or 
decrease in inverse proportion. It may sound complicated but 
it works beautifully well.

You are supplied with plenty of lives to begin with but as your 
camel strength gauge diminishes you will lose them rapidly under 
the intense pressure of attack.

It is not just the usual Minter shoot-'em-up because you have 
to actually think about this game. The action ia as frantic as 
ever and the ideas individualistic and original.

One word of warning: the game is really freaky and there are 
bound to be some of you out there who will hate it. But most 
people are going to spend many a happy day discovering yet 
another classic Minter game.

Bob Wade
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Panel Points

Being a fan of the Minter style of gaming, I really enjoyed 
playing Ancipital. It has all the elements of a good shoot-
'em-up and still requires that extra element of thought.

It takes a little time to realize the tactics needed for 
certain screens, but this all adds to the lasting interest.

The presentation is very good, although I did find the accomp-
anying drum beats a little tiring at times.

Yes, Mr. Minter, you've done it again. I think Ancipital will 
be even a bigger hit than Revenge [of the Mutant Camels].

Toni Takoushi
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My favorite screen was the one starring Rory the guinea pig. 
Shoot him and he savages you!

I also liked the moving, starry background, and the way 
Ancipital moves around the screen.

The huge variety (and comic nature) of the aliens makes for 
great entertainment. But the action is so fast, you often 
don't know when you've hit one - or when they've hit you. 
I found this aspect slightly unsatisfying, but if you liked 
Revenge this won't bother you at all.

The provision of the help screens is a major plus. Without 
these the game would cause many people considerable frustration.

Chris Anderson
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The zapping and the controls both introduce new elements, but 
they don't take long to get used to and they certainly enhance 
your enjoyment. You have to work out in each room exactly what 
you have to do to get out, it's not just a question of doing 
the same thing 100 times.

Peter Connor
--------------------------------Judgement------------------
Game: Ancipital                         Graphics:          9
Machine: Commodore 64                   Sound:             7
Control: Joystick                       Originality:       9
From: Llamasoft                         Lasting Interest: 10
                                        Overall:           9
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Minter' Animal Magic (Side Article)
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Jeff Minter is every bit as extraordinary as the games he 
creates. Hippy hairdo, bizarre sense of humor, and so much 
energy it's exhausting just to be near him. Ancipital is the 
result of two months intensive programming. The main character 
- half man, half goat - comes from 'Sheep in Space'.

'I just loved its animation, so I thought it needed a game of 
its own. Also I wanted to experiment with artificial gravities 
- have him walking on the walls and ceilings, you can do a lot 
with that.

'And since everyone loved Revenge of the Mutant Camels I wanted 
to do a follow-up, but one which had more depth. I've admired 
games like Atic Atac [on the Spectrum], so I thought I'd do my 
own arcade-adventure. But hopefully it's one that will still 
appeal to my shoot-'em-up fans.

One thing I haven't included this time is a screen-scrolling 
routine. That's because everyone else is now writing screen-
scrolling routines. It's no longer original.' The lack of 
originality of iother software houses provokes a change of 
subject at this point as Minter lets off steam against the 
copy-cats.

Minter is now 22, but his passion for computer games hasn't 
abated one iota. He now has three arcade consoles at his home 
in Tadley, Hampshire - Tempest, Star Wars II (sit-in model) 
and, his latest, Stargate, which he was hammering away at in 
between writing attack waves on Ancipital.

His other interests include skiing, running and cycling = he's 
the proud owner of a horizontally-ridden bike which is 
supposed to be one of only three in the country.

Soon after Ancipital's release, scheduled for mid-september, 
Minter flies off to Peru for an encounter with llamas, his 
favorite quadrupeds. After that work starts on another game.
'I haven't decided what to do yet. But I quite like the idea 
of basing a game around a wildbeast.'

Llamas, camels, sheep, man-goats and now wildbeast. The big 
question is: will Minter one day run out of hairy animals?

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