V (official 1986 game)

edited April 2010 in Games
I've been trying the game V, and I was wondering if anyone had any tips or thoughts on the game? Is there much else to it than the corridors and the door codes, and are the corridors cylindrical, or do they have a definite final end in either (horizontal) end?

What do you have to do in the game, and how long does it take to complete?

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0005532
Post edited by ewgf on
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Comments

  • edited April 2010
    I can't say that i've ever played it before, so I've downloaded it to give it a try as it's one of those games that come up quite often on here. I also note that there hasn't been a map made for it yet...

    *EDIT* Played...waste of time, all I could do was 'bounce' between two walls. It's probably a game that need instructons to work out what to do and what all those symbols are for. I did like the smooth animatin for the jumping though. That was well done!
  • edited April 2010
    As far as I could tell the best way to play this game was to take the tape and stamp on it until it's in tiny pieces then flush it down the toilet.

    Secondly after removing it from your presence try your hardest to block out the fact that this game actually exists.

    Hope that is of some help to you :D
    Every night is curry night!
  • edited April 2010
    I agree ! Was gutted when this came out, doesnt look a terrible game but i'm sure back then we all expected much more from this TV license. Not one lizard in sight ! Ridiculous
  • edited April 2010
    ewgf wrote: »
    I've been trying the game V, and I was wondering if anyone had any tips or thoughts on the game? Is there much else to it than the corridors and the door codes, and are the corridors cylindrical, or do they have a definite final end in either (horizontal) end?

    What do you have to do in the game, and how long does it take to complete?

    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0005532

    The TipShop is your friend
  • edited April 2010
    I payed full-price for it (?7.99) of my hard-earned pocket money and was a bit annoyed that there were no lizards - just those ridiculous robots... Still, the shooty-jumpyness is pretty good and unlocking the codes and seeing extra touches like the docking bay is quite interesting. But it gets dull after a hour or so. Needs a playable shuttle-flight scene to make it more interesting. Even so, it's one of those games that I'm determined to beat one day, so it must have something drawing me to it. The worst thing has got to be the cover... one of the actors having his make-up put on for the series! Why the hell use that?! It's even digitised as the Loading screen! :lol:


    V.
    No lizards.

    Bah.
  • edited April 2010
    Graz wrote: »
    No lizards.

    Bah.

    Succinct sheep go "Bah" ...
    Lizards go "Hisssssssssssssssssssssssssss!"
  • edited April 2010
    I went to the shop with the intention to buy Batman (the isometric one) that i had looked at the day before. But they had by then sold the last copy so i bought V instead.

    Boy was i dissappointed. This has to be the worst game i ever bought, and at full price. Another stinker was Galivan for the c64 but that was nowhere near as bad as this. Both by Ocean/Imagine now that i come to think of it. Actually i think Joffa should refund some of my money for these (having worked for Ocean and all, he's bound to have had something to do with them).
  • edited April 2010
    one of the biggest licensed disappointments along with transformers.
  • edited April 2010
    I haven't watched the show and learnt about this game just recently, by WOS.

    So for me it was just another game, with no expectations and biases about it.

    So:

    Advantages:

    - it has some good graphics and animations

    Disadvantages:

    - even with all instructions, reviews and Tipshop tips I still don't understand how to play it and what I am supposed to do.

    I would like to complete it one day and make a recording, but it doesn't look to be easy.

    Anybody knows what to do in this strange game ?
  • edited April 2010
    Graz wrote: »
    The worst thing has got to be the cover... one of the actors having his make-up put on for the series! Why the hell use that?! It's even digitised as the Loading screen! :lol:

    Surely it was meant to be a lizard having his fake-face torn off?

    ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/v/V.jpg
  • edited April 2010
    Rickard wrote: »
    Surely it was meant to be a lizard having his fake-face torn off?

    ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/v/V.jpg

    No, it's the actor having all his lizard / ripped human face put-on - a famous make-up shot. You can see the end of the fake human skin (in the series they're supposed to be covered in fake human skin) and you can also see the end to the lizard rubber mask beneith it, followed by his green T-Shirt. He's also not got his lizard contact lenses in yet. The shots of them having their faces torn off are quite different and much, much better.
  • edited April 2010
    Interesting, and strange! :-o I wonder what made them chose that picture? Perhaps the same game designer that left out the boring lizards and introduced some not-before-seen ROBOTS! :-P
    Graz wrote: »
    The shots of them having their faces torn off are quite different and much, much better.

    I did some picture-googling, but did not find the original picture, but some that does indeed look a lot better.

    http://futurebrain.free.fr/wp-content/v3308na1.jpg

    http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2008/10/10/v-lizard-alien-lady.jpg
  • edited April 2010
    Graz wrote: »
    No, it's the actor having all his lizard / ripped human face put-on - a famous make-up shot. You can see the end of the fake human skin (in the series they're supposed to be covered in fake human skin) and you can also see the end to the lizard rubber mask beneith it, followed by his green T-Shirt. He's also not got his lizard contact lenses in yet. The shots of them having their faces torn off are quite different and much, much better.

    Overall it was just plain stupid of them to use that shot when in reality the game had basically "nothing" to do with lizards ... aside from (ab)using the license.
  • edited April 2010
    ZnorXman wrote: »
    when in reality the game had basically "nothing" to do with lizards ...

    Could it be possible that someone had made some ordinary space game with robots for Ocean and when the V license was aquired they just took the robot game and attached a new loading screen to it?
  • edited April 2010
    Rickard wrote: »
    Could it be possible that someone had made some ordinary space game with robots for Ocean and when the V license was aquired they just took the robot game and attached a new loading screen to it?

    Quite likely ... or maybe they could only pay for the license to use the cover-pic and not the actual lizard-people (Sorry guv, actual lizards cost extra! But we've got this piccy from our make-up artist, 20p and it's yours.)
  • fogfog
    edited April 2010
    MinerWilly wrote: »
    Actually i think Joffa should refund some of my money for these (having worked for Ocean and all, he's bound to have had something to do with them).

    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0005532

    3rd party dev team.. joffa is innocent (for once.haha) , just curious does the usual tagline of "produced by DC Ward" feature on it? *points the finger* :)

    go play aliens dev'd by probe on c64 instead :D
  • edited April 2010
    The game page mentions a certain Gary Knight as responsible for the game. Looking at his record he has indeed produced some well known bad games..
  • edited April 2010
    Now it seems very possible to me that a some generic spaceship exploration game has been made into V license.

    The recipe:

    Take a random space game.

    Change a few verses in instructions, so it's no longer some anonymous ship, but a lizard ship.

    Add a loading screen by David Thorpe showing a lizard, completely unrelated to the game.

    And you have a bestseller ;)
  • edited April 2010
    Ralf wrote: »
    The recipe:

    Take a random space game.

    Change a few verses in instructions, so it's no longer some anonymous ship, but a lizard ship.

    Add a loading screen by David Thorpe showing a lizard, completely unrelated to the game.

    And you have a bestseller ;)

    "It's foolproof! We'll make millions, it simply can't fail!"
    -Famous Last (Bank Statement) Words.
  • edited April 2010
    If you take that formula by Ralf, maybe the utterly crap Highlander also has the same "excuse"? Make a crappy 1 on 1 sword fighting game, grab a license, draw a few sprites and blow them up 100% and you got a bestseller. I guess.

    Even though Ocean was a very solid software house with a lot of highly rated games, I got very tired of the sort of "various minigames" game format (like Untouchables/Batman) they adopted towards the final years. Sure, the games were not bad at all, but still ...
    Would have been funny though if the Speccy's commercial life had lasted a bit longer and they decided to make a game out of "Falling Down" (the flick with Michael Douglas):
    1st stage: 1 on 1 fight with korean convenience store owner. Then you get to smash up the store with the baseball bat
    2nd stage: Talk to the two latino boys using multiple choice questions, when you do everything right he beats them up with the baseball bat and you receive the knife
    3rd stage: Maybe something in Whammy Burger? And so on ...
  • edited April 2010
    Ralf wrote: »
    Now it seems very possible to me that a some generic spaceship exploration game has been made into V license.

    The recipe:

    Take a random space game.

    Change a few verses in instructions, so it's no longer some anonymous ship, but a lizard ship.

    Add a loading screen by David Thorpe showing a lizard, completely unrelated to the game.

    And you have a bestseller ;)

    Well some of the 'door-code language' is indeed the language of the visitors, straight out of the series - it also features the same sort of corridors and a recognisable shuttlecraft, so the graphics were based on the show.

    My answer as to why robots - lazyness. I'm thinking that they programmed the enemies to pass through the player, shooting randomly to save on any fiddly AI that would have been presented by the lizards. They just didn't think. If they didn't want to bother with AI, then why not have the lizards chase donovan, fire a few pot-shots and then run away? If they really knew the show, then they could have had a few Crivits instead of robots!
  • edited April 2010
    No map in Pavel Pliva's site, but there's a map in the spanish magazine INPUT Sinclair, issue 10, pg. 54:

    ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/magazines/INPUTSinclair/Issue10/Pages/INPUTSinclair1000054.jpg

    Anyway, it's a very boring game, as many people posted before...
  • edited April 2010
    XTM of TMG wrote: »
    If you take that formula by Ralf, maybe the utterly crap Highlander also has the same "excuse"? Make a crappy 1 on 1 sword fighting game, grab a license, draw a few sprites and blow them up 100% and you got a bestseller. I guess.

    Even though Ocean was a very solid software house with a lot of highly rated games, I got very tired of the sort of "various minigames" game format (like Untouchables/Batman) they adopted towards the final years. Sure, the games were not bad at all, but still ...
    Would have been funny though if the Speccy's commercial life had lasted a bit longer and they decided to make a game out of "Falling Down" (the flick with Michael Douglas):
    1st stage: 1 on 1 fight with korean convenience store owner. Then you get to smash up the store with the baseball bat
    2nd stage: Talk to the two latino boys using multiple choice questions, when you do everything right he beats them up with the baseball bat and you receive the knife
    3rd stage: Maybe something in Whammy Burger? And so on ...

    "please, can somebody write this game?".
  • edited April 2010
    Good to see that map thingy. Hmmm, so iv'e got through 3 of the levels. Gets very hard after that, and proceeding becomes slightly tiresome. Still, press on!
  • edited April 2010
    I can remember playing this a lot and never getting anywhere. I guess I must been one of the few games I had on disk; that would be the only reason I would keep going back to it.

    It was obviously some sort of Impossible Mission clone that Ocean slapped the V license on, as was the case with many titles in order to get a quick turnaround.
  • edited April 2010
    No map in Pavel Pliva's site, but there's a map in the spanish magazine INPUT Sinclair, issue 10, pg. 54:

    ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/magazines/INPUTSinclair/Issue10/Pages/INPUTSinclair1000054.jpg

    Anyway, it's a very boring game, as many people posted before...

    Yep, I am still waiting for RZX of this game and then I can map it ;-).
  • edited April 2010
    I actually returned the game to Boots because I thought it was bugged as I couldn't open the doors :-P
  • edited April 2010
    Absolute cack. Great tv programme back in the day , possibly - along with Scooby Doo - the worst use of a licence ever
  • edited April 2010
    Absolute cack. Great tv programme back in the day , possibly - along with Scooby Doo - the worst use of a licence ever
    Oh, I don't know... there must be worse, surely? They seemed to license anything back in the day, and there was some absolute rubbish... Give My Regards to Broadstreet for example... :) Mind you, maybe that's just the best use of a license to make an appropriately bad game.
  • edited April 2010
    Yep, I am still waiting for RZX of this game and then I can map it :)


    And I'm waiting for map to make a rzx walkthrough :lol:

    And the map would be a huge one. This preview mentions 640 screens :

    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=YourSinclair/Issue03/Pages/YourSinclair0300060.jpg
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