Overview:

Name:  Space Panic
Year:  1980
Genre:  Platform
Class:  Coin-Op
Sub-Class:  Arcade
Manufacturer:  Universal
Resolution:  CGA
Orientation:  Vertical

 
Game Details:

General Description:
Classic platform game very simular to Universal's much later follow up to their other classic "Mr. Do" called "Mr. Do's Castle". In it you control a man in a space suit that must dig holes through platforms and get monsters to fall in them, then fill them back up again to make the creatures fall through and be destroyed, all of which must be done before your oxygen supply runs out. Things are made MUCH more difficult in higher levels as you must deal with monsters that must be drop through more than one floor, something that seems almost impossible for all but the most skilled players. This game was also released for the Colecovision home game system and for the Apple II computer as "Apple Panic."


A game can only be as sophisticated as its audience. Somewhere down the aisle is Universal's Space Panic. This was not only the first of the climbing games, it was also the first of the digging games. That's quite a load for a player on a new game. No punning intended when I say that the rungs were too high for the average gamer to scale. 

In playing this game, players move from level to level by the way of the now popular ladder while pursued by apple-shaped aliens. When you came in contact with them you died -- with three deaths to a game. The object of the game was to catch the aliens by baiting them into pits you'd dig, and then covered them before they escaped. This was accomplished with the "digging" button. As you got to the higher levels you had to dig two holes, perfectly placed, one above the other, to keep the alien in. 

The average playing time for Space Panic was 30 seconds. You felt like you'd been hit going up the ladder by a brick falling through the arcade. Or maybe you'd dug a hole too deep to escape them. Whatever it was, Space Panic played too hard and had to be buried. 

Someone must have seen it though, and like it, because the game was released as a computer game by Broderbund under the name Apple Panic. This software version is deliciously true to the original. So perhaps there is life after the arcade!
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