Thursday, January 21, 2010

Arcticfox - 1986

One of my favourite games from my misspent youth was Arcticfox. It worked very well on my 320x200 CGA powered laptop of the time.


The premise of the game involved the player being deployed to Antarctica in a tank to repel the invading aliens. The tank had a regular cannon, a player guided missile, and could burrow into the ground to hide from enemies.


Enemies included small and large tanks, speeders, gliders and IIRC some different types of turrets. A favourite strategy involved firing a guided missile, then burrowing into the ground (safe from enemies) while you flew the missile into a target, or used it to survey the area.


The game was quite notable for its use of a 3D polygonal rendering system. This is quite an impressive feat considering the game was running on 4.7MHz processor, in 512k of RAM. I guess the developers made their job a little easier by only using a small part of the screen for the 3D display.

I can't remember finishing the game, though I do remember finally finding the Alien fortress in the centre of Antarctica, and firing a few pot shots at something that looked like a control tower. After that... my memory fades.

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