Prehistory XXV: Rocket [Rockt1] - Prehistory Finale!

Release Date: 1970

Platform: PDP-8

Genre: Simulation

Developer(s): Eric Peters

Publisher(s): DECUS

The finale has arrived! It's time to close out the Prehistory series with this - the 25th and final article. As a side, I love that it closes on a nice, round number. It certainly was not planned that way. It's taken just under 11 months to complete this series, which is longer than I initially expected. However, the further I researched, the more my list of games kept expanding. There were also some lengthy down periods where I didn't post anything. I hope in the coming year to become more consistent with game articles, and to also produce some other types of articles that you'll have to wait in suspense for.

I also didn't plan to end the series with two Lunar Lander games. I often don't research whether games are available to me until I begin to work on that game's article. That's going to change in the coming year, as I want to be more prepared in my research and planning.

Rocket is the second of these two Lunar Lander games, and final of the three Lunar Lander variants listed in David Ahl's 101 BASIC Computer Games book. The first was the original game by Jim Storer, and the second is LEM, by William Labaree, which I covered in the previous article. In the last article, I described that LEM and Rocket take two different approaches to expanding on Storer's original. LEM added additional gameplay mechanics, whilst Rocket (listed as Rockt1 in the original BASIC Games) adds graphical elements, but plays much more similarly to the original game.

The Lunar Lander page from the original 101 BASIC Computer Games.

Rocket was developed by Eric Peters, an employee at DEC - the company that published the majority of BASIC games through publishing the original version of David Ahl's BASIC Computer Games. Peters wrote another game published in the book, Even Wins. He developed a "cybernetic" version of the game that features AI that learns to play the game as you go. Finding any more information on Peters is quite difficult, as there are numerous people who share that name.

It's safe to say I was significantly less intimidated by Rocket in comparison to LEM. On the surface it seemed far more similar to the original in terms of gameplay, and the inclusion of a graphical display of the location of the lunar module looked like it would provide an excellent visual reference. I ended up really disliking LEM, so I'm hopeful that Rocket will be far more enjoyable.

Nice, clear instructions. Did you know your on-board computer in the game is named Digby?

First off, the game has very well-formatted instructions that clearly explain its mechanics. Rocket actually, in further contrast to LEM, simplifies the game mechanics from Lunar. You only have 150 units of fuel, the maximum you can use per second is 30, and each unit of fuel slows you down by 1 ft/sec. This immediately made sense to me, which I appreciated, having come from LEM where I stared at the instructions for a good 5 minutes, at least, trying to figure out everything.

I followed the same strategy I used for Lunar, which was waiting to use my fuel until being much closer to the surface. Immediately I noticed a formatting error when I inputted my first command, with the text shifting left a few spaces. I waited until I was under 350ft from the surface before putting the thrust on full blast. I got close, but this I crashed, hitting the surface a 8.3 ft/sec (9.1 kph, which seems awfully slow...) 

You blew it. Literally.

I was actually pretty happy with this run, despite the failure. I decided to wait for another second for my follow up attempt. This one went better, landing at 3.16 ft/sec (3.46 kph). The game still considered this a crash, which mildly annoyed me. Going that slow would surely not cause a destructive crash?

Round 2 also came to an explosive ending.

Oh well, another round! This one went less well, so I tried again. Another failure, as I forgot what I did from my most successful run.

However, on the next attempt, I found success. In fact, I got a perfect landing. It turns out I wasn't too far off on my second attempt. The winning strategy was as follows:

1. Wait until the module is 250 feet from the surface.
2. Use 30 units of fuel for the next 3 seconds.
3. Use 10 units of fuel for 5 seconds.
4. Win.

The winning formula.

Surprisingly simple. I think it helped that I had previous experience from other Lunar Lander-style games, though. I'm at the very least pleased that I figured out the perfect landing on my own in one of these games. On to the scores.

Time Played: 0:12

Difficulty: 4/10 (Easy)

It wasn't challenging to figure out the perfect landing. I'm giving a bit of leeway in this score, as my previous experience helped, so it may be harder for someone coming into the game fresh. It's still the easiest of the three Lunar Lander games by quite some margin.

Gameplay: 7/20

Being based on Lunar means that Rocket has a solid gameplay foundation. It works like a puzzle, consisting of experimenting with the use of fuel and timing of using it through trial and error. The refining process is much simpler than Lunar, as the numbers you work with are much smaller here. While it makes for a good introduction to the Lunar Lander genre, the simplifying of the gameplay has caused some depth and difficulty to be lost, which I believe is to the game's detriment.

You may be confused as to why this is getting a 7, when the original Lunar got a 6. I'm currently doing a rescore of all reviewed games, and will post an article detailing these changes. Rocket's score is based on these changes, and will make more sense once I release that article.

Control: 5/10

As standard as it gets for text-based games.

Visual: 5/10

Unfortunately, the visual plot of the module's distance from the landing zone isn't anywhere near as helpful as I thought it would be. It only follows the module's distance up to halfway, so it ends up being rather pointless. There is also that slight formatting error, where the numbers on the table shift left after inputting a command. On the positive side, the instructions are very well presented, and general formatting is sound. I think all of this evens out to result in a 5 being a fair score.

Functionality: 5/5

Didn't find any technical issues.

Accessibility: 3/5

Easily the most accessible of the three Lunar Lander games. It's much friendlier, and simpler to understand due to how "game-ified" it is.

Fun Factor: 6/20

I was a bit disappointed by how simple the game was. I think Rocket suffers from my previous experience with Lunar. I did most of my obsessive trial and error experimenting there, so I came into Rocket already knowing how it would work. It being simplified really works against it there, whereas I think it wouldn't as much if I was coming into Rocket without having played any previous Lunar Lander games. 

Rocket's final score is quite amusing. At the time of writing, it's identical to Lunar's - 31/70 (44.28%) - a D-tier placement. It won't be like that for much longer, though. I do think that Rocket is marginally worse than Jim Storer's original game. I was hoping for it to be better, but the distance plot ends up being pointless, and the gameplay is simplified just a touch too much.

Next time we move into the beginnings of the commercial era of video games. I've already done the first two arcade games, Computer Space and Galaxy Game, so my attention has to turn elsewhere. Computer gaming was still evolving, and the next game up is a landmark game that would continue to be remade and expanded upon all throughout the 1970s: Mike Mayfield's Star Trek.

However, before that, I want to rescore all the games from the Prehistory series, as I've mentioned already. That'll be the next article to expect before I get into Star Trek.