Game #1 - Space Panic (Nov. 1980)

Background

• Developer: Universal
• Publisher: Universal
• Debut: November 1980
• Platform: Arcade
• Home Ports: PV-1000 (1981), ColecoVision (1983), various clones (e.g., Apple Panic on the Apple II)

Can You Dig It?

Even the most devoted players have gaps in their gaming history. The medium has grown exponentially in the past decade; mobile games, console games, PC games, indie, triple-A, free-to-play, web browser—no one can play everything. If you've played Donkey Kong, released by Nintendo in 1981 and famously designed by Mario and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto, you may think you've been a fan of platformers, or at least familiar with them, since the beginning: running, jumping, and power-ups.

Right? I thought so, too! Turns out we were wrong.

Space Panic is considered the granddaddy of the genre, meaning one of the earliest examples that historians and game developers—notably famed writer and designer Chris Crawford—agree meets the minimum criteria of a platformer. (It wasn't the first, but we'll discuss that in the next article.) There's running, there's climbing, there are platforms, and there are obstacles in the form of enemies. If you're more acquainted with Nintendo's style of platformer, however, you may see only a passing resemblance at first, especially if you're coming to Space Panic for the first time, as I have.

Genre is a tricky thing. You can't get too particular in defining one, especially in 2020, when so many games are amalgams of this, that, and the other game mechanic. The platformer itself is a sub-genre of the action game, where players jump and climb over suspended platforms to achieve some goal—go through an exit door, descend a flagpole, etc.

Running. Jumping. Climbing. Mario does all three of those, but while Donkey Kong solidified the contemporary definition of platformer, Space Panic predates it by several months. (Release dates were nebulous before the advent of pre-order dates for games like Sonic the Hedgehog 2, whose release date was dubbed "Sonic 2sday" in Sega's marketing campaign, and Mortal Kombat, which released on "Mortal Monday," September 13, 1993. Universal distributed it to arcades in 1980, and it began appearing in November. Nintendo's famous ape didn't nab Pauline and scale construction sites until the fall of 1981.)

Space Panic, published and developed by Universal.

The goal of Space Panic is simple to state, but difficult to achieve. You're a "man"—extra lives are referred to as "extra men," a colloquial term from when games were designed by men, starred male characters, and predominantly played by men—in an unnamed area in space made up of suspended platforms connected by ladders. There are aliens running amok, wouldn't you know it, and you've got to defeat them by digging holes in the platforms, luring them into said holes, and refilling those holes so they fall through, eliminating it from play.

Speaking of holes, Space Panic filled more than one gap in my gaming knowledge. I'd never played it, for one. For two, this is, to the best of my recollection, my foray into the "digging" genre. I know of Lode Runner, but never played it. Maybe because I was too young to play most video games before Super Mario Bros. and the NES made its way into my household: there were so many other games to play that Lode Runner and its many clones sailed right over my head.

Which brings me to the next shocker, at least for me. Designed for one player or two players who take turns at the joystick, Space Panic lets you dig, climb, and run, but there's no jump button. I struggled with this, to put it lightly. Donkey Kong was the first platformer I'd played. Some verbs describe a type of game perfectly. For platformers, and for me, jump is that verb. Not being able to hop around made me feel like I was playing one-handed, which I probably could since the controls are simple.

One button digs holes. Another button fills them in. Remember, though, that you cannot job. If you dig a hole and decide you want to walk across it, well, you can't. You'll have to refill that hole to step across it, or take the long way around by climbing or descending ladders and hurrying to and fro across platforms. You could also opt to drop through it, and you won't take any damage, a decision Nintendo wouldn't incorporate in its platformers until later, thus making it a strategic decision in Space Panic.

Trapping aliens isn't as simple as digging a hole and waiting for one to fall through. Not only do you have to consider how and where digging holes affects your navigation options, you must press the dig button repeatedly. If an enemy reaches your hole before it's finished, it'll stumble over it then refill it and continue the chase. You can't use that shovel to fight back, either. Your options are run, climb, dig, and fill. If an alien drops into one of your pits, you need to be ready to refill it, or it will haul itself out and refill the hole.

On top of all that, not all aliens go down easily. Red aliens are the easiest to topple; trap them, fill in their hole, and they plummet to the next platform and helpfully disappear. Green aliens, however, need to fall at least two stories. That means you need to dig a hole in one platform, then dig a hole directly above or below it. You can't dig too near ladders, so you've got to play realtor and consider location, location, location. The difficulty ramps up quickly. By level 3, you'll have red and green aliens to contend with. By level 4, gray aliens, which must fall even further, enter the fray.

This may not sound too complex on paper. In practice, it's a lot to wrap your head around. Like the ghosts in Pac-Man, aliens wander at first but quickly grow aggressive. Digging a hole takes just long enough that you'll have to choose spots to dig as you're avoiding aliens and climbing ladders. Early on, I hit on a strategy that worked well. Find a space between two ladders and dig a hole on either side. The aliens will eventually come to you. Fill in each hole as fast as you can, then dig another.

That strategy falls to pieces by level 3. Space Panic is a coin-op game, which means time is money. An oxygen meter in the lower righthand corner depletes, functioning as both a timer and a bonus score. The more oxygen you have left when you clear a level, the more bonus points you'll get at the end. Of course, this means digging holes around you and waiting for aliens to trip their way in consumes a lot of time, which is a bad idea on later levels when you need to be on the move and setting up two or more vertically aligned holes to defeat tougher aliens.

It's a compelling game loop, but consumers weren't ready for its complexity in 1980. "No punning intended when I say that the rungs were too high for the average gamer to scale," wrote Electronic Games magazine in 1983; the editor went on to note that the average play time was recorded at 30 seconds. Reader, I admit that this near-40-year-old loop challenged me in 2020. Despite draining my oxygen, I was more comfortable entrenching myself between pits. Later levels add more ladders, which is good for navigation, but bad for digging, since holes can't be placed too close to ladders.

Perhaps the worst part is that when you die, the level repopulates with aliens. Platforming standards weren't set in stone by this point. The cement was still drying. Still, wiping out all but one alien only to make a mistake and have to start over is demoralizing. There were times when I opted to stop playing rather than try again. Each credit, or quarter, also buys you a finite supply of lives. Three strikes and you're out.

I'm tempted to play Monday morning quarterback and say that the addition of a jump button would have made the gameplay much smoother. Being able to hop over a hole while being chased would be convenient. It would also probably make the game far too easy, an unappealing prospect for coin-op developers and operators looking to devour quarters in as short a span of time as possible.

Nevertheless, Space Panic qualifies as a platformer as much as it's also a "climbing" or "digging" game, and is a good example of the branches that connect games on platforming's leafy family tree. Universal deemed the game a commercial failure overall, which isn't surprising. It's tough, and the gameplay loop is so simple that its charm wears off after a few turns. Still, clones such as Broderbund's Apple Panic on the Apple II did quite well, likely because playing at home without having to worry about your mom's finite supply of quarters gave players more opportunities to sharpen their skills.

There's no denying Space Panic sets the stage for greatness. Almost all the pieces are there. The action takes place on a single screen, there are plenty of ladders to climb, and thinking on your feet while zipping around and digging is fun. Just not for long. I recommend taking Space Panic for a spin to understand how platformers started, but be prepared to move on to greener, bouncier pastures within a few minutes.

Score

Graphics: 1/5. Crude, but serviceable and neat, until levels become cluttered with ladders.

Gameplay: 2/5. Deceptively challenging. The fun you'll have on levels 1 and 2 will soon be overshadowed by frustration as aliens, ladders, and the complications of dispatching tougher foes sets in.

Sound: 1/5. Space Panic exhibits the beeps and bloops typical of the era. They're grating enough that I'd almost prefer to play the game muted. The audio is glitchy on MAME, so I only heard the end-of-level fanfare; I watched videos on YouTube to get an idea of how the game sounded during play.

Overall: 2/5. Not a bad game, but not a particularly engrossing one either.