| Nova 9: The Return of Gir Draxon | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Dynamix |
| Publisher(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Designer(s) | Paul Bowman |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, DOS |
| Release | 1991 |
| Genre(s) | Shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Nova 9: The Return of Gir Draxon is a futuristic shooter video game developed by Dynamix and released by Sierra On-Line in 1991 for the PC as the second sequel to the game Stellar 7 .
The player assumes the role of a futuristic tank pilot fighting alien threats across nine different star systems. The tank is designated as the Raven II and is equipped with forward-facing cannon with unlimited ammo that can fire two shot bursts, energy shields and armor (unlike the tank in the previous game Stellar 7). Damage to the player's tank after the shields are breached comes in the form of systems becoming less effective; this mostly effects mobility. Power-ups can be collected in this game, though the system works differently than in the previous game in the series. Here, up to nine power-ups can be stored and used when needed. The damage to the player's tank can permanently break power-up slots. Finally, the player's tank can be repaired by returning to a hidden asteroid base at a designated warp portal locations throughout the game. These appear on about every other world. If the tank is not particularly damaged when going to a repair portal, the player can also receive permanent upgrades to the tank as well; a few upgrades are required to advance the story, so they will happen at designated points in time even if the player's tank is badly damaged.
The game's enemies include anything from other tanks to mechanical birds equipped with a range of weapons including lasers, ballistic attacks, and mines. Each of the nine worlds has a theme to it, and the enemies on that world tend to follow the theme, such as a dinosaur world or a bug world; this was an advancement over the previous game, where enemies were often reused across worlds. Each alien world also has a boss that must be defeated, most of which require some level of creativity, such as shooting the boss in a weak point or using terrain against it. The final boss is Gir Draxon himself, in a horned skull-like super-tank. He has three phases to defeat, the first two of which require creative tactics; this level of boss complexity was rather impressive for the time.
The alien worlds were rendered as mostly featureless plains that looped around themselves eventually, though each world had a modest variety of 3D objects on it that represented rock formations or occasionally alien plant life. The worlds' backgrounds were digital paintings of alien skies that wrapped around the horizon.
The game lacks a save feature. The player has effectively two "Continues" - basically, extra lives - and that was it before the game needed to be restarted from the beginning. Experienced players would also soon notice that damage effects to the tank could be overly crippling, reducing the fun of playing or making the game unwinnable on the current life. For example, significant damage to one side of the tank could completely remove the ability to turn in a given direction; damage effects tended to pile up rapidly, since as mobility was reduced, it became harder to avoid further incoming damage or keep enemies away from the tank's wounded side. The damage effects allowed the tank to survive more damage than the unarmored one in Stellar 7, which simply died when its shields (hitpoints) ran out.
Gir Draxon, the evil overlord defeated at the end of the previous game (Stellar 7) crash lands on an alien world, broken and scarred. He quickly locates a powerful alien artifact that controls the minds of his victims, slaughters the harmless alien creatures nearby, and begins rebuilding his interstellar empire. A distress call goes out from one world as he conquers it, which quickly turns to an image of obviously mind-controlled victims claiming that everything is fine. Meanwhile, the protagonist from the previous game has built a hidden facility in a large asteroid amid a vast field of asteroids where he can design more powerful tools to fight evil like Gir Draxon. The most notable creation is that of the Raven II heavy tank, a direct upgrade over the powerful but fragile Raven I from Stellar 7. He also has a robotic repair droid and an AI computer that contains the personality of his late wife, who was lost in Gir Draxon's first attack on Earth in Stellar 7.
As the hero advances through each world, defeating Gir Draxon's forces as he goes, Draxon's minions close on the hidden base. Eventually, they find it as the game nears its conclusion, and the AI destroys the base to prevent Draxon's minions from finding information on the Raven II and using it to defeat the protagonist. After Draxon is defeated in the final battle, his super-tank overloads, electrocuting and killing him. The hero then returns to the asteroid field and finds evidence that the AI computer containing his wife's personality may have survived the blast.
The game got 4+1⁄2 out of 5 stars in Dragon . [1] Computer Gaming World praised the game's "breathtaking graphics", high difficulty, and intelligent opponents, only criticizing the lack of a save game option. The magazine concluded that "Nova 9 is an excellent offering for arcade fans everywhere ... a thoroughly professional effort". [2]
In video games, a boss is a significantly powerful non-player character created as an opponent to players. A fight with a boss character is commonly referred to as a boss battle or boss fight. Bosses are generally far stronger than other opponents the players have faced up to that point in a game. Boss battles are generally seen at climax points of particular sections of games, such as at the end of a level or stage or guarding a specific objective. A miniboss is a boss weaker or less significant than the main boss in the same area or level, though usually more powerful than the standard opponents and often fought alongside them. A superboss is generally much more powerful than the bosses encountered as part of the main game's plot and is often an optional encounter. A final boss is often the main antagonist of a game's story and the defeat of that character usually provides a positive conclusion to the game. A boss rush is a stage where players face multiple previous bosses again in succession.
Wonder Boy in Monster Land, known by its original arcade release as Wonder Boy: Monster Land, is a platform video game developed by Westone Bit Entertainment and released by Sega in Japanese arcades in 1987 and for the Master System in 1988, with a number of other home computer and console ports following. The game is the sequel to the 1986 game Wonder Boy and takes place eleven years after the events in the previous game. After enjoying over a decade of peace on Wonder Land following the defeat of the evil King by Tom-Tom, later bestowed the title "Wonder Boy", a fire-breathing dragon called the MEKA dragon appeared; he and his minions conquered Wonder Land, turning it into "Monster Land". The people, helpless due to their lack of fighting skill, call for Wonder Boy, now a teenager, to destroy the monsters and defeat the MEKA dragon. Players control Wonder Boy through twelve linear levels as he makes his way through Monster Land to find and defeat the MEKA dragon. Players earn gold by defeating enemies and buy weapons, armor, footwear, magic, and other items to help along the way.
Llamatron is a multidirectional shooter video game programmed by Jeff Minter of Llamasoft and released in 1991 for the Atari ST and Amiga and in 1992 for MS-DOS. Based on Robotron: 2084, players of Llamatron control the eponymous creature in an attempt to stop an alien invasion of Earth and rescue animals—referred to as "Beasties"—for points. Players advance by destroying all of the enemies on each level using a laser that fires automatically in the direction that the Llamatron is moving. Various power-ups exist to aid the player in defeating the wide variety of enemies and obstacles they face along the way.
Top Banana is an environmentally-themed platform game produced by Hex and Psycore for the Acorn Archimedes in 1991 and ported to the Amiga and Atari ST in 1992. The chief artist and coder was Miles Visman, with supporting graphics and sound by Karel Dander, and supporting graphics by Sophie Smith, Robert Pepperell and Matt Black. Top Banana was released using recycled cardboard packaging, furthermore being advertised as being the 'first video game with recycled packaging'. Top Banana's plot is about trying to save the environment from pollution using love.
Xenon 2: Megablast is a 1989 shoot 'em up video game developed by The Bitmap Brothers and published by Image Works for the Amiga and Atari ST. It was later converted to the Master System, PC-98, X68000, Mega Drive, Commodore CDTV, Game Boy, Acorn Archimedes and Atari Jaguar platforms. The game is a sequel to Xenon and takes place a millennium after the previous title. The goal of the game is to destroy a series of bombs planted throughout history by the Xenites, the vengeful antagonists of the first game.
Stellar 7 is a first-person tank simulation video game based on the 1980s arcade game Battlezone in which the player assumes the role of a futuristic tank pilot. The game was created by Damon Slye for the Apple II and Commodore 64 in 1983, then remade in the early 1990s for MS-DOS, Amiga, and Classic Mac OS. There are three sequels: Arcticfox (1986), Nova 9: The Return of Gir Draxon (1991), and Stellar 7: Draxon's Revenge (1993).
Risky Woods is a fantasy-themed, side-scrolling platform game developed by Dinamic Software and Zeus Software and published by Electronic Arts in 1992. It was released as Jashin Draxos in Japan.
Awesome is a science fiction action video game released by Psygnosis for the Amiga in 1990. It features a variety of gameplay styles, from overhead shooting to Asteroids-esque sequences, and a pre-rendered ray-traced intro. The objective is to traverse the galaxy despite not having funds or fuel to do it.
Blasteroids is the third official sequel to the 1979 multidirectional shooter video game, Asteroids. It was developed by Atari Games and released in arcades in 1987. Unlike the previous games, Blasteroids uses raster graphics instead of vector graphics, and has power-ups and a boss.
Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds is a first-person shooter game developed by Team17 for Amiga. Published by Ocean Software in 1996, it is the fifth game in the Alien Breed franchise, a series of science fiction-themed shooters.
Arcticfox is a science fiction tank simulation video game developed by Dynamix and published by Electronic Arts in 1986. It was published in Europe by Ariolasoft. A sequel to Dynamix's Stellar 7, it was released on Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, MS-DOS, and Apple II. A third game was released in the series in 1991 titled Nova 9: The Return of Gir Draxon.
SWIV is a vertically scrolling shooter released in 1991 for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MSX, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC computers. A Game Boy Color conversion was published in 2001.
Magic: The Gathering is a video game published by MicroProse in March 1997 based on the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. It is often referred to as Shandalar after the plane of Shandalar, where the game takes place. The player must travel the land and fight random enemies to gain cards, and defeat five wizards representing the five colors. The player must prevent one color from gaining too much power, and defeat the planeswalker Arzakon, who has a deck of all five colors. Adventure and role-playing elements are present, including inventory, gold, towns, dungeons, random battles, and character progression in the form of new abilities and a higher life point total. An oversized version of Aswan Jaguar was included in the game box.
Vindicators is an arcade video game released by Atari Games in 1988. One or two players each control a tank in a multidirectional scrolling level. Home ports were by Tengen. Vindicators was not licensed by Nintendo and used an alternate chip to defeat the 10NES lockout system. Ports were planned for the Atari Lynx and Apple IIGS, with the latter even completed, but both were cancelled. Vindicators was followed by the lesser known arcade sequel, Vindicators Part II.
Dark Side is a 1988 video game published by Incentive Software for the Amiga, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, IBM PC compatibles, ZX Spectrum, and Sharp MZ-800. The game is a sequel to Driller, set in the Evath system but this time on Evath's second moon Tricuspid.
Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is a horror adventure/role-playing video game developed by Horror Soft and released by Accolade in 1990 for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and MS-DOS computers. It was Horror Soft's second published game after 1989's Personal Nightmare and stars the actress Cassandra Peterson as her character Elvira.
Menace is a horizontally scrolling shooter developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis. It was originally released for the Amiga in 1988, and was ported for the Atari ST, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS in 1989. The game is set on the planet of Draconia, where players are tasked with destroying the planet's defence mechanisms in order to kill the harmful creatures.
Conqueror is a video game released as the follow-up to Zarch, using the same landscape engine. It is a third-person shooter with strategy elements in which the player controls a fleet of tanks. It was originally developed and released on the Acorn Archimedes by Superior Software in 1988 and ported to other home computers in 1990 by Rainbow Arts. The game was well received, particularly for its blend of strategy and arcade action.
Radix: Beyond the Void is a 2.5D first-person shooter developed by Canadian studio Neural Storm Entertainment and published by Epic MegaGames for MS-DOS in 1995.
Stellar 7: Draxon's Revenge is a 1993 video game developed and published by Dynamix for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer.