“HE HE”

-EV (Evil Vulture(s))

Studying the history of video games involves playing those games. Seeing how games started and mastered the basic mechanics helps one learn how improve one’s own games.

As stated in the description, Dazzler “is rather like a cross between Pac-Man and Donkey Kong Junior.” Although I’ve never played Donkey Kong Junior firsthand, I’ve seen other people play it and understand its influence on many games proceeding it. Created in 1982, Dazzler was not exactly what I expected it to be based off its name and visually imposing logo. Obviously, the bias on my part from consuming modern media needs to be put aside when looking at an emulation of an arcade game from the 80s. However, the game was surprisingly difficult—I wasn’t expecting it to be easy, but I died too many times despite its deceptively simple “collect-the-item” in a maze mechanics. It took me quite a few deaths before I could safely avoid the paths and programmed behavior of for the amusingly named “Evil Vultures” (EV). Playing on an emulator has drawbacks such as learning the controls, but I think the main detraction is from not having the arcade and arcade cabinet experience. The emulation performs mostly fine outside of input lag and occasionally invisible pixels to get caught on—but otherwise the simple arrow keys are very easy to understand.

The character one plays as in Dazzler is “Our Hero” (OH) who must eventually rescue the unnamed gorilla after feeding it bananas in return for the method of defeating the Evil Vultures. (Random funny feature: occasionally, one can boost themselves up in the score ranking (by 500 points) by collecting a randomly placed smiling lemon, but if it is not collected in time it will frown and disappear.) Games have come a long way, but it is interesting to see how something was able to be fun by taking advantage of simplicity under heavier constraints.

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