David Steffen is an editor, publisher, and writer.
If you like what he does you can visit the Support page or buy him a coffee!
He is probably best known for being co-founder and administrator of The Submission Grinder, a donation-supported tool to help writers track their submissions and find publishers for their work . David is also the editor-in-chief here at Diabolical Plots. He is also the editor and publisher of The Long List Anthology: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List series. David also (sometimes) writes fiction, and you can follow on BlueSky for updates on cross-stitch projects and occasionally other things.
Jetpack Joyride is an endless runner mobile app game published by Halfbrick in 2011. Download it for free from app stores like Google Play.
The game stars Barry, a struggling gramophone salesman who breaks into a high-security laboratory to steal an experimental jetpack prototype and makes his escape with it, dodging electrical traps and missiles along the way.
It’s an endless runner game where you collect gold coins and complete achievements to earn more coins that you can use to buy more gadgets, upgrade your jetpacks, and etc, buying things that will make it possible to go further the next time.
The controls are very simple. With the standard jetpack, if you touch the screen the jetpack turns on and pushes Barry toward the ceiling. If you lift your finger, Barry falls, So, you move up and down to dodge obstacles, and to collect coins and powerups. You can collect other specialty jetpacks which each have their own control scheme, like the crazy teleporter that moves along at the same height with the destination cursor scrolling up and down constantly and touching the screen will move you to the cursor. Each specialty jetpack has its own variation of the simple touch controls, which adds some variation and also allows you to take one extra hit before dying.
The game is heavy on in-game purchases and ads (which you can choose to view at certain points to get extra powerups, but you will see ads either way unless you pay), and although the game is a lot of fun, I found the level of ads and in-game purchase solicitations to be off-putting and enough to put the game down for good. It’s a fun infinite runner game, but I’d rather buy a game on Steam where I don’t have to get constantly solicited after the fact.
I played this game for the first time at the Game Changers exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
Visuals Fun cartoony graphics, I particularly like the beehive jetpack.
Audio They’re all right.
Challenge Challenging to make it a long distance as you figure out the rules and unlock more powerups. Then again, there’s not much consequence to dying, you just start again, so it’s not very frustrating if you die.
Story Very light on story.
Session Time Even the longer rounds I played have probably been 10 minutes.
Playability Simple, can be played with one finger.
Replayability Certainly some replayability with the unlockable stuff. Many of the unlockables are just reskinning of the jetpack and etc . So unless you’re a hardcore completionist you’ll probably get bored of that before you run out. There are a limited number of achievements and at some point they start again with the simpler ones which also makes it get old.
Originality I’ve played a ton of other endless runner games that were very similar, though I guess I haven’t compared the timelines of their development.
Playtime There’s not really an objective, per se, so hard to say. If you wanted to unlock every unlockable, you could spend a very long time.
Overall This is fun and addictive for a while and easy to play for just a few spare minutes. But for me it wore thin pretty quick between the constant in-game purchase solicitations and ads, and the achievements looping back to easier achievements.
Elevator Action is a 1983 spy action game by Taito published in arcade format. As each level begins the player character grapples to the top of a 30-story building and must make their way down to the ground floor through the building filled with gun-toting guards while collecting secret documents along the way.
The most novel part of the game, as the name suggests, is the elevators used to move from floor to floor which you and the guards can use to shift up or down floors. You do have an advantage over an individual guard: you also have a gun, and both you and the guards will die from a single bullet, and the guards don’t seem inclined to dodge by jumping and ducking as you can, and you can also kill the guards by jump-kicking.
As far as arcade games of the era go, this one is much easier to get pretty good at than most, so was probably an easy “gateway game” for arcade players. despite the relatively simple controls, you have quite a few options between shooting and dodging and jump-kicking and riding elevators to evade or attack the guards.
I played this for the first time at the Game Changers exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
Visuals Typical for the era.
Audio Typical for the era.
Challenge Lower than most arcade games, much easier entry point.
Story Not much story (typical of the era and format).
Session Time Depends how good you are!
Playability Simple, apart from it not being immediately obvious that you have to collect documents behind the red doors, and if you don’t open those doors reaching the ground floor just sends you back up.
Replayability Not in the usual way I mean, but if you like this kind of game there’s certainly plenty of fun to be had.
Originality It was a new twist at the time.
Playtime I don’t know how long it would take to play all the way through.
Overall This is a fun game and less frustrating than other games of its time. And there have been various recent-ish ports that you might be able to find.
Missile Command is a franticly paced war game published as an arcade console by Atari in 1980. In each level of the game you have three bases that can fire missiles that need to defend themselves and their cities against incoming enemy missiles.
The controls consist of a roller ball for movement and three separate firing buttons, each of which fires a missile from one of the bases. Some of the enemy missiles are simple predictable shots, others can split into multiple pieces that move in different directions, enemy planes can fly through the area. You have to keep your cities alive until the timer for the level runs out, without running out of your own missiles while missiles are raining down from multiple directions.
This game is frantically paced and while simple to understand is very difficult to master and no wonder it was so popular (and inspired by the dominant fear of the times during the Cold War).
While I had been familiar with the game from its reputation, I played this one for the first time at the Game Changers exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
Visuals Probably good for the era, can certainly handle a large amount of moving objects
Audio Typical for the era.
Challenge Very high.
Story Very basic story (typical of the format).
Session Time Depends how good you are!
Playability Simple to understand, hard to master–one fire button for each base plus a rollerball for moving the targeting reticle (at least in the original arcade version). There is just a lot going on all at once, hard to keep up.
Replayability Not in the usual way I mean, but if you like this kind of game there’s certainly plenty of fun to be had.
Originality Still recognizable as its own thing after almost 40 years.
Playtime I don’t know how long it would take to play all the way through.
Overall This is a solid and challenging game, though probably not one of the first I’d recommend for a casual gamer because it is probably one of the more difficult games in a difficult genre. I haven’t come across a convenient looking port on a modern-ish system, but you might be able to find one in an older system or an emulator.
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a turn based combat game developed for the Nintendo Switch by Ubisoft, which is a mashup of Nintendo popular Mario Bros. franchise and Ubisoft’s Raving Rabbids franchise.
A new invention has just been completed, a visor that allows the wearer to fuse two other objects into one object. Everything is going smoothly until the Rabbids arrive in the labarotory in their Time Washing Machine and start wreaking havoc, grabbing the visor among other things and fusing random things together. The inventor is a big Mario fan, so there are lots of Mario decorations around the lab, and soon the rabbid wearing the visor has fused Mario characters like Peach and Luigi with Rabbids, and the Time Washing Machine takes them all to the Mushroom Kingdom where the Rabbids are running wild, fused with various elements and monsters of the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s up to Mario, Rabbid Peach, and Rabbid Luigi to save the kingdom.
The gameplay is turn-based, and everyone is equipped with ranged weapons unique to their character and much of the game is based around finding cover from enemy fire while trying to get around the enemy cover to fire on them. You can also move every turn to change cover spots and to tackle an enemy as you go. For most rounds, the last team standing wins (different rules may apply in individual cases). To move from area to area to try to work toward saving the kingdom, they have to fight through hordes of Rabbids fused with monsters along the way.
Maybe it’s because I’m not at all familiar with the Rabbids, but I didn’t find the premise compelling. Who are the Rabbids, why do I care? But the major issue for me was that the difficulty curve was badly designed. The first battles I found too easy; I didn’t have to try very hard, just had to persevere, follow basic rules about finding cover, try to stick to the higher ground whenever possible. For several hours of gameplay this was enough, I was able to advance and didn’t die, and not only was this part not particularly challenging, it was repetitive and dull. This continued until I reached the first mini-boss battle with a more formidable foe, at which point I got soundly beaten by the mini-boss and the hordes of Rabbid minions. The earlier battles hadn’t prepared me for whatever strategies were needed to beat that tougher foe, and I was bored enough of the earlier challenges I didn’t want to go back and try to level-grind if that’s what was needed to stand a chance. I didn’t care enough about making it further in the game to really devote myself to trying over and over again to try to beat this boss, and much of that apathy was the difficulty curve of the game, which ran low low low low high without transitioning from one to the other smoothly.
Visuals A mixture of standard 3-D Mario design with weird Rabbid looks.
Audio Nothing remarkable.
Challenge Very uneven challenge curve, starts out so easy that it’s boring, then ramps steeply up very suddenly.
Story The story does not make a ton of sense, and seems to be a lot of work to justify a game mashup.
Session Time The nice thing about the switch is you can put it to sleep at will no matter what part of the game it’s in.
Playability Easy enough that the early battles are pretty easy to pick up. But could use some more difficulty ramp-up to prep for tougher battles.
Replayability Even playing through the first time got boring very quickly.
Originality While game mashups bring their own kind of originality, the gameplay itself is nothing particular original
Playtime Unknown, didn’t get all the way through, I played for a few hours so far.
Overall Maybe a fan of the Rabbids would be more into the game than I was, but I found the challenge progression of the game very uneven, not challenging enough at the beginning and then suddenly very challenging. I’m sure someone will find the game fun, but it’s not for me. You can find it for $60 at major retailers
Charlie Slawson sat alone in the transit station, watching a set of empty train tracks and wondering why the train was late. Truth be told, he hadn’t known until just then that temporal trains even could be late.
He looked around the underground station—its old, brick walls lined with gaudy digital displays, advertising exciting trips to next year, next century, and beyond—before noticing a man stepping onto the platform from a little door beside the tracks. He wore navy blue coveralls and a tall pair of work boots. His close-cropped, grey hair was half hidden beneath a faded baseball cap.
“Excuse me,” Charlie called. “Any idea when the train will arrive? I think it’s running late.”
The man stopped and frowned, then walked over to the bench. “You sure you’re in the right place, son? Which train are you waiting for?”
Charlie nodded and motioned to the marquee above the tracks. “Train to Wednesday. Just like it says.”
“Hmmph,” the old man grunted. “Wednesday’s never been one of our peak destinations. Especially not a Wednesday that’s just a few days away. What’d you want to do a thing like that for?”
Charlie turned the tablet in his hands so the old man could see the picture on the screen. That day, years ago, when Dad took him fishing out west of Cambridge. The first time he’d ever been to the train station.
Dad tried to keep the trip going every year after Charlie left home, but life got busy, then they drifted apart. Charlie had always assumed they’d have time to catch up later, but he would give anything to have that day back, now.
“Your father?” the man asked.
Charlie nodded. “His funeral is this Wednesday.” He thought of the tearful video message he’d received this morning from his mother, his siblings already bickering in the background over funeral venues and seating arrangements.
It was foolish, all of it. It would make no difference to Dad if the memorial dinner served chicken or beef, or if the service was held at the church on High Street or Main. What Dad would have appreciated was more time with his son, but Charlie hadn’t given him that. And no memorial, however perfectly it was planned, could do a thing about it.
More time at home would just mean more time to feel guilty. More awkward conversations with distant relatives, more photographs and memories, more reminders that Dad had always been there for him, but he hadn’t done the same.
“I loved my Dad,” Charlie said. “Even if I wasn’t the best at showing it. I wouldn’t miss his funeral for the world, but I’d just rather skip all the mess in between.”
The man nodded and fished a hand into his coveralls, coming up a moment later with a small, silver pocket watch. Inscribed on its cover was the looping infinity symbol of the Temporal Transportation Administration.
The man opened the watch and tilted it so Charlie could see. Dials and arms littered the watch face, twisting together in an intricate dance that Charlie struggled to make heads or tails of. The man tapped the glass faceplate and made a sound which fell somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh.
“Well would you look at that,” he said. “Seems you’re right. Train should’ve been here at least thirty seconds ago.”
“Is that normal?” Charlie asked.
“Nah. But it ain’t unheard of either.” The old man bit his lip. “These tunnels have been around almost as long as I have. Every once in a while the track is bound to run a little slow.”
Charlie looked down at the screen in his hands and sighed. “Okay. Any idea how much longer it’ll be?”
“Doesn’t work like that.” The old man shook his head. “A little hiccup on the other end might mean just a few extra minutes here, or it could mean a few days, or more. No way to tell without heading down the tracks and finding where the train is stuck.”
“Christ,” Charlie mumbled, staring down into the empty tunnel at the end of the station. “Is that safe?”
The old man shrugged. “Life ain’t safe. But there’s no reason it should be especially dangerous, provided we’re careful.” He turned and started to walk towards the tracks.
“We?” Charlie asked.
“Course.” The old man climbed down onto the railway and motioned for Charlie to follow. “Any extra delays stack up real fast down the line, so once we get her going again, the train won’t stop until the next station. You’ll have to board wherever we find her.”
“You’re joking,” Charlie muttered, glancing down at his dress slacks and new oxford shoes, then at the puddles and mud waiting for him beside the tracks.
Then he thought of his father, and the nightmare the next two days would be without him. He grabbed his briefcase and jacket and hopped over the edge of the platform.
*
Charlie tiptoed along the rail line, as close to the man and his flashlight as he could manage. Above their heads, aging brickwork dripped water and something much darker in thick, black droplets that clung to the floor.
“You sure it’s safe to be in here?” Charlie asked. “These walls don’t look like they’re holding up so well.”
The old man grunted in agreement. “Been around a long time. It’s a wonder they’ve held up as long as they have.”
Somehow, that didn’t comfort Charlie. “Why hasn’t anyone bothered to replace them?”
“Ha!” The old man laughed, then turned back to face him. “When are you from, son?”
“When?” Charlie asked, shielding his eyes from the beam of the flashlight. “Don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Course you don’t,” the old man replied. “Because you don’t remember when they put these things in.” He patted the brick wall with obvious affection, then turned down the tunnel and started to walk again. “It ain’t just something you can go and replace. Takes a lot of time, and a lot of lives to dig a set of tunnels through spacetime. To pull the two apart so that you can move through one by moving through the other. It also took a lot of problems to make men and women willing to take that risk. Problems that you couldn’t just hop on a train and skip.”
Charlie grimaced. He wasn’t skipping the problem, just the mess. “So how does this work?” he asked, hoping to change the subject. “Aren’t we traveling back in time?”
The man laughed again, like Charlie was a child. “Course not. Trains can only go forward and so can we. Can walk down the tunnel as long as you want, but you’ll never reach a previous station.”
“And what if you managed to get outside the tunnel?”
“Wouldn’t want to do that.” The man pointed his flashlight at a pool of ink-black liquid. “The tunnel’s old enough here that some of the outside’s dripping through. All you’d find out there is a big sea of black.”
“Unless you found another tunnel?” Charlie asked.
The old man shrugged. “Suppose so, but you wouldn’t last that long. Just the tunnels and trains that can survive in the void.”
As they walked down the tracks, the dripping grew more frequent and louder, until the darkness spilled from the walls in neat little rivulets.
“Careful now,” the old man muttered. “Better keep your feet on the tracks and avoid them puddles altogether.”
“Otherwise?” Charlie asked.
The man’s voice was stern for the first time since they’d met. “Otherwise I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.”
*
The train was near wrecked when they finally found her. That much was clear the moment the old man’s flashlight beam fell onto her engine’s crumpled exterior.
“Well that doesn’t look good,” Charlie managed to mutter.
The man shook his head and wandered closer to the engine. He pointed his flashlight down onto the ground, stepping carefully around the small, black stream which poured from the brickwork where the train had collided with the wall. The engine was lodged halfway through the wall itself, the only thing plugging a massive hole to the void.
The old man crouched beside the damaged tunnel and ran his hand along the bowing stone. Little waterfalls of thick, black liquid flowed from the brick around the sides of the train, pooling into a narrow brook which ran both ways along the tracks.
“Well?” Charlie asked. “What do you think?”
The old man grimaced. “I think we’ve got a big problem to deal with.”
Charlie looked at the line of train cars behind him. Aside from the engine, the rest of the train was largely undamaged. Passengers milled about inside, uninjured, pressing their faces up against the small, dark windows. A woman in a floral dress and an ancient-looking hat leaned her head out of one of the passenger car doors and began to climb down the emergency ladder. A young, mustachioed man in a charcoal-grey suit followed closely behind.
“The train doesn’t seem so bad to me,” Charlie said. “Just needs a new engine, probably.”
The old man nodded, then noticed the couple exiting the train. He wagged his finger like a grandfather scolding a pair of children. “And what exactly do you think you’re doing?” he called.
A guilty smile crossed the woman’s face. “Just
coming to have a look. Maybe see if we could fix whatever’s the matter.”
The old man sighed and dipped a finger into one
of the pools of black. The liquid crawled quickly up his hand, until he
withdrew it from the puddle. He held his arm in the air a moment before pressing
it against the edge of the train. The blank, dark space where his hand had been
simply passed through the metal as if nothing was there.
He fixed the couple with a glare. “And what exactly are you going to do about that?”
The woman’s smile vanished and she mumbled a
half-hearted reply.
“Exactly,” he replied. “Now you two get back inside and close that door, and let the experts handle this.”
Charlie chuckled. He certainly didn’t feel like an expert.
The old man frowned at him, then pulled a small, silver rag from his coveralls and wiped his hand clean. The black which had coated his palms seemed to simply fade into the fabric. “It ain’t the train that I’m worried about. This wall gives any further and the whole tunnel will be swimming in the black. Station too. Maybe the next station down the line. Nothing to stop it moving forward once it reaches that point.”
“Christ,” Charlie muttered. “What can we do about it? I imagine there’s someone that we’ll have to call?”
The old man glanced at his pocket watch. “No time for that. It’d take ‘em at least as long as it took us to get down here. But we can start by getting this engine out of the way.”
“What?” Charlie asked, feeling the knot in his stomach tighten at the idea. “The engine is the only thing plugging the hole. If we pull the plug, the entire tunnel will flood.”
The old man shook his head. “Don’t work like that, kid. The tunnel isn’t any happier about it being broken than we are. Given the chance, the hole would seal itself right up. As is, the train’s the only thing keeping it open.”
He pointed at the spiderwork cracks running through the tunnel wall. “It’s like a knife in a wound. Might bleed worse for a minute when we pull it out, but the longer it’s in there, the more damage it does.”
The cracks seemed to grow even in the short time the man spoke, new drips and defects popping up around them. “Well that’s easy then,” Charlie replied. “We just put the train in reverse and pull the engine out.”
“Mmhmm,” the man replied. “Provided she’s still working.”
*
Charlie sat in front of the train’s aging control board, horrified that humans had ever trusted their safety to technology so primitive. Although digital networks had replaced the engineers running the rails decades ago, the engines were built in a time long before then and still sported a panel of manual backups, littered with dials, levers, and other relics of the past. Charlie glanced over his shoulder at a small, dim screen that showed a live feed of the passenger cars. Come to think of it, most of the train’s passengers were relics as well.
Out the cabin’s small side window, the old man stared at Charlie and gave him two thumbs up. He’d stayed outside to make sure the hole sealed shut, his hands full of minor patching equipment which Charlie was entirely sure would be insufficient if actually needed.
Initially, he thought he’d gotten the better end of the deal. But now that he was inside the engine room, with only inches of glass separating him from the horrible emptiness which stared back through the front windshield, he wasn’t so certain. The darkness in front of him swirled and writhed like a pile of living shadow, feeling and squirming its way towards the cracks in the tunnel wall. Charlie couldn’t see it, but he felt it. Felt it the same way he felt this might not end well. But what choice did he have?
He could climb back outside the engine and tell the man he’d had enough. Walk straight to the station and wait out the rest of a painful week at Mom’s. That wouldn’t be so bad. It’d be tearful and frustrating, but certainly not deadly.
But it had taken nearly an hour to walk this far down the tunnel, and there were no guarantees the wall would hold long enough for him to get back. Besides, if the man was right, and a spill on this end of the track could creep into the future, who was to say he’d make it to the funeral at all?
At the end of the day, those thoughts didn’t matter. The only one that mattered was of Dad, standing on the train platform all those years ago, bending over to pick up a piece of crumpled paper from beside the trash can.
“Never walk past a mistake, Charlie,” he’d said, his quiet, certain voice rising over the sound of the station’s bustle. “Not when it’s in your power to fix.”
Dad had lived his life by those words, and Charlie would be damned if he couldn’t live up to them, especially today. It was the least he could do.
“Alright, Dad,” he muttered, staring down at the large, red lever on the control panel. He glanced out the window and gave the man a thumbs up in return, then threw the lever into reverse.
Behind him, the engine whirred to life, rumbling and shaking as it struggled to throw the massive weight of the train backwards. Charlie gripped his seat and stared out the window at the man beside the tracks, but the train didn’t move.
The man shouted something that Charlie couldn’t hear, but he knew what it must mean by the waving of the man’s arms. Turn the engine power up. Charlie nodded and spun one of the dials to full.
The knot in his stomach tightened even further as he felt the train start to shift backwards. Its metal walls screeched and scraped against the brickwork as it pulled itself back from the hole. Then, just as soon as it had begun, the train slammed to a halt.
“No, no, no,” Charlie mumbled, spinning dials left and right. Despite his attempts, the train wouldn’t budge. Outside the window, the man motioned madly for him to kill the engine, rushing out of the way of a sudden onslaught of black liquid.
Charlie stared at the river and raced through his odds. A portion of the wall must have broken loose as he reversed, lodging itself behind the rear wheels and holding the train in place. The void was coming in, even if he stopped the engine.
He looked at the growing stream of black with mounting certainty. Even if he stopped now, it would be enough to flood the tunnel. The only chance to stop it was to get the engine out, so the hole could close.
Through the windshield, the void tumbled over itself with anticipation. Nothing but black in its horrible depths. Nothing but black…and was that a streak of silver?
Charlie stood up from his chair and pressed his face to the windshield, struggling for a better look. Somewhere below, in the sea of emptiness, a small line of silver glimmered brightly. Charlie traced its path until it ended in a box, so far below it only looked like a little dot.
But it wasn’t a dot, of that Charlie was certain. In that moment, he knew it was a train station—some other year, some other century, lingering in the darkness below.
It was a train station, and he had a plan.
Charlie sat back in his seat and took a deep breath, then one final peek out the small side window. The black stream had grown into quite a torrent already, pouring both ways down the tunnel. The old man still motioned for Charlie to stop the engine, but he was standing pressed up against the opposite wall to avoid the darkness as best as he could.
Charlie tapped a small red button on the dashboard, feeling a clunk behind him as the engine detached from the rest of the train cars.
“Alright, Dad,” he muttered. “I’ve never been one for walking anyways.” With that, he gripped the engine’s lever and shoved it towards the waiting void.
The engine lurched forward with a tremendous screech, and Charlie turned around in time to see the wall snap closed behind him and the world vanish from view.
*
The engine crashed through the station ceiling some time later. How long, exactly? Charlie wasn’t certain, and he doubted he ever would be. It felt as if he’d spent no time at all in free fall, and yet it felt as if he’d spent his whole life. All he knew was that he was happy when the collision threw him forward against his restraints and he was suddenly staring into someplace bright and living again.
The moment the engine came to a rest on the empty platform, Charlie unclipped his restraint and scrambled to the door. He climbed awkwardly out of the twisted, tilting vehicle, prepared to shout at any bystanders about the need for evacuation. Instead of spotting a stream of black liquid behind him, however, he noticed that the engine had fallen straight through the ceiling, which had, indeed, sealed itself right up behind him.
The few commuters on the platform stared at him with surprise, but not dismay, until a middle-aged man wearing dark blue coveralls shouted at him from a across the platform.
“Hey! Hey you!” he called. “What the hell is going on?”
Charlie stared at the brightly colored baseball cap atop the man’s head and smiled. He ran across the platform and wrapped the man in a tight embrace.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the man grumbled, shoving him away with a confused frown.
“What year is it?” Charlie asked suddenly, catching sight of the posters which lined the station walls. He remembered seeing them years ago.
“Oh Jeez,” the man muttered. “Don’t tell me you got yourself lost somehow.”
Charlie felt the knot return to his stomach as he shook his head and grabbed the man by the shoulders. “No, no, no. You don’t understand. I just need to know the date, or at least the day of the week.”
The man stared at him for a moment without answering, but Charlie already knew the answer. On the tracks, a train was waiting, its doors preparing to close. Inside, a young boy and his father were too busy staring at the fishing guidebook they’d brought along to notice the commotion outside.
“Wednesday,” the man muttered, but Charlie was already running towards the train.
Author’s Note: I spend most of my life waiting for moments. Counting down the days to big events like graduation, or the minutes to small ones like the end of a shift. Too often, I’m so busy looking forward that I forget to look around, and I find myself wishing later I could have those moments back. Time-travelling trains might make for fun scifi, but even in fictional worlds time only moves one direction, and in real life you can’t cheat your way around that.
Steve is a resident physician in the Pacific Northwest. When he isn’t too busy cracking open a textbook (or a patient’s thorax), you can find him exploring the Cascades by bike, boat, or boot. His stories have appeared in places like F&SF, Grimdark Magazine, and Flash Fiction Online, among others. You can read more of his work at www.stevenbfischer.com, or find him on twitter @stevenfischersf.
Robotron 2084 was developed by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar of Vid Kidz and released in 1982. A multi-directional shooter survival game, where the object is to survive in a fight against endless waves of killer robots while rescuing human survivors along the way.
The game uses a dual-joystick movement and shooting scheme that made it easy to share controls with a friend, and featured some major hardware innovations for the time that allowed large numbers of enemies to be animated on the screen at the same time making for exciting fast-paced action. At any given time you are being swarmed by robots for multiple directions and you have to move in any direction to avoid them while firing in any direction as well–the direction of firing is independent of direction of movement, so you can fire in the direction you’re moving, or fire backward, or fire to the side. (This scheme was used for later games like Super Smash TV if it seems familiar).
This game’s dual-joystick independent control also makes it suitable for two players cooperative play–one player per joystick. I played it with kid, for which most 80’s arcade games are way too hard, and together we were better than I was by myself, with me controlling the movement (and really just concentrating on dodging) and them controlling the shooting from the moving.
I played this game for the first time at the Game Changers exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
Visuals Not the most detailed, but where this one really shines (for its era) is the number of animated things on the screen at a time!
Audio Typical for the era.
Challenge High.
Story Simple (not unusual for that era).
Session Time Depends how good you are!
Playability Simple controlers, with basic direction joystick and directional shooting, but hard to master, it’s hard to do both at once and the challenge ramps up quickly.
Replayability Not in the usual way I mean, but if you like this kind of game there’s certainly plenty of fun to be had.
Originality It was a major innovation at the time that has inspired other games since then.
Playtime I don’t know how long it would take to play all the way through.
Overall A lot of fun, especially if you get a chance to play it on the arcade console, especially with a friend. I haven’t found a really convenient source to play this game, but it’s had some console ports to SNES among others you might be able to find.
Xevious is a 1983 vertical-scrolling top-down shooter arcade game published by Namco.
In the game you have two weapons: a laser that fires straight forward that can destroy air targets, and a bomb that fires forward suitable only for land-based targets. As you travel through the level, other flying ships are firing back, as well as ground-based turrets and tanks, reflective obstacles that can only be avoided, as well as boss fights.
I played this game for the first time at the Game Changers exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
Visuals Quite good for the era! Much more detailed than some of its contemporaries.
Audio Typical for the era.
Challenge High.
Story Not much story (typical of the era and format).
Session Time Depends how good you are!
Playability Simple, apart from it not being immediately obvious that ground forces CAN be destroyed (lasers fire over the top of them and it takes a little trial and error to figure out the bombs). Joystick for movement, and two fire buttons.
Replayability Not in the usual way I mean, but if you like this kind of game there’s certainly plenty of fun to be had.
Originality It was a groundbreaking design of this type of its time, so any perceived lack of originality may be because you’ve played other games inspired by it..
Playtime I don’t know how long it would take to play all the way through.
Overall This is a fun shooter arcade game if you like classic shooter games this is a solid one from the era. If you want to play it now you can find it on some recent-ish game systems, such as Game Boy Advance on Amazon for $12.
Descendants 3 is the third in a series of musical action Disney Channel original movies, and was published on The Disney Channel in August 2019. The kingdom of Auradon is perfect, and populated entirely by Disney movie heroes and their kids (who are somehow all within a few years of each other in age, despite the Disney movies being set in significantly different technological time periods and regions). All of the Disney movie villains and their kids are exiled to the gloomy Isle accessible to only a few, except the few VKs (villain kids) who were allowed out of the island to integrate with Auradon society a few years ago.
Mal (Dove Cameron), daughter of Maleficent, is the most famous of those, since she is dating King Ben (Mitchell Hope), son of Beauty and the Beast. Her VK friends who were released before are Evie (Sofia Carson), daughter of Evil Queen from Snow White (and they never thought of a better name for that character), Carlos (Cameron Boyce, who passed away before the movie was released), the son of Cruella de Ville, and Jay (Booboo Stewart), son of Jafar.
Mal and her friends visit the Isle in an official capacity to pick a few more VKs to integrate into Auradon society. As they’re leaving, the powerful villain Hades (Cheyenne Jackson), attacks Mal with his magical ember, and appears to almost succeed, starting a new panic among the citizens of Auradon who are afraid that they will never be safe, and Mal proposes closing the Isle forever.
Meanwhile, back in Auradon, Audrey (Sarah Jeffery), daughter of Aurora, after years of always feeling second best to Mal, takes this opportunity with so many of the rulers being out of Aurodon to visit the Isle, and steals several magical items from the museum where they’re stored and starts to make her own power play.
The music in this movie was the best of the three yet, and was more varied in style–the other movies went for a kind of uniform pop aesthetic with a bit of a punk flavor (an approximation of it, I should say, it is still the Disney Channel), this one mixed in some different styles like 80s rock ballads.
I found the plot harder to get into than the other ones, because there wasn’t a clear villain. You find out quite early on that Hades is Mal’s dad and it becomes pretty clear that he wasn’t actually trying to kill her when they faced off at the boundary of the Isle. And the conflict about sealing the Isle is so artificial I found it hard to relate to–as Hades points out, he’s not even a regular villain, he is literally the god of the Underworld, they should just let him out and do his Underworlding. And never in all of this do they consider just… finding a way to provide the Isle with more resources to live on. Auradon is the land of plenty, but the villains and their kids are literally starving within their enclosure, and though there are those sympathetic to the VKs, everyone in general blames the villains and their kids when they really seem to just be surviving as best they can in general.
And especially given that Mal was a VK, and knew what it was like to live there, it was very hard to relate to her in this movie, when she decides to close the barrier for good, especially given that it’s her Dad, which she doesn’t really think was trying to kill her, gets in a skirmish with her. It appears that her whole stance on this was set up entirely so that she can have a change of heart to give the story a moral, but at this point, and given her history, the moral is sort of a “duh” moment that she had already reached two movies ago and only reverted for plot purposes.
So, I wouldn’t expect big things from the plot, especially in terms of Mal’s character. The soundtrack is probably the best of the three. And I think this is Cameron Boyce’s last movie if you want to remember him fondly, he passed away at an unusually young age.
Jakayla crouched in front of her dark closet. She hadn’t turned on the light because that was an awfully rude thing to do when trying to talk to the monster hidden inside.
“You gotta listen to me,” she whispered. “The news is saying really bad things, like rocks are gonna fall out of the sky and a lot of people are gonna die. You can’t stay in my closet. You gotta go to the basement. There’s dark spaces down there for you to hide in. I won’t tell no one you gone there.”
“Jakayla!” She turned to find Grandma leaning into the bedroom. “I got to run to your auntie’s house. The phone network’s down.”
“The phones don’t work?” Jakayla gasped. “Why? I didn’t think anything had fallen yet?”
“Nothing has, yet. Everyone’s trying to talk to everyone on the phone, and the system can’t handle that. Listen, girl.” Grandma waddled forward to cup Jakayla’s face. “We’re going to be just fine, you hear me? Don’t you worry. Just stay here. We’ll have everyone here together in the basement tonight.”
Jakayla nodded, wide-eyed.
“I love you. You be safe.” Grandma took a few deep breaths and planted a quick kiss on her forehead. A moment later, she was gone. The walls shuddered as the front door closed.
Jakayla whirled to face the closet again. “She don’t want me to worry, but I’m not worrying. Grandma wants to save all our family, and I’m trying to save you, too. Just ’cause you’re a monster don’t mean you don’t count.” She paused, head tilted with hope of an answer from her closet. “I can’t wait ’til night for you to talk. Just go to the basement, okay? If you get scared, bring Fluffinator the Stuffed Unicorn from the box right there. She always helps me feel braver.”
Jakayla hurried through the apartment. Grandma’d left on the TV. Jakayla would have gotten yelled at if she did that. A big red “BREAKING NEWS” banner filled the bottom of the screen. One woman talked in front of a big computer-made graphic of Earth with a lot of lines going all over and a whole bunch of colors, words everywhere like “projected impact zone” and “tsunami risk” along with countdown timers.
She knew all about tsunamis because her cousin had this one video game where a tsunami happened. Those scenes had scared her a lot until Grandma told her she shouldn’t worry because they couldn’t even see the water from their apartment.
“Plus, we’ll be in the basement,” Jakayla said to the TV. “Grandma said that’s the safest place to be. It don’t even leak like it used to.”
She rushed onward. Out the sliding door, their tiny backyard held a big pile of black garbage bags. Grandma’d said she’d throw out all Uncle Jerry’s belongings unless he paid what he owed in rent. This was as far as she’d thrown everything. Now weeds grew on some of the bags.
Jakayla nudged a sack with her foot. Further back in the pile, something rattled. “Hey, monster. I know you won’t come out or talk in daylight. You’re worse than the closet creature like that. But you can hear the television from here, right? You know what’s coming?”
She waited for a reply, because it was a polite thing to do. Somewhere nearby, sirens wailed and dogs howled like bad back-up singers.
“Here’s the thing,” she continued. “I know you got a good home in these bags, but you should come to the basement. I’ll be there with a bunch of people and the closet monster, too. There’s room for you.”
An odd clicking sound caused Jakayla to glance indoors. The living room was dark, the room quiet. “Oh. The power went out. No more TV.” Her voice suddenly sounded high-pitched. Scared. But she had to be brave so the monsters stayed calm. She took a few deep breaths, like Grandma did before she left.
“I need to go,” she told the pile of bags. “I want you to be okay. You live in Uncle Jerry’s trashed stuff, so you’re kinda like family.” A pop-pop-pop sound like fireworks carried from way off in the distance.
How soon until the rocks fell near here? She pictured the map from the news. The news lady had said something about her city being in a red zone. Red was Jakayla’s favorite color, but a red zone didn’t sound so good. That meant she needed to be fast, “lickity-split, zoom-zoom!” like the bird in her favorite cartoon. She had to go to the old church down the block to warn the gargoyles, then dash to the park on Howard Street to tell the shadow in the sewer pipe, then get home, all before Grandma got back.
She ran through the house. First of all, she had to visit the closet again. She hoped the monster there wouldn’t mind if she borrowed Fluffinator the Stuffed Unicorn. She needed her favorite unicorn with her as she warned her other friends about the awful things to come.
The basement would be crowded tonight, with lots of family and monsters, but that was okay. Grandma said they’d all be together. They’d make it through. In the end, that’s what mattered.
Author’s Note: I wrote this story as part of a Weekend Warrior flash writing contest on Codex. I don’t recall the exact prompts that inspired this story, but I really wanted to show a child’s compassion in the thick of a terrible crisis.
Nebula-nominated Beth Cato is the author of the Clockwork Dagger duology and the Blood of Earth Trilogy from Harper Voyager. She’s a Hanford, California native transplanted to the Arizona desert, where she lives with her husband, son, and requisite cats. Follow her at BethCato.com and on Twitter at @BethCato.
Pushing Daisies was a fantastical and whimsical murder mystery romance show that aired for 2 (both very short, the first one cut short by the writer’s strike) seasons between 2007 and 2009.
Ned (Lee Pace) is a piemaker, who lives a mostly quiet life, but who has a secret ability to reanimate the dead with a touch. If he touches any dead thing (plants, animals, humans, included), then it will come alive again no matter what condition it’s in. If he touches them again, they will be dead forever with no way to raise them again. If he leaves something alive for more than one minute, then some other alive thing in the near vicinity will die, something of a similar level of order of complexity (i.e. a small animal for a small animal, or a human for a human).
Ned didn’t know about this ability until his mother suddenly died when he was a child and he brought her back with a touch, and dead again when she touched him again. And he learned the other part of the rule that same day because his mother stayed alive again long enough to pay the consequence and the father of his best friend and neighbor Charlotte Charles (aka Chuck) (Anna Friel) died as a result, and she moved away to love with her aunts.
Ned has been working on the side to help private detective Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) solve murder cases. Ned’s abilities are very convenient for such a venture, because he can raise the murder victim and ask them some very quick questions before making them dead again, before there are consequences. But one such case (at the beginning of the series) is murdered tourist Charlotte Charles, and Ned doesn’t have the heart to lose her again, so he keeps her alive. They develop a romance, albeit an untraditional one since they can’t touch again on penalty of her death. She feels that she can’t tell her aunts Vivian and Lily (Ellen Greene and Swoosie Kurtz) that she’s alive. Ned feels he must keep his own secret from everyone except Emerson and Chuck, including his only employee, Olive (Kristin Chenoweth).
Despite the extremely dark premise, the show as a whole is relatively lighthearted in tone with odd and whimsical set and costume designs and clever dialog, and much of the show being centered around the awkward romance, and around the banter between Cod and the others. The premise is contrived, but if you overlook that and just look at how it’s used to structure the show, it’s a fun mystery to watch.
The second season, you could tell that the writers were working under threat of cancellation because the arcs are kindof muddied, longer arcs building and then suddenly resolving without much fanfare, and then shorter arcs without much sign of new larger arcs until the end when there’s a hasty wrapup. All in all, I think they did a pretty good job wrapping everything up with how this sort of thing all goes. The whole two seasons is only about the length of a normal season of a show, so it’s not a huge time commitment, but it is a lot of fun to watch.
