Battlantis (Arcade, PC, XBox 360, Konami, 1987)

[Randorama]

Battlantis is a single-screen Konami (ro)TATE shmup that combines the core ideas from Space Invaderswith quite a few innovations. The game is now obscure enough, even though it was ported to XBOX 360 and PC in 2010. Konami released several versions of this game (e.g. versions E, F, G, J(a)P(an), International), which differ in order of stages and on enemies’ placement and attacks. The international version is also a bit harder than the other versions, since enemies shoot slightly faster bullets. For those readers who want a dash of personal experiences, the squib version of this review is here; this version is 2350 words long, or 5.5 pages in times new roman, size 12, single space, just in case. Let us make haste, anyway:

Battlantis (Konami, 1987) is a single screen shmup in which the young king of Atlantis, Cripeus III, must defeat the evil demon king Asmodeus. Battlantis combines all the basic elements of Taito’s Space Invaders with an Heroic Fantasy setting, an atmospheric OST, and a fast if remarkably difficult game experience. The level design is intricate enough that players must develop precise killing strategies to clear stage. Thus, the game also displays the typical puzzle-like challenges of many 1980s arcade games, and an often frustrating but seldom boring tight challenge to players. The game is also one of the earliest shmups featuring a loop with harder stages and a considerably higher difficulty. The Shmups difficulty wiki considers this a game for master players, at an hefty 34/50 points difficulty. My goal in this review is to convince my readers that the game is excellent, so you should try it difficult challenge notwithstanding.

Battlantis is part of an historical arcade gaming context in which the influence of Heroic Fantasy and of authors like Robert E. Howard entered videogame design. In the same year, Capcom’s Black Tiger, Taito’s Rastan and Sega/Westone’s Wonder Boy in Monster Land appeared. Namco previously released other fantasy-themed games (e.g. Dragon Buster) and would release the shmup Phelios in 1988. Battlantis is thus part of this wider aesthetic and thematic movement of the second half of the 1980s, with Konami’s title being one of the few shmups with fantasy-based themes. At the same time, it is part of a lineage of Konami TATE shmups (e.g. A-Jax) that may not be as famous as their HORI(zontal) counterparts (e.g. Salamander). At the same time, the game acts as an heir to Konami’s single screen classics such as Gyruss and Juno First. It is thus a quite unique game, from an historical perspective.

The plot may sound like Konami wanted to pilfer Howard’s King Kull stories, given the Atlantis setting. The valiant king Cripeus III must defend the beautiful kingdom of Atlantis from the great demon Asmodeus and his underlings/enemies. Armed with a powerful arbalest, he wages a defensive war to avoid that the demi-humans invade his kingdom. Cripeus III moves from one rampart of the immense walled city to another rampart, and slaughters Asmodeus’ armies with relentless precision and violence. Asmodeus decides that he will take matters on his own claws after his three monstrous generals fail him. The final battle between the two kings ensues, to determine which kingdom will survive. No, I do not know if Hayao Isayama of Attack on Titan took inspiration from this game for the giant walled cities in his manga. Asmodeus, however, seems to be the twin of Gava from Konami’s Super Contra.

With this background knowledge in place, we can talk about the game’s basic mechanics. The joystick controls Cripeus III’s movement to the left and to the right. Cripeus always moves along the border of a rampart, so players do not need to use the other directions. The A button controls the shots from the arbalester, which follow a common rule of single screen shmups: only one bullet can be on screen, under normal conditions. Players can also use the B button if this button is active, but the rule regarding bullets remains active. Ramparts have defensive bastions behind which Cripeus can hide from bullets, but those will crumble once enough enemies’ bullets hit them. Demi-human invaders can climb the walls and immediately erase a bastion if they touch it. Furthermore, Cripeus dies if an enemy touches him after invading the ramparts, or if any bullet strikes the young king.

The game awards several power-ups when Cripeus can hit an enemy’s carriage moving in the back lines of the enemies’ formations. Power-ups include a dual shot (i.e. two bullets can be on the screen at once), a side-shooting arbalester (i.e. Cripeus can shoot invading enemies on his flanks), and a few others. Extends are at 20k, 70k points and then every 70k points. Most enemies slowly move towards the ramparts with the goal of climbing them and killing Cripeus via the classic Space Invaders-style zig-zag patterns. However, some enemies also follow other patterns and may simply run against the ramparts to invade Atlantis via a potentially kamikaze attack. Some stages have flying enemies and other creatures that move in more creative patterns. Thus, Cripeus and with him the players must land shots with ruthless precision, especially when enemies have 2 or more H(it)P(point)s.

The stage design/layout aspects exploit these mechanics in often complex manners and strongly affect the game’s overall non-trivial difficulty. First, however, I want to sketch the basic aspects or Facets of game to getter a better conceptual footing, and by using our by now standard term. The game has two loops of 16 Stages each. Each Stage takes place in one of many Atlantis’ districts under siege, such as the ramparts below the main cathedral (Stage 14), or near the Vulcanic outskirts (Stage eight). Each Stage has a first phase in which Cripeus must kill each enemy as soon as possible, and possibly a second phase with enemies attacking in free-form patterns. In the final phase, one enemy type appears as a Stage boss, with a bigger sprite and a shield. Stages two, six, 11 and 16 feature battles against the three generals and then demon king Asmodeus.

The game’s 32 stages follow a regular structure, but the loop stages offer a considerably higher challenge. Let us however spend a few words on the visual and musical Facets, before we address these matters. The game has a highly distinctive Heroic Fantasy setting, even though it runs on older Konami hardware that poses certain (minor) limits to the quality of the graphics. Enemies come in several colourful and detailed varieties, even if the basic templates are three: enemies walking with(out) a shield, running enemies, and flying enemies. Walking enemies’ animations are rather simple, but running and flying enemies offer more detail. Enemies’ pixel art quite detailed especially when enemies appear as larger sprites (boss form or when walking on ramparts). The game implements minimal scaling and rotating effects that embellish the bosses’ and generals’ animations, and more in general it pushes the underlying hardware to considerable efforts.

The game’s design creates a particularly vibrant and evocative atmosphere. The 32 stages take places around Atlantis: intuitively, the city has the roughly circular shape that players can glean in the title screen. Cripeus thus seems to move on the ramparts defining the city’s borders and walls, with dramatically different environments lying outside these walls. In some Stages (Stage six, 22 in the International version), Cripeus seems to simply face a sea of clouds hovering some deep chasm, and from which flying enemies appear. In other stages (e.g. Stage eight), the outside lands are full of lava lakes and vulcanoes. Cripeus is designed as a powerful warrior in the vein of Frazetta or Vallejo warriors. Enemies are bulky creatures straight of a Game Workshop’s WarHammer expansion, and the four main bosses are huge and well-animated. The game exudes its Heroic Fantasy appearance in a bombastic manner.

The OST provides an equally intense experience, even if it has a peculiar design aspect. The game has four themes, one per “Act”, intended as sequence of Stages between fights with the generals. The four themes open with two distinct introductory motives: a fanfare for “Act I” and “Act III” and fast-paced theme for “Act II” and Act “IV”. Each theme then proceeds with a distinct intermediate motive: after 50 seconds or so, the ending coda of the motive will loop. Players should clear Stages quickly, so the opening themes signal when most of the kills should happen. The intermediate themes may correspond to the appearance of free-form enemies, and the looping codas cover the quick boss battles. Bosses have their own dramatic, longer, and more intense themes, as befits boss battles in Konami games. Players can thus use the themes as pacing cues in their slaughtering of demi-human invaders.

The OST’s style is perhaps the campiest, zaniest, and coolest aspect of the game. The opening motif for the Act I and III themes attempts at creating the sound of a melody-rich fanfare that might appear in a traditional fantasy movie. The opening motif for Acts II and IV sounds like standard action movie theme from the 1980s, and so do the boss themes for the three generals. King Asmodeus’ fight comes with a theme that could vaguely remind players of organ-based music. What is campy and zany about these themes is that the Konami musicians used the trademark high pitch synthetisers that appear in most of Konami’s 1980s games (e.g. Contra). Thus, the OST sounds like a chiptune version of a probably solid “orchestral fantasy” score, and therefore a glorious arcade experience. Battlantis sounds and looks “1980s Fantasy” to fantastic levels, and revels in its own camp style shamelessly.

Now that we have a good understanding of this game’s smirk-inducing audiovisuals straight out of a Manowar album, we can dissect its difficulty in detail. I believe that, as in the case of Surprise Attack, the basic game mechanics and level design/layout do not provide significant sources of difficulty. It is the way designers combined the two Facets and created Stages with a strong puzzle-like component that provides the core challenge, in my view. I thus suggest that the two basic Facets provide each 10 points out of the 50 total, and the remaining 30 come from their combination into a third Facet of difficulty. I also anticipate matters and suggest that the final score I propose for this game is 30/50 difficulty points, i.e. a top-tier challenge for expert level players. The reason I provide this score, which is slightly lower than the wiki’s score, works as follows.

Players should find a certain challenge in mastering Cripeus’ limited fire rate: Space Invaders-style limitations may require some time, before players master them. Power-ups are another Facet that players must handle with care. For instance, the side-shot power-up allows Cripeus to kill enemies that reach the ramparts, but the side shots are nevertheless slow. More in general, power-ups can considerably help players in clearing stages, but players must learn how to use them wisely. I thus award 2/10 difficulty points to these Facets. The two stage design Facets that I then consider as providing a source of difficulty are the use of bastions and the killing of climbing enemies. Players may decide to destroy bastions on some stages because they can be in the way for slaughtering enemies, but can also absorb bullets. Cripeus can also shoot enemies while they are climbing but not on the ramparts, as last-defence attacks.

These mechanics work in the same way irrespective of the Stages, and thus I include them in the second Facet. For this reason, too, I assign a 2/10 total difficulty points to this Facet. At 4/20 difficulty points, it seems like the basic Facets of this game do not provide a massive challenge. The Stages, as we mentioned in the previous passages of this review provide considerable challenges in their puzzle-like structure. Each stage has a precise enemy layout, and Cripeus is a slow shooter. Furthermore, in most stages there will be running and even flying enemies mixing with the hordes of approaching enemies, and possibly free-form phases. Bosses, then, require specific killing techniques, with bosses from latter stages providing harder challenges than the generals’ challenges. Power-ups can help Cripeus, but they may often be hard to get: Players must count on their own solutions to each Stage.

I thus propose that the Facet corresponding to the combination of mechanics and design is worth 26/30 difficulty points. Every Stage after Stage three requires a carefully designed solution to the puzzle it provide, i.e. 30 Stages out of 32 require mastering. Bosses in the loop stages do not however provide a considerably more difficult challenge, and so “only” 26 Stages require careful practice from players. I propose a total of 26/30 difficulty points for this Facet, and therefore the aforementioned total of 30/50 points. The International version of the game has a slightly different order of Stages that can increase the difficulty by two or three points, perhaps raising the total to 32 or 33/50 points. My evaluation may be excessively hinging on one Facet of the game, but I believe that the point remains. Battlantis is a tough game, as players must master each Stage and its “solution(s)”.

By means of a conclusion, Battlantis is single screen shmup in which the king of Atlantis, Cripeus III, must slaughter the invading armies of Demon King Asmodeus. The game plays like a more elaborate version of Space Invaders in a Heroic Fantasy setting, and has a gloriously camp OST. It is possibly one of the hardest single screen/proto-shmups in the genre, as most Stages require careful, puzzle-like planning for players to overcome them. If players are willing to challenge themselves with this approach to shmup action, however, they will find an carefully designed shmup with a steep but constant difficulty progression. They will therefore enjoy a glorious and shamelessly camp interpretation of the genre and of a heroic fantasy setting in arcade games. Wear your best NWBHM t-shirt, let your long perm hair and mullet explode, and enjoy one of Konami’s finest and most obscure gems.