Developer: Telesys
Publisher: Telesys
Release Date: 1983
Telesys pivoted very quickly from their original strategy of doing uniquely funny games. That's not necessarily a bad thing considering the quality of their first three. Instead, they decided to go with the strategy of so many third-party publishers and just copy an already popular arcade game. The game in question is Amidar. Although not as remembered as some of the other arcade greats, Amidar was one of Konami's most popular and influential early games. It's a Pac-Man influenced game that has the player moving around a grid while collecting dots and filling in squares. It's an addictive game that launched its own subgenre of grid capture games. Pepper II for Colecovision is an excellent example. Atari 2600 saw several variations on the grid capture formula including an official version of Amidar released by Parker Brothers in November of 1982. MobyGames has the release date for Demolition Herby as February of 1983. That certainly sounds like they were trying to cash in on a trend. Thankfully Demolition Herby isn't an exact clone. It makes some changes to the formula which are both positive and negative. At least it keeps up with the Telesys trend of having a funny title, and Don Ruffcorn even used his full name. That's already two points in its favor. Well, metaphorical points anyway. I am not going to start doing a point system for these reviews.
The biggest difference between Demolition Herby and Amidar is the speed. Amidar is surprisingly slow even in its arcade incarnation. It's a game more about careful planning than twitchy reflexes. Demolition Herby ramps up the speed to an almost frantic pace. The dots are gone making Demolition Herby much more about escaping from danger. You play as the titular Herby being chased by other cars on a perfectly rectangular grid. The goal is to fill in rectangular sections of the grid by driving over all four sides. There are no power-ups to fight off enemies with, but holding down the button will make Herby move even faster. The catch is that turbo mode won't fill in squares and fuel drains faster. If you run out of fuel, you lose a life. The only way to regain fuel is to fill in grid sections. You get a bigger bonus if you fill in two squares at once, and this is basically the whole goal of the game. I appreciate the extra speed, but there is a problem with the design.
Demolition Herby is fast, but this necessitates a somewhat tedious design. Usually, grid capture games will have more varied and interesting maps. Amidar features rectangles of all different sizes and multiple screens. The more varied gameplay helps keep things from geting boring. Demolition Herby features the same shapes set up in the same way forever. This caused me to play every section of every level in basically the same way. Sure, there are enemies to avoid, but they feel more like nuisances than challenges. You can't really do much with them, just speed away. I wish there was some sort of powerup that allowed me to attack the enemies. The games needs about 50% more demolition and 50% less Herby. Alright, so maybe I don't actually have a problem with the amount of Herby. I just want some more variety.
I know that all the Telesys games have been inspired by other games so far, but Demolition Herby is the one that can't hide behind quirky originality. Cosmic Creeps stood out as an original game despite it being mostly a Space Invaders clone. Demolition Herby is a better game than Cosmic Creeps, but the inevitable comparisons to Amidar make the flaws really stand out. I had some fun playing Demolition Herby, but it was a fun that didn't last very long, and I don't think this is a game I am going to take out and play very often when I get the urge to play Atari. Honestly, I liked Fast Food just a little bit better because it was so distinct and had fun graphics. It's that classic battle of burgers vs rectangles. It comes up a lot, but burgers win every time. In this case it's more of a moral victory since they're both stuck in the purple section. They're a couple of middling games coming in at 107 and 108 overall. I can't say what people were doing on Saturday afternoons in 1983 because I wasn't born yet, but I bet there were better things to do than play Demolition Herby.
Atari Quality Percentage: 9/23 or 39.13%
