Games section

7. Review: Moonbases

Also Moonbases had some problems: E.g. the publisher Verkosoft did no longer want to publish the game, after it was completed. So Moonbases was put on ice for some months, until Alive Mediasoft agreed to publish it. So finally I found it in my letter box, directly sent from England. The first surprise was, when I opened the CD case: Moonbases is shipped on a CD-R. There is a lablel sticked on the CD-ROM, but this has been made with an ink-jet printer. This looks quite amateurlike, but let's find out, how the game itself is. The story of the game is printed in English on the back of the CD case, even if the game supports English and German. It is not in the manual on the CD-ROM, either.

The story is about two companies, Sigma Corporation and Omicron Incorporated. Both companies rob the moon, in a way: They mine minerals and other things and transport them to the Earth. And how else should it be, that both companies get into the way of the other. The user can choose, which company he wants to play. In either case he has to ensure the future of his company by winning against the other company with own weapons and strategic plans.

After opening the CD-ROM on the Workbench some users might be a bit confused. There are 9 different startup possibilities for Moonbases: Moonbases Standard, Moonbases Serial, Moonbases RTG, Moonbases Prefs Standard, Moonbases Prefs Serial, Moonbases Prefs RTG, MapEditor, Moonbases Serial RTG and an uninstaller for Moonbases, that just deletes some environment variables in ENV: resp. ENVARC:. Moonbases does not need an installation on the hard drive, it runs also from the CD-ROM. An installer is also not present, even if there is mentioned '10 MB HD space' on the back of the CD case. So, then just start the Standard version (AGA) and up it goes! Well, the game is in English, so quit again and set 'Deutsch' in the Prefs program and then click on 'Save', but the disk is write protected. Ah, so just copy it completely to the hard disk (just drag & drop, because there is no installer present). Now, the saving works and the game is partially in German.

After the start you find yourself in the main menu, where you can load an old game or start a new one. Now you get explained your mission: 'Fights cannot be avoided', you are told. Well, approx. 10 seconds after starting the game you are under fire of the opponents. Totally surprised you start clicking on the buttons of the tool bar, to find a method to shoot back. But if you found out, the main base has been destroyed. So, give it another try! But the opponent acts quite agressive on the slightes motion and shoots as much as possible. The defence is not easy, even in the first mission. Due to the a bit hard controls, it is even more difficult. But Moonbases seems to be a quite good game, that could have better graphics.

Conclusion: If you read the features of Moonbases on the back you should get it at once: There they talk about great mucic and voice output as well as about raytraced ingame graphics. The only music I heard was a little tune in the main menu. The voice output seems to be limited to the motion of a vehicle (north, west, east...) and is in English, only. Only the vehicles and stations are raytraced, but not all the graphics. The graphics don't make you fall over backwards, but they are not the lowest level. But the Terrain graphics could be better. The controls are quite confusing. But Moonbases offers a 2 player mode via null modem cable or modem. Graphics boards are also supported, but it is questionable, if there are any 256 colours graphics in the game. It looks more like ECS. The evaluation: