Space Fighter: Mercenary

Less than three full months after the release of the original, DarkMage has a sequel here in which the main credit goes solely to him. Three months might not be a lot of time, but this does line up quite nicely with Summer vacation, the perfect time for any young ZZTer to create their masterpiece. I hadn't originally intended to cover both games in one article, but the first one felt short enough after playing it that I worried it just wouldn't be enough on its own.

As a sequel to a mediocre game with some potential, I'd say that DarkMage is in a good position. The original Space Fighter: Mercenary doesn't seem to have had a significant impact on the ZZT scene, so no need to fear not living up to expectations. Nivek is dropped from the main credits (he will be thanked in the end credits for his work and ideas on the first game), so DarkMage is free to make the game entirely to his own vision. There are clear paths forward for how to improve upon the previous game. Polish both the weak story and the weak gameplay and there's no reason the sequel can't be something quite solid.

The new title screen opens to a promising start. The twinkling stars are a backdrop to an introductory text sequence that seem to hint at a richer story in this one.

It's not much, but it's just the title screen after all. For anybody who's played the original this makes it clear that the sequel is a direct continuation of the first game. For a newcomer it gets them up to speed immediately. The war gets immediate focus, giving me some hope that we'll end this one with an actual understanding of the conflict between the two groups.

Before you can even get a good look at the starting board you're immediately bombarded with numerous popups to help establish the scene and remind you of the game you're playing. Rodite is back and he's still smuggling goods to rebels on Leber. Our boy Rich-Ul has survived the empire's attack on his base, and seems to have been providing steady work for Rodite.

Space Station Crimson2TX

Immediately I found myself getting hopeful. I think there are more people on this board than there are non-hostile characters in the entire first game. The graphics are still a little bland keeping the metallic grays of the original, but the shading providing depth to the walls makes for an already nicer looking world than before. (Not counting, of course, the few art boards.)

While it's still a much more populated world, and you can run around and look at the various beds, dressers, and electronics, DarkMage quickly calms the player's excitement once you realize that every person in each room has identical lines. Upon entering the "research department" you'll find nothing more than a few men who love neato computers. Same.

In the hallway we're introduced to a new character, Commander Levine who is sympathetic to the rebels on Leber and willing to let Rodite use his space station as a safe place to stop while Rodite continues his weapons smuggling. Things seem positive once again with "Rodite's" stolen ship being worked on. This is looking like a nice in-universe way to let the player know that the flying sections of the previous game are being overhauled.

Well hey, that's not the stolen ship. That actually is Rodite's. Now I'm imagining an awkward return to Ekul to return the stolen ship and take back the one that actually belongs to Rodite.

Visuals are still predominantly gray, but continue to look more detailed than the first game. The ship design has been cleaned up a little with more shading for the cockpit and plenty more little objects to add some of those greebles you hear so much about these days.

With some fresh illicit goods loaded on-board, Rodite opens the bay doors and takes off! Of course, it won't be long until he runs into trouble once more.

Return To Leber

This interstitial scene does demonstrate the numerous ways this game really does improve on its predecessor. A scrolling star-field effect combined with twin afterburners do a much better job of communicating flying through space.

At first glance the board seems to be little more than a cut-scene that breaks convention a little by putting the player right in the middle of things, but there's a bit more to it than that. The player can interact with the ship's computer, getting an ETA on their arrival time (ten minutes), the ability to read the ship's statistics, perform a short range scan, or check the ship for any damaged components. Most of this is just fluff, but it's presented in a way far more natural than the first game.

It also functions as a puzzle almost? The scene has a timer running in the background before Rodite's ship is attacked. Before the ship is attacked Rodite has a chance to scan for damage and realize that his chain cannon is malfunctioning. The damage can be automatically repaired once the order is given, but if you're not actually playing with all your options there's potential to not notice and have to do without the advanced weaponry. Admittedly, the coding on this isn't quite as tight as it should be. Even when you're being fired upon you can still repair the gun, and while you can watch your hull slowly change from solid, to normal, to breakable in appearance, there's no way to actually die or even lose health here. The danger is merely just pretend.

And there it is. The big reveal that the space combat is exactly the same.

Every issue with the engine carries forward. The controls are still running at cycle three making afterburners useless. The shields still require a free space to function. The only real change is that the engine controls have been moved to a corner rather than taking up entire rows of the board giving the player more room to fly around and DarkMage more room to place ships.

Despite a flag being set when you repair the chain cannon on the previous board, the engine never checks for it, so it works regardless and renders the entire sequence moot.

But hey, I just got done saying that I could forgive the engine being shallow if the story were improved, and so far things are looking up in that regard. There's no need to despair just yet.

While the code problems remain, the design is improved a little bit. DarkMage is definitely more willing to not make the player shoot out all the weapons before exposing the ship's core. This really does make it so just flying away from the cannons is enough to be safe from everything other than crashing, but it does mean these lesser parts of the game do go by more quickly at least.

And the actual destruction of a ship is a bit more glamorous as well. No longer does a defeated vessel simply blink out of existence. Space Fighter 2 instead uses a simple fade to red before fading to black as a crude explosion effect. Again, nothing jaw-dropping or anything, but still a clear improvement.

A little bit of mid-combat dialog helps give the game some much needed personality as well. The first game did have a few transmissions like this, though they rarely offered up anything more than "shoot the asteroids" or "chain cannon broke. have a nice day". Rodite shows more personality here than ever before, finally settling into the cocksure ace pilot role who can beat the odds and take out entire warships with his small craft. Now it actually hits home that Rodite is racking up a body count here taking out these massive ships. The empire is not going to be happy with this.

Luckily for the empire, they have plenty of these ships. For the player this basically means repeating the previous fight. The only change is one single extra blue ship that attacks by throwing stars. I genuinely don't understand what purpose they're meant to serve other than making the player feel smug that for once stars are ineffective.

The docking sequences have thankfully been cut as well. You do still get a board showing Leber from space, now in traditional art-board form with the player trapped in a little box with a passage to move to. Leber has had its artwork cleaned up slightly. This board is very much directly exported from the first Space Fighter, imported, and given some revised shading. Once again it's an improvement that's nothing too major. The actual background remains that same, though I do quite like the shading on the pink moon.

It's unclear how much time has passed between the two games. Leber's rebel base is looking a lot better than when Rodite left it in the first game. There's still a bit of a mess to be sure.

Yo. That's a plot beat. Something is actually happening in this war with plans to turn things back on the empire by trapping them inside the base whose location has been compromised.

Despite the numerous occupants in the base, Rodite can't talk with anybody other than Rich-Ul, making the interactivity here actually worse than the canned phrases of the game's space station beginnings.

Upon exiting the base this time, there's a small squad of rebels with Rodite in charge! I guess he did find himself getting a little personally invested in this war.

Marching down the path the rebels meet up with enemy forces as expected. They don't retreat into the base as part of the deception, opting to instead go out guns blazing. This is a pretty silly scene since Rodite and the enemy general can just kind of hang out while the grunts do the actual shooting. The fight here is all just random moving and shooting with the rebels being at a disadvantage just due to their fewer numbers.

Though even with the odds against them I wound up in this great situation where both armies were reduced to just one soldier. A Pyrrhic victory for sure.

In order to actually advance though, all the blue soldiers have to be killed so Rodite had to clean up the last one. Strangely the enemy general "Commander Levi" only attacks if you touch him, causing him to yell about how the empire can't be stopped before he begins to attack as well. Levi can't be killed here and is best left alone.

What follows is a great animation of the soldiers rushing into the base, being surprised to find it empty, and then suddenly all of them being immediately killed in an explosion. There's a little "!" of surprise and everything. Followed by some nasty white flashing as an explosion goes off, which dissuaded me from actually recording the scene.

The hidden base is very much compromised but still very much going to keep being used. This room is looking a lot more livable than what's been seen of the base previously with some bunks, tables, and most importantly some people hanging around.

The only thing the player gets to do here is talk with Rich-Ul who thanks Rodite for the help and suggests he he gets out while it's still safe to do so. After the elaborate escape from the first time, this seems like good advice.

In addition to the advice, there's an unmentioned reward here of health, ammo, shields, and credits. After the structure of the first game, actually being provided the resources you need is a big improvement in playability.

Rodite is safely and immediately returned to the space station he's been staying at upon leaving the rebel base. The commander suggests getting some rest which is pretty much all the player can do.

The only exception to this is the one person who was sleeping before is now awake and quizzing people about Tool albums. Answering correctly gives the player an extra 500 of every resource, something that would completely change the experience of the first game. Here though DarkMage is a lot more aware of what the player's numbers are going to look like, so it's okay to answer incorrectly. For those of you, like me, who are just guessing, the answer is indeed "Ænima".

Going to sleep leads to another cinematic where a massive ship descends upon the space station and begins an attack. The empire has found Rodite and doesn't care who gets in their way, especially not rebel-sympathetic researchers knowingly offering room and board to an arms smuggler.

The station is under pretty heavy fire. Rodite awakens to the carnage while commander Levine is rushing everybody out. There are a few confirmed casualties already, including the Tool guy. Rip to a real one.

Last time Rodite was content to run away, but it's clear that the empire will be relentless in chasing him down and hardly cares if anybody happens to get caught in their attacks.

Racing to his ship Rodite jumps in and begins yet again to fight against all odds against numerous massive ships. The ship designs do look nice, but the gameplay is as stagnant as ever. The second ship at least does have some smaller ones to give you something to actually do beyond steering to the core and opening fire. It's still not very fun to play though.

The final ship is absolutely massive compared to the others, not even fitting on screen. This is our Death Star moment.

Rich-Ul sends a message, a tad too late to be helpful. Rodite is committed to ending this once and for all which is done by yet again lining up with the core and shooting until you're victorious. The other ships try to make things more tense, but without any real possible way to track the player's ship they're as safe to ignore as ever.

The fireworks are nice at least. Rodite's ship is too small to even be seen at this scale, making the warship seem truly gargantuan.

Rodite definitely seems more on board with the rebels this time, but it's still not clear if he actually considers himself to be a part of the rebellion or just somebody who's getting steady work from them.

Either way, the rebels are pretty pleased at the destruction of the empire's ultimate weapon. Apparently this thing being destroyed is an instant win for the rebels and defeat for the empire. (Provided of course that the empire doesn't strike back in another sequel.) Whether he intended to be one or not, Rodite is indeed a hero to the rebellion.

As a nice touch, DarkMage actually gives you a choice of how the game should end. Rodite can be the hero of the rebellion and stay on Leber or he can opt for being the mercenary the title screen says he is and peace out for some yet again needed vacation time.

The differences only amount to a little bit of text and two different art boards. The latter revisits the original game's ending and does a really nice job improving the graphics on it. Without a credit to Nivek, this has to be a DarkMage art board and I'm impressed with it enough that I prefer it over the other ending just for the artwork.

The credits are pretty short here, but I am glad to see that Nivek is still credited here. It wouldn't sit right with me if the same exact engine was being used with his name on it.

Final Thoughts

And that's the Space Fighter: Mercenary series. Credit where it's due, the sequel feels a lot more cohesive. We still don't know anything about the empire other than that it's bad, but the rebel side of things is a lot more defined. They make plans and execute them. They seem like more of a threat to the empire now, actually managing to one-up them with their trap to lure them into the old base. Rodite being able to stay on space station Crimson implies that there's sympathy for the group and those willing to quietly help out. There's evidence of the conflict beyond the narrator simply saying that rebels are fighting an empire.

The story is still a very basic one in an era when stories told in ZZT were doing their best to become more complicated and serious. This is a story that's still a lot more bare bones than say Rhygar 2 which was released the following month, but the expectations for an RPG are a lot higher than for a space shooter. It's only noteworthy because of the fact that the first game was so incredibly sparse on its story and because both games suffer from the space combat that's meant to be the main draw of the game actually being its weakest component.

The sequel definitely looks nicer. I do like the designs of the various ships you fight, and the fine-tuning of graphics on reused boards like the moons of Ekul do make this one feel like there's more effort than the original. The ending art on the beach is a great scene as well. While on average the sequel is definitely nicer looking from start to finish, the original game's transportal swirl remains the most iconic imagery in the series. I appreciate DarkMage's ability to draw a person in something other than a front-facing or profile view, but it is a bit strange for the best art in this sci-fi game to be a beach scene that could just as easily have been in a game taking place in present day.

The gameplay is still a mess. Playing these games back to back definitely made it harder to appreciate the sequel's small changes. You do get the benefit of not having to worry about ammo in the sequel, though in fairness, if you actually spend all your money at the start of the first game you won't have ammo problems there either. Handing out supplies at fixed points makes it a lot easier to balance at least, eliminating the worry for overly-cautious players like myself saving money in case it's required later on. With no shops in Space Fighter: Mercenary 2 at all, your score is indeed just that with the only time the player receives any being on Ekul.

Fights have shifted away from hitting tiny moving targets to going after static larger ones, which in the current state of the engine is for the best. It's an improvement, but not the improvement the game needed. The change doesn't make the space fighting any more fun, just faster. Fixing the controls being cycle three would be an easy payoff to improve on the original, but even then this kind of game is difficult to really work with ZZT's inability to have objects track other objects in any way. You can't really pull off what these games want to do, but I do think you can dress up the other areas of the game and create a space shooter that's a fun experience even if the actual combat has to be fairly basic. DarkMage definitely pushes the sequel in the right direction here, and I think had this been the first game I'd look at the experience more favorably overall. Going into this immediately after dealing with the combat issues of the first game and seeing the engine remain unchanged sapped my interest quicker than it would have had this been my introduction to the engine.

Overall, I wouldn't really recommend the entire series. The sequel is good enough, definitely something that can be enjoyed without playing the original, but it's still nothing so amazing as to be a lost classic or anything. If you played a lot of ZZT shooters years ago, you might be able to enjoy the nostalgia here, but otherwise more contemporary titles like Metal Saviour Bia and 587 Squadron utilize this style of gameplay while making it more attractive to a modern audience through detailed writing, and fancier presentation compared to the vast emptiness of space seen here. Space Fighter: Mercenary and its sequel are trying to a little more with the basic shooter formula, but they haven't quite perfected it just yet, leaving you with two games that have the right idea, but don't manage on the execution.

Secret Art Boards

Psst, the second game also has a handful of unrelated art boards tacked on to the end of the file. If you get a kick out of the Tool and NIN references, take a minute to flip through them as well!