Illegus Episode IV was developed and published by the ASCII Corporation in 1983 for the MSX. This is the second game that I’ve played on this system; the first being Warrior. The huge difference between these two games however is that while Warrior is a clear role-playing game, Illegus is a first person shooter.
I am not clear how or why Illegus made it’s way on to my list of role-playing games but it is very clearly NOT a role-playing game. I suspect that I acquired the title of the game from the dungeoncrawler website. It DOES sport excellent 3d maze movement but that’s about all. It is a first person shooter and NOT a role-playing game.
The premise of the game is quite simple. You make your way through a series of mazes or labyrinths on the planet Al-Mazar in an effort to find the way out. Hunting you within the maze are killer robots that are easily dispatched by pressing the space bar to fire upon them. There are also pits in some of the mazes that you have to jump over. This is a very awkward feat as you have to press the forward key and then the backward key in order to jump over the pit and it doesn’t always work.
My understanding is that there are 10 such labyrinths on the planet for you to work through. I could find no documentation on the game anywhere even from it’s japanese version.
There are items that you can find that are randomly dispersed throughout the maze. You may find night vision goggles that will let you see in the infrared spectrum when darkness falls. The game has a very impressive graphical sequence when the daylight gives way to night. You can see the darkness descending from the horizon and then very soon the entire maze becomes dark making movement virtually impossible without your night vision goggles.
You can also find gold, food, and water in the maze. These items appear to be window dressing as they do not seem to affect the stamina or gameplay in any way.
The game also has a sound mechanic or a hum that gets progressively faster and louder as the killer robots get closer and closer to you. It is reminiscent of Dungeons of Daggorath and Cloudy Mountain which make use of sound while in a dungeon or maze.
What CRPG enthusiasts might appreciate about Illegus Episode IV is another opportunity to do some graphing by hand. It was really the only pleasure for me with this one and with the lack of any fantasy or role-playing element I am going to elect not to continue. I probably have three hours into the game and I’ve mapped out the first three levels by hand and have progressed through them. The prospect of spending another 5-10 hours however on the other 7 levels with so many GENUINE role-playing games ahead of me makes this an easy decision. I spent enough time with the game and completed enough of it that I decided to do a write-up on it even though it really doesn’t belong in any role-playing category. If you can’t find enough grid-based maze games to map by hand well here is another one for you.
Here are the first three levels mapped out for your viewing pleasure:
This is another very obscure title and thus I was glad to spend some time with the game and to be able to cover it for you. It is a very fine and early example of a FPS (first person shooter) moving smoothly through a maze environment. The graphical rendering of day becoming night within the maze deserves honorable mention as well as the use of sound in the game to warn of an approaching enemy.
I think I’m justified in moving on and I felt I went above and beyond the scope of my mission here.
Next up on the docket is Gateway to Apshai.
Until next time…