Last Days of Atlantis

Last Days of Atlantis is a remake of Imagic's game Atlantis, which came out for multiple platforms, including the Atari 2600, the Atari 8-bit home computer systems, the VIC-20, and the Intellivision. It is one of Tangent's favourite games of the post-Vista era.

In Last Days of Atlantis, or "Atlantis" for short, the player takes control of a crosshair and fires defensive cannons from Atlantis up to the invading alien Gorgon fleet. The game is based primarily on the Atari 2600 and Intellivision ports, with sound effects and graphical influences from the Atari 8-bit PCS version.

The game was originally planned to be a Missile Command remake, thus it influenced the final product in a few ways (the intervals at which extra lives are earned and the presence of the crosshair).

Official description
I had been working on a remake of Atlantis which is based primarily on the Atari 2600 and Intellivision versions. Yeah it’s gonna be a mix of the 2 plus some new features added in. I also took inspiration from the Atari 8-bit personal computer system version.

Download the manual here (preview has issues but is still readable): https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9aBX97zgGJ0TXdMcXJybmRWaFU

Difficulty options: A few words about the game. Atlantis was one of the first games I wanted to remake but I dropped the project due to lack of motivation (it was gonna be in a package with a Missile Command and Exed Exes remake, though that one was solely based on the 2600 version). This one here is completely redone cause I no longer have the files for my old version (other than the screenshot below), graphics or the game, though I tried to imitate the original style I had, with some improvements.
 * Easy: Slowest enemies, Bandits don’t appear during the first night and destroy other ships when shot
 * Normal: Normal speed enemies, Bandits don’t appear during the first night
 * Hard: Faster enemies, Bandits appear in the first night
 * Contest: Fastest enemies, Bandits appear during the first night and destroy other ships when shot. Also different font and scoring.

There are things I wasn’t terribly happy about but with the direction I’m taking it, I feel I’ve done the best I could without ruining the game or having to do a completely do-over which would probably cause me to lose motivation for finishing this game entirely (long story on that), so I wanted to do the smaller fixes and push this game along to be released.

Gameplay
Main article: Official manual for Last Days of Atlantis Using the cursor, the player controls the crosshair which may move to anywhere in the game, though cannons may only fire inside the firing area shown on the right. The cannons will not fire if the cursor is outside of the firing area or if there are already 2 shots on the screen.

Gorgon ships enter the screen from the top and fly horizontally across the screen before dropping down 1 row if they make it to the opposite side. If they make it to the bottommost row (the 4th row), they will unleash their death ray and demolish the first settlement that it comes across. The player needs to defend 7 settlements, which include the 3 generators, the Aqua Plain, the Domed Palance, the Bridged Bazaar, and the Bubble that the saucer resides in.

There are 4 types of enemies, each behaving differently. This is detailed in the manual.

At any point during the game, provided that the saucer has fuel, the player may activate the Sentinel Saucer by firing left while the cursor is on the Bubble, regardless of whether the Bubble is damaged by Gorgon death rays. The Sentinel Saucer can fire horizontally left or right, with a maximum of 2 missiles on the screen at a time. Enemies shot by the saucer's missiles are generally worth double. If the saucer hits an enemy physically, the saucer takes 10 fuel units of damage and destroys the enemy without earning any points or effects it brings. If the fuel runs out, the Sentinel Saucer crashes into the ocean and the player will not be able to use the saucer again until the next day (dawn). A warning sound plays and the fuel counter turns red when the player is low on fuel. Fuel recharge starts automatically once the player redocks the Sentinel Saucer into the Bubble.

Each level has a predetermined number of enemies that the player needs to survive to complete the level. If a settlement is destroyed, no more Gorgon ships enter the screen, and a level break occurs after no enemies are present. If the player has survived the predetermined number of enemies, the player progresses to the next level, and the background changes to indicate so. If however, the player has not survived the preset number, the level will repeat itself. The exception to this is the night levels, which will skip ahead to the next level regardless. This is to prevent the player from being permanently stuck on a night level and continually getting more and more settlements demolished.

Elements from the ports
*: The theme music is from the "new day" music from the Intellivision version.
 * O = large influence
 * I = little influence
 * (O) = large influence only due to the fact that it's identical to another version

**: While the player can fire at anywhere inside the firing zone like in the Intellivision version, their shots do not have a limited range and explode (which is the case in the Intellivision version), after the Atari 2600 version.

***: Due to the increased freedom of aiming in the remake and the lack of bandits in the Intellivision version, bandit ships do not destroy other ships in the Normal and Hard difficulty modes, though that feature is retained in the Easy and Contest modes.

Contest difficulty mode
The Contest mode is an afterthought that references Atlantis II.

Back in its days, Imagic held a contest for their game Atlantis on the Atari 2600. However, as too many people got the maximum score, Imagic released a contest edition of their game, Atlantis II, which featured much faster enemies, and the last digits (that were always 0) were removed, resulting in extra settlements not being given roughly every 2-3 levels, which was the case in the original Atlantis. Visually, Atlantis II had a distinct font for the score indicator from the original Atlantis on the Atari 2600. For more information on Atlantis II, check out its AtariAge feature page.

The remake originally only had Easy, Normal, and Hard. Tangent was considering yet another difficulty level harder than Hard, but it only involved speeding up the enemies from the Hard mode, and decided it would not be a mode that people would try often. However, Tangent later saw the opportunity to incorporate Atlantis II, the contest version of Atlantis into the remake, and thus added the scoring and font changes as well into the Contest mode, to make it more distinct and more like Atlantis II. Finally, the feature of Bandits destroying other ships from Atlantis II was also brought back into the Contest mode. This made Contest a much more distinct mode from "just a difficulty level above Hard" and also made for a fun to play mode in Tangent's opinion, rather than the "mode a player rarely tries out" that was initially planned.

Trivia

 * The official manual was written in the vein of StrategyWiki articles.
 * This is the first of Tangent's games that uses a custom cursor.
 * The use of the space bar to pause the game is a reference to Atari 8-bit PCS games.
 * This game may be considered part of the "Mystery series" together with Tangent's Bermuda Triangle remake and Cosmic Ark-based games.
 * The death ray's sound effect is white noise.
 * The "Activision sunset"-styled sunrise background is borrowed from (though redrawn) Tangent's Bermuda Triangle remake.
 * While in the Intellivision version, the night levels occur at every 3rd level, in Last Days of Atlantis they occur at every 4th level.
 * The pattern the dark purple Gorgon ship moves in is inspired by the wave-like movement that some ships have in the Intellivision version. An enemy type that attempts to dodge player shots (after the smart bombs/cruise missiles in Missile Command) was attempted, though ultimately dropped for various reasons, though a main one being that it was difficult to implement without allowing for easy exploits.
 * The Sentinel Saucer first appeared in one of Tangent's earliest games, that was based on Cosmic Ark.
 * The cannons take on the appearance of their Intellivision/box art counterparts, but are coloured gold to emphasize on their invulnerability to the death rays, after the Atari 2600 version and the original unreleased remake as seen in the concept art.
 * The night level stealth style first made its appearance in Tangent's games in the earier Assassin 2600 of the Touhou 2600 series.
 * There was a piece of music that was at one point planned to be used in the ending of the game. It was modified a few times but ultimately not added into the game. The piece is a remake of an extract of a Microsoft clipart music clip, and may be found on the game pages or Tangent's SoundCloud here.