Agent USA
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| Agent USA | |
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| Developer(s) | Tom Snyder Productions, Inc. |
| Publisher(s) | Scholastic |
| Platform(s) | Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, PC Booter |
| Release date | 1984 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure, Educational, Strategy |
Agent USA is a 1980s educational computer game designed to teach players about state capitals. The game was developed by Tom Snyder Productions and published by Scholastic. The game focused around a mutant television set, called the "Fuzzbomb" which had begun infecting United States cities. Agent USA, who could defeat the Fuzzbomb by growing energy crystals, traveled the United States via train, encoutering "fuzzed cities" along the way, with mutant inhabitants who would take the Agent's crystals. The game came out at around the same time as The Halley Project[clarify(relevance?)].
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[edit] The Game
Originally, Agent USA was designed to be an educational game since it was distributed by Scholastic, a company that made educational materials for schools including learning aids and books. As a game with color graphics, it was released fairly early during the first few years that graphical games were programmed and made available for the home computer. Back then, there were fewer game titles and, as an educational game, it stood out as a game that not only had an educational theme, it also was a lot of fun.
[edit] Pioneering Game Design
The game design was very advanced for its time and the game succeeded in delivering on both the entertainment and educational fronts. What has been lost to time is that this game was one of the very first to pioneer the room-to-room scrolling aspect of game play that later games, namely Nintendo's The Legend Of Zelda, made famous.
The main objective of the game was for Agent USA, controlled by the player, was to find the city where the "Fuzzbomb" was located and to touch it while holding 100 crystals. As the Fuzzbomb carried a contagious "fuzz" disease that caused regular people, represented as black hats with feet, to turn into contagious fuzzes that resembled squares of television static with feet. Agent USA was represented by a fedora-style spy hat with feet. One touch by a fuzzed person turned a regular citizen into a fuzz. Since the Fuzzbomb always started out in a major city, it usually infected a large body of people right off the bat. The fuzzed people would randomly board trains and get off at other neighboring cities and spread the fuzz disease. Thus it was important for Agent USA to amass 100 crystals and travel to the Fuzzbomb as quickly as possible in order to destroy it. If Agent USA was touched by a fuzzed person, he would lose half of his crystals rounded up, and if he is touched when holding 0 crystals, then the hero also turns into a mindless fuzz. The hero can be turned back to human by touching a crystal, but the player cannot control the fuzzed hero and this occurrence is somewhat random.
The game featured many elements that were ahead of its time. Randomized elements such as the starting location of the player and the Fuzzbomb, and the way fuzzed citizens spread from city to city added replayability to the game. Another unusual element was the realistic passing of time. Every two hours of in-game time causes the sky and color of buildings to change. Lights in building windows may be turned on or off at different times of day.
[edit] Educational Aspects
When someone opened the Agent USA box, included was a color map on laminated paper of the United States that had every major city and state capital listed on it. In the game, each of these cities was a destination that could be traveled to and explored. Each city was made up of several screens that could be explored. Every city had a train station where the main character, Agent USA, could find train times, destinations and board the train. Each city only had train destinations for neighboring cities so in order to travel to a city far away, the player would have to learn state and regional geography of the United States. Since each time the game started the player in a different city, each game was totally different and repeated play meant many opportunities to learn different regions of the continental US. Also, the game took place in real time, although on a sped-up clock, so that the player also learned time management. Missing the same train several times in a row could have serious consequences in the game since the main goal of the game was a beat-the-clock type of objective. Even the trains took a proportionally longer time both in game and real time if the trip between cities was actually longer.
On a side note, Agent USA featured an appealing spy-themed jingle that played during the train trips. This theme music was obviously inspired by other famous spy-related theme music like the James Bond main theme or Peter Gunn, the theme of the Spy Hunter arcade game.
[edit] Crystal Management
Between train trips, the player gathered information and news about where Fuzzbomb might be located. Whenever the player arrives in a city that has fuzzed people, the player could deduce that she was getting closer to the home city of the Fuzzbomb. Also, the player could grow her crop of crystals. At the start of the game, Agent USA has only one crystal. The player can grow more crystals by simply dropping the crystal on the ground and over time, new crystals randomly appear next to the ones on the ground. However, random regular people can pick up the crystals and thus deprive Agent USA of them. Since growing 100 crystals from just one crystal takes a significant amount of game time, this can be quite annoying for the player. However, sometimes the player may want to give up some crystals to other non-player persons in the game. If the player drops a crystal in front of a fuzzed person, it cures that fuzz back into a regular citizen. If the player allows a regular citizen to grab a crystal, that regular citizen will actually attempt to drop the crystal when a fuzzed person is around, in an attempt to cure that person! But the one annoying thing is that a regular citizen can only carry a few crystals but will continue picking them up off the ground even when full, thus destroying crystals in the process.
[edit] Winning The Game
So in the game, not only does the player have to manage a crystal crop while managing a travel schedule, the player must also manage the non-player sprites. The NPC sprites move in a diagonal fashion and merely bounce off walls of the city or off other sprites. Sometimes they randomly change direction. However, no two sprites can occupy the same space so that much of the game is spent using the Agent USA sprite to block the path of regular citizen sprites and, in a very Pong-ish manner, attempt to bounce them away from your crystals that are growing on the ground. The player can even bounce the citizen sprites into other areas of the city and even on to the train, effectively shipping that citizen out of the city. In the smallest towns, it's possible to completely clear out the entire city except for citizens that randomly arrive at the train station from other cities. Once the Agent has 100 crystals or close, it's time to go directly for the Fuzzbomb. Since the maximum number of crystals that can be held by the Agent is 100, there is no way to save up extra and thus approaching the Fuzzbomb is extremely dangerous since it is nearly always surrounded by randomly walking fuzzed people who can instantly halve the Agent's crystal inventory. If the Agent accidentally touches the Fuzzbomb with anything less than 100 crystals, he is instantly turned into a fuzz and the game is over. So the final approach in the town that is the source of the infection is extremely dangerous for the player.
If you do wind up seeing the Fuzzbomb, it has an ironic resemblance to a giant TV set. Essentially by destroying it, the player cures the people of the US from their addiction to television. This is a fitting message for a company who sells educational books.
