Pandemonium (video game)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Pandemonium | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Developer(s) | Toys For Bob N-Gage: Nokia, Ideaworks3D |
| Publisher(s) |  Crystal Dynamics Crystal Dynamics Bandai |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation, Sega Saturn, PC, N-Gage |
| Release date | October 31, 1996 N-Gage: October 6, 2003 |
| Genre(s) | Platformer |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Kids to Adults (6+) |
Pandemonium is a platform game, published by Crystal Dynamics, for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, PC, and Nokia N-Gage. It features Fargus, a joker, and Nikki, who unwittingly casts a spell that destroys the town. The goal of the game is to reach the Wishing Engine, where they can wish the town back to normal. For each level, the player can choose which character to be. Each has a special move - Fargus can deliver a special spinning attack, and Nikki can double jump. The game consists of a great variety of unique gameplay objects, such as watermelons, clouds, spider webs and logs. The Playstation and PC versions have 18 levels, while the N-Gage version has 11.
In the PlayStation and Saturn versions, rather than using a memory card as in most games, progress is saved using a password system.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
In the land of Lyr, there was a young sorceress called Nikki and her friend, a court jester called Fargus, and his folderol Sid. They lived at the Lancelot Castle. They had gone there to attend a "Wizards in Training" seminar. Nikki, a talented acrobat with swift reflexes, had become irritated with her blunt carnival life on the high-wire. After having forgotten to feed the lions, and the trainer almost having his arm chewed off, she decided it was time to run away and become a wizard! Fargus, having grown up in a family of jesters, and his stick-puppet partner Sid spent their lives together traveling from fair to festival entertaining and embarrassing people here and there. Their act, however, was as old as the hills and usually turned into a bombardment of fruits and eggs. They too were a little tired of same old routine and had heard about the Wizards seminar.
Nikki, Fargus and Sid met at the seminar while pushing and bumping into each other. The seminar turned out to be rather boring and they each did their own thing while waiting for it to end, with Nikki practicing back- flips, Fargus sleeping, and Sid making spitballs. Finally Vu, the speaker at the seminar, terminated his speech and headed for the restroom. Nikki and her new found friends decided to follow Vu as he went down the hallway. As they approached him, they noticed that he had been hitting the bottle a little. Tripping over a pleat in the carpet, an ancient book slipped out of his backpack. Nikki leaped and grabbed the thick handbook before it hit the ground. The book was titled, "Ancient Wizards Spellbook", and contained warnings such as "Must be fully trained and licensed to use" and "May result in danger and death". This is exactly what they had hoped for as they rushed up to the high balcony over looking the city.
The adventure begins here with Nikki performing spells from the magical book atop of the castle. Fargus and Sid want to see something with more fire power and urge Nikki to perform a 10th level spell. With a few magical words appears a green horrible looking monster called Yungo that consumes the entire village with one large gulp. With a slight panic in their voices, they search the book for how to rid the city of the monster. Instructions on their mission are given out as the book reveals that they'll have to obtain a boon from the Wishing Engine. "A boon? What the heck's a boon?" Sid asks, "A wish, you idiot!" Fargus replies. With a map from the book to help them, they set off on their journey.
When they find the Wishing Engine, the engine tells them to speak three wishes. Fargus elects himself to try to make the wishes, despite Sid's suggestion to "Wish for a million wishes. Wish for a million wishes!", with Nikki commenting "that never works!" on that. Fargus makes the first wish, he wishes for a chicken. Sid scorns him and questions him why he did that. Fargus says that he just wanted to see if it would work. Nikki makes the second wish, she wishes that Yungo was sent back to his own dimension and the village was saved. The heroes are then teleported back to the top of Lancelot Castle. They watch as Yungo spits out the village, and is pulled back into his own dimension. In their moment of joy, Nikki realises that the Wishing Engine promised them three wishes. Fargus is concerned about that. Nikki is worried, what did Fargus wish for? As he put it, Fargus wanted to share the joy with the whole world. And, he wished that everyone back home could be just like him! Bad move! Everyone in the village looks exactly like Fargus! As the scene fades, Sid exclaims "Oh boy, I think we're gonna need another wish!"
[edit] Gameplay
Pandemonium employs a so-called "2.5D gameplay". While the game renders polygons in a typical 3-D fashion, gameplay is 2-D. The area of gameplay can be described as a two-dimensional surface twisting and bending in a three-dimensional world. Occasionally, this surface will overlap itself. For example, the main tower of the second level is a cylinder with a spiral-shaped floor.
Along the way, the player can gather treasure. Collecting 300 treasure grants the player an extra life. The player can also activate a bonus level by collecting enough of the treasure in one level. (It is unclear how the limited-time × 2 treasure modifiers affect the percentage of treasure collected.)
- If the player gathers 80% to 94% of the treasure on a level, he activates "Speed Greed", a bonus level in which one must collect treasure while simultaneously keeping ahead of a pursuing vortex.
- If the player gathers at least 95% of the treasure on a level, he activates "Full Tilt", a pinball-based bonus level. In this, the player directs the character around a giant pinball machine in order to gather treasure and activate special areas of the board. Upon reaching the end of this bonus stage, the player can achieve as many as three extra lives as well.
In each bonus level, one automatically has three "tries", which are separate from lives.
There are three unique powers (other than metal, which provides limited invincibility) that the player can collect. Each shoots a beam of limited range in the forward direction, somehow affecting the first enemy it hits. The red power harms the first enemy in its path. This will destroy most enemies in one hit, but it will take some enemies three or even ten hits. The blue power freezes an enemy, and upon touching a frozen enemy, it will shatter and be destroyed. The green power shrinks any enemy, whereupon it can be destroyed by stepping on it. Shrunken enemies grow back after a limited amount of time, and likewise frozen enemies will thaw after a similar amount of time. None of these powers affects bosses. A player loses all powers when hit.
At several points in the game, after passing a certain area the player will turn into a unique animal; passing another area will revert the player back to a normal character. The player will become a frog, a rhinoceros, a turtle, and a dragon throughout the course of the game. The frog can jump extremely high, the rhinoceros can kill any enemy by charging at them, the turtle can become invulnerable by hiding in its shell, and the dragon can breath fire and fly. The challenges of the level then reflect the abilities of each animal until the character reverts to normal later in the level.
Like in Zelda games, the player has a limited number of hearts, representing health. Rare bonuses allow the player to add to the initial two heart containers, so that the player can store more than two hearts at once. Loss of all hearts results in the loss of a life and the return to the latest checkpoint. Loss of all lives ends the game.
[edit] Levels
Level 1 - Skull Fortress
Level 2 - Hollow Stairway
Level 3 - Dungeon Tower
Level 4 - Lost Caves
Level 5 - Fungus Grotto
Level 6 - Acid Pools
Boss 1 - Shroom Lord
Level 7 - Burning Desert
Level 8 - Branky Wastes
Level 9 - Spider Forest
Level 10 - Canopy Village
Level 11 - Soldier Barracks
Level 12 - Honcho's Logmill
Boss 2 - Goon Honcho
Level 13 - Honcho's Airship
Level 14 - Dragoon Skyfort
Level 15 - Cloud Citadel
Level 16 - Efreet Palace
Level 17 - Frozen Cavern
Level 18 - Storm Temple
Boss 3 - Wishing Engine
[edit] Heart containers
The aforementioned heart containers are the most coveted of all treasures and are nearly impossible to find. In order to gain access to a heart container, the secret area where the heart container dwells must be located. Despite being a platform game, Pandemonium's heart containers are extremely difficult to locate, as certain things may distract one from seeing the less obvious path leading to the container, or simply because the area is hard to reach. For example, in level 10, at a certain part of the level, some leaves fall from the sky and the player can jump on them. They must go fast, for the leaves continue to fall and there are some normal platforms in between the leaves that stay floating. If they're too slow, they can't make it to those platforms and they'll fall. Falling takes the player to the next checkpoint, so they can't try again without exiting or finishing the level first. At the end of the leaves, there is a tree that can be entered, and if the player enters, it takes them to the top of the tree, where there is a small hole in the path and a bunch of boxes filled with treasure. In the last box in the middle, there is a heart container. Certain passwords have been discovered in which the character has eight heart containers (seven in the Playstation version), meaning a total of six(five for Playstation) heart containers exist throughout the game's eighteen levels. However, no one knows of anyone who has found the location all of the heart containers and come forward with the information, although there are rumors. The levels that have heart containers are:
- Level 3 - Dungeon Tower
- Level 5 - Fungus Grotto
- Level 10 - Canopy Village
- Level 13 - Honcho's Airship
- Level 16 - Efreet Palace
- ? (Likely to be Level 15 - Cloud Citadel, because nobody has gotten more than 88% treasure on this level)
Note: The code IGGEOPJF (or in some versions IKKEOPJF) will activate ALL heart containers and a freeze powerup.
[edit] Japanese version
Pandemonium was released in Japan by Bandai under the title Magical Hoppers (マジカルホッパーズ?), with story, cutscenes, characters (Fargus becomes Clam, and Nikki becomes Guppy. Though Sid changes, he keeps his name), and soundtrack completely changed.[1] The Sega Saturn and PlayStation versions have different intro cinematics.
[edit] Sequel
Pandemonium 2, the sequel to Pandemonium, was released in 1997 for PlayStation and PC. It was released in Japan as Miracle Jumpers.
[edit] References
- Chambers, Chadd (2003). N-Gage: Pandemonium Review. Retrieved Jan. 19, 2005.
- Schwarzenbach, Blake (2000). review - PC - CNET Reviews. Retrieved Feb. 3, 2005.
