Guzzler(1983) By:Tehkan Genre:Maze Players:1 Difficulty:Medium-Hard Featured Version:Arcade First Day Score: 27,350 (one credit) Also Available For:SG-1000
I was actually playing a pretty awful old shmup with a view to entering a score in a retro league when I noticed the name of this game just above it. I hadn't heard of it but I thought I'd give it a quick go anyway. Given its name, I expected it to be a blatant Pac-Man clone or perhaps even some some of binge-eating game, like a food version of Tapper, but it was not. While it is indeed a maze game, it's not like the one starring that flappy-jawed yellow gobbler at all. Each stage is a single screen in size and feature mazey-like layouts, but the similarities are not extensive besides that. It even took me a few minutes to work out what was going on when I first tried it. I guess that shouldn't be too surprising!
I naturally assumed I was simply required to dispatch all the enemies on each of the apparently-infinite stages, but it's not quite that simple. As it turned out, our splodgy hero is for some reason filled with water, and it's his job to put out the fires on each stage. It is these hot flickery piles that create all the enemies and also replace them if you dispatch any, so focusing on the sparkly imps that chase you around each stage as I initially did is not the best way forward. Splodgy, as I've decided to call the main character, is able to put enemies down by... well, I'm not quite sure how he does it actually - he appears to extend forwards out of his own body, perhaps in a form of astral projection.
However he does it, the process seems to deplete his innards - i.e. the water he is filled with - and as a result he's only able to perform this dubious ritual three times. One advantage, however, is that the emptier he is, the faster he moves. Very handy considering the quickest enemy (the red one) moves faster than Splodgy does when he's full. He can fill himself up again though, by drinking, or indeed 'guzzling', one of the puddles of water laying around the place. Using this strange and possibly-occult means of attack, Splodgy can take out enemies and the fires that produce them; once all the fires have been extinguished, it's on to the next stage. Beware though - the last fire starts moving around!
This is just one of several things that makes this a rather tricky little game. There are few pick-ups and none (that I've found so far) that grant any kind of invulnerability, and mistakes are easy to make with enemies closing in from all around. You do get a wheel of fortune-style 'last chance' when your meagre stock of lives is used up but that's about all the help you get. You can give your score a significant boost, though, by lighting up the letters at the bottom of the screen which is done by defeating an enemy in the 'column' above whichever letter is outlined in red. This makes Guzzler a great game for high-score chasers and it's decent fun to play. The graphics are quite pleasant for their day too - colourful with appealing sprites, and there are (I believe) fifteen unique stage layouts before they start repeating. I guess it's not a hugely original game but it was certainly a pleasant surprise after the strangely annoying shoot 'em up I was playing immediately prior, and another quirkily enjoyable game from those splendid Tehkan/Tecmo fellows.
RKS Score: 7/10
Gameplay Video: here's a video of the first 22 stages of the game being played by one of the talented fellows at MamePlayer (check out their great channel here).
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