JauntTrooper: Mission Thunderbolt (Oldie)

[Godzilla Blitz]

Anyone ever play JauntTrooper Mission Thunderbolt? I played it just a little bit a long long time ago on a Mac, and was directed recently to the PC version of the game over at Underdogs. Downloaded it and gave it a whirl again. It's everything I remember it to be. What a hilarious, fun game.

For those who've never heard of the game, it's a top down, rougelike RPG with minimal but sufficient graphics. It's got a sci-fi theme: you are trying to help save a post-apocolyptic world that has been invaded by aliens. Your mission is to bring back a prototype of an anti-matter bomb from the abandonded headquarters of MegaCorp. Unfortunately, your mission gets all messed up, and you are the only one from your patrol that makes it to the headquarters. Once there, you discover that it is far from abandoned. There are all kinds of critters and nasties inside waiting for you.

I never got that far with the game before, but one of the amazing things about the game is that you can do just about anything with anything, and there a oodles of ways to solve almost every problem. IMHO, the game is an unheralded classic.

I took three quick runs through the game tonight at "normal" difficulty. The first time through I tried a lot of the mysterious pills that I found as I made my way through the facility. Unfortunately, I forgot that the black pill I was carrying from the start was my suicide pill, to be used in case I get captured by the Zytts (the alien enemy). I popped that one: game over. Whoops. The second time I made it a bit farther. I kept popping pills, but didn't have such good luck. One of them made me stupid, which means that I didn't know what a lot of the objects were that I found, and one put beastly spots all over my skin. Not sure what kind of affect this might have had, because I fell through a hole in level 4 and got surrounded by critters in the room I fell into. I tried to run away, but had been poisoned by something in the initial fight and ended up dying from the poison. The third time I got killed by a little dog on level 2, after once again not paying attention and falling through a hole in the floor. I dropped my weapons in the fall and tried to beat the thing to death with my hands, but there was some kind of rat behind me too, and well, my wimpy ass died again.

I'm going to try again tomorrow. Next time I'm going to skip the pills and pay more attention to where I'm going. I am determined to make it through this game once.

Best part of the whole thing is that the game is abandonware, available for free download at Underdogs, and works like a charm on Windows 95 and up.

A couple of hints for those that give it a try...

You get unlimited saves, but each save takes incrementally more points off your final score, so save wisely if you want to end up with a good score. Also, think about creative ways to solve problems and things will go much better. There are multiple uses for just about everything you find.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Watch out for the holes in the floors, too.

[Blade6119]

link?

[Godzilla Blitz]

Blade6119: Here you are...

hxxp://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=4199

I didn't link it before because a lot of people know Underdogs, and I wasn't 100% sure if we can link to this site or not, as they have software available for download. I'm guessing it's ok, though, because they don't have any pirated software, just stuff that is legitimately abandonware. Hell, this game is over a decade old.

If I'm mistaken, please accept my apology and nuke this post.