Roach Motel - The Story Of My Last Game - Amiga Written Review With Pics
Roach Motel
Amiga, 1993
Public Domain
*Appropriately written on my
Amiga using Excellence
*Game best played in PAL
mode, is NTSC compatible
If you don't mind, I'd like to take you back in time.
It's 1999 and my Amiga is but a second computer taking up valuable real estate
in my very own room. Second computer for my room, but there was a third for the
household, and more powerful than all the rest. It was now sitting in the very
spot this Amiga once sat, in the basement, a thrown for the households main
computer. My, how the mighty had fallen... Not long before this, when there was
a single PC in the basement, and the Amiga was the only computer in my room, it
was still managing extensive usage on my behalf, quite a bit after its prime.
Ever so slowly, my Amiga started to die. It really wasn't
even being replaced so much, as I've always shown an attachment to the previous
things I once spent so much time loving. I would have been happy to find it a
spot somewhere for some occasional fun. But it was not dying in terms of
usefulness to me, it was quite literally sucking in its last breaths of air,
drinking up its last voltages of electricity. It seemed to be as much, at least
in my mind at the time.
^Title screen with instructions
Disk after disk would be inserted, only to be met with
the nightmare inducing "read/write error". The majority of the games
I once held so dearly were now considered dead. There was now a large container
of floppy disks housing disks I instantly knew would be fruitless to try, along
with a second container, floppy disk label stuck to it, showing the title of
"Games that work!", and special emphasis was always put on that
particular exclamation point by myself. But now, even the "Games that
work!" collection was slowly fading away, the heart pumping ever so much
slower.
I didn't want to see the Amiga die. Desperation took
hold, I started reaching for smaller containers of disks, grabbing anything
which might shock some new life into the still beautiful. Utilities, word
processors, magazine disks, a large collection of what I now know to have been
the Fred Fish disks. Some worked, some would not, but even at this late hour it
all collects for some unforgettable moments in front of my first love, my still
true love, my Commodore Amiga 500.
Eventually the Amiga would be rounded up and put away for
many years, as it seemed like a lost cause. Luckily I did keep it around, and
would discover that the Amiga never was dying, nor had the majority of those
disks, it was simply the very well used disks drives that needed replacement or
cleaning. But those revelations would come another day.
^Get ready!
Hidden within the large number of Fred Fish disks I was
then flipping my way through was a little public domain game titled Roach
Motel. It would eventually gain the honor of being the last game I remember
being able to still play on what I considered to be my mostly dead Amiga. A
disk those quite dirty drives would somehow read their way through. Quite a
pungent gaming memory, indeed.
Roach Motel, being a public domain game, is unlikely to
win many awards for its gameplay. What is there is enjoyable enough, considering
the short amount of time you'll be spending with it. It's a platformer with the
majority of action taking place on a single screen, scrolling is kept to a
minimum, with far more on the vertical end as opposed to horizontal. There are
around seventeen levels, any of which can be selected from the main menu. I noted
many issues on my particular setup, getting "out of memory" messages
galore, especially on level ten, which I was never able to play without the
error or an outright freeze, despite doing all I could think of to increase
memory on an already memory heavy machine. One thing that escaped my thoughts
at the time, but might be worth a try for others wanting to give this one a
try, is to forget the hard drive and just boot it from floppy.
^Lots of physics based platforming
You play as a funky looking character, with some mighty
special teeth, indeed. The fact that I can notice the teeth should speak well
for the games overall graphics, it's rather well done in terms of side
scrollers, especially those in the public domain realm. Your main goal is to
grab all of the spray paint cans scattered randomly throughout the levels,
while avoiding or crushing the roaches which will spawn and disappear in an
endless fashion. Similar to Ghosts and Goblins, these enemies have no issues
spawning directly below you, causing some cheap deaths.
Starting off with around eight lives, I can't say the
deaths in this game cause too much frustration, but there will be plenty of
them. Your character is only able to fall the shortest distances imaginable
between platforms, which I'm willing to bet will be the cause of most deaths in
the game. If you're able to plot your fall in order to land on a roach, fall
damage will be negated.
^Ice physics must be used at times to get from one area to another
An attention to detail is ever present in terms of the
games mechanics. Certain platforms can have quite a bit of physics applied to
them, most notably those covered in ice. Quite slippery, they will also be a
cause of many deaths until you figure out the best approach to them. At times
you will be needing to exploit the games physics in order to get from one area
to another. An example is gaining a bit of speed on an ice platform so you can
make a normally impossible jump to another. There are ladders which only go up,
polls where you can only slide down, both of which act in a fast manner, as
opposed to the many ropes which you can go up or down on, but much slower. Lava
will also be ever present, causing near instant and guaranteed death.
The music is a rather short but enjoyable loop of
samples, including a bit of voice, helping the game to receive that
"funky" feeling from me. There's really not much more to say about it
all. It's a simple public domain Amiga platformer, there are some things that
will scream out at you as public domain in the terrible sense, but also a few
things which will cause you to smile and think "hmmm..." Of note is
how the game detects upon start-up if your Amiga is an NTSC or PAL machine, and
is quite compatible with NTSC despite being designed to fully utilize the extra
PAL resolution. The graphics will be stretched vertically in NTSC, and the
bottom portion of the screen, showing the score, will be cropped out as well.
The music as well as the overall gameplay seem to run at the same speed in
either mode, and all in all it's rater nice to see some PAL Amiga designs
actually utilizing what PAL had to offer, while at the same time caring about
the NTSC machines.
^Naturally, harder as the levels increase, notes from the readme
While not a game I imagine too many out there are going
to be reading about and leaping to get a hold of themselves, I'm also sure that
most out there will get a few kicks out of it should they end up seeking it
out. Its ever enduring appeal to me will always be the memories of sadness
simply looking at my Amiga in the late 90's brought to me, knowing that almost
everything I could throw into the disk drive would be met with a horrible error
message and sound... But never this one game. Even during rock bottom for my
beloved Amiga, this one game stood tall, allowing me a period of time to relive
the glory days.
Hope everyone will check out the companion video review
for Roach Motel, showing off the game and vocalizing those heartfelt memories.
Also of possible interest for those reading would be my special video and
article concerning that horrid "read/write error", can Disk Doctor
cure our floppies needs?
Hey I made this game when I was a kid. Thanks for your fun review. It's a blast from the past.
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