ChinnyVision: Colony

[chinnyhill10]

Heard from a few people who bought this game and didn't understand it. Zzapp 64 gave it a measly 22% (probably explained by the fact the magazine was staffed by kids with huge egos who only wanted to zap aliens). I got this game at the age of 10, understood it and played it to death. Some have even noted it has much in common with games like XCOM.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnxdcEwmH_w


Loved it back in '87 and got sucked back in very quickly playing it again last month. All the versions are very solid with not much between them.

[Shaun M. Neary]

LOL I'd hardly call Julian Rignall a kid with a huge ego who only wanted to zap aliens, he went on to do pretty well after his time at Zzapp but hey... 

[chinnyhill10]

We all grow up. But at the time they were kids and while some idolise the Zzap crew I don't have much time for them. And once he got to C+VG he spent his time shouting about unobtainable games while ignoring the 8 bits. Because obviously as a teenager I can afford expensive import games or Neo Geo's. Reading back through those magazines it's all a bit tragic and 'look at me'.


Anyway we are here to talk about Colony a game which they were wrong about.

[Nich]

I played Colony for the first time a few months ago and I didn't particularly like it. I know the concept was fairly original for its time, but I found that the gameplay gets repetitive fairly quickly, and the lack of any goal to achieve (you mention in the video that the game has no ending) means that I had no incentive to want to carry on with the game for long.

I would rate it 5/10 overall.

[Shaun M. Neary]

We all grow up. But at the time they were kids and while some idolise the Zzap crew I don't have much time for them. And once he got to C+VG he spent his time shouting about unobtainable games while ignoring the 8 bits. Because obviously as a teenager I can afford expensive import games or Neo Geo's. Reading back through those magazines it's all a bit tragic and 'look at me'.

Eh, did you actually read C+VG much, Chinny? The only time he really did that was in the Mean Machines category as the 16 bit era was launching, and that was worth about six pages of the entire magazine! I should also point out that he praised a lot of Sega Master System, NES, and PC engine stuff around 87-88. All of which were 8 bit systems, so you're clearly wrong on that score.

Anyway we are here to talk about Colony a game which they were wrong about.

I'll translate that into "I can't handle an opposing opinion". But it seems others don't rate Colony as high as you did either so... 
As you are, sir.

[chinnyhill10]

Eh, did you actually read C+VG much, Chinny? The only time he really did that was in the Mean Machines category as the 16 bit era was launching, and that was worth about six pages of the entire magazine!

Saw C+VG most months '89 to '93. If I hadn't bought it myself, someone else in my class had. Have a full collection here and if you flick start around the time just before Mean Machines launched it was full of stuff like the Neo Geo and PC Engine, which most people would never see let alone afford. Flip over to the much more mature ACE (before Emap ruined it) and you got a far better read.

[chinnyhill10]

I played Colony for the first time a few months ago and I didn't particularly like it. I know the concept was fairly original for its time, but I found that the gameplay gets repetitive fairly quickly, and the lack of any goal to achieve (you mention in the video that the game has no ending) means that I had no incentive to want to carry on with the game for long.

I would rate it 5/10 overall.

Well the goal is being able to buy better equipment and get more money. But yes it does get repetitive in the end and there is no conclusion. But I'll say this, I got far more out of it than most budget games. It's well presented, well implemented and you'll be playing it for half hour before you start to get bored.


Also as things start to fall apart and you get over-run with aliens you start to get busier as there is more to do. When the colony is running well, yes its just balance off the tasks.


But I still think this is a genesis of the type of resource management games that are ten a penny now. It's limited but for £1.99 it was better value than many competing original Mastertronic titles of the time.

[Shaun M. Neary]

Saw C+VG most months '89 to '93. If I hadn't bought it myself, someone else in my class had. Have a full collection here and if you flick start around the time just before Mean Machines launched it was full of stuff like the Neo Geo and PC Engine, which most people would never see let alone afford. Flip over to the much more mature ACE (before Emap ruined it) and you got a far better read.

Thank you for the response.
I'm gonna assume you're talking about Mean Machines, the magazine and not the feature in C+VG as the latter had been around since about 87. In which case, I'll admit there was a fair amount of focus on the Neo Geo and the PC Engine. But that was going to happen anyway, they were a huge deal at the time, and both were penned for a UK launch. But it's still really unfair to say that the 8bits were dropped for it, Dragonninja, Blasteroids and Vindicators were definitely covered on the CPC. There were several other Speccy and C64 games covered. By 89-90, the 8bit coverage was slowly diminishing as the ST and Amiga's library was really starting to build, but that's not necessarily down to Rignall. That was just the direction all formats publications were going. The 8bits were dying and with the Neo-Geo and PC Engine being primed for European release, and the Megadrive under development on the back of the SMS's success. Everything was all going in this direction... =>

[tjohnson]

Loved colony back in the day but our copy crashed when the third drop ship arrived with supplies so could never play it past that. I'm assuming this bug was fixed in some releases. 

No way was it a 22% game.

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[Phantomz]

I remember buying colony at the same time I purchased Feud, I preferred Feud at the time, but I did also enjoy playing colony.