When will we ever use this junk?

When will we ever use this junk? Yes, it is a common question a math teacher hears when he or she it teaching Algebra. It seems so abstract. It seems so much like...Tetris?!? Sure.

So what is the point of Tetris? To make as many lines as possible disappear (duh). Why not put this idea into a real life situation and make a better Tetris game? Well, Atari did that on the good old arcade version.

I think the arcade version was one of the last games to use a roller ball for a D pad, and certainly one of the best heard sound samples of its time.

"Ready! Aim! Fie-yahr!"

Man that was cool hearing that unmistakably British general shout out orders, but as we all know the Game Boy isn't too big on sound and the voice here sounds distorted. Actually, with the volume turned all of the way up it is still too soft to make out what is happening. No battle drums are clearly audible. The sound was a let down. I actually returned my first copy thinking it was a defect. No, just bad sound.

As far as the graphics went they were quite on par with the arcade original and even better than the Super Nintendo version. Everything was crisp and clear.

There are 2 stages of game play. 1 is building your castle with tetris like pieces, making a solid perimeter to fortify your capitol. the 2nd is aiming a crosshairs at enemy ships who are shooting at your perimeter. If the ships land, men get off and create small and impossible targets that block your ability to replenish your barrier. If you cannot patch all holes in your castle, the game is over. You lose. When you are rebuilding you have a limited amount of time. If you can claim other castles by building around them then you get bonus cannons that make it easier to blast enemy ships.

This is why the game was fun. It gets really tense when you have to rebuild walls and when you do not get to choose the pieces, particularly when you are using a track ball. The benefit of the gameboy is that the D pad is easier to use. the drawback is that the screen is too small to see what is going on and because of the screen limitations there is no possibility of making the 2 player mode where you bomb each others castles.

The Gameboy is a great system and Rampart is a cool game, but they do not mesh too well together.

Control is good, but it is hard to tell where you should put the pieces and since the sound is so terrible it it difficult to tell when the battle drums are giving you that "running out of time" cue. Shooting the enemy is just as it should be. It was a good game, but not a to die for puzzler.

When will you ever play this junk? About as often as you play tetris and subtract 2 over the reciprocal of pi.